My Directing Decision

[jikl]

I think Richard is right, online bridge is the same as bridge behind screens except both opponents know what you think the bid means. The only way to find out about misunderstandings behind screens is when there is an obvious screwup and information is volunteered as to what the screwup could be, such as: "He quite often screws up this sequence" or "He forgets we play 1430 in ♥s and 0314 in the other suits". However, the opposition is only entitled to your agreements.

 

Now, what are your agreements? In the online world you hear from each person what each bid means by the person that bid it. There is a dangerous thing that can happen here from a devious player looking for a doubleshot, a player can potentially ask for a review of the whole auction from either player as they have received alerts from both players potentially in an auction.

 

Hopefully the ACBL will see that this is a problem and make some sort of ruling on it, otherwise the director calls are going to be hell. They would need to make very subjective opinions on fining people for setting up doubleshots.

 

There are also some serious UI problems here when you are asking for a review from both players, (especially if during the auction, the delay will be lengthy given all the potential typing), how is the questioner's partner supposed to interpret the delay and what effect will this have on subsequent actions? We already have this problem with an inherent part of BBO, if one clicks on a bid slower than one's partner you get the message that XXX is already answering a question which in and of itself already conveys some UI.

 

It is a very complicated issue. As I said, personally I agree with Richard. However, I personally think they can legally ask for a review of the whole auction from both players as they have received alerts from both players so far. If it comes to it, and people start doing this, there better be some serious assessment of time penalties etc, but we know this won't happen.

 

Sean

[blackshoe]

A review of the auction is just that - it doesn't include explanations.

 

One could ask for an explanation of the entire auction, and then "explanations should normally be given by the partner of the player who made the call in question" (Law 20F1), but I agree with the idea upthread - once one player of a pair has explained to both opponents the meaning of the call, asking his partner also for an explanation seems why too much like "operating" to me.

 

In this case (online) I would interpret "normally" in the law quoted above as allowing me to rule that this is not a normal situation, and if explanations have previously been given, then in the explanation of the entire auction, those calls which were already explained should be explained only by the player who already explained them.

[mycroft]

"I'd like a review of the bidding with all the original inflections"

[barmar]

I think Richard is right, online bridge is the same as bridge behind screens except both opponents know what you think the bid means. The only way to find out about misunderstandings behind screens is when there is an obvious screwup and information is volunteered as to what the screwup could be, such as: "He quite often screws up this sequence" or "He forgets we play 1430 in ♥s and 0314 in the other suits". However, the opposition is only entitled to your agreements.

But they're entitled to both explicit and implicit agreements. Implicit agreements include any knowledge that the partner has of the player's unique tendencies, based on his experience playing with him. So if partner knows that he often forgets a particular convention, the opponents are supposed to be entitled to this information as well.

[mycroft]

More specifically,

 

Law 75C:

 

When explaining the significance of partner's call or play in reply to an opponent's inquiry (see Law 20), a player shall disclose all special information conveyed to him through partnership agreement or partnership experience, but he need not disclose inferences drawn from his general knowledge and experience.

 

"He tends to forget this a lot" is definately "partnership experience".