axman

A hypothetical presented as this has been presented has no value because no one has told the truth nor has anyone told a lie upon which to rule. This is much akin to dealing with "When did you stop beating your wife". To be of any value you need a real live case, with who said what, the right questions asked and so forth. Trying to get a recipe is a non starter Personally I have been involved with two similar situations. Even though I don't recollect how the TD dealt with the first one my impression was that the TD was highly deficient on both occasion concerning the investigation- even though on both occasions the ruling reflected [correctly] that my account was the accurate one. And what was indelibly disappointing was that both rulings omitted the basis/reasoning for the decision made. That information is vital for the parties in deciding whether the ruling was a fair one.

I have had reorganizing TFLB in the back of my mind for well over 10 years- but never once has the thought risen close enough to the surface to act on it. And if I were to act on it I believe that my priority would be to locate all of the important stuff [what it takes to play assuming no irregularities] in a contiguous location. In other word, if you tore the section away you could make do. the idea being you would have the fewest pages needed . This then would necessitate having principles as how to dismantle sentences as needed. This can be a rather delicate task. And then there needs to be principles for dealing with the additions that no one knows about yet. This is important because if you are going to arrange thinks so that everyone has to learn where to find them, and then you renumber again when something new does not fit. You get my drift. However, here is the rub. As TFLB now stands, it contains several hundred conflicts within its borders. So, does it make sense to reorganize [errr I mean organize] TFLB before or after the conflicts are removed? The thing about organizing, if you don’t know what the end product is supposed to look like before you start, you’ll be doing an immense number of iterations until you do. Just trying to be helpful.

Take a good look see at L21A.

Dummy has exposed a card after the auction and there was an OLOOT. The lead is accepted [L54C], dummy is spread, and declarer plays second to the trick. Dummy has participated in breach of L43 and should be assessed a stiff PP [half a board seems about right, but conditions could merit more].

I could say a substantial bit on the subject but will leave it with this: The practice often has the effect of engendering an unwarranted sense that the receiver must find some way to reciprocate the forgiveness- which often manifests itself by increasing the pressure so high that the player cracks under the strain. And, far more likely, the ‘gift’ carries with it the expectation that it to be returned with interest….to wit: In October of 1999 the Bridge World gave some ink and trees to the case during the Team trials where team A exposed a card to a trick and then exposed a second card after returning the first to his hand. The ruling was [properly] that the second card was a PC which in the end moved two tricks originally destined to ‘A’ over to ‘B’. Well, it seems that earlier B had received liberties from ‘A’ when he had claimed and now ‘A’ expected to get his reciprocation [not call the TD and thus no PC]. The result, as reported by TBW was that WW3 erupted.

As has been characterized, psyche has been adopted as a legal term that has been frequently abused and misused by those on the legal side of things. I’ll suggest that the word that fits your bill is bluff. I am aware of one convention that would be known as a systemic bluff. It is known as the Herman Heart and to my knowledge it is practiced by one individual [Herman de Wael]- without, or as the case might be, with the knowledge or blessing of his partner. iirc the convention applies only to opening the bidding 1H third hand holding specifically two hearts and 3-5 hcp [i don’t recollect if there vulnerability constraints]. As I indicated he invokes the ‘convention’ whenever the conditions are met [which works out to once in 20-40 months]. There are no responses to control the proceedings. Churchill advocates bluffing with Kxxxx and not much else, [but not systemically] for the purpose when the occasions that partner judges in time [and also when he doesn’t judge] you have bluffed then he might better judge a place to land. After an illegal call not accepted a player is in a position to control his bluff since partner will be forced to pass. This of course has L23 ramifications. Others have pointed out that some systems lend themselves in certain situation to bluff while you can control the immobilization of partner. One such system is 2/1 which utilizes implicitly the drury convention after 3rd major openings to advise responder that opener has shaded his opening from the minimum starting hand. In such a position third hand can choose to bluff say with the Churchill holding mentioned above without fear of partner getting a bee in his bonnet and thus stay away from intense danger because of the probable 9-card fit. Personally, I think that drury is a valid method to control such a bluff, but.. …there is immense temptation to employ the method unfairly [cheating] by tipping partner off say by poor tempo and the like. Which leads to perhaps the most common technique for controlling a bluff: tempo/ OBM. A fast pass by partner can suggest such a pitiful hand that a bluff opening gains attraction because partner likely won’t respond and thus keep the possible disaster low while maybe knocking the wind out of the opponents. Then again, an out of tempo think or gesture can tip partner off that you have deviated, including with deception of the opponents in mind. Even undiscussed such gestures can and do tip the balance frequently enough to make the difference. And then there are the discussed [secret] signals like pencil signals, touching a wrist watch and such that can be used to tip off that it is safe to bluff or a bluff was made. [this is L73B2 territory]. And in that same group the alert procedure. The presence or absence of an alert can tip a player off that he has misbid thereby putting him the position of judging how to control the disaster of the impending derailment. It is for these reasons that I suggest that partners that do not have good tempo should not engage in bluffing for the simple reason that they are not in a position to conduct themselves fairly.

In Gatlinburg the typical noise level would be considered a roar. Under those circumstances I was watching a KO match where three tables away there was a tirade of abuse shaking me in my chair [even with the background noise going on]. After twenty minutes of putting up with it I notified the TD of the problem. He advised me he would do nothing about it as I wasn’t a player at that table. While I can see the point that if the players are well aware of that kind of irregularity anyone of them could and ought to speak out, and to not do so they deserve what they get. I wish to point out that it is extremely important for third parties to be careful to not introduce in any way their own anomalies into a hand in play. So, with that in mind, after consideration it occurred to me there is sufficient leeway for a kibitzer at some other table to draw attention to such a public nuisance so that a TD might take action; and in every event it occurred to me that the TD has a duty to address all irregularities brought to his attention by what whatever means he comes to know about them.

To build on this thought, a point I was making was the importance for the law to deal satisfactorily with all the ancillary issues [the law not conflict with itself, for instance]. An example being that in the last two years I pointed out that the law required all players to quit their cards immediately upon a trick being completed. And yet, the law also provides for a player being permitted to see quitted cards provided he has not quitted his card.... uh-huh, right. Providing solutions [prevention] for improper deception is merely one of the issues that ‘request to see the last trick’ touches.

I do not believe that the contributions to this thread reflect the gravity of the issues. To demonstrate I’ll relate a series of events that I have suffered many more than several times. Consider here that I sit east, picking up the action at T4 where pard led, dummy and I play and declarer detaches a card and places it in the discards in such a way that I can not see its face. The other two players quit their cards and declarer now exposes a card on the table, pard exposes a card, and declarer calls for dummy’s card. I now quit my card to T4 and the other three players quit their cards; and declarer exposes a card and then pard exposes a card. I should think that declarer’s first card was not played to T4 and the second one was. Doesn’t that make pard’s next card the lead to T5? And, possibly OOT? And, has not pard’s playing a card at T6 cause a defective trick whereby I did not play to T5? The reason that I left my card faced was to find out which card declarer played to T4. Does anyone really believe that the TD will rule that declarer’s second card belonged to T4. Do you believe that it is right headed for a player to [improperly] perpetrate a series of events that cascades into entrapping an opponent into establishing a revoke via a defective trick? There should be enough meat here to spark some lively and terrifying thought. For them who want to fashion law it behooves you to carefully consider the issues that are crucial to present to the players as important and the words used to convey the messages- lest you do no better than the WBF.

The expectation [and actuality] are the opposite.

It is imbecilic for law to give permission to take a do-over. For instance, if a player corrects his call the law ought to provide for what is to happen. The business of inadvertency, being otherwise a matter of mind reading, should be directed toward the ethics of the player: in other words, if his call was not inadvertent he shouldn’t consider attempting to change his call. A whole lot of people believe that the correct point of measuring for too much time having elapsed being the time when the play ‘says he noticed’ needs to be ‘the point in time when he first should have noticed’. For instance, in voice bidding that point is when the words were uttered; for bidding boxes it is at least by the time the hand starts coming down towards the table, and certainly not after the bidding cards have been released; when an opponent commit a distraction coincident with bidding- after the smoke has cleared; when partner mentions that Wendy is particularly daring tonight- the same as when there was no distraction; when some one yells fire- after the smoke clears.

It is extremely important that rulings be made in accordance with law. This is distinct from making them for or against some player. As to the former, by doing so the conditions of contest might be fulfilled; as to the latter, there is the suggestion that the conditions of contest are not fulfilled such as by ruling by principles that are in conflict with law or by ignoring facts or changing the facts. As to matters that are irrelevant I will point out one or two things. For instance there has been some issue made [irrelevant] as to things claimer would surely have done had he played it out. And I draw attention to one of those things in particular. When declarer made his spurious second claim he claimed ‘if the clubs don’t break…’ -what he claimed was that he would not notice the CJ, only whether the defenders would follow to clubs. To wit, he could have said ‘if the CJ falls’ or ‘if the CJ does not fall in three rounds’ but he said something with quite a different meaning. In other words, the second claim can hardly be 'a correction' as it indeed suffered from its own fatal error. Which is to say that the claim requires the D hook once clubs don’t break.

A player that tries to maintain a consistent tempo will not go about consciously varying it so as to get a reaction from an opponent. If such a player does vary his manner and does get a reaction from his opponent, and if he should draw inference he does so at his own peril that he misunderstands the source of the reaction [eg the distinction between being startled and between contemplation]. Such a player- whether fair minded or Rodwell should realize that any mistake came from himself and it would be a grave breach of propriety to accuse the opponent of improper deception or even broach or contemplate the matter. Unintentional or not, his hands aren’t clean and it is wrongheaded to believe ill of such an opponent. In the poker world, what Rodwell contemplates is called shooting an angle. To an observer, he can’t tell what shooter’s motivation is [can’t discern a breach of propriety] so the shooter [a] wins/breaks even if he gets the tell right and he wins when he gets a tell but gets his play wrong- because in that instance he has a case for improper deception which will unsettle and distract, perhaps break his opponent’s will to win- even when the shooter loses his L73 ‘accusation’. The angle is that the shooter’s mannerism changeup gets lost in the confusion and never is brought up as a bridge reason for the tell, let alone as a basis for a proprieties case against the shooter. As fascinating as embracing coffee housing may be, I for one am unable to visualize a set of rules for bridge that encompass it. Nor can I visualize such a game being popular amongst more than meager numbers. Such a game would be focused upon who can be the rudest and roughest character. I should think that to hold one’s interest significant stakes need to be involved- there in fact being such a game known as poker.

When I read this note I took pause, a rather lengthy pause. As I have long been an advocate of pauses for pre-auction, skip bids, and T1 play I was astonished by what I found after I spent a couple hours yesterday searching for ACBL regs and commentary on T1 pauses. I discovered zilch. That revelation having been made I am inclined to concur with Mr. Burrows that to indemnify the player for a T1 pause an appropriate regulation currently is required. I applaud your language skill. As such, the only avenue of solution for the player that does not want a large number of bad scores from play less skillful than he is capable of, or, from adjustments imposed by a punitive FLB is to adopt as his normal tempo [as provided by L73D1]- the tempo at T1 that he most of the time would need to make his plan. This of course would necessitate that SO create contests that afford 12 minutes per board rather than the customary 7 odd minutes. That bridge authorities have declined for so long from establishing satisfactory regulations for pre-auction, skip bids, and T1 play suggests that they are unwilling to make them- in spite of the benefits that are derived every board from the problems of the player that are solved.

The referenced provision was proposed to be 'moved' to the violation of system section.

The discussion concerns those things embraced by partnership understanding given that what a partner does [such as a single instance] is part of what is embraced. Such is an effect of the EBU rule that espouses that partner’s action is synonymous with partnership understanding prior to the action.

The EBU holds that a single instance of a player’s advance of his partner’s call** may establish that the partnership had a [pre-existing] CPU***- Q.E.D. **particularly when the call can be described as a bluff *** concealed PARTNERSHIP UNDERSTANDING

As I comprehend the language of TFLB, Sven, and Stevenson the notions mentioned by Sven are encompassed within TFLB and do not necessarily extend to the limits prescribed by TFLB. In my view it is understandable that Stevenson has declared revulsion to Sven’s notions as perhaps I too feel revulsion [if not for the same reasons]; however, as Sven’s notions merely reflect TFLB, it is TFLB that is the source of the revulsion, not the messenger. As such, would it not be a better thing to direct the revulsion to where revulsion is due? I find it notable that on Stevenson’s home turf, the EBU policies and regulation embrace the notions mentioned by Sven, and If I am permitted to editorialize- with immense vigor.

I believe that it is dubious to establish a particular/ narrow band length of pause at T1 that is not tempo sensitive. The considerations at T1 can be considerable to non existant depending on one's holdings and as such, T1 is not a one size fits all and thus does little to solve the player's problem. It is notable that an even more important 'pause time' is the time prior to beginning the auction. If the auction begins prior to everyone being ready to act in tempo, not only do nasty UI problems tend to dominate, several minutes [not including TD calls] more than would otherwise be needed can tacked on to the duration of the hand.

This approach is a system of communication with partner other than by call or play which is forbidden by L73B1 and condemned by L73B2. The reason for affording T1 [for the msot part] as being not tempo sensitive is to provide the opportunity for the players to plan ahead thereby avoiding tempo sensitive situations later. As such, follow at T1 with your stiff in the same tempo at T1 as you would holding a long suit. Further, the business of detaching and putting the anticipated play face down besides communicating to partner also has an intimidation factor- which if nothing else [such as telling what you are/are not 'thinking' about] says you are depriving the opponents of data/time to analyze.

There was a time when there were no bidding cards to be left out. THe long and short of it is that the memory of the players can be sufficient and ought to be sufficient. Best practice is for the contract to be recorded on the official score prior to the OL with some sort of nod of concurrence by the players. Further, bidding cards take up considerable real estate and to leave even the final contract on the table can cause irregularities and infractions such as when players mistake a BC for a Play such that they then POOT.

Given the conditions Wayne is wheeled into the operating room and a new brain is installed. What else is there to do when N holds the HK2 and E the H34?

The primary reason for giving thorough rulings is increase the likelihood that they will be good rulings. Ancilliary consequences include education [players and ruling giver] and avoiding the desire to appeal. Personally, I haven't been given a good ruling [zone 2] in twenty years and I attribute the dearth to not doing the things I outlined above. The attitude that you have displayed has very sad consequences. I suggest being thorough and if the players want to avoid it then maybe they will make the effort to avoid irregularities just to keep you away.

The primary reason that most bad appeals are lodged is that when ruling the TD does not: A] state the agreed facts B] explain his reasons for his finding of disputed facts C] quote the relevant law D] explain his judgment in interpreting the facts Notably, if TD did the above they would not be giving so many rulings that should be appealed; and for the rulings that are appealed the appellants at least would be able to judge the relevant issues to bring forward. Which is to say that AC should do the same and to fail to do so is a dereliction of duty and a disservice.

The truth of the matter is that BA’s do not encourage players to develop good tempo [consistent tempo of bidding, of play [not necessarily the same pace] that covers about 90% of one’s actions]. Actually, my impression is that BA’s vigorously avoid encouraging the development of good tempo ostensibly on the premise that if nasty L16/L12 penalties are not enough incentive, then becoming the bad guy messenger is not worth it. To be clear, teaching players this skill is an important function of the Bridge Authority and it is remiss in neglecting this important duty. Now, what appears to be unnoticed is that the value of the skip bid pause is not realized unless most players have good tempo. Think about it- if players have bad tempo then what is to be gained by providing a consistent pause? The best I can think of is a false sense of accomplishment. I have actively studied tempo and its effects for nearly 20 years- and have thereby come to many conclusions. To a great extent, typically the dominate proportion of time of the auction is spent trying to figure out what partner’s UI means. I have found that ‘a speed pass’ by dealer can add 3 minutes to an auction because partner has so much UI to process from it….-and this gives dealer so much UI to process from his partner- thereby feeding off itself. There is much to be gained from a mandatory pause prior to the auction. I personally have started thousands of rounds 5 minutes and more behind and invariably finish early by using the technique of not making my first call until all players [at least] appear ready [there is a recent thread about the speed bidder OOT that didn’t wait for the dealer to inspect their hand]. Since everybody has less [unauthorized] data to process they are focusing only on authorized data [being considerably less difficult to process] they are better focused to play well, and at a considerably faster pace. Does mjj play bridge? No, he reads little cards while Rome burns. To wit- the skip bid demand destroys the benefits of the skip bid pause.