PeterAlan

Your RHO is wrong. Law 9 covers this:

Pran's comment was presumably intended for the other thread on UI from another table, which had developed a sub-thread on barometer events.

Moreover, it is incorrect to say that "you can appeal a decision ...": cases for the Court of Justice have to be referred by the relevant national court (or EU institution), not by an individual appellant. The UK has a good record in relation to cases with the Court of Justice, both in the number of referrals (relatively low) and in terms of their resolution: for example, see Institute for Government's report. Most of the cases that the press and some politicians highlight for criticism have nothing whatsoever to do with the [European] Court of Justice, the one that is an European Union institution; instead, they are judgments of the entirely separate European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] in Strasbourg, which is concerned with alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. This Convention (drafted 1950; came into effect 1953) was created under the auspices of the Council of Europe (established 1949), which both pre-dates and is entirely separate from the European Union and its predecessors. (Incidentally, the United Kingdom played a leading role both in the establishment of the Council of Europe - it was created by the Treaty of London - and in drafting and promulgating the Convention on Human Rights.) Again, the UK has a good record at this Court too, both in the number of referrals and in their outcomes. UK courts are required under the Human Rights Act to take account of ECHR judgments, but they are not bound by them. Leaving the EU (if it happens) would not affect the UK's obligations under this Convention, and in particular would not remove us from the ECHR. I focused initially on the Court of Justice, since your remark was in response to a question about the "EU judicial body" and the "EU charter", but I felt your response was potentially misleading. It has suited mendacious politicians and others to conflate the two entirely separate and different Courts, and to spin ECHR judgments with which they take issue as reasons for leaving the EU: please do not add to this confusion.

This is often misrepresented: the [European] Court of Justice is only the final court in matters of European Union law; its jurisdiction does not extend to domestic law in general.

0.6172% of all hands (roughly 1 in 162). That's 3 27-board sessions for a partnership.

Pedantry alert: after any specified opening lead the number of possible distributions of the remaining 25 cards is 5,200,300.

One matter that is clear is that an opponent touching dummy's cards without permission is in violation of Law 7B3.

1 Hard cases make bad law. 2 300k signatures = 0.5% of the UK population. We have a representative democracy for good reason. I have no wish to get bogged down in fruitless exchanges with you, so I won't be responding further.

Quite. I choose rule of law over rule of populist petition.

In general, when the trick is won by the revoking player, it's that trick "together with one of any subsequent tricks won by the offending side". Here, that side won a further trick so the point is not at issue.

Previously, the 2007 Law 16B1(a) referred to extraneous information (same examples) that "a player makes available to his partner". The question is clearly covered; I leave it to Lamford, whose ability to make a case out of nothing at all suggests that he has passed up a lucrative career at the bar, to decide which side he chooses to come down on regarding the answer to such a question.

Pran, I think you continue to misunderstand much of what I've said, but no matter: we'll leave it there. Best wishes.

A more general point is that it's better to correct entries on Bridgemates themselves, and to prevent errors arising before scores are sent to the Bridgemate server, because that preserves the integrity of Bridgemate's .BWS data file. If you make corrections within the scoring program instead then you would have to repeat them if you needed to reload the scores from the Bridgemate file (unless the scoring program enabled you to re-synchronise the two AND you had actually done so correctly).

I don't understand your point. Are you still under the illusion that the lead card warning would be given before play is finished? My point about detecting an incorrect entry of the declarer is that it's much better to do so at the time rather than much later, if at all.

One useful, real and legal purpose is to highlight timeously cases where the wrong declarer may well have been entered, especially when this is (one of) the wrong pair.

Normal practice is to enter the contract and opening lead at the start of the hand. When you get to the end of play, you enter the result, and if the lead is not validated the Bridgemate says so. If nevertheless you don't enter the lead at the start, someone may (1) have remembered it, (2) have written it on their scorecard or (3) despite what you say, even look at what they played before they shuffle their cards. And the Bridgemate operators quickly learn what's required. What's gained is an accurate opening lead (with all the advantages you have already mentioned), instead of it routinely being ♣2. The only glitch is in cases of an accepted opening lead out of turn, and there are ways for the TD to deal with that at the time.

Bridgemates do not report on the lead card check when the card is entered; they do so when the result is entered afterwards. It would be easy to spot an operator going that far before the hand is played. But the Bridgemate doesn’t show that, just the scores on the board played. You need the app to see the actual rankings, if this service is provided by the organiser. In our club we have decided not to activate this, because there are quite a few - mainly elderly - players who don’t have a smartphone or don’t know how to use it, and also we’re afraid that the others would look almost permanently at the screen like some youngsters. With the more recent software and firmware, Bridgemate II units can be configured to offer to show the current rankings of the pairs (via one of the variable function buttons), whether or not they are configured to show the board results.

In the EBU this is specifically covered in the White Book guidance to TDs:

That is a nice hand Hrothgar, particularly the depth of honours. Probably the best hand I've held was ♠- ♥AKQ1084 ♦AKQ109 ♣AK, but it's missing the Js. I've also been dealt one 30-point hand, which I haven't got immediately available, but that wasn't 0-loser. Your ♥s remind me of a hand where I opened 1♥ on four to the 8, and partner's support was ♥AKQJ1097.

Joe Grue's Pass of 4♦ doubled had denied the Ace, so Bobby Levin could bid normal RKCB and get the same information as from Exclusion. Joe Grue recognised this possibility, but it seems he may not have done so before bidding 7NT over 7♠.

On a detail, EBU's regulation is that where (as here) less than half the boards are played by the withdrawing pair, that pair's results are cancelled (White Book 2018 section 2.4 for more details).

A then low to Q IS better. A then small unnecessarily loses two tricks to all cases (6) of Kxx onside (W) (and hence J/10/9x offside) and only gains in the (4) cases of Kx offside. As Cyberyeti says, cashing the A first avoids 3 losers when there's a singleton K.

At risk of being overly technical, it's not as simple as that (Gödel's argument requires that the system is sufficient to contain Peano arithmetic, for example). And you can have a consistent such system - for example, ZFC (Zermelo-Frankel set theory with the Axiom of Choice) is generally regarded as consistent - it's just that in that event (1) it will be incomplete (there will be true statements that can not be proved within the system), and (2) its consistency is one such statement: ie you can not prove the system's consistency within the system. Mathematics would be impossible if all systems were inconsistent. That is certainly not a logical consequence even if the premise were true.

Mr Bumble in 'Oliver Twist'. Lord Denning certainly took that view from time to time, but I couldn't quickly find an example of where he actually quoted Dickens in this way.

Marty Balin.