Most ridiculous ruling of the year.

[dogsbreath]

hi

I am not qualified to comment on the director's ruling so i will not persue that part of the discussion.

 

As regards the use of these methods in on-line tournament play .. i think it is ridiculous to suggest that the opponents have been given a chance to discuss a defence. Many pairs in tourneys are formed at the partnership desk and may not have played together before .. they may have no idea what defensive options are available or likely to be effective and have insufficient time to discuss them ..quite apart from the possible issue of language barriers.

It is unreasonable to suggest that pairs entering such a tourney can discuss defensive options in advance other than to the 'normal' weak 2 or multi .. there are too many other variations such as this WIlk.. and (eg) Tartan two .

The effect of these methods being used in BBO tourneys is to randomise results, in favour I believe, of the pairs using them.

 

Additionally, my experience of playing against pairs using these methods is that they often stray considerably from the announced shape and range requirements.. a situation that they are better able to deal with than their opponents.

 

Further, in this part of the world (UK) it is forbidden to psyche a conventional bid.. again I dont know the prescribed penalties, but have no sympathy for someone who gets an inaccurate ruling subsequent to such action.

 

Maybe such tourneys should carry a clear 'health warning' that all unusual methods are permitted.. then I would accept that no 'unfair' situation had arisen.

 

I am not against these methods 'per se' .. in a teams match where my partner and I have had an opportunity to revise our actions against 1 known set of weak openings

or other 'unusual' methods then I anticipate an enjoyable and possibly challenging game..

 

Rgds Dog

[DrTodd13]

Look, I didn't know that this thread would turn into what it has or I wouldn't have been so sloppy with my original post. In subsequent posts I've tried to clarify that this was a deviation from our system. The whole point of the singleton comment was to indicate that it was "close" to the 5-8...meaning it was a deviation and not a psyche. My explanation was probably crappy. I didn't define it was "Wilkosz" at the table but gave the same explanation I did here. If people want to be pedantic that Wilkosz must be 5-5 then fine, we don't play Wilkosz. I'm uninterested in what the name of what we are actually playing is because you aren't supposed to use names to alert things.

 

There are lots of people bitching about these methods being allowed but Sigi and others are correct, no statement to the contrary and the WBF _LAWS_ are in force and the sponsoring organization's _REGULATIONS_ are in force. The sponsoring organization is in effect the tournament host and if they don't specify their regulations then there aren't any.

 

It is a sponsoring organization regulation that requires people to provide defenses to unusual systems/conventions. We don't feel it mandatory for us to provide such defenses or even to allow people to discuss them once the hand starts. However, we don't want unfamiliarity to generate ridiculous results. We want the inherent difficulty of the bid to generate IMPs but not unfamiliarity. As such, we encourage people to discuss when the bid comes up even if they to some degree tailor their defense to the hand they currently hold (if it comes up again then they are stuck with their original defense). We even tell them that we can provide a suggested defense if they want it.

[inquiry]

For what it is worth, I have taken the time to take a look at Dr. Todd's 2♦ openings that fall into this category using Bridgebrowser.

 

This is the first hand I can find where he held less than 5HCP. However there were six hands with 9 or more hcp (including 11 once). In addition a number of the 8 hcp hands had singletons (suggesting too strong if he counts distribution)? I don't think his 2♦ bid was a psyche, nor does the evidence show he opens this light routinely with 2♦ (although a significant proportion was stronger than 8 hcp (I was careful not to include his weak twos in diamonds in this total).

 

So I think we can move away from the partnership agreement it can be this light, and accept that he alerted his agreement (albiet his partner might expect a bit more than 8 on "good" hands). So the question becomes, is this brown sticker allowed in general? Should he provide a suggested defense? Were the opposition truely damaged by inadequante alert?

[hrothgar]

 

>So the question becomes, is this brown sticker allowed in general?

 

I see no reason to limit this discussion to "this" Brown Sticker Convention. I think that legal structures so be applied uniformly. If a given Law applies to Brown Sticker Conventions it should apply to all Brown Sticker Conventions - including the hallowed Multi 2♦ opening.

 

In this case, the tournament sponsor did not specify any type of convention regulations. From my perspective, this should force you into one of two different corners. We can either assume

 

1. Anything that is not explicitly banned is allowed in which which case we have an "anything goes" regime in which any/all conventions are legal

 

OR

 

2. Anything that is not explcitly allowed is banned in which players are not allowed to use any conventions including takeout doubles, Stayman, etc.

 

Logically, the two cases are equivalent. I suspect that the first system would be more popular.

 

>Should he provide a suggested defense?

 

Once again, this regulation defaults to the sponsoring authority. With this said and done, if I were the Dictator of the Bridge Universe here's how I'd handle things.

 

1. Establish a standard mechanism by which suggested defenses are provided to the opponents. Long term, I believe that this is best accomplished using the Full Disclosure application.

 

2. Create a committee that is tasked with developing suggested defenses to different conventional opening bids. I strongly believe that it is a mistake for the individuals who develop a new opening to provide a recommended defense. These individuals have a clear conflict of interest in creating an effective defense. They are also likely to suffer from some big blind spots regaridng the merits of their own methods.

 

3. Upon inventing a new convention I am obligated to submit said convention to the defense committee. 30 days from the date of submission I get to start using this convention in competition. If the Conventions committe hasn't been able to devise a new defense its not my problem.

 

>Were the opposition truely damaged by inadequate alert?

 

The damage was subsequent to the infraction, not consequent. The non-offending side is not entitled to redress.

[DrTodd13]

For what it is worth, I have taken the time to take a look at Dr. Todd's 2♦ openings that fall into this category using Bridgebrowser.

 

This is the first hand I can find where he held less than 5HCP. However there were six hands with 9 or more hcp (including 11 once). In addition a number of the 8 hcp hands had singletons (suggesting too strong if he counts distribution)? I don't think his 2♦ bid was a psyche, nor does the evidence show he opens this light routinely with 2♦ (although a significant proportion was stronger than 8 hcp (I was careful not to include his weak twos in diamonds in this total).

 

So I think we can move away from the partnership agreement it can be this light, and accept that he alerted his agreement (albiet his partner might expect a bit more than 8 on "good" hands). So the question becomes, is this brown sticker allowed in general? Should he provide a suggested defense? Were the opposition truely damaged by inadequante alert?

Did you use BUMRAP counting or standard counting?

 

Another problem is that even using BUMRAP counting we may have sufficient points to open 1♣ or 1♦ but lack sufficient controls (2) and therefore must treat the hand as weaker. This is another one of those things that was impossible to explain in the alert window before because the size of the alert explanation was limited. Is there a limit on the size of the FD explanation? In any case, this is the type of thing that we have tried to alert in the past and have been told we are giving too much information and it is confusing people. Another example of this is that our intermediate openings have a lower requirement of 9 but BUMRAP counting can give you values in increments of 0.25. We use to alert things using the fractions but several people including one of the posters in this thread suggested dropping the fractions and rounding down. So, 5-8 would actually mean 5-8.75.

[jdonn]

I think I suggested once that you should drop the fractions, though I have to admit I had no idea you were using some other point count method, I thought you were using standard point count and making minor adjustments for positive and negative features. It may be the wrong thing to do given that you are using a point count method that specifically involves decimals, but frankly what I think you should do anyway is translate into normal point count for your explanations. A fair amount of work? Yes, but you are the ones playing something very unusual, the onus is on you to make it easily understandable to the opponents.

 

As an analogy, picture a French player coming to the United States, and instead of explaining his bids in English he explains them in French and then hands the opponents flashcards translating each word he used into English. That is what you are doing, but with numbers instead of words.

 

Also since I believe (reading other posts in this thread) that in your methods queens and jacks count even less for you than 2 and 1 respectively, it becomes that much more difficult to classify this as a deviation rather than a psych (or to the cynical, an implicit agreement, although Ben's data seems to refute that.)

[pigpenz]

Not only have we violated no law but the opps have "failed to play bridge" by 1) not discussing a defense when this came up even though we told them they could do so,

Apart from the time constraints already mentioned are your opps expected to discuss their defense strategies openly at the table? Once a round has started it is not possible to talk privately with your partner.

 

jb

I have even asked online acbl TD's about. Numerous times we are hit up with late alerts or only part of the system is pre announced....example we open shapely 8pt hands and lead small from xx.....

then they open a short club or short diamond.....

 

I have asked the TD's can we now say partner lets play this defense. Their answer was thats interesting I dont really know.

 

I fell is they can hit you with that then we should be able to say lets play this. :rolleyes:

[whereagles]

I feel like awarding...

 

For EW: 4♠+3, +680

For NS: 7♠=, -2210

[DrTodd13]

I think I suggested once that you should drop the fractions, though I have to admit I had no idea you were using some other point count method, I thought you were using standard point count and making minor adjustments for positive and negative features. It may be the wrong thing to do given that you are using a point count method that specifically involves decimals, but frankly what I think you should do anyway is translate into normal point count for your explanations. A fair amount of work? Yes, but you are the ones playing something very unusual, the onus is on you to make it easily understandable to the opponents.

 

As an analogy, picture a French player coming to the United States, and instead of explaining his bids in English he explains them in French and then hands the opponents flashcards translating each word he used into English. That is what you are doing, but with numbers instead of words.

 

Also since I believe (reading other posts in this thread) that in your methods queens and jacks count even less for you than 2 and 1 respectively, it becomes that much more difficult to classify this as a deviation rather than a psych (or to the cynical, an implicit agreement, although Ben's data seems to refute that.)

We always pre-alert the scheme we use to count points. There is nothing in the rules that says you have to use 4321 or that your alerts must be made using that methodology. Hypothetically, if we did try to do what you suggest then the range would appear larger and would substantially overlap with other ranges. Our 2♦ might be 4.5-11.5 and our 1♣ might be 8-16.5 and our pass 12+. Anybody paying attention will then ask how do we know what to open when where this in an overlap in the ranges at which point we have to reveal our true point count scheme anyway after which there is very little overlap in ranges. Then those people will be pissed that we didn't tell them our real strategy up front.

 

Show me the law that says my explanations must be "easily understandable." I want them to be as understandable as possible but still be accurate. I have an obligation to full disclosure and I don't believe that hiding the way we evaluate our hands is in the spirit of full disclosure. My view is that many experts are effectively not using 4321 but are not effectively disclosing what they are using. This results in this "good 14" and "bad 18" stuff.

 

In our methods, the hand in question was worth 2.5 points. Is this a gross misstatement or a simple deviation? If you want to call it a psyche then I'll counter with we don't have an implicit agreement to psyche this frequently so there shouldn't be a penalty. If you want to call it a deviation then do we have an agreement to deviate like this frequently. I think the answer is no.

 

If we had a huge long history for this bid then how do we calculate what lower range we should announce? Drop the lower X% of instances and chalk those up to infrequent deviations and then list the next amount as the minimum? If that minimum in our scheme is 4.25, 4.5 or 4.75 then what should our alert say? Should it use the fraction? Should you round down? Round up? Are you going to penalize if somebody makes one of these decisions and you believe they should have made the other? Do we really want to go around penalizing people if they are making a valiant effort at full disclosure and hand analysis reveals their true minimum or maximum is off by a point?

[hrothgar]

If we had a huge long history for this bid then how do we calculate what lower range we should announce?

If it were me, I'd like to understand the following:

 

Is the distribution unimodal?

If so, what is the range and the Standard Deviation.

[jdonn]

"There is nothing in the rules that says you have to use 4321 or that your alerts must be made using that methodology."

 

I didn't say you couldn't use whatever methodology you want. And I wasn't trying to suggest that it says in the rules you must convert into the methodology most people readily understand, only saying that I thought it would be a good idea.

 

"Hypothetically, if we did try to do what you suggest then the range would appear larger and would substantially overlap with other ranges. Our 2♦ might be 4.5-11.5 and our 1♣ might be 8-16.5 and our pass 12+. Anybody paying attention will then ask how do we know what to open when where this in an overlap in the ranges at which point we have to reveal our true point count scheme anyway after which there is very little overlap in ranges. Then those people will be pissed that we didn't tell them our real strategy up front."

 

I don't see the problem with an apparent overlap. Many people would open a weak two bid on some hands with 11 points and a one bid on some hands with 9 points. Anyway I don't think they should be upset about something like that. Many people base their decision to open the bidding or not on losing trick count, but I've never seen anyone bothered when they weren't told that by the opponents up front. It's true though, no matter what you do someone will always find something to be pissed about. You know that better than anyone, I'm sure.

 

"Show me the law that says my explanations must be "easily understandable." "

 

I don't mean to suggest you can't play something complicated, just that your opponents have to be able to understand your explanations. Are you suggesting you could explain in Urdu since technically you may be fulfilling your requirement?

 

"I want them to be as understandable as possible but still be accurate. I have an obligation to full disclosure and I don't believe that hiding the way we evaluate our hands is in the spirit of full disclosure. My view is that many experts are effectively not using 4321 but are not effectively disclosing what they are using. This results in this "good 14" and "bad 18" stuff."

 

Nothing is wrong with evaluation that is based on aspects other than strict point count. Emphasis on the word evaluation (as opposed to apparently random deviations.) Indeed, if you had opened 2H because you felt your hand was worth the equivalent of 5-8 on whatever scale you are using then this would be a whole different story. The problem largely arose from you making the bid on a hand you knew was worth less, or at least you probably couldn't convince me that you didn't know.

 

"In our methods, the hand in question was worth 2.5 points. Is this a gross misstatement or a simple deviation? If you want to call it a psyche then I'll counter with we don't have an implicit agreement to psyche this frequently so there shouldn't be a penalty. If you want to call it a deviation then do we have an agreement to deviate like this frequently. I think the answer is no."

 

All totally reasonable arguments, and honest I do believe you. The problem is your opponents have absolutely no way of knowing if this is true. They may not have legal recourse, but I could understand if they felt a little robbed. I would call this instance a psych though. If someone playing 14+ to 17 notrumps opened 1NT with an average 12 (essentially 2.5 points light) that sure seems like a psych to me.

 

"If we had a huge long history for this bid then how do we calculate what lower range we should announce? Drop the lower X% of instances and chalk those up to infrequent deviations and then list the next amount as the minimum? If that minimum in our scheme is 4.25, 4.5 or 4.75 then what should our alert say? Should it use the fraction? Should you round down? Round up? Are you going to penalize if somebody makes one of these decisions and you believe they should have made the other? Do we really want to go around penalizing people if they are making a valiant effort at full disclosure and hand analysis reveals their true minimum or maximum is off by a point?"

 

Now you are being way too nitpicky. Just pick something reasonable! I think a reasonable test (just off my head, with no basis in law) is that the lower would start on hands where you expect to make this bid every time, not merely hands where you have made it at some time.

[joshs]

How about:

Announce ranges as :"Approximently A to B HCP but we actually use a modified point count that gives more weight to aces and tens, and less weight to queens and jacks "

[1eyedjack]

For what it is worth, my opinion:

 

We accept that the conventional agreement is not banned in the event, whether the bid was in accordance with the agreement or otherwise.

 

It was not a psyche. A psyche is a gross mis-statment, which this was not, even if it was a deviation of sorts.

 

It may have been inadequate disclosure. There is some prima facie evidence of this, from DrTodd's initial posting. Personally I am currently inclined to believe that it may well have been sloppy wording in the forum posting, ie that his partner may well not have expected such weakness, in which case there is no question of damage, and that seems to be supported by Inquiry's research. But proceeding for the time being on the reasonable if perhaps not conclusive assumption that as a matter of fact the disclosure was inadequate:

 

There is no doubt in my mind that E-W contributed considerably to their own appalling score. I base this conclusion on the fact that had South held full values for his bid E-W had good reason to investigate slam with every expectation of success. Perhaps the granny was out of the picture, but there is no excuse for stopping in 4.

 

Whilst I have an aversion to players feeling that they have an automatic right to a "double shot" at a good score whenever they come up against an artificial method, simply by picking some technical hole in the disclosure, by the same token those playing the artificial methods have a higher standard of disclosure to live up to when they choose to use these methods.

 

I am no TD and have no particular expertise in the laws. I do feel that I have something of a sense of fair play, and I feel uncomfortable in this case of providing E-W with any adjustment that provides them with anything approaching an average score. On the other hand, if as a question of fact the TD were to conclude that disclosure is inadequate then I would hope that N-S incur a procedural penalty of sorts, but not so as to benefit the E-W pair.

[Sigi_BC84]

Show me the law that says my explanations must be "easily understandable."  I want them to be as understandable as possible but still be accurate.

For what it's worth, if I played a method like Moscito or Dejeuner, where a point count different from Milton-Work is systemically applied, I would translate the ranges into M-W and use those in my announcements.

 

This certainly is not as accurate a description as when using your "native" point count, but you do players a better service because they can apply their own "point count feel" to your bids. In my eyes this outweighs the lack of accuracy.

 

When facing expert oppos or when playing in a longer event you could still offer to explain accurately if your opponents prefer that.

 

--Sigi

[kenberg]

I see that in response to Inquiry's finding that 2D has sometimes been opened on 11 hcps, the defense is that Inquiry mistakenly used standard carding. On the other hand, poster originally asserts that the posted hand has 3hcps. If I understand his counting method, actually the posted hand has 2.5 hcps. Oh well.

 

What we have here is an unusual mathod described in a manner that can be called accurate only by using methods that have landed various accountants in jail or in bankruptcy court.

 

Not my problem, really. Best of luck to those with the responsibility to deal with it.

[pigpenz]

I see that in response to Inquiry's finding that 2D has sometimes been opened on 11 hcps, the defense is that Inquiry mistakenly used standard carding. On the other hand, poster originally asserts that the posted hand has 3hcps. If I understand his counting method, actually the posted hand has 2.5 hcps. Oh well.

 

What we have here is an unusual mathod described in a manner that can be called accurate only by using methods that have landed various accountants in jail or in bankruptcy court.

 

Not my problem, really. Best of luck to those with the responsibility to deal with it.

he was just referring to the fact that he had checked DR Todds bids with Bridgebrowser...which would allow him to see all of the hands that he opened on BBO with that bid.

[inquiry]

To be fair to DrTodd, I think now there was extenuating circumstances on his 11 hcp hand.

 

IMP-6       foobar      Dlr: West  
Board 56673 S           Vul: Both
           H 6432      
isobay1     D AQT97     yls1975     
S Q874      C AK83      S A952      
H AQJT7                 H K95       
D 54        DrTodd      D 82        
C T2        S KJT63     C 9764      
           H 8         
           D KJ63      
           C QJ5       

09-Feb-06  8:16:06 PM 
First  7:59:04 PM, Last  8:19:16 PM

West       North      East       South      
isobay1    foobar     yls1975    DrTodd     
Pass       Pass*      Pass       2D!        
2H         5D         Pass       Pass       
Pass       

1. 14+; any shape
2. 8-11,5+!S,4+!D

Opening lead: D5    Result: Made 6
Score: 620          Points: 6.53  

As you can see, his partner made a forcing pass (part of their system). I didn't take forcing pass into account when I did my search. So tos 2!D turns out to be different from the other ones.

 

But here is one wth 10 hcp... (and if you use winking blinking and nod points (K=3, Q=1.5, J = 0.75, and Tens = 0.25, he has two kings (6), a queen (1.5), two jacks (1.5) and 3 tens (0.75) = 9.75 of those before you add for the singleton.

 

IMP-7       foobar      Dlr: South 
Board 39676 S A4        Vul: Both
                H QJ6       
TATAGLIA    D 54        lalise      
S K653       C Q98742    S QJ72      
H 54                           H A87       
D 983       DrTodd        D A762      
C AKT5      S T98         C 63        
               H KT932     
               D KQJT      
               C J         


First  7:09:50 AM, Last  7:18:57 AM

West       North      East       South      
TATAGLIA   foobar     lalise     DrTodd     
                                2D!        
Pass       2H!        Pass       Pass       
2S         Pass       3S         Pass       
4S         Pass       Pass       Pass 

 

But again, I think he generally is within the range promised.

[DrTodd13]

Of course on that last one I discounted the singleton ♣J so it was really more like a 9 pt hand.

[jdonn]

The sort of evidence Inquiry presents (if available) would be able to convince me to simply record what happened and give no penalty at all, as it seems to prove that no implicit agreement to make the bid on lighter hands exists. Without such evidence I still think it would be difficult to convince a director that partner was unaware of the possibility of such a light hand, and I still think a (small) procedural penalty would be fine, as the burden of proof tends to be on the accused for his own innocence in such cases.

 

Of course this evidence would only be useful in the case of an appeal, as there is no way you could instantly offer it to a director on the spot, not to mention that there would be no time to analyze it anyway. So the laws of bridge are inconvenient and often unfair, what else is new.

[inquiry]

Of course on that last one I discounted the singleton ♣J so it was really more like a 9 pt hand.

Ok.. but you added an aweful lot of points for a singleton on an earlier hand in htis thread to push 2.5 winky, blinky points up to 5.... and here your own count is nine before the stiff. But remember, I am defending you here.

[DrTodd13]

Yes. Thanks for the analysis Ben. It makes me want to get BridgeBrowser so that I can verify all of our ranges. Also, I'd like to see the ratings system that they have implemented. Does it only compute ratings for the sets of deals you have bought or does it give you up-to-date ratings for everyone for all the deals they know about?

[pigpenz]

i believe it gives ratings base on all the hands that you have played on bbo. The datasets I have are four tournament play, so I think they only reflect tournament play not main club play.

 

Having been a district recorder something like bridge browser would have been great. Too bad we can record all hands played at a sectional or regional and make a bridgebrowser database...granted it could be done....but having the strokes recorded by computer make life alot easier.

[inquiry]

Yes. Thanks for the analysis Ben. It makes me want to get BridgeBrowser so that I can verify all of our ranges. Also, I'd like to see the ratings system that they have implemented. Does it only compute ratings for the sets of deals you have bought or does it give you up-to-date ratings for everyone for all the deals they know about?

it gives real time taring based on all hands played in main room. If you want tourney hands i think you have to recalculate. I really ignore the ratings (mine varies from roughly average to very good, very rythmically. One could think of new reasons to take a peak at ratings these days.

[pigpenz]

Ben you have a database different than I did, when i got my data from Steve I just wanted BBO Tourney data not main bridge club.

[sfbp]

I would like to know this: if 2 points are added for a singleton, how many points are SUBTRACTED for a singleton Queen or King?

 

Without wishing to provoke a flame war, it seems to me at the very least self-serving to attempt to justify the range used by adding in distribution.

 

Experience from BRBR shows that when we hold the majority of the points, every singleton J pulls its weight. So an un passed partner with 20 points, can they rely on opener having 5 points or not? If not, bidding game becomes an extremely random exercise.

 

When we have very few points, suit concentration IS an issue - and it would concern me if the bid was used on ANY hand of acceptable point range without regard to honours being in the suits being bid. Add to the fact that the suits are unknown, and one starts to see the rationale behind the "destructive bidding" shibboleth used by the ACBL in deciding to ban some of these conventions.

 

Stephen