sloooow 4N blackwood. All pass.

[wyman]

w/r imps

 

P - (1C) - 3S - (X) <--- in tempo

4S - (X) - P - (4N) <--- very slow 4N

AP

 

Dummy is Axx/Kxx/Jxx/KQxx

 

Before the lead, the 3S bidder asks what 4N is (in particular, whether it's to play), and opener says "I have no idea. Probably not." And the 4N bidder says "It's blackwood."

 

4N=, and 5 of anything goes down. 6 of anything gets doubled and goes down. I don't know whether "blackwood" by their agreements would be standard blackwood or RKC in the last bid suit (whether that makes (a) sense or (:huh: a difference in the ruling). Come to think of it, I wish we or the director would have asked.

 

The ruling was essentially: Pass makes no sense in this auction, so it can't have been suggested by the hesitation before the 4N bid. The passer took her own life in her hands by passing. She guessed, and it happened to be right. No adjustment to the board.

 

At first I thought this was insane. Obviously the slooow 4N suggests a lack of values, so keeping this at the 4-level is suggested by the hesitation. There's a 0% chance that she'd pass with no hesitation.

 

But the more I think about it, pass really is not an option here, so while staying low can be suggested by the hesitation, pass itself can't really have been suggested.

 

Thoughts?

[Pict]

It would have been good to have the answers to various questions, as you suggest.

 

I have to say that forced to decide just on the information in the OP, I would not contradict the TD.

 

There seems no reason at all for opener to be anxious about their hand, so I would conclude it was genuine uncertainty about the 4NT and a successful guess. The thinking time of responder may have given opener time to make a decision, but does not seem to me to have suggested the outcome.

 

I don't, by the way, think that the suggested 'impossibility' of pass is relevant - that would not protect against a judgement of use of UI.

[WellSpyder]

Much more important to my mind than asking what their agreements about Blackwood would have been is asking opener why she passed 4N if it wasn't to play. If the answer was along the lines of "it doesn't sound as if partner has much to spare so I thought we were probably high enough already" then there may indeed be a case for adjusting the score. If the answer was more along the lines of "4N sounds like it is asking me to pick a suit, perhaps with an emphasis on the minors, and I felt with no suits worth mentioning and a spade stop which I can hold up, that 10 tricks in NT was more likely than 11 tricks in a suit" then I would be tempted to go along with the view that the hesitation did not demonstrably suggest passing.

[karlson]

Obviously the slooow 4N suggests a lack of values

 

I have no idea why this would be true. Maybe she has a slam try and isn't sure if 4n is blackwood. Maybe she's thinking about whether blackwood would get her too high opposite some responses. Maybe whether it would actually tell her what she needed to know for slam. Maybe whether some other bids are also slam tries. And this is given that she admitted fairly confidently that 4n was blackwood. Without that, there are a million and one other things she could have been thinking about. I feel like this must be one of those situations where the BIT doesn't suggest anything in particular.

[vigfus]

My opinion of preemtive bids have been the same for many years.

The main goal of preemtive bids is to make life difficult for the opponments. That goal is sure ok. But when the opponmenst manage to land safe in some contract, despite having been interupted with preemtive bids, I tend to have little sympathy for the preeemtive side when they call TD.

In this case, it looks like the opposition does not know how to handle those preemtive bids, and guessing to stop in 4NT. Now the preemters call TD, because they feel that the opp's should go to high because of a BIT by the 4NT bidder. TD should ask himself, is the BIT UI, and if so, what kind of UI is here. Someone tell me what the UI is.

[peachy]

The ruling was essentially:  Pass makes no sense in this auction, so it can't have been suggested by the hesitation before the 4N bid. The passer took her own life in her hands by passing. She guessed, and it happened to be right. No adjustment to the board.

It is a wrong basis for a ruling to use "Pass makes no sense in this auction". If it was determined that there was UI and that there was damage, then the bidder choosing an illogical alternative (in this case the Not-LA was Pass) is not going to protect the bidder from a ruling. The TD has powers to redress damage to NOS under OTHER laws if UI laws cannot be used.

 

I think this case is similar to another type of situation once discussed on another forum, several years ago. 1S-...3S-6S.

1S natural (opener had a minimum hand), 3S limit raise (responder had a limit raise), 6S bid out of frustration apparently because partner hesitated before 3S. The UI definitely did not suggest AT ALL that opener choose an ILLOGICAL alternative of 6S, but the illogical alternative of 6S was nevertheless caused by the UI hesitation although could NOT be demonstrably suggested by the UI, and there was damage because 6S was cold.

 

I have never quite reconciled myself with this logic, it so much feels like "if it hesitates, shoot it". But it was the consensus of respected TDs at the time that when TD cannot adjust under UI Laws, he still can and should under the broad license "when no other laws allow for redress of damage".

 

Apparently in the OP case here, there was BIT that is UI, there was an illogical alternative chosen (to Pass a forcing bid/inquiry), and there was damage (nothing beyond 4NT makes) so using the same logic that was used in the 1S-...3S-6S case, this result should also be adjusted.

[blackshoe]

There has to have been an infraction. What was the infraction?

 

More specifically, for an adjustment under Law 16: there has to have been UI, it must be the case that the UI could demonstrably have suggested the call chosen, there must be a logical alternative call that leads to a better result for the NOS.

 

The "broad license" to which you refer, Peachy, is currently Law 12A1:

The director may award an adjusted score when he judges that these Laws do not provide indemnity to a non-offending contestant for the particular type of violation committed by an opponent.

If the violation was "use of UI", and Law 16 does not lead to a score adjustment, you cannot, IMO, use this law to adjust the score (this may be a change in approach from your "years ago", I don't know). There is also Law 12B2:

The director may not award an adjusted score on the ground that the rectification provided in these Laws is either unduly severe or advantageous to either side.

 

Edgar Kaplan is said to have been of the opinion that the TD should decide what ruling he wants to make, and then look for a law to support it. That approach is no longer favored - instead the TD should do his best to make the correct legal ruling, even if in his opinion that ruling isn't "enough".

 

There is this, wrt to your 1S-3S-6S case: Law 73C says

When a player has available to him unauthorized information from his partner, such as from a remark, question, explanation, gesture, mannerism, undue emphasis, inflection, haste or hesitation, an unexpected alert or failure to alert, he must carefully avoid taking any advantage from that unauthorized information.

But there is no score adjustment from this, because the criteria for score adjustment in case of violation of this law are in Law 73F, and that law does not apply to this situation. I suppose that a TD could rule that the frustrated player violated Law 73C, and then invoke 12A1 to justify a score adjustment. OTOH, we had a discussion here not too long ago about whether you can do this if 16 doesn't lead to an adjustment anyway. There were various opinions; I'm not sure we came to a conclusion.

 

Whatever the TD decides to do though, he has to be able to show that there was an infraction, and that the law tells him to adjust the score because of that infraction. In the instant case (passing 4NT), I don't see any such justification.

[peachy]

I like your analysis.

Would you have ruled "no adjustment" also in the 6S case? If not, how are the two cases different?

[blackshoe]

Would you have ruled "no adjustment" also in the 6S case?

Yes.

[helene_t]

I think passing 4NT makes a lot of sense if opener has spades stopped.

 

4NT may be intended as Blackwood, two/three places to play, or natural. Now if opener happens to have preference for, say, clubs, and 5♣ would also show the correct number of aces, then 5♣ would be safe. But otherwise bidding over 4NT risks reaching the wrong contract.

 

I don't think the tempo of the 4NT bid suggests anything. Well, it might suggest that it is Blackwood (before bidding Blackwood you have to spend some time figuring out whether the number of aces is really what you want to know and whether you can handle all possible responses), but more likely the slow 4NT suggests that responder wasn't sure how 4NT would be taken, or wasn't sure what the double meant.

 

Maybe the slow pass suggests that pass was an option. But:

- Pass will usually be an option for responder anyway

- The fact (?) that pass was an option doesn't necessarily mean that responder is at the weak edge of a 4NT bid.

[peachy]

Would you have ruled "no adjustment" also in the 6S case?

Yes.

That solves my many-years-long dilemma, at least I have company in my opinion.

I, too, would have left the 6S as "no adjustment". At the time, everybody else said adjustment was necessary. If those same "everybody else" now rule the OP case as "no adjustment", they have changed their minds since IMO the OP case and the 6S case involve identical principles and facts.

[barmar]

I have never quite reconciled myself with this logic, it so much feels like "if it hesitates, shoot it". But it was the consensus of respected TDs at the time that when TD cannot adjust under UI Laws, he still can and should under the broad license "when no other laws allow for redress of damage".

I agree that this seems wrong. Once you have UI, it seems like you're doomed, because whatever you do can be seen as taking advantage of the UI.

 

First, if the UI obviously suggests something, and you do that thing, it clearly violates that rule.

 

So what if you deliberately do the opposite thing. Well, you're still making a decision based on the receipt of UI. Now someone can say "what if partner deliberately sent misleading UI, to get you to do that?"

 

Of course, they'll only come up with that argument if your will guess happens to turn out well, like that crazy 6♠ call.

[aguahombre]

I have never quite reconciled myself with this logic, it so much feels like "if it hesitates, shoot it".  But it was the consensus of respected TDs at the time that when TD cannot adjust under UI Laws, he still can and should under the broad license "when no other laws allow for redress of damage".

I agree that this seems wrong. Once you have UI, it seems like you're doomed, because whatever you do can be seen as taking advantage of the UI.

 

First, if the UI obviously suggests something, and you do that thing, it clearly violates that rule.

 

So what if you deliberately do the opposite thing. Well, you're still making a decision based on the receipt of UI. Now someone can say "what if partner deliberately sent misleading UI, to get you to do that?"

 

Of course, they'll only come up with that argument if your will guess happens to turn out well, like that crazy 6♠ call.

perfect

[peachy]

I have never quite reconciled myself with this logic, it so much feels like "if it hesitates, shoot it".  But it was the consensus of respected TDs at the time that when TD cannot adjust under UI Laws, he still can and should under the broad license "when no other laws allow for redress of damage".

I agree that this seems wrong. Once you have UI, it seems like you're doomed, because whatever you do can be seen as taking advantage of the UI.

 

First, if the UI obviously suggests something, and you do that thing, it clearly violates that rule.

 

So what if you deliberately do the opposite thing. Well, you're still making a decision based on the receipt of UI. Now someone can say "what if partner deliberately sent misleading UI, to get you to do that?"

 

Of course, they'll only come up with that argument if your will guess happens to turn out well, like that crazy 6♠ call.

So I assume, in the OP case, you will adjust the score to 5-level (at least) something, going down.

 

Using your logic (and I have no problem calling it logic, they make sense) and looking at the OP given facts: Pass of 4NT was antisystemic; UI never suggests antisystemic action; if antisystemic ation was taken when in receipt of UI and it cannot be determined what action the UI could suggest, then the antisystemic action, if successful, will be ruled against; here, Pass over 4NT is judged illegal and a 5-level bid is imposed upon the Passer. Right?

[bluejak]

So what if you deliberately do the opposite thing.  Well, you're still making a decision based on the receipt of UI.  Now someone can say "what if partner deliberately sent misleading UI, to get you to do that?"

It is never particularly easy to prove cheating. But no-one cheats once, and such a pair will eventually get expelled. There is no point in a standard UI case starting to think of cheating.

[TimG]

there was BIT that is UI

Is it automatic that a BIT creates UI? Even if every BIT automatically creates UI, in my opinion it is important to know what the UI is, not merely that some UI exists.

[CamHenry]

Is it automatic that a BIT creates UI? Even if every BIT automatically creates UI, in my opinion it is important to know what the UI is, not merely that some UI exists.

I'd say yes, there is, and the UI is that partner did not have an automatic action. Whether or not it is clear from the UI what the alternatives to his selected action were is a different matter, and therefore we come to the "demonstrably suggested" test.

 

For example, suppose partner deals, and takes a good 35-40s to pass. It's likely that he was considering opening, and therefore either has a long suit or some values. This demonstrably suggests opening on marginal hands.

 

On the other hand, suppose he deals, and makes a very slow weak 2. It could be that his hand is so poor that he suspects this may be a bad idea, but it could equally be that his hand is almost good enough for a 1-bid. The UI does not demonstrably suggest any action.

[peachy]

there was BIT that is UI

Is it automatic that a BIT creates UI? Even if every BIT automatically creates UI, in my opinion it is important to know what the UI is, not merely that some UI exists.

I said "there was BIT, this is UI". I don't think there is any doubt that BIT *is* UI.

 

You are expanding the statement to a different thing, of "what the UI could suggest".

[Finch]

I can't see what a slow 4NT suggests on this auction (other than, possibly, "I don't know what partner will think 4NT means") so I would not adjust.

 

I know what 4NT means in my partnership (two places to play). A very slow 4NT means one of the following:

- I was thinking of passing the double

- I was debating the difference between 4NT followed by 6C and an immediate 6C bd

- I was deciding whether I am going to bid a slam or not

- I was deciding whether I had two places to play or one (e.g. 5=3 in the minors)

- I was wondering if 4NT then 5H shows a good 5H bid given that I started with a double rather than a 2H bid, and if so whether I am worth it

 

I can't see that any of those suggest that passing 4NT is likely to be successful.

 

In this pair's methods, it may be that double of 4S was more penalty orientated, so the possible meanings for a slow 4NT may be somewhat different. But I still can't really see what a slow 4NT suggests.