jh51

Accordomg to ACBL regulations: At this club there was a single 5 table section, so a playing director was allowed. I seem to recall a recent change concerning eligibilty of a playing director to win master points in a STAC game. My recollection, which could easily be wrong, was to allow the playing director to win section master points in a STAC game but not overall awards. I think that previously the director (and partner)could not receive master points.

I guess I failed to mention that North had discovered her mis-sort sometime between her 1♣ insufficient bid and her 2♠ bid. With only 3 HCP and 4 clubs, my East partner might well have passed 1♣. As noted, at the end of the night I was happy with the table result (a match point top) but not how we got there. In the discussion of the possible weighted scores, I think they all result in zeroes for NS.

I have corrected the diagram. Because he did not want to see what was going on, the director did not come to the table and ruled from the table where hw was playing. He basicly allowed North to correct the bid to 2♣ without further repercussions. He made some remarks that since "everyone knew what was going on" we had no reason to beleive that North's bid was Michaels. I was thinking at the time that had we the correct ruling, he would have been in a 2C contract and that without the UI (everyone, including South knew this was not Michaels, but If allowed to bid, South should bid as though it were) it would seem that South would want to be in 4H with a presumed double fit and a void in West's suit. I am of course assuming that 2♠ by a Michaels bidder after partner bids 2♥ os a forward going bid.

Obviously not. The intent was to say that there were two other people there who ran games at the club on other nights and had experience directing club games. BUt I thnik you got that.

[hv=pc=n&s=sa72ha9862dq7542c&w=s63hkq3djt6cakj62&n=sqj984hjdak9cq973&e=skt5ht754d83ct854&d=e&v=b&b=10&a=pp1c2c(see%20comments)p2hp2sppp]399|300[/hv] The 2♣ bid was preceded by an insufficient 1♣ bid. The director was called, but on this particular night at the club, he was playing and neither he nor the other two club level directors in attendence had played the board yet. (This was the second round.) North said she was simply going to make the bid sufficient, and the director remarked that the new bid would not have the same meaning as a 1♣ opening bid. North-South play Michaels, so this is clearly the case. I think that the ruling on the hand was not correct, once North bids 2♣ and that South should now be barred from the bidding for at least one round. (But I am not a director, so I may have this wrong. I assume just one round, but aren't there certain cases where IB's partner is barred for the rest of the auction?) When South is not barred by the director, I would think that she has UI that North has a 1♣ and not a Muchaels bid. It would seem to me that if South treated 2♣ as Michaels, passing 2♠ is not a LA. In fact, I would think that once North bids 2♠, these is no LA to 4♥. Would I be right in thinking that with a proper rulling, the final contract would likely have been 2♣ by North, most likely going down. Once South is not barred, 4♥ (or more) seems inevitable. This contract is almost certainly doomed. Additioanl comments: North had missorted her cards and had a spade amongst the clubs. At the end of the night I considered asking the director to take a further look at this, but I found we already had a top. North found a way to take only 9 tricks when everyone else was taking 10 if they played in spades. One North played 3NT had made 5 (bad defense I suppose.)

I don't know if he invented it, but the method you describe is discussed in Dr. Neil Timm's book 2/1 Game Force A Modern Approach. He calls the 3♣/3♦ bids combined Bergen raises. 3 of the other major is an ambiguous splinter. The next step (3♠ or 3NT) asks for the short suit.

And the Summer 2011 casebook is now available on the ACBL website. Now you can start whining about Fall 2011.

Not last summer - it was October.

For what it's worth, I have a friend who works at ACBL headquarters whose responsibilites include overseeing the publishing the NABC casebooks. When she was hired last fall she found a backlog in this area. She explained to me that there are many steps along the way from the hand written notes the AC provides to the final published product. Lawyers, editors, and expert panelists can all introduce delays.

How experienced is responder? On a couple of occassions I had a beginner partner pass my forcing bids. In one case I had creatively reversed into a 2 card suit (don't ask why) and she passed with a singleton. Not a good result considering we were cold for slam.

The club had not been identified at this point. And it was not Pattaya in any case. Just out of couriosity, do you have some issue with the Pattaya brige club?

Kanter recommends 012wo2w3 and notes that 3 is rare. One really has to wonder about 4 since that means the asker has a void and no key cards.

My favorite loss was in a Men's Regional Swiss (many years ago). Small field (24 tables, the concurrent Women's was much bigger). After 3 rounds our team with less than 1000 MPs among us were still undefeateed and in first my a few victory points. We found ourselves playing a team of pros, each of whom had far more master points tham our entire team. 6 of the 7 boards were fairly close - we were losing by a handful of IMPs. On the 7th board, we bid to 6NT (should have gone to 7NT) and made 7. At the other table the pros bid to 7♣, which would have failed when our teammate led from his 7 card diamond suit and dummy had promised 5 and declarer implied at least 1. Alas, our teammate with the diamond void decided that now was a good time to take a sacrifice, and 7♥x would have still won us the match. However, that gave the pro the chance to get things right with 7NT. The win would have been a huge upset win for our team. The loss was something to be remembered forever.

1st or 2nd seat clear pass at any vulnerability. 3rd seat I might get frisky at favorable vulnerability. It is likely that LHO has a really good hand. 4th seat I wonder who forgot to open as I quickly pass.

But when the are enforced, oh what fun. Last year I was at a tournament when, during a hospitality break, someone's cell phone rang in the playing area. A full board penalty was assessed. (the dinze of the prnalty had been announced before the start of play.) Even though it was during the hospitality break, it was in the playing area, so there was no excues.

Oddly enough, I included this item specifically because ERKC (had we been playing it) would have been the perfect rebid. Partner had a pretty good hand with a club void, but was missing the KQ of my heart suit and the K of her 6 card spade suit. I had those 3 cards. With ERKC she could have asked for keycards and would have given the "1" response. The Q ask would have revealed the other two. As it was, she could have raised my hearts. With no Aces to cue bid, my next bid would be 4♥. If she understands that I would have cue bid with something to cue bid, she could use regular RKC knowing that the club Ace was not in my hand. She would then find I had the relevant missing honors. Once she knows of the missing honors, she knows we have the top 4 spades, top 3 hearts, and top 2 diamonds. Assuming normal breaks, there should be 6 spade tricks, 5 heart tricks, and 2 diamond tricks. Her hand will likely ruff a club at trick 1, so that's 14 tricks. (What she does not know is that I have a 7 card heart suit and the Q of diamonds, so there are 16 tricks if I don't have to ruff a club. And that assumes that spades are breaking no worse than 4-2. In any case, there are tricks to burn.) Alas, partner decided to jump to 3♠. None of the items in my list seemed likely, so I decided that she had jumped becauase she had 6 spades and 17+ HCP, and fewer that 3 hearts. Since I had 7 hearts, I tried 4♥, which she raised to 6.

Last weekend I played with a less experienced partner in the pairs games at a nearby sectional tournament. In one event we twice failed to bid cold grand slams after she made jump rebids. We were playing 2/1 Game Force. In each case my response to her 2nd seat opening bid was 2 of a new (lower) suit, establishing a game force. After the game, I discussed this issue with her. I suggested that once we were in a game forcing auction, she did not need to jump to show a good hand. I suggested that in this situation, it is really only necessary to jump to show specific kinds of hands. I cam e up with a list and would like to see if others agree or can add to my list. To show a soldid suit To deny slam interest. (Perhaps opener made a rule of 20 opening bid and responder bid her second suit.) To show shortness (a splinter bid). Need only be a jump (not a double jump), since you don't need this bid to create a game force. To ask for keycards or Aces. This possibly includes Exclsion Blackwood, Kickback, and other such bids you have agreed to play. Any thoughts on my list?

I am not 100% sure of what was meant by this, but it not necessarily unethical to make a conventional bid when you do not have what the bid describes. I recently had a hand where, after partner had responded in hearts, I needed to know whether she had the Q♥ for a slam contract. I had all 5 keycards, and we were using 1430 RKC, so I knew her resposne to a 4NT ask would be 5♦, leaving no room for the Q ask. We were not using kickback, so that was out, but we were using Exclusion RKC. I did not in fact do this, but I considered trating my singleton spade Ace as a void for ERKC purposes to elicit a response where I could make a Q ask. Supposedly, if I had jumped to 4S I would have been showing a void, but there would have been nothing unethical or illegal with making such a bid.

This was a small club game (3 tables) and West was the (on this occassion non-playing) director's girlfriend. So there was some additional reason for reluctance to issuing a PP.

I was pretty darn sure that West thought there was a failure to alert. But I was not sure at that point whether that was the case or whether West had made a bid she imagined to be altertable but was not. I thought that a complete answer if it was indeed alertable would tell me eomething about West's hand that I was entitled to know. In the latter case, I imagine I am not entitled to know what West thought her bid meant.

[hv=pc=n&n=sqjt754h53d642c64&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1n2sppp]133|200[/hv] After the bidding ended, I asked whether there was a failure to alert. Not only did I nor receive an answer, West said to her partner, "Well, was there?" and threw her bidding cards at her partner. I suspect that there were a couple of infractions here deserving of PPs. West who had confused their agreements over their own NT opening with their agreements over opponent's NT openings. She meant 2♠ as a transfer to clubs, but their card (which I looked at after the actions descrived above) said that it was natural after our 1NT call. There would certainly seem to be a ZT violation if only for the thowing of the bidding cards. There would seem to be a violation of the requriement to dislose partber's failure to alert. I am not so sure of this one, as their agreement did not require an alert, but West made a bid that she thought should have been alerted and appareently still beleived at the time I asked the question. There was no apparent damage to our game from this - 2♠ -1 was a top for us. At all the other tables we were going down in NT or spades. We were the only plus in our direction. Any thoughts on this?

In my case, I think it was clear to the director who was at fault for the slow play. But all he ever did, at least in the second session, was warn. The excuses were amazing. 15 minutes after a hospitality break, one of the members had to go to the restroom. That's why they have hospitality breaks, but this pair had used the break to get caught back up. Near the end of the seoncd session they were about 5 minutes behind. Their excuse was that the oppoents had a complicated auction on the final hand of that set. This ignored the fact that they had arrived at that table 3 minutes after the move had been called. One should remember that this was a "Fast Pairs" event where one was expected to average about 5 minutes per board, so one would think that time was of the essence and that slow play should absolutely not have been tolerated.

And them there are those pairs who have every excuse in the world why it it not their fault, and the directors let them get away with it. At last summer's NABC, I was playing in a 2 session regionally rated fast pairs event (3 boards in 15 minutes). In both sessions I was adjacent to a particularly slow pair. When we were N-S, we almost never got 3 boards when the move was called. (There was an oddity in the room layour in that there was a huge suppport column between us. By huge, I mean that it was square in shape and it took up an amount of space that a bridge table and chairs would nirmally occupy and still leave room to walk between the occupied tables. Thus I was not privy to what was going on in that session except for whe I received boards.) When we were EW, we were almost always waiting for them to finish so we could go to their table. The director was frequently at their table due to their slow play, and they always had an excuse. On one occassion, he stated that there woule be a penalty on the next occurrnace, but none was ever issued, despite the director having to come to their table at least two more times due to their slow play. FWIW - they finished 2nd in the event.

I am in the position of be able to unofficially tell you that the 2011 Summer appeals casebook will be published very soon. Or so I have been told by my friend who is now responsible for this. Don't blame her - she started working for the ACBL last month. After reading your post I thought I would take advantage of my friendship and ask her if she knew who was responsible. She exlained that one of her tasks was to catch up on the backlog. Apparently there is a lot that has to be gone through between the appeal taking place and getting it published. It starts with hand written notes from the ACs and the TDs, and it has to go to the expert panel, an outside editor and the legal department before it appears as a published casebook.

Not long ago I was at a Regional where one of the guest lecturers was an ACBL TD. One of the subjects he touched on was insufficient bids. He remarked that one should always require that the insufficient bid be replaced with a sufficient legal bid unless: The bid was so bad that you want the opponent to play in that suit, possibly doubled. For example, your partner has bid 3S, and is overcalled with 3C. You have AQTx of clubs, and would love to have them play it there, and will probably double them. You certainly don't want them to substitute a pass. They have gotten you off the hook with their insufficient bid. For example, you have a clear misfit and are headed for a bad result. Don't let them substitute a pass and put you back in trouble. You are able to use the "extra bidding space", as had been discussed here. Under this last topic, there are certainly implications when one supports partner at a lower level. For example, I recently was able to support partner at the same level of the suit that she had bid because of an IB. She drew the inference that I was minimal, which was correct. The TD in question seemed to be saying that this was perfecly legal so long as there was no agreement in advance.