Appeal committee problem

[Guest Jlall]

dburn wtf are you talking about?

 

The question is: If partner hesitates and it demonstrably suggests bidding 6C, and you do in fact bid on to 6C and it makes on a very lucky layout do you still adjust it to 5C?

 

The answer is: Yes. For reasons already mentioned which you seem to have trouble reading.

 

Whatever you are talking about now has no relation to any of that.

 

Your first reply to this actual question where you asked:

 

Now, if 6♣ was a horrible contract, what information would you say that the player who bid it had received, and what information would you say that his partner had made available?

 

was answered thoroughly, you can go re-read it. If you would like the cliff notes version then the fact that slam is bad does not mean there was no relevant UI conveyed. You are thinking about only the actual hand and not the range of hands partner could have.

 

Also this:

If his partner had, instead of merely bidding slowly, been illegally communicating every detail of his hand via some electronic device (or, now that these are banned in the United States, by some tried and trusted method such as signalling with his fingers), the player would never have bid 6♣.

 

is very misguided. What if I told partner I could have 5 hands, 4 of which made slam cold and one of which made slam poor. They are similar hands with slight differences. What if my partner then bid slam, and I happened to have the one which made slam poor. Did we not cheat? Again, stop thinking in terms of only the actual hands and think in terms of how the range of partner's hands has changed by the UI, and how that affects the decision from the other side of the table.

[benlessard]

The laws arent that complicated and this is a fairly simple example.

 

If the 5C club bid would have been bid in tempo, is passing 5C a logical alternative ?

 

The hesitation of the 5C suggest others alternatives, does those alternative are suggesting to go higher then 5C ?

[whereagles]

ahhh.. laws threads always beat post records.. lol.

 

By the way, what's wrong with my idea of showing the hand to a couple peers and decide on basis of that whether it's obvious to allow 6♣?

[brianshark]

I don't agree that the 1NT-(hesitant)2NT-? auction is the same as the given auction in this thread because it seems that the hesitation in this thread can only suggest bidding on (the eventual 5♣ bid is the weakest possible bid at that point in the auction). However a hesitant 2NT in the above auction could suggest either a hand almost too weak to invite or a hand almost too good to invite or even a hand thinking of transferring or using stayman or something.

 

So while in principle I agree with dburn's opinion that people are way too eager to jump on the "if it hesitates, shoot it" bandwagon, I don't believe he is right in this situation because the hesitation does suggest bidding on.

 

The issue of whether a hesitation which suggests bidding on, acted upon and succeeding where the hesitator actually had a worse hand than demonstrated is something I'm still undecided about.

[Halo]

JLall position is definitely the mainstream interpretation IMO.

 

You can debate what info was passed, poll people and all that, but the principle is clear.

[badderzboy]

My take on this is ....

 

We should first consider what the hesitation and bidding suggests to date...

Was partner considering passing 4C we KNOW that 6C makes so we know that the person who hesitated was considering 6C but DID his partner and that is the crux of the issue. I can quite believe that they were considering 4S as well and they also failed to cue a Red suit control - both of which the 6C bidder has....

 

Rather than prevaricate on this surely ask peers what they would do with the 6C bidders hand and base your decision on that rather than on knowing the final result

 

Steve

[Fluffy]

ahhh.. laws threads always beat post records.. lol.

 

By the way, what's wrong with my idea of showing the hand to a couple peers and decide on basis of that whether it's obvious to allow 6♣?

Nothing wrong except that I doubt anyone would bid 4♣ instead of 4♦ or some spades, and that a very important fact of this question is if 4♣ is forcing or not, because if partner doesn't feel in a forcing situation, then 5♣ hesitation doesn't give away any extra info.

[Cascade]

I don't agree that the 1NT-(hesitant)2NT-? auction is the same as the given auction in this thread because it seems that the hesitation in this thread can only suggest bidding on (the eventual 5♣ bid is the weakest possible bid at that point in the auction). However a hesitant 2NT in the above auction could suggest either a hand almost too weak to invite or a hand almost too good to invite or even a hand thinking of transferring or using stayman or something.

 

So while in principle I agree with dburn's opinion that people are way too eager to jump on the "if it hesitates, shoot it" bandwagon, I don't believe he is right in this situation because the hesitation does suggest bidding on.

 

The issue of whether a hesitation which suggests bidding on, acted upon and succeeding where the hesitator actually had a worse hand than demonstrated is something I'm still undecided about.

I am entirely unconvinced that this particular hesitation based on the facts presented here suggests that the hesitator was considering bidding on. Its possible this is the case but I would want to know much more about the partnership experience and agreements before jumping to that conclusion.

 

That is the first conclusion that needs to be established. And if the actual hand doesn't match the conclusion then perhaps we need to revisit the situation and consider again what is being suggested and not assume as Justin did that we are simply at the bottom of the range of hands that would have hesitated on the assumption that our initial conclusion had been correct.

 

I know for me that I will reasonably often break tempo in late rounds of the bidding on complex or convoluted or unfamiliar auctions. The only conclusion that could be drawn is that I am checking the auction to make sure I have taken in all of the information. And conversely if I do not break tempo then the most likely conclusion is that I am being stupid and not playing carefully enough. When I make a slow bid I could have anything from a clear action that was unsure about the bidding to a hand with a problem that was considering some alternative action.

 

Another view is that I have seen many hands where partner tanks and makes some bid and then when I see her hand I think "What on earth was she thinking? She has an easy ??? bid" Where ??? is the bid she actually made. In reality I am pleased that she takes her time to make the right bid. If a problem occurred then many times it would quite wrong, especially at higher levels, to assume the slow call suggested one action over another. More so when the hand that is presented does not fit well within the group of hands that would have had the same problem that the committee believes would demonstrably suggest the action.

 

In practice appeal committees in my experience often seem to gloss over the requirement that a bid needs to be demonstrably suggested. This is just the first step towards if it hesitates shoot it.