WellSpyder

And if the "either" and "or" parts of your parenthetical explanation give different answers as to what would have been specified then we are back to trying to read the mind of the insufficient bidder, are we (with their help, of course)?

I think Kelsey describes a double vice in his book on double-squeezes, but the classic vice squeeze only squeezes one opponent. At the end of the day, I guess Shakespeare was right that it is the beauty of the end position that counts, not its name. Or, as he put it, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".

Except that it really isn't easily understood, is it? I'm not just trying to be awkward in saying that I don't really know whether there is an agreed and non-controversial interpretation of "specified" as "shown" or as "named". I do realise that something like this law has always been with us. But my assumption was that it long pre-dated anything like 27B1(b) or the precursor of that law. Now that we have the concept of a comparable call, it seems to me more logical only to allow a replacement without penalty if there is a comparable call, not in addition when there is a call that specifies the same denomination but isn't comparable - though I am, of course, not trying to get the laws changed at this moment in time.

I don't actually understand why we would want to allow that! But I recognise that we have to use the law as it is.

This looks like what Terence Reese named the "vice" squeeze.

They do? Are you explaining 27B1(b) (which I think I more or less understand) or 27B1(a) (which is what I am struggling with at the moment)? (I wonder, actually, why we even need 27B1(a) when we have 27B1(b), but that is a discussion to be had in another 10 years' time, I guess.)

I confess I am now utterly bewildered. An IB doesn't specify anything, anyway, if we interpret this as what it shows rather than what it designates, since it is surely illegal to have an agreement about what an IB shows.

That seems reasonable to me. But it doesn't seem to be the interpretation of "specified" that has been adopted by others who have commented in this thread. It is also arguably inconsistent with the wording of 27B1(a), which refers to the "lowest sufficient bid which specifies the same denomination(s) as that specified by the withdrawn call". How could the withdrawn call ever specify more than one denomination if it is meant in the way that you have interpreted it?

This all seems fairly straightforward, but the latest discussion has got me all confused again when I thought I had things sorted out! If we always allow the lowest bid that specifies the same denomination as the IB, then surely we are back with the impossibility of deciding what the IB shows? In our discussion of comparable bids, I thought we had managed to avoid this, because it was OK if the meaning was comparable to one of the potential meanings of the IB. So does 2N - 2♦ specify diamonds or hearts? Is it the case that we don't need to answer this question for the purposes of Law 23A, but we still need to answer it for the purposes of Law 27B1a?

I played against a pair last weekend whose defence to our strong club was to double to say "I was going to open our strong club".

"Give us everything we want, and then we'll think about whether to give you anything you want" doesn't seem to me to be how most negotiations are carried out, and with good reason. It is also unlikely to be something the UK gov't can afford to be seen to go along with, given how badly it worked out for David Cameron - who was essentially committed to supporting continued EU membership before he tried to renegotiate terms and therefore ended up with nothing. So it does look like the chances of the UK leaving without a deal are increasing.

Supposing that the player does indeed say something like this. Under the new laws, should the TD treat that as limiting the comparable bids? Or should the TD treat the issue of comparable bids in the same way that they would have done without the comment, but also take into account the UI?

I'm not sure this is true at all. If a replacement call is comparable to ANY of the potential meanings of the IB, then partner does not need to be silenced. This seems logical to me (albeit generous), since arguably you don't get any extra information from the IB than you get from the replacement in this case.

The ruling seems fine, but is this correct? I don't think you can vary your agreements after your own IB, so it seems that you do have an agreement about what 3♦ shows here...

Could I just check whether this is a contested or uncontested auction before thinking about it too much?

I seem to remember from a discussion quite a while back, though, that it may be legitimate for declarer to lead to the next trick once the previous trick has been completed, even if it has not been quitted.

I agree with the first part of this, but I don't think the questions you raise amount to much. The law talks about W changing his bid, not cancelling it. I think he has made a call until he changes it. Then he has made a different call. So at no stage can his partner legitimately claim that W hasn't made a call. I don't think UI is a significant problem here, either. E summoned the TD following an irregularity, which is the right thing to do. (Indeed there was more than one irregularity, since N should have called the TD himself before providing the correct explanation.) I don't see how W can know anything about East's hand from the TD call, and neither do I think EW should suffer any UI constraints that arose directly from North's failure to call the TD before correcting the explanation.

Since when????

But if each opponent only had one club higher than the 9 then the opponents could indeed have lost the trick they conceded, even if they also had lower clubs they could, and no doubt would in practice, play on the ace. The claim is still flawed, but dummy would not be accepting a trick that the opponents couldn't lose if he didn't point out the flaw....

Fortunately, in my view, not everybody agrees with you. (I'm sure the reason the law hasn't been changed in the way you suggest isn't because the lawmakers didn't think of it. After all, you must have made this exact proposal at least half a dozen times while I have been following these forums.) It may not be a popular view, but I actually think the lawmakers have done a good job on this law. The new law preserves most of the advantage of the previous law in not allowing declarer to "wake up" to a problem he wasn't aware of (since experienced defenders will not be tempted by the idea of giving declarer the option to play on), while allowing less experienced defenders whose only problem is that they genuinely can't follow what declarer is saying he will do to see it played out. (I know that at least one regular poster says that as declarer he will refuse requests to play it out, but I suspect this is a minority view. At least I hope so, since to me it will mainly look like a discourtesy to less experienced players who we should be aiming to encourage rather than intimidate.)

1M - Pass?

Of course the L&E committee doesn't operate in a vacuum. Its members are active in the English bridge world. And it is operating in the context that many people (myself included) complained about the previous definition of strong, which caused difficulties both for Strong Club players who found many obvious 1C openings were illegal and for players who thought there were playing "Benji" (a popular version of Acol in clubs, which includes a 2C opening to show 8 playing tricks in any suit). But I think it is probably true that non-L&E members didn't get a chance to comment on the latest definition in advance of its adoption. (Disclaimer: like Vampyr, I have also stood for the L&E in the past but not been elected.)

I'm glad someone mentions that possibility. I would go further and say I would expect it to be for penalty unless you have agreed it is for T/O (since you have already had an opportunity to make a T/O double of ♦ and you are not in the protective seat).

I think you are over-analysing this! I don't even know what you think "a psyche must have 4+ cards in a known suit" means. A psyche does not actually have what it purportedly shows, so how can you "know" with it has? I suggest you go back and read what jefford76 wrote above, which explains clearly why regulations about disruptive bids and about psyches are completely independent of each other.

If there is a "correct" response to a call about which you have no agreement, then surely that is what you MUST assume partner has made once there has been a BIT? (Without the BIT you can assume what you like, of course, but it still seems sensible to assume partner has made the correct call. If you don't want to assume this then I suggest it was probably a bad idea to make the undiscussed call in the first place.)