Disable Undo Feature for Opening Lead

[DeNovo]

I think that the undo feature should not be available for the opening lead.

 

I was playing in an Indy the other night when partner made his opening lead against a suit slam contract. As soon as partner saw dummy, he requested an undo which declarer granted. Dummy was short in the suit that my partner originally led, so I guess he decided that a trump lead would be better. Unfortunately, that lead emabarrassed my trump holding, and declarer was able to play the suit for no loss making an overtrick. This action by partner is against the spirit of the game. I believe that the undo feature should be used for misclicks on the wrong bid or card, not for correcting actual bad bids or plays. If we were playing bridge in a live situation, no player would allow the opening leader to replace his lead with some other card once dummy has been exposed. The same rules should apply when playing on-line.

 

I did not want to allow the undo but I was powerless to prevent it since the transaction ocurred only between declarer and my partner. Partner requested, declarer accepted, and I was not presented with an option to decline. I suggest that the undo feature be modified so that all other players except dummy be allowed to consent to an undo before it is accepted.

 

In summary my suggestions are:

1. Disable Undo for opening leads

2. If a defender requests an Undo, allow the partner of the defender to consent before the Undo can be accepted

[PeterE]

sorry, but I must object.

 

Nearly the only time, when a undo during play may have a substantial value, is with the opening lead.

That is, because BBO resorts the hands in the moment, the declarer is found, to produce the trump-suit at the most left of the cards.

And therefore it is possible (and it actually happened to me more than one time) that you are ready to lead (say: the Ace of AKxx) and in the moment you click, you click on the 7 of another suit, because the suits were resorted.

[DeNovo]

Peter, if that is your only objection then it can also be fixed. The program would just have to be modified to ignore and discard mouse clicks that occur after the last bid and before resorting is complete.

 

I have not noticed the problem you describe myself, but I am sure it was an unintended consequence of the sorting operation. We should not however want to keep an atypical bridge circumstance (put my card back in my hand and lead something else once I've peeked at dummy) simply because it compensates for a programming glitch.

[Blofeld]

People shouldn't be asking for undos just because they think another lead would be better after they've seen dummy.

 

So requiring partner's acceptance is ludicrous. You feel damaged because your partner asked for an undo and you thought that the original lead would have been better. But your partner should only ask in the case of a misclick, in which case you certainly shouldn't get any say in whether or not it can be changed.

[DeNovo]

Blofeld,

 

You say players "shouldn't be asking for undos just because they think another lead would be better after they've seen dummy". Agreed. The point of my post is that they shouldn't but they do, hence my suggestion to close this loophole.

 

I don't know what in my posts gave you the impression that I felt "damaged", but you are mistaken. If I had felt damaged I would have called for the Director which I did not. From a purely ethical standpoint, I was hoping for declarer not to accept the undo request even before I knew that partner would choose another lead that would embarrass my holding. After you have played a few of these wild and wooly Indies, you learn how to raise your "injury quotient" so that you take bad results in stride. This IMPs result represented a minor damage, if any.

 

However, even if I felt damaged, how does that detract from my argument? I can't see how closing an ethics loophole and requiring that you participate in partner's request for an undo is "ludicrous". What exactly are the reasons for your objections to my suggestions? The argument that you present in your post seems to be:

Since the rule is people shouldn't ask for undos unless they misclick, then we ought not to do anything to prevent them from abusing this rule.

 

This does not strike me as being a very realistic approach.

[kenrexford]

I wish my one partner had an undo option in real life after his opening leads. He is relatively famous for bad opening leads.

 

One great example was where he selected the 9 from J97x in clubs against 7NT. As I held Qx, Declarer K10x, and Dummy A86x, it was the ONLY lead to allow the contract to make (Declarer needed all four clubs), and a strange one at that.

 

:)

[1eyedjack]

I am a bit concerned that you should assume that, because a change of opening lead might be indicated by the sight of dummy, that information is the motivation for the undo request. It might be the reason, but it might also be coincidence. Misclicks arise whether the erroneous lead is good or bad. Indeed if the opening leader is a good player, and can be relied upon genuinely to find a good opening lead more often than a bad one, then a misclick will more often result in a worse opening lead than intended, than the reverse.

 

Where there are two possible explanations for an undo request, one ethical and one unethical, then I would be inclined to assume the ethical motivation unless there is evidence to the contrary (such as habitual requests where a change of lead is indicated more regularly than statitistics warrant). An isolated case where a change of lead is indicated by the sight of dummy would not, of itself, constitute sufficient evidence in my opinion (to assume the unethical motivation).

 

Generally, if any software change is proposed that is designed to inhibit unethical actions but which would compromise the ability of ethical players to obtain an equitable result as otherwise pemitted by the laws, then in my opinion those software changes should be enabled or disabled at the discretion of the table host or tourney host, and not a blanket software change imposed without discretion on the entire population. Whether or not the feature is enabled should be clearly visible so that players (other than tourney/table host) have the opportunity to make an informed decision whether to play in that particular event or at that table. It has repeatedly been suggested that undo requests throughout card play should be disabled (not just on opening lead), and that would fall into this category.

 

In response to PeterE, there already exists a solution to that particular problem: Configure your display so that it shows card symbols with suits ranked vertically rather than playing cards with suits displayed horizontally. That prevents re-sorting of suits and even without re-sorting is a much easier display to handle. I cannot imagine anyone wanting it to be configured otherwise, and I think that a fresh installation of BBO software should be configured that way by default (which I believe is not currently the case).

[barmar]

However, even if I felt damaged, how does that detract from my argument? I can't see how closing an ethics loophole and requiring that you participate in partner's request for an undo is "ludicrous".

If you're allowed to participate, there's just as much of an ethical problem. You might refuse the undo request because you know that partner's original lead really was best.

 

Perhaps we should just request an option to disable resorting of the hand. In f2f bridge, players don't usually resort their own hands, only dummy normally has trumps on the left. Personally I haven't run into this problem because I don't use the "pictures of cards" option. On OKbridge they have options of ♠♥♣♦, alternating colors, and trumps on left; alternating colors is really annoying because it will resort in the middle of the hand when you void yourself in a suit. I just leave it as SP]♥♣♦, just as I do in f2f.