Declining the multi defense

[wyman]

Club in ACBL-land allows Multi 2D, because one pair wants to play it. They are the only pair that plays it, and it's well-known that they play it. Newbie to the club (and to some extent to multi 2D, but not to bridge) has heard that the club allows it, so long as a defense is provided. NS is a pickup partnership, both experienced players.

 

r/r MP

 

W----N----E----S

2D - (X) - 2H - ?

 

2D is alerted and explained (when N asks) as showing a weak 2 in either major. East then offers the written defense (both "option 1" and "option 2") to North and gives the spiel about how EW is required to offer the written defense to anyone who would like to use it. North says "no" and doubles. 2H is explained as pass or correct, and that a pass of X would be a suggestion of a place to play.

 

The question is what rights south has. Can/should he call the director at this point? After the auction? After the play?

 

South contends that this agreement should have been pre-alerted and that NS shouldn't even be allowed to -- much less be forced to -- discuss the choice of a defense in the middle of an auction. Further, he (of course) would have insisted that he and his partner agree on *some* defense to multi, rather than just winging it, but now this is impossible. He feels damaged by the lack of a pre-alert, despite north's insanity.

 

In any case, the auction continues:

W----N----E----S

2D - (X) - 2H - (X)

2S - (P) - P - (3N)

AP

 

South holds Kxx/Kxxx/AQx/Qxx

North holds xx/xxx /KJ10xx/Axx

 

EW take the first 7 tricks (1 heart and 6 spades).

 

South calls at the end of the hand.

 

Since it rarely comes up and is just general knowledge that this pair plays multi, most pairs just take the defense and play option 1, so the pre-alert has never been brought up before in the club, and you (the director) have never informed anyone that it needs to be pre-alerted. Your ruling?

[RMB1]

2D is alerted and explained (when N asks) as showing a weak 2 in either major. East then offers the written defense (both "option 1" and "option 2") to North and gives the spiel about how EW is required to offer the written defense to anyone who would like to use it.

 

Is it really permitted to choose your defence ("option 1" or "option 2") having seen your hand? I had assumed pre-alerting was required if written defences were to be offered (and used).

 

This smacks of Christmas party bridge where you decide your system and your opening bid on each deal, based on your hand.

[wank]

dispense with the regulations on this occasion and accept you made a balls up by not mentioning it to the newbie in a club environment.

 

award the newbie ave+ and the opps' their table score.

[wyman]

Is it really permitted to choose your defence ("option 1" or "option 2") having seen your hand? I had assumed pre-alerting was required if written defences were to be offered (and used).

 

This smacks of Christmas party bridge where you decide your system and your opening bid on each deal, based on your hand.

 

This was part of South's contention.

[blackshoe]

The club TD would have done better in the first place to have said "you can play multi, but as it's a mid-chart convention, the mid-chart rules apply. You must pre-alert the agreement at the beginning of the round, and you must provide the ACBL approved written defense." However, clubs have unlimited license to regulate conventions — they don't have to follow the ACBL convention charts at all. So while the lack of a requirement to pre-alert may be an error on the part of the club management, the TD is kind of stuck with it (Law 80B2{f}, Law 81B2). I do not believe there are grounds for score adjustment here. If I did believe there are such grounds, I do not believe that a split score, artificial for one side, assigned for the other, is legal.

[bluejak]

dispense with the regulations on this occasion and accept you made a balls up by not mentioning it to the newbie in a club environment.

 

award the newbie ave+ and the opps' their table score.

I find it difficult to see the basis for this. Apart from the general illegality of giving Ave+ when a result has been reached, you cannot give more than 100% unless some outside influence has affected the result. What outside influence, pray?

[Rossoneri]

I find it difficult to see the basis for this. Apart from the general illegality of giving Ave+ when a result has been reached, you cannot give more than 100% unless some outside influence has affected the result. What outside influence, pray?

 

Outside influence = director not informing players about the need to pre-alert.

[blackshoe]

It is not clear, in a club game, that there is a need to pre-alert. See my previous post in this thread.

[mrdct]

If the applicable alerting regulations in he ACBL require a multi 2♦ to be prealerted and EW have failed to do so, I would apply Law 40B4:

 

4. A side that is damaged as a consequence of its opponents’ failure to provide disclosure of the meaning of a call or play as these laws require, is entitled to rectification through the award of an adjusted score.

I've got no idea what the ACBL approved defences are to the multi 2♦, but I would reconstruct the likely auctions and results as if NS were expertly applying both Options 1 and 2 and adjust the score to whichever yields the superior outcome for NS. Without the full hand diagram it's hard to reach any sensible conclusion. It may well be that the table result stands as if NS discover via their approved ACBL defence that they have the majority of the points, all suits stopped and a source of tricks in ♦, 3NT sounds like quite a likely contract.

 

The fact that the TD hasn't previously provided advice to EW to prealert is irrelevant as it's incumbant up the pair playing the unexpected convention to make proper disclosure. Ignorance of the law is no defence.

[blackshoe]

The problem is that clubs are permitted to set whatever regulations they want; there is no requirement for any club to follow ACBL regulations. And most clubs do not publish any regulations at all, making things up, as it were, on the fly. I would agree with what you say about ACBL regulations, if ACBL regulations are in force. But it is not clear that they are in this club.

[barmar]

The OP said that it's well known that this pair plays Multi. If so, then how much damage was there from the lack of pre-alert?

 

Did you mean well known to everyone except South (is he the newbie?)

[Vampyr]

Is it really permitted to choose your defence ("option 1" or "option 2") having seen your hand?

I believe that it is permitted and is in fact not uncommon.

[mrdct]

The problem is that clubs are permitted to set whatever regulations they want; there is no requirement for any club to follow ACBL regulations. And most clubs do not publish any regulations at all, making things up, as it were, on the fly. I would agree with what you say about ACBL regulations, if ACBL regulations are in force. But it is not clear that they are in this club.

Surely in the absence of any specific regulation made by the club, the ACBL regulations would apply.

[blackshoe]

Yes, I've made that assumption before - only to find out I was wrong.

[wyman]

The OP said that it's well known that this pair plays Multi. If so, then how much damage was there from the lack of pre-alert?

 

Did you mean well known to everyone except South (is he the newbie?)

 

South is the newbie to the club. Part of the question is that north obviously didn't protect his side's interests, so how much rectification should be given in light of north's actions. Does south have his own rights here?

 

I believe that it is permitted and is in fact not uncommon.

 

This is worrisome. With a bad hand with diamonds, north can decline a defense and double as a lead director, for instance. Or NS could play one defense with a good hand and another with a bad hand. If it's actually acceptable (even with a pre-alert) to choose your defense mid-auction, I think this rule should be revisited.

[wank]

I find it difficult to see the basis for this. Apart from the general illegality of giving Ave+ when a result has been reached, you cannot give more than 100% unless some outside influence has affected the result. What outside influence, pray?

 

i did say 'dispense with the regulations', i.e. i'm not suggesting it's in any way legal, but this club has evidently made an unstated deviation from the regulations by no longer requiring these opps to pre-alert. in such circumstances the club should take some responsibility. if that means bending the rules a little, so be it.

 

of course, i'm not expecting that to be popular on here where understandably people want to follow the letter of the law, but things get rather murky when regulations are changed in a tacit fashion as evidently happened in this club.

[bluejak]

I find it difficult to see the basis for this. Apart from the general illegality of giving Ave+ when a result has been reached, you cannot give more than 100% unless some outside influence has affected the result. What outside influence, pray?

 

 

Outside influence = director not informing players about the need to pre-alert.

It is not a TD's job to invent regulations nor to tell every play every Law and Regulation. This would only be a TD's error if the club had a regulation about the Multi and had a Regulation requiring newbies to be told about it.

 

Since there is no such Regulation, as I understand it, the TD has done nothing wrong and a score of greater than 100% is illegal.

 

:ph34r:

 

It is true that on an AC at an NABC many years ago the AC wished to give more than 100%: the AC was of the view that the ACBL regulation at the time was unworkable and illegible, so the ACBL was the outside influence. That was the Multi and their website at that time was fairly illegible. However it is fine now.

 

:ph34r:

 

I think I am getting the hang of Multi-quoting now, and it works ok. But I still actively dislike the method of misplacing the cursor when you apply Bold, Italic, Colour and so on.

[bluejak]

i did say 'dispense with the regulations', i.e. i'm not suggesting it's in any way legal, but this club has evidently made an unstated deviation from the regulations by no longer requiring these opps to pre-alert. in such circumstances the club should take some responsibility. if that means bending the rules a little, so be it.

 

of course, i'm not expecting that to be popular on here where understandably people want to follow the letter of the law, but things get rather murky when regulations are changed in a tacit fashion as evidently happened in this club.

Sure they do, but the TD has no right to show his disapproval of the club's Regulations by giving illegal rulings.

[mrdct]

Yes, I've made that assumption before - only to find out I was wrong.

So can I get that straight - are you saying that in ACBL sanctioned club duplicate sessions the ACBL Regulations don't apply?

 

To take it a step further, if the club in question doesn't have any regulations of its own, does that mean that other things governed by regulation like simple alerting become unregulated and players can cease to alert at that particular club?

 

I still revert to my conclusion that Law 40B4 applies as even if not specifically dealt with by local regulation, EW have failed to provide proper dislcosure of their methods.

[blackshoe]

So can I get that straight - are you saying that in ACBL sanctioned club duplicate sessions the ACBL Regulations don't apply?

 

To take it a step further, if the club in question doesn't have any regulations of its own, does that mean that other things governed by regulation like simple alerting become unregulated and players can cease to alert at that particular club?

 

I still revert to my conclusion that Law 40B4 applies as even if not specifically dealt with by local regulation, EW have failed to provide proper dislcosure of their methods.

 

No, I'm saying that whether they apply or not is effectively up to the club. The ACBL says their regs apply even in club games (save the convention regs, which clubs have full authority to modify or replace completely, if they wish), but in practice no one is going to say anything if the club doesn't enforce, say, the bidding box or alert regulation.

 

After looking at 40B4 and 80, I agree with your conclusion.

[Trinidad]

Is it really permitted to choose your defence ("option 1" or "option 2") having seen your hand? I had assumed pre-alerting was required if written defences were to be offered (and used).

 

This smacks of Christmas party bridge where you decide your system and your opening bid on each deal, based on your hand.

I fully agree with this. But I actually witnessed exactly this during the 1996 Reisinger in San Francisco (which was at Thanksgiving rather than Christmas ;)). We were kibitzing Meckwell and all players had picked up their cards. Meckstroth was dealer and called the TD. When the TD came he asked him for two copies of "the yellow booklet" (containing the approved defenses to a Multi 2♦).

 

When the TD came back, Meckstroth opened one of the booklets and turned it so the opponents could read it. He said: "I am about to open 2♦. We have three defenses that you can choose from." and he proceeded by pointing out the features of the defenses. One of the opponents suggested a pick to his partner. The partner agreed. Meckstroth thanked the TD. Play continued.

 

To me this was one of the weirder things I have seen at the bridge table, but the players seem to think that it was entirely normal.

 

Rik

[peachy]

Surely in the absence of any specific regulation made by the club, the ACBL regulations would apply.

 

Not "surely" at all. It is a club.

[gnasher]

I believe that it is permitted and is in fact not uncommon.

It may not be uncommon, but I don't think it's permitted. It's obviously a breach of Law 73.

 

There's also nothing in the relevant ACBL regulations to suggest that this is allowed.

[karlson]

When I played multi in ACBL-land, we never forced the opponents to decide on a defense at pre-alert time, though I'm virtually certain that we could have according to the rules. Nobody wants to waste time on discussing something that may not come up only to prevent the opponents from gaining a tiny edge. This seems pretty common, and I've never heard of multi players complaining about the opponents choosing a defense after seeing their hands. I think it's because they're already so demonized for playing multi.

[bluejak]

Is it really permitted to choose your defence ("option 1" or "option 2") having seen your hand? I had assumed pre-alerting was required if written defences were to be offered (and used).

I believe that it is permitted and is in fact not uncommon.

It may not be uncommon, but I don't think it's permitted. It's obviously a breach of Law 73.

I am not convinced of that. While I think it a fairly manic idea, in fact I consider the whole approach childish in the extreme, I fancy it is legal under Law 40B, which gives an RA very wide powers in this area.

 

We had beautiful approved defences on laminated sheets in Orlando. When we played on the third day of the National Swiss Teams, most of our opponents, especially the Europeans, seemed fairly insulted at being offered them! :P

 

There's also nothing in the relevant ACBL regulations to suggest that this is allowed.

Nothing to suggest it is not, either. You have to make both defences available, and there is no regulation that they have to choose one or the other or either or neither.

 

When I played multi in ACBL-land, we never forced the opponents to decide on a defense at pre-alert time, though I'm virtually certain that we could have according to the rules. Nobody wants to waste time on discussing something that may not come up only to prevent the opponents from gaining a tiny edge. This seems pretty common, and I've never heard of multi players complaining about the opponents choosing a defense after seeing their hands. I think it's because they're already so demonized for playing multi.

I think approved defences are a reasonable idea, and should be allowed in novice games, and 0-20 games. But if they are going to be used at top level, I can see no excuse for not doing it properly. A simple regulation that players are required to say whether they will use the defences when they are pre-alerted [and which one in the case of the Multi] would make sense.

 

The current arrangement allows you to double a Multi three times in one match. When you hold a long diamond suit, you decline the defences. When you hold a takeout double of spades, you announce that you will use Option One. When you hold a balanced 14 count you announce that you will use Option Two.

 

Pshaw! :angry: