An ethical question

[awm]

Sometimes my RHO makes an insufficient bid. I've found that my best policy is usually to accept this bid.

 

Is it ethical for me to simply make my call over RHO's insufficient bid, or am I obligated to point out the irregularity and summon the director?

[ArtK78]

Given that one of your options over an insufficient bid is to accept it and treat it as a legal call, it is not improper to act directly over the insufficient bid.

[Quantumcat]

I have a question. I think someone told me once you are not allowed to have agreements over insufficient bids. What happens when it's happened to you so often, and you have a basic understanding of what partner's bids mean in that situation, that you basically have agreements without ever discussing it? Is that not allowed? Is it more severe if it's your partner that made the insufficient bid (by accident of course) and the opponents accepted it?

 

e.g. this auction happened to me in the trials for the NSW youth team:

 

1♠ (3♦) 3♥ (P)

4♦ (P) 4♣ (Director came - accepted. I thought she wanted to bid 4/5♦ perhaps but she passed instead)

4♦ (P) 4NT (P)

5♥ (P) 6♥ PPP

 

Not that I had any agreement with my partner (first time we'd ever played together) but am I allowed to tell my partner I have a void diamond and a better hand than I had already (which is what I intended), taking advantage of her insufficient bid, or should I pretend it was a sufficient one (5♣ or 4♥) and bid accordingly?

[Hanoi5]

I think it's better to call the Director. Suppose you don't and make a call and then your LHO says you cannot make that call and then s/he calls the Director and then you get a procedure penalty for not calling the Director. Better to be safe than sorry, nothing wrong with waiting for the Director to come.

[aguahombre]

I think it's better to call the Director.

FWIW, I agree it is better to call the director, AND to pause a bit before doing that (just a few seconds). In those few seconds you can sometimes get a feel whether the IB was correctable as unintended. But that is just me; and it seems most ethical.

 

The director is not at the table, but I am; and if the IB was a mechanical error, I don't like taking shots, whether in keeping with the letter of the rules or not.

[awm]

My experience with calling the director is that the first thing he will do is ask whether it was a mechanical error. The person making the insufficient bid will always claim that it was a mechanical error, at which point it can be corrected to any call without penalty (and the opportunity to accept the insufficient bid is eliminated).

 

This is why I tend to simply accept the insufficient bid in reasonable tempo. Is there an ethical issue?

[gnasher]

My experience with calling the director is that the first thing he will do is ask whether it was a mechanical error. The person making the insufficient bid will always claim that it was a mechanical error, at which point it can be corrected to any call without penalty (and the opportunity to accept the insufficient bid is eliminated).

You should get a better director. For the player to be allowed to correct his mechanical error, he has to "substitute his intended call for an unintended call but only if he does so, or attempts to do so, without pause for thought." (Law 25A1)

 

And if everyone at your local club thinks it's OK to lie to the director in this situation, you should get a better bridge club too.

 

Regarding the ethics of bidding over the insufficient bid without calling the director:

- If anyone has drawn attention to the insufficient bid, you are all required by the Laws to call the director (Law 9B1(a)). Usually I'd say that breaking the rules in order to benefit your side is cheating. Breaking the rules in order to stop the director making an incorrect ruling might be considered a grey area, but the rules are the rules and I think you should obey them.

- If no one has drawn attention to the insufficient bid, I believe that it's legal simply to bid over it. I think that's fine as long as you're sure that RHO didn't make a mechanical error. If I thought he might have made a mechanical error, I'd give him a bit of time to notice (but there's no legal obligation to do so - that's just me).

[mycroft]

To answer the original question, there is no requirement to draw attention to an irregularity. If you simply bid over it, no problem.

 

Of course, what will happen is that "you can't bid 2S, your partner bid 2S", then the TD will be summoned, and one of several things will happen:

 

- your LHO hasn't called, so if that's what makes RHO notice that the call is not what she intended to make, L25A still applies, and off we go (same problem with "of course it was not what I meant to pull");

- your LHO has called, and in 100% of cases I've run into as TD where this happens, it's very clear at the end that RHO's call (which can't be changed now, even if unintended) was unintended, and now there's UI floating all over the place, and more trouble;

- it was, in fact, an intended IB (not deliberate, just that's what she wanted to do); now you have chosen to not enforce the penalty, and they're allowed to bid as if the IB was legal. Your choice, mind you.

 

The one thing you *can't* do is tell them to make it sufficient; there are options. But you know that already.

 

Strangely enough, most people don't in fact lie when asked "when you went to the bidding box, was that what you were trying to pull out?"; and if I have even a dream that this is a "tell the TD it was unintentional and he'll let you change it", I'll check to see if the sufficient bid was a legitimate call.

 

I remember the pair that I know did bamboozle me - but since he thought he was answering Gerber, when in fact partner had bid Blackwood, changing from one ace to two aces turned +650 to -300 (partner bid 6NT) all on its little lonesome. I did have a word with the gentleman afterward, but didn't bother with any other penalty.

[nigel_k]

I can't imagine any ethical issue here.

 

If the Laws Committee intended that you always call the director, it would be very surprising they:

 

a) didn't insert a provision that says so; and

b) said the director must be called when attention is drawn to an infraction (rather than when a player becomes aware of it)

[barmar]

I have a question. I think someone told me once you are not allowed to have agreements over insufficient bids. What happens when it's happened to you so often, and you have a basic understanding of what partner's bids mean in that situation, that you basically have agreements without ever discussing it? Is that not allowed? Is it more severe if it's your partner that made the insufficient bid (by accident of course) and the opponents accepted it?

 

e.g. this auction happened to me in the trials for the NSW youth team:

 

1♠ (3♦) 3♥ (P)

4♦ (P) 4♣ (Director came - accepted. I thought she wanted to bid 4/5♦ perhaps but she passed instead)

4♦ (P) 4NT (P)

5♥ (P) 6♥ PPP

 

Not that I had any agreement with my partner (first time we'd ever played together) but am I allowed to tell my partner I have a void diamond and a better hand than I had already (which is what I intended), taking advantage of her insufficient bid, or should I pretend it was a sufficient one (5♣ or 4♥) and bid accordingly?

If you're not going to make use of the extra level of bidding, why accept the insufficient bid in the first place?

 

Whether you can have agreements over insufficient bids (and other infractions, e.g. bids out of turn) is a matter of local regulation. ACBL doesn't allow it, I don't know about other jurisdictions. However, in my opinion, this doesn't prohibit taking logical inferences.

 

In my experience, insufficient bids don't happen so often in the same kinds of auctions that you would form implicit agreements that need to be disclosed.

[blackshoe]

I can't imagine any ethical issue here.

 

If the Laws Committee intended that you always call the director, it would be very surprising they:

 

a) didn't insert a provision that says so; and

b) said the director must be called when attention is drawn to an infraction (rather than when a player becomes aware of it)

 

The 1997 laws did say "the director must be called when attention is drawn to an irregularity". When I pointed out on blml during the work up to the 2007 laws that the word "must" suggested that failure to do this should be penalized "more often than not", Grattan Endicott brought it to the attention of the WBFLC, and the law was changed to its current "the director should be called". I've often thought I should have just kept my mouth shut. B-)

 

Note that under the current wording, failure to call the director when attention is drawn to an irregularity is still an infraction of law.

[Vampyr]

If you're not going to make use of the extra level of bidding, why accept the insufficient bid in the first place?

 

Whether you can have agreements over insufficient bids (and other infractions, e.g. bids out of turn) is a matter of local regulation. ACBL doesn't allow it, I don't know about other jurisdictions. However, in my opinion, this doesn't prohibit taking logical inferences.

 

The poster above asked if it was legal to have agreements over partner's insufficient bids (assuming that regulations allow agreements after irregularities). Law 40B3 is mute on the matter. After pd's insufficient bid is accepted, every bid is going to be different from what it would have been had partner not made the insufficient bid, but I find it difficult to believe that the WBFLC intended that a pair should gain from this infraction. So I feel that agreements should not be allowed in such a case, but I don't know if they are. (Harsher Laws with a much greater deterrent effect would be an improvement here.)

[iviehoff]

- If no one has drawn attention to the insufficient bid, I believe that it's legal simply to bid over it. I think that's fine as long as you're sure that RHO didn't make a mechanical error. If I thought he might have made a mechanical error, I'd give him a bit of time to notice (but there's no legal obligation to do so - that's just me).

It depends what you think a "problem" is.

 

If you call, and RHO now wakes up to his mechanical error and immediately tries to correct it (immediately making a call for the director would suffice), it is in time to be corrected. If this happens, your call is withdrawn and is not even UI to your partner. So you and your partner will not suffer any legal problems as a result of your call after the mechanical error.

 

But if you had called the Director, the insufficient bidder may at this moment of you drawing attention to an insufficient bid wake up to the mechanical error and be in time to correct it. But if you simply call over it, your LHO has no good reason to call the director,* nor must LHO pause unduly or otherwise try to draw attention to the situation, so the auction must now proceed in tempo, and if it gets as far as LHO calling before RHO waking up, the mechanical error may no longer be corrected. If your opponent's uncorrected mechanical error (which might have been corrected had you called the director) falls within your definition of a "problem", then you are kinder to your opponents than many.

 

*The reason LHO has no good reason to call the director is that after your bid, the insufficient bid ceases to be an irregularity, so there is no evident irregularity that LHO may draw attention to. Of course LHO would have been within his rights to call attention to his partner's insufficient bid before you called. (L9A; and there is no law preventing a player drawing attention to his partner's insufficient bid.) A player may correct his mechanical error if his attention is drawn to it by an action of his partner - even an illegal action of his partner - provided he satisfies the criteria of L25A, although this is considered an unsatisfactory area of law.

[jh51]

Last year I was at a regional tournament and one of the directors gave a talk between sessions which included a discussion of IBs.

 

He gave 3 reasons for accepting opponenents IB:

1. You will be able to take advantage of the extra level of bidding
   
2. You don't want the IB bid changed bid because it might be changed to pass and the IB is so much beter for your side than the bid it might have replaced. (For example, partner has made a bid that can only lead to disaster if the IB bidder passes).
   
3. You don't want the IB bid changed to something else because it is leading the opponents to disaster. (For example, you plan to double the IB and they have no good place to run. Perhaps you have only a part score your way, but you can defeat the opponents by 2 or 3 tricks in any likely contract after the IB.)
   

 

Otherwise he recommended not accepting the IB. In any case, he recommended calling the director to explain your options.

[Gerben42]

Last year I was at a regional tournament and one of the directors gave a talk between sessions which included a discussion of IBs.

 

He gave 3 reasons for accepting opponenents IB:

1. You will be able to take advantage of the extra level of bidding
   
2. You don't want the IB bid changed bid because it might be changed to pass and the IB is so much beter for your side than the bid it might have replaced. (For example, partner has made a bid that can only lead to disaster if the IB bidder passes).
   
3. You don't want the IB bid changed to something else because it is leading the opponents to disaster. (For example, you plan to double the IB and they have no good place to run. Perhaps you have only a part score your way, but you can defeat the opponents by 2 or 3 tricks in any likely contract after the IB.)
   

 

Otherwise he recommended not accepting the IB. In any case, he recommended calling the director to explain your options.

 

I think those are good rules.

 

Option 1: You will bid something and this of course denies any bid you would be making over the sufficient bid. Example:

 

1♠ (1♣) 1♥: This shows a natural hand with 5+♥ but denies values for 2♥ over 2♣. Tricky part: If 2♥ in competition is non-forcing, this probably should be forcing and vice versa.

 

Option 2: This happens when partner bid something you did NOT want to hear:

 

[hv=pc=n&s=skhkj52dk632caq83&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1np2h(Transfer)]133|200[/hv]

 

You took a view with 1NT and partner rewarded you with a transfer to ♠. When RHO bids 2m insufficient (you'd be so lucky!), you accept and Pass to warn partner.

 

Option 3: You got them and they might retract the present.

 

[hv=pc=n&s=s2hkj987da72ck532&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=2s2h]133|200[/hv]

 

If RHO overcalls 2♥ insufficient, don't let him reconsider :)

 

Annoying thing: Even if you hack the code for the hand, it won't let you enter insufficient bids :(

[Ant590]

This type of issue occurred last night:

 

(P) - P - (1♣) - 2♥*

(P) - P - (2♣) - 2♥**

(P) - P - (2NT) - P

(3NT) - dbl - AP

 

* Weak jump overcall, wide ranging opposite passed partner

** ib accepted

 

The doubler decided that to rebid 2♥ partner must be at the top of his overcall. 3NT rolled home with an overtrick.

 

So, if we assume we're in a jurisdiction that allows it, (EBU?) when one has made a wide-ranging overcall and there is an IB in this position, it is probably sensible for a rebid of the suit to show values, lead direct etc. Does that mean that when an IB is accepted / not accepted in this situation partner should alert?

[TimG]

Are negative inferences alertable? Either way, I would consider this general bridge knowledge.

 

Edit: Consider when you have bid a suit and later have an opportunity to double a cue-bid in the suit you have bid. If a double of the cue-bid confirms interest in having this suit led, should it be alerted if you pass the cue-bid?

[kenrexford]

This ACBL Rule that I have heard about but have not yet confirmed is idiotic nonsense. (The one about no agreements taking advantage of insufficient bids.)

 

Consider a simple example. 1♠-(1♣)-?

 

A partnership cannot possibly have an agreement as to what 1♠-P-1♥ shows, obviously. That would be dumb. So, if the auction is 1♠-(1♣)-1♥, the 1♥ call cannot have any meaning at all unless you have some agreement regarding this sequence (and no meaning at all is not allowed, either). If the agreement is just "four hearts with 6+ HCP," then that is a special agreement. If it is "enough for a 2♥ bid, but I am bidding it at a cheaper level," then that is an agreement, as well. In other words, you cannot have "no agreement."

 

Additionally, this creates an obvious problem of what the difference is between 1♠-(1♣)-1♥ and 1♠-(1♣ corrected to 2♣)-2♥. If the latter shows 10+ with clubs, then the former must show only 6-9 HCP or only four hearts, which, ahain, is an agreement.

 

A rule that you cannot have agreements after an insufficient bid, therefore, is practically impossible unless you cannot ever accept the insufficient bid. Now, you might say that the one time you could accept the insufficient bid is when you pass, but that's stupid.

 

Someone with clout really should address this issue, because the rules, if they are as they seem, are impossible to comply with or force never accepting an insufficient bid.

[jeffford76]

Ken, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that ACBL rules are required to have logic behind them.

[Gerben42]

@Ant: I think in your situation the innocent side used general bridge knowledge and profited from the irregularity in a legal way.

 

@Adam: I don't know about your directors, but if it WAS a mechanical error, I would call the director if you simply accepted the insufficient bid. Besides, since as director I have the hand records, I can check if I believe the "mechanical error" part. Usually I don't.

[awm]

@Adam: I don't know about your directors, but if it WAS a mechanical error, I would call the director if you simply accepted the insufficient bid. Besides, since as director I have the hand records, I can check if I believe the "mechanical error" part. Usually I don't.

 

The real problem is, quoting Gnasher quoting the laws:

 

For the player to be allowed to correct his mechanical error, he has to "substitute his intended call for an unintended call but only if he does so, or attempts to do so, without pause for thought." (Law 25A1)

 

ACBL directors seem to have a very liberal definition of "without pause for thought" and a lot of players have legitimate trouble distinguishing a mechanical error from a rethink. I've seen situations where several minutes passed between the original "mechanical error" and the correction, justified by the director by claiming that the player wasn't thinking in the intervening time (so the pause was "not for thought").

[gnasher]

The real problem is, quoting Gnasher quoting the laws:

 

For the player to be allowed to correct his mechanical error, he has to "substitute his intended call for an unintended call but only if he does so, or attempts to do so, without pause for thought." (Law 25A1)

 

ACBL directors seem to have a very liberal definition of "without pause for thought" and a lot of players have legitimate trouble distinguishing a mechanical error from a rethink. I've seen situations where several minutes passed between the original "mechanical error" and the correction, justified by the director by claiming that the player wasn't thinking in the intervening time (so the pause was "not for thought").

 

The interpretation of "pause for thought" comes from the WBF Laws Committee. See this post:

http://www.bridgebas...post__p__652355

 

Obviously that doesn't allow a rethink, but it does allow several minutes of not thinking.

[lamford]

I have a question. I think someone told me once you are not allowed to have agreements over insufficient bids.

I am pretty sure you are allowed to have agreement after an opponent's insufficient bid, but I don't have time at the moment to find the relevant Law. Perhaps someone else can.

[gnasher]

The relevant law is 40B3:

The Regulating Authority may disallow prior agreement by a partnership to vary its understandings during the auction or play following a question asked, a response to a question or any irregularity.

The ACBL has elected to disallow this:

7. Law 40B3: A partnership, by prior agreement, may not vary its understanding during the auction or play following a question asked, a response to a question or any irregularity.

 

(From http://www.acbl.org/...cate-Bridge.pdf )

[TimG]

I'm not sure how this can work. A partnership may not vary its understanding, but an agreement about what to do after an opponent's insufficient bid won't likely be in variance to a partnership's regular understanding.

 

Suppose the auction starts 1H-(1C)-DBL. If a partnership plays this as penalty instead of negative, are they varying their understanding? No one has an agreement to play negative doubles of 1C overcalls.

 

Suppose the auction starts 1N-(1D)-? Are transfers on? We don't play transfers after they interfere with our 1NT opening, but we do play transfers when the whole 2-level is available to us. Which is varying from partnership understanding?