campboy

I disagree with this. International visitors are few in number, and are usually experienced players who can be expected to cope. But an inappropriate set of alerting regulations is going to cause problems for the much larger number of novice players in clubs, and, potentially, put them off the game entirely. These are the people we should be concerned about. And that is one reason why alerting regulations vary from country to country -- because what is unexpected to that group of players also varies.

No, they aren't. Traditionally, the team that wins a board is awarded some IMPs as defined in Law 78B, and the other team gets nothing; then the result is determined by seeing which team got more IMPs. This is why 78B only lists positive scores. So "IMPs" would just be the IMPs won; "IMP margin" is the IMPs won minus the IMPs conceded. Normally, your IMP margin is just the negative of your opponents' IMP margin (because your IMPs won on a board = their IMPs conceded, and vice versa), but when a score is split this will not be so.

I think there is a difference between the two. In the case given in this thread I would feel on firm ground ruling against SB, because to play extra-quickly in the hope that an opponent will think you've played a different card seems like a clear violation of 73D2. Playing extra-fast so that your opponent has to think when it's his turn, not yours, isn't covered by that law. I suppose you could get it under 73D1 and 23, but it feels more tenuous. I do think it is sharp practice, and wouldn't do it myself, but there's no reason why Rodwell (or anyone else) should be expected to share my opinion. What makes the case here more interesting to me is that, as Lamford points out, by a strict reading of the laws the TD's powers to "designate otherwise" do not extend to penalty cards arising from a revoke. I wonder whether this is really what the writers intended.

I agree with mycroft that the removal of the SEWoG clause would benefit experts, since experts would be better able to judge when they have a chance at a double shot. Now it is true that experts are currently less likely that non-experts to be denied redress under SEWoG. But I do not think that is because the SEWoG rule benefits experts. Rather, it is that when a situation arises where a non-expert might get denied redress, often the expert manages to avoid being damaged in the first place, so also does not get redress. tl;dr: the rules do not favour experts -- being expert favours experts.

In a club event, if you think it's going to be anywhere near as few as 1 board in 10 where the play is irrelevant, or as much as 1 board in 10 where you're booked for +/-12 whatever you do, our experiences are clearly quite different. I find there are lots of boards where your play might make the difference between two smallish but positive numbers (or two smallish but negative numbers) at IMPs and is a waste of time at BAM. There doesn't have to be a big number at the other table to make the play irrelevant -- 200 on a partscore board, for example, which could still see your play changing -3 to -7 at IMPs. Of course there is more luck involved at IMPs as to where the big swings fall, but I'm happy to take my chances. As I said in my first post, I don't think maximising the chance of good pairs winning should be the primary aim of club events.

It happens occasionally, yes. But even an overtrick when there is a big score at the other table can often gain an IMP. Making your contract rather than not will almost always gain. I don't mind the play turning out to be irrelevant occasionally, but with two- or even three-table MPs I find it happens far too much.

I think mgoetze is probably right that the better pairs win more often at MPs, but in normal club events I don't think that should be the primary criterion. I strongly prefer to play some form of IMPs with two or three tables, because I find it annoying to play/defend a contract carefully and then discover it was a waste of time because something silly at the other table(s) meant my MP score was determined before the opening lead.

No, the correct procedure with all claims is to give the worst non-careless line that is consistent with the claim statement, if any. If there are no lines consistent with the claim statement, then and only then do you give the worst of all non-careless lines. If West had had a club instead of one of his hearts, and the same statement had been made, then it would break down immediately on a red-suit return, since it would be impossible to win both small diamonds. So we have to fall back on the worst of all non-careless lines; since as you say it would be worse than careless to fail to make all the tricks now, we still allow him to do so.

I disagree with the majority here, and would allow the claim. It seems to me that by saying "dummy is high", declarer has implied that he does not intend to win a trick with the ♦K. (Indeed, had the ♦J been out I would rule on the basis that he would still "unblock", and would give the defence two tricks rather than one as a consequence.)

I think the previous rule was better precisely because club TDs often do forget Law 64C. The vast majority of 64C cases in the current laws involve a defender winning a later trick with a card he shouldn't have (and conversely, most situations where this happens now require 64C).

If it's a mechanical error (or "unintended call", as the laws put it), then, by law, it can be changed even if it has been made (indeed, even if next hand has subsequently called). Whether the bid has been made or not is usually only relevant when it was not a mechanical error but the player wishes to change his mind. In the ACBL, the point at which a bid is made is slightly later than in the EBU (where it is made as soon as it is removed from the box with apparent intent, but of course can still be changed if it was not the actual intended call).

I think the point of this second part is that it covers the case where the player is no longer holding the bidding card. We need to be able to say a bid that has been dropped onto the table has been made, even if at no point was it being held near the table. I suppose one could maintain it in such a position as to indicate it had been made if one stuck it in front of another player's face, or something, but I've never seen anything like that.

All you need to do is find an action that the player takes about 10% of the time, think of a hand feature you might be interested in signalling that comes up on about 10% of hands, record 65 hands, and get a little bit lucky. Then you assume 50% instead of 10% and get a figure of 1 in 1,000,000,000 for at least 56 out of 65 matches, when this actually has a probability of 1 in 4. Now the wide bids in this article weren't anywhere near as rare as 10% (which is why you still get 17,000,000). But you actually need to go and count them to check that. They weren't anywhere near as common as 50% either.

I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. The linked article is not claiming that 38 out of 40 times when they made a wide bid they had a good hand. It is claiming that on 38 out of 40 hands they either made a wide bid and had a good hand, or didn't make a wide bid and didn't have a good hand. And that is why it becomes crucially important to find out how many of those 40 hands actually had a wide bid. If almost all of the 40 hands were bad hands where wide bids didn't occur, that proves nothing. As it happens, only 10 of those 40 hands had wide bids on them, and you actually have to look at the raw data and count stuff to get that information.

Of course it's trivial to inflate your figure. Just pick some thing that the pair does occasionally but not often, pick a piece of information that you'd want to show occasionally but not often, notice that on a lot of hands these things coincide (which they will, because most hands will be no for both), assume that both these things are actually 50% and there you go.

The point is, until you actually do the calculation you have no idea how far out the 1,000,000,000 figure is, just that it's too high. That's not useful information. If you're going to make assumptions that aren't justified and will inevitably inflate your figure as much as possible, it's not difficult to end up with a very big number. The question is whether you can do an accurate calculation that gives them the benefit of the doubt and still get a big number. And the answer, in this case, seems to be yes.

The analysis in the linked article isn't great. The article says This is not accurate. Looking into the appendices, narrow gaps are much more likely than wide gaps; 43 of the 65 hands included have a narrow gap. The panel are also much more likely to go for narrow than wide, and perhaps that is genuinely because you are more likely to hold a narrow-gap-suitable hand. In fact, the panel were explicitly biased towards narrow gaps. So, some proper figures. We have 65 hands. The experts pick 23 of these as "wide" hands. The video analysts pick 22 of them as "wide" hands. If the two groups make their choices completely independently, what is the chance of at least as good a match? The answer is: 1 in 16,788,770. That's a large number, but also a lot smaller than the 1 in 975,969,054 you would get with the flawed 50% analysis above.

I think some of those don't count since the definition talks about the aims of the activity, not the effects. Smoking may demonstrate your health, but that's not why people do it.

Also it's not "improves" but "improves or expresses". Anything designed to show off your physical and mental fitness fits the definition, even if the activity itself is damaging.

FWIW that website says that they are using the Council of Europe's European Sports Charter 1993 definition of sport, which they don't bother to provide a link to, but googling gives the following. That's an even worse definition than I'd expect from a political entity (which is saying something). Why is it "physical fitness and mental well-being"? Why is it "aim at [x], [y] or [z]"? What exactly is meant by "physical activity" anyway? I don't see why something which only aims to form social relationships, but has no aspect of physical/mental fitness or competition, counts. Helene's example of speed-dating actually is a sport, I guess (in fact, just regular dating seems to qualify).

I assume you mean "if the penalty card is small, he may not play another small card in the same suit before playing the penalty card". My version is a bit more complex than that because I went out of my way to write something which would clearly cover all possible multiple-penalty-card situations (and which wouldn't require "small" to be defined elsewhere). You are certainly right that the first eight words of 2 are just as unnecessary as the first six words of 1.

Complexity of the restrictions on what card a player with a penalty card must play. Which is more complex: "he may play any legal card", or "he may play any legal honour card, but he may not play a non-honour card which is not a penalty card if he has a non-honour card of the same suit which is a penalty card"? In practice, you can probably write version 1 above as "", which is even simpler.

Play continues with the larger card having been played, but the TD may award an adjusted score if he feels that dummy's (illegal) suggestion damaged the other side (law 45F). IMO he should adjust the score based on what would have happened if declarer had played small (assuming that is worse for declarer), since it seems clear he would have done so without dummy's intervention. You might give dummy a procedural penalty as well, particularly if you thought he did it deliberately.

I think law 17D still applies, even though we are no longer in the auction period. The only thing that suggests otherwise is the heading for law 17 ("The Auction Period"), but according to the introduction headings do not limit the application of any law.

Nonsense. Law 47 is not about leads out of turn at all; it is about situations where a card may be withdrawn. One of these is when a player has been incorrectly informed that it is his turn. Law 54A is not more specific than 47E, because 54A considers the general (and common) case of an OLOOT rather than the special (and rare) case where it is because the player has been incorrectly informed.