gombo121

I wonder, how does one disclose tendency of the partner for "creative" actions? Suppose, East never psyched by 1♠ (or anything similar) in this partnership previously, but is known for imaginative actions (may be, he is Zia). At the third round of auction it is quite clear for West that something is not right in the auction. Is he allowed to guess that it may be his partner who muddled the waters and play it safe? I have full compassion to NS, but can see nothing wrong with West.

I do not consider it a reasonable discussion where one side neither substantiates its claims nor responds to arguments of the other. Yes, I'm perfectly aware that my view is a minority, but what you call "normal" interpretation is, frankly, pure nonsense, which cannot be applied in any consistent non self-contradictory way. If "at you own risk" is not a gambling, than I don't know how you define either. I get, you don't care providing examples of 73D in action, may be somebody else would volunteer?

Sorry for taking such a long time to get back but I've been quite busy lately. I beg to differ. In my opinion the Law 12C1B is fully relevant. Quote: Under the Law 73D any inference taken from opponent's mannerism constitutes exactly a gambling ("on his own risk") action, therefore no relief for innocent side. Again, English is not my first language, but in my book a provision, which is never applied is de facto being dismissed. You failed to provide a practical example, where 73D have been applied, you also failed to define where are limitaions on what counts as misleading action as opposed to any random hitch.

Sorry? :blink: Dummy was something like ♠Qхх ♥Jхх ♦Aхххх ♣ххх with ♦K and ♥A onside.

Sorry, I don't have access to the archives. If I remember correctly one pair got to 6♦ and went down there, one more played in 3♦, all other made a game, some in 3NT some in 5♦.

C'mon. That's a nice theory but it is just that - a theory. "Normal tempo" for anybody is no more than 1 (or 2, if your are clumsy) seconds per play - this is what it takes to pull out a card and put it on the table. Nobody would be able to maintain artificial timing of say 4 seconds per card through the entire hand and if somebody tries he would probably be ostracized for slow play. And 1 second is too fast to think over the situation if you are not prepared for it.

Sorry for being back but I think it is rude to leave direct questions unanswered. (OK, that's a lame excuse, I know. B-)) What exactly do you mean? No damage but self-inflicted one for S under 73D (no, I don't buy "only have not been misled situations" approach - see below), infraction for E, if necessary, under 73F, adjustment and split score under 12B1, 12C1(a,b,f, and, possibly, c). Please, define "not misled you in any way". It seems to me, that there are only two options: 1) the opponent' play was perfectly smooth or 2) declarer got it right. Otherwise, declarer did get a wrong conclusion from the mannerism, i.e "was misled", wasn't he? In neither case you'll see a complaint and, indeed, I'm yet to see an example of complaint against misleading hesitation in play, which have been rejected under 73D. Instead I've seen rulings under 73F against players who fumbled with a single card (of course), with two smalls and three smalls. So if you did not manage to play in tempo to the trick for whatever reason, you'd better have an honor, because the only honorable decision for you is to play or not to play it - and how can declarer fail now?! (I'm not sure that even honor will always help - what about a lead of a stiff from dummy toward KJххх in hand - would you apply 73D or 73F if LHO pauses with Qхх and declarer plays king?) Yes, it would be nice if everybody always played in "steady tempo and unvarying manner". But it is unreasonable to expect that in practice and the Law 73D is a recognition of this fact. I can't see how you distinguish between mere "fumble" and "clear hesitation". Pauses in those cases are just several seconds, usually under 5s, - they are clearly noticeable, because smooth tempo for most players is 1-2s per card, but still very short to be caused by anything, like simple loss of concentration. I believe, there is no way to provide consistent distinction between them and rulings based on the difference are bound to be subjective and inconsistent, which obviously should be avoided if possible. Also, applying Laws in the way you do (the way it is commonly agreed at the moment) creates very perverse incentive for players - if they notice any fumble or hesitation by an opponent, they don't need to try and get their choice right, instead they need to invent a way how this fumble can possibly mislead them, because that provides a free ride, even if their logical conclusions are completely unreasonable. Both those drawbacks can be avoided if we refuse to compensate misled players - we remove incentive to complain and therefore get much less dubious cases to judge; at the same time we still have a stick to penalise clear cases of "coffehousing". It would certainly makes matters simpler and I firmly believe in simpler is better.

I'm strongly inclined to adjust because presumed bad split clearly discourages both North and South from bidding game. On the other hand you really can't argue that "No agreement" is better explanation than "I think it is for majors". The latter clearly translates into "we do not have explicit agreement or I don't remember it; on the basis of our common experience in similar situations, I judge it should be for majors", which in my opinion is absolutely appropriate. May be South looking at 9 major cards should be suspicious about the presumed explanation, especially after free 2♥ bid.

Actually, most of the field plays a Polish club system, so the bidding would probably go like p-1♣*-2/3♣-p p-2/3♦ (* 11-14 balanced or 16+ unbalanced or 18+ any shape) showing 16+ with diamonds. In a natural system I would expect South to rebid spades at the second level and double at the third level if his partner pass. In any case, the only plausible auction to 3♣ undoubled is p-1♦-2♣-p; p-2♠-p-p 3♣-p-p-p which does not seems to be very likely. :ph34r: After thorough discussion our AC (to which I was a member) in a 2-to-1 decision ruled that pass is not an LA, result stands, deposit returned. The decision worried me a bit, therefore this thread. It seems that in most cases AC would reach the opposite decision, but opinions are indeed divided, so our decision is not outrageous.

The inference is not false, it is completely misguided. East evidently has 13 cards to put on table, but whether he has an alternative legal card to play is unknown - he does not even pause for thought. Obviously not. It is crystal clear that it can never be to his advantage to play queen in this position, therefore nobody can knew in advance that hesitation (either true or fake) can influence declarer or how the declarer would read it. This is NOT a two-way finess case. Yes, he shall (provided he rejected my arguments above), but a split score is an adjusted score, according to Law 12. Why don't director exercise this option? Should not alleged 'false inference' be at least somewhat plausible? Law does not require that explicitly, but this is obvious, isn't it? And one more - you repeatedly state it is a tempo problem; certainly, it is not - it is a case of (possibly inapropriate) mannerism. This does not change much in the discussion, but it is not the same thing either. :ph34r: I'm sorry writing so much in this thread but it does touch my sore point. I'll stop here, since I think I put out all my arguments at least twice. Thank you for discussion. :)

Thank you for translating my grumbling into a short coherent message. Indeed, I my point basically is that in any 73F situation there can be no damage to innocent side but self-inflicted one (because of 73D). Even you don't buy this argument in general, in this particular case it is impossible to produce a logical link between the alleged infraction and supposed damage.

Sorry, but once again: how exactly declarer have been "robbed"? After any mannerism of a defender declarer has the same choice as before plus additional option to take new extraneous information into account. To exercise this option or not is his deliberate choice and he should be held fully accountable for the consequences. No action by defender can limit declarers choice, no action can "rob" him of anything. Actually, above arguments, though I firmly believe in them in general, are completely irrelevant for the particular case we discuss. Here everything is much simpler and I'm surprised that this point (though mentioned by Cyberyeti and mrdct) was not really stressed before (and I'm sorry that I didn't pay much attention to the diagram myself). Bidding have made clear that South had at least four hearts, so if East happened to hold queen-third he knew exactly that his partner has no more cards in the suit and he would never dream about covering jack. Not only that, but South perfectly well knew that East knew that. So South's pretense that he was deceived into thinking that East have been holding queen and hesitated about to cover or not are simply ludicrous and it is just a crude attempt at double-shot, which collected surprisingly lot of sympathy (and if East is really so inexpirienced that he may actualy consider covering jack, the whole business becomes indecent in my opinion).

Wait, now I'm lost. You basically say that all South saw was that East take out a card, put it back, and then take out a card again, possibly a different one. For all he knows, East may just escaped making a revoke; what kind of inference he can possibly made from that and what he is complaining about?! Suppose East said that the first time he took out a card of another suit; would you also rule against him? Personally, I would consider such a ruling outrageous (provided, of course, East is not known to make such slips each evening). The actual explanation by East did sound a bit suspicious, since you don't usually need put card back in hand to check if it is one or two, but it may well be sincere. I'd say East should get a lecture about his action being suspicious and that it is illegal to try to deceive declarer this way, South get a lecture on he should not pay close attention on behavior of opps and certainly should not expect to be compensated if his conslusions went wrong, result stands. Fine. Really, good for him. What is he complaining about, again? That his coin does not come heads up when he need it? Tough luck. If he'd like to make a case about misexplanation of 1♣ opening, or missing alert, or something else related to the bidding - that's completely different story. But I see no case for the Law 73, especially if East is a player of any ability - there was clearly no sense to cover J, so there was equally no sense in faking it.

Actually, you can get some quite real gain. Depending on position you get quite different expectation on strength of partner's hand and probability of interference from opponents, which makes it very reasonable to vary opening and response structure to accomodate accordinagly, possibly changing both beyond recognition, so that notion of "basic system" became unreasonable. Of course, that leads to excessive strain on memory so hardly anyone does that, but from theoretical point of view the concept is sound.

I'd like to ask "says who?", but really that is NOT the point. The point is that declarer may legitimately complain about an attempt to deceive and defender should be penalized if this would be proven. But declarer is not supposed to base his action solely on opponent's tells, and therefore he should not get a free ride doing that. You concentrate solely on East's alleged infraction, but what South did is (or did not) is equally or even more important for his score. If he plays along with probabiliteis (as bridge is supposed to be played, I believe), he will never be deceived this way. BTW, how does South know that East pulls the same card from his hand second time? Was he watching closely? Then he was breaching 74C5, wasn't he? Should PP be applied to him?

EW play a kind of Multi-Landy (Woolsey) defence. It is the lowest bid to show one-suiter in ♣. It denies two-suiter, does not specifies any particular strength, just reasonable number of playing tricks to be on the safe side.

Thank you, I've got the point and sorry for failing to use search function properly. But I still wonder, what the Law 45C4(b) (and entire 45C4 to that matter) is about? If it is meant to allow declarer to get away with something like "club, erh... I mean, top club!", it cannot be worded more vaguely (at the very least it can mention declarer as opposed to player in general). If something else, than what? Or is it just a relic of some old and forgotten days?

Why oh why we so easily dismiss "at his own risk" clause? East fumbles - for whatever reasons. Can declarer deliberately ignore the fumble or can he not? Sure he can, but he deliberately chooses not to, he chooses to base his action on East's mannerism. Fine, rules allow for that, but on his own risk. Declarer decided to take his chances and failed - so what? You have a harsh look on East's attitude? - I can see your point. So PP him, or adjust his score, or both. But declarer's score should not be adjusted in any way, next time he will try harder to get real information on card distribution from play, not from mannerism of his opps. Split score could and I believe should be used in such situations.

Two-card no-trump ending. North (dummy) holds ♦K2, East holds ♦AQ over it. While West cashes a winner in other suit, dummy discards deuce and East puts ace on the table. Immediately upon seeing it he exclaims "Ouch!" and tries to take it back. Would you allow? If not, what kind of situations in your opinion are referred to in the Law 45C4(b)? (emphasis to indicate that it is certainly meant to apply to defenders in some way).

[hv=pc=n&s=sakt4hk7dqj654ca2&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=p1n(15-17)3c(nat)p(agreed%20BIT%2C%20"%7E%2020%20sec")p3dppp]133|200|matchpoints[/hv] A small regional tournament in Russia. 8 tables, 3 sessions, very different levels of players, inexperienced director, no screens. Matchpoint scoring. South is a pro and arguably the best player in the tournament, North is a client, intermidiate and not very experienced; they are among contenders for the top spot. EW are both good advanced players, they are contenders too (in fact, EW won the tournament and NS finished in the third place). South choose to open off-shape 1NT in second hand. After jump overcall by West, North took a while before passing (stop cards are not used in Russia, but a bit of a pause after skip bit is considered normal; here it was agreed that North thought longer than normal, but not extremely long, "about 20 seconds"). In duly course, 3♦ was made +2 (dummy sported 5-card fit and 7 PC) and TD was summoned. He established BIT, but kept the result (unfortunately, I don't know his exact reasoning; at least polling peers was not a realistic option due to small field). EW appealed. Predictably, EW argued that BIT makes bidding much more attractive then passing and that result should be reversed to 3♣, down two, +100. South claimed that because of his off-shape opening, 3♣ are probably non-standard contract and because of form of scoring pass is not an option; between bidding on and doubling hesitations suggest double, so he choose bidding on. AC found that NS has no clear agreement about double from North in this position (whether it is for take-out or for penalties), so it seems that the argument that hesitations clearly suggest double is valid; anyway, since 3♣ doubled produces +300, the only relevant question is whether pass is a logical alternative for South. Ethical considerations aside, what do you think about LA problem?

I'm sorry, I am a bit confused about meaning of "coffee housing" (English is not my first language), but I presume it is not intended as a compliment. You do realize that it is as bridge actually was played and is played? For example, "Tempo discovery play" described above (which, I believe, is attributed to great Belladonna) has no sense unless declarer expects that defender would try and mislead him by variation in tempo. Reading bridge periodicals you can't miss how top experts are paying attention to opponents' behavior and many of them (probably, all) would directly admit that reading tells is a powerful weapon. Granted, that usually does not involves any "shooting" as you describe it; however, is it really necessary if opponents have no counter-weapon? We teach weak players that they may not pause with a singleton and then, as they cannot play smoothly with an honour, expert declarer has easy time reading them. Suppose we teach novices instead to always temporize slightly with a singleton or three smalls to protect themsleves - would not expert have a much harder time then? Sure, he would, and I don't see how our game would lose as a result. I believe that Laws 73D2 and 73F2 should be eradicated (may be, stressing 73A a bit to discourage really long pauses instead). As the very least we should get rid from the word "such" in 73D ("Otherwise, inadvertently to vary the tempo or manner in which a call or play is made does not in itself constitute a violation of propriety, but inferences from such variation may appropriately be drawn only by an opponent, and at his own risk."), making inference from all and any variations of tempo and manners be drawn at own risk of the player. Then we can penalize deceptors without encoraging "naivety" on behalf of their opponents. That would significantly straighten up incentives for players.

I like the answer, but I didn't get the point. :) I suggested interpreting sequence like 6 5 Q A K 10 2 J as 0101001 (ace is ignored so that number of zeros and ones are equal). And, yes, transitions certainly work.

Well, it may. Like, you counted opponent's hand to be 3532 and know him to hold AK in hearts in K in both spades in diamonds;you need to place him with either ♥Q or ♣Q. If the opponent never opens 1NT with weak doubleton, you have a clear-cut case for ♣Q; if he choose randomly, it is probably for ♥Q; if it is semirandom, you'd really like to have an idea about factors affecting his choice. True, it is not often when it would matter, but it may.

Valid point. Then we can use "even" cards as zeros, "odd" as ones and ignore aces - that should not to correlate to any game-related factor.

That's exactly the point of the method - to introduce a weak option, but don't let it to be too frequent. 2hrothgar: Thank you for very enlightening piece.