PeterAlan

The mathematician John Horton Conway died on Saturday. The link covers his well-known work, and I won't elaborate on that. He taught me two courses - Graph Theory and his own Number system (later popularised as 'Surreal Numbers' by Donald Knuth) - more than 40 years ago, and I have great memories of them, in particular the second: it was late 1974, whilst the theory was still being developed in certain respects.

No. Both 98765 and 99000 are different numbers (and differ from each other), being the (different) results of rounding the same number (98765.4321 to use UK / US style) to different amounts of precision.

I'm with RMB1 and chrism on this. In particular, I consider that it's perverse to require the play of ♠J from dummy to be treated as a lead out of turn to the trick in question, ie that the non-offending side is now treated as having committed the offence of leading out of turn whilst the offending side, having removed its surplus card, is now spotless. (Notwithstanding that S could have realised the irregularity before playing from dummy.) Since the irregularity has come to the Director's attention before S has played to the trick, the Director should decide on any relevant rectification(s) before S does so. I read Law 13C as limited to saying that there is no 'further rectification' for the irregularities of the existence and removal of the surplus card. It does not, however, mean that there should be no rectification for any different and further irregularity that may arise as a consequence of such removal, as occurs here; that seems to be common ground. Where I differ from pran et al is that I regard the Definitions quoted as sufficient for the Director to hold that W's lead to the trick has been withdrawn ('cancelled'); the Director is entitled to interpret the Laws in a sensible way where that leads to an appropriate rectification and is not otherwise contrary to law. The lead reverts to W; dummy's ♠J may be withdrawn under Law 47D; and (if dummy does not play ♠J to the trick), so may E's ♠3 (with any relevant UI consequences; it's not clear to me that the Director should treat it as a penalty card). NB: Quite apart from W's putative failure to count cards correctly, the lead of ♠A is in itself an irregularity, as it is 'a deviation from correct procedure'.

I agree, but that wasn't my point - I was merely constructing a counter-example to one of the steps in axman's chain of 'logic' in his absurd assertion about it being a claim.

No. Even on your pedantic terms, this is not true. Let's agree (despite my differing from you on the meaning of 'impute', which does not mean 'imply') that 'run the clubs' means from the top. That does not have 'the effect of asserting that each club will win its trick': for example, dummy may hold ♣AKQ2 and declarer intends to endplay a defender with the 2.

The WBFLC minute I quoted in the initial response to the OP is not consistent with these suggestions about "run the clubs" constituting a claim. If WBFLC had thought that then they would have said so, and not what they did.

The mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson; the link shows the extraordinary range of his activity.

I've posted a reply there.

The WBF's Laws Committee has considered this: It's implicit in the wording "since the Declarer is not able to stop play of the card once it is played" that the Declarer can do so before it is played, even if (s)he has previously given the deprecated instruction to run the suit. You don't give your jurisdiction, but EBU's White Book 2019 explicitly addresses it:

A ♣ lead works just as well to defeat the contract. Have you analysed the position? First, let's look at the play sequence in your link, which is both mis-played and mis-defended. After ♠A, ♠K, ♥J there is no squeeze when declarer doesn't cover. S should keep ♦ length with dummy and not discard any, trusting N to guards ♥s: he can see that if declarer has as little as ♦Qx the suit will come in if he discards, and then declarer has 11 top tricks (6♣s, 4♦s and ♥A). For a genuine squeeze, declarer must cover with ♥Q, and then fortuitously declarer's ♥6 beats N's ♥4 at the end. With that clear, consider the opening lead. Red suit leads are out because they give away the corresponding suits. The reason the underlead of the ♠A works and ♠A, ♠K doesn't is that S must play ♥J/10 through declarer before the defence takes a second ♠ trick, as that second ♠ tightens the position (rectifies the count) for the squeeze. When declarer has a ♥ loser and still has a ♠ one the squeeze won't operate, and the passive trump lead leaves him in that position: if he plays ♠s himself after a ♣ lead, S can win and push the ♥ through. (Edited to clarify remarks about the link's play sequence (not originally covered) and to re-order accordingly.)

That's how I remember it, and you don't have to change the X / 1NT mnemonic if you play correspondingly over 1♦. If you play Helvic over 1NT(X), as my regular partner and I do, then Truscott has the same pattern for the touching two-suiters (the suit + next up), which also eases memory strain.

If you're going to be that pedantic, yes. But, to use your notation, 12C1(b) then says adjusted score = F(x). Law 12C1(b) says "The Director in awarding an assigned adjusted score should seek to recover as nearly as possible the probable outcome of the board had the infraction not occurred." Since Law 64C2(a) says "After repeated revokes by the same player in the same suit (see B2 above), the Director adjusts the score if the non-offending side would likely have made more tricks had one or more of the subsequent revokes not occurred" then "the infraction" for which we are adjusting is the subsequent (here second) revoke, and the effect is that 12C1(b) means in this case that we are to assign "the probable outcome of the board had the" second revoke "not occurred". You're drawing a distinction without a difference.

Not so. 64C2(a) says that the adjusted score is determined on the basis that the second revoke does not take place, which means that E plays ♣Q under W's ♣A at trick 3. The rest then follows.

The application of Law 64C2(a) means that in arriving at the adjusted score: the first two tricks, including the revoke, are as they were at the table. E is then deemed to have played the ♣Q on the third trick, not the second, ie under W's ♣A. declarer then takes 11 actual tricks (4♠s, 1♥, 2♦s and 4♣s) in all adding one for the revoke penalty (the offending side won the ♣A after the initial revoke) gives 12 tricks. (Edited to correct point about when ♦A taken by defenders.)

Sorry, Tt, I don't have the time to go into this much now, but, whilst playing it as non-forcing and with opener's rebid sometimes being passed, generally responder is able to find a second bid.

It's not alertable in EBU: My regular partner and I play this way (it's not as unplayable as you might think, even though we play it as non-forcing), but we have a comprehensive system card have "Reverses don't show additional values" in the General Description of Bidding Methods headline section at the top of that card (we originally put it at the top of the "Other Aspects of System which opponents should note" part, but found that was rarely looked at by opponents), and mention it whenever telling opponents our basic system at the start of a round. Neil Rosen contends that if you play this way "It's not a reverse": take your pick on that.

The EBU regulation is 40% / 40% in most cases: Lead registration is the norm at most EBU tournaments, and as pescetom says this should catch most cases in time. My preference is to enter an adjusted score of this form at the table's Bridgemate rather than in the Bridgemate Control software (or elsewhere), to have it correct at all steps of the scoring chain.

Not in quite the same way, since the section of the 1831 London Hackney Carriage Act that is interpreted (arguably mistakenly) as this requirement was actually abolished in 1976, a rather more comprehensive method of removing "illegality".

Curiously, we had exactly the same issue with this very similar hand at the club the next day: ♠ J ♥ A K Q 10 8 3 2 ♦ - ♣ K Q 9 8 2

On my laptop, the Fn key is a toggle between the two modes (1) the normal F1 - F12 actions, and (2) the 'superscript' actions, like screen brightness, speaker volume etc, and the setting persists until toggled again. It has a LED indicator that's on (mode (1)) or off ((2)). Your setup seems to be defaulting to the latter mode. If toggling the Fn key on the keyboard doesn't persistently change the mode, and from your description it sounds like it doesn't, then look in the BIOS for an Action Keys setting and change that.

It seems to me that your regulations (the start of which I quote above, assuming I've found the correct document) define quite clearly what is meant by "convention" (and by extension "conventional") for the purposes of those regulations, and there is no need to refer to any other document to determine its meaning. "Artificial" occurs three times (in the definitions of transfer and puppet bids, and in one of the examples in 5.1(d)), and, whilst the term is not defined in the document, in all these cases the intended meaning would seem to be both clear and also unchanged if "conventional" were to be used instead. The first of the bids in your OP is clearly "conventional"; I would have regarded the second as being so as well, given the broad interpretation of "conveys a meaning other than" in 2.1.1, but I note that it is cited as a "natural" call in 3.3.2(b), which states that it is nevertheless to be alerted.

The word "natural" does not occur anywhere in the 2017 Laws, whether in relation to a call or otherwise. It does occur in various Regulating Authorities' regulations. In relation to calls (as distinct from adjusted scores), "artificial" occurs in the Laws in only two contexts: In modifying (Laws 29C, 30C and 31) the provisions concerning calls out of rotation (so that artificial bids are treated in terms of the denomination shown, and artificial Passes and Passes of artificial bids are dealt with). In the details of Laws 40B1&2 regarding how Regulating Authorities approach the categorisation of calls as "special partnership understandings" or otherwise. The first of these does not appear to be your concern, and the second is a technical point that doesn't appear to be either. I repeat, what matters in the context of your various enquiries about particular call / meaning combinations is your Regulating Authority's regulations, with which almost all replies have rightly concerned themselves, and not what you insist on calling "the status of such bids under the Laws". Please get that bee out of your bonnet.

I've been struggling to understand the "legal status" that you keep referring to. Basically, the only "illegal" calls under the Laws themselves are: insufficient bids bids of more than 7 inadmissible doubles or redoubles calls by a player required by law to Pass calls out of rotation, or calls after the last Pass of the auction. (This is off the top of my head; there may be some other detailed cases. Some otherwise illegal calls can become legal by being accepted. There are also the restrictions on partnership understandings in Laws 40A3&4.) Subject to what follows, any call that doesn't fall foul of such prohibitions is "legal", as are all the calls you cite in your OP and subsequently. We then have Laws 40B1&2 regarding "special partnership understandings". Without going into all the detail that's there, in all cases it's ultimately the Regulating Authority that determines what is and is not a special partnership understanding, and what restrictions, including possible prohibition (which presumably is what you would regard as "illegality"), and alerting / announcing rules, apply to them. Note in particular that whilst the default is that an "artificial" call is a special partnership understanding the RA is empowered to determine otherwise. Any call / meaning combination that the RA does not determine (and regulate) as a special partnership understanding remains legal, whether artificial or not and whether or not "readily understood etc". Thus, the legality of the calls you mention, and for that matter any other such specific call / meaning combination, is completely determined by the relevant Regulating Authority's regulations, and not by some other provision within the Laws. Your assertion that "the fact that a Sponsoring Organisation may have Regs about these bids is irrelevant" is totally false; they are in fact the only things that are relevant.

The grounds for impeachment in the Constitution are "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". Whilst the transgressions you list are indeed liable to be regarded as HC&M, they are not as clearly delineated as the other two grounds, and I think that Winston's point is that one doesn't have to get into the possibly contentious issue of what constitutes a "high Crime [or] Misdemeanor", but can instead focus on the more clearly defined Bribery. What's really depressing is that Republicans are so willing to subvert the Constitution to keep this manifestly unfit President and his administration in place, and the lengths that they will go to for this end.

Even if the result is a Senate conviction, I thought the penalty was only removal from office. Perhaps he'd need to be carried out.