How would you rule

[pran]

When for instance you know how your partner plays with other partners, or vice versa, or you can make an analogy to another situation which you have discussed, or when something else you have discussed almost always implies another treatment which you didn't explicitly mention. You're welcome.

Yes, and this is just another example of disclosable implied partnership understandings.

[blackshoe]

It occurs to me that riding into town on your white horse, slinging hot lead at the bad guys, is probably not a good way to direct a bridge game.

[pran]

It occurs to me that riding into town on your white horse, slinging hot lead at the bad guys, is probably not a good way to direct a bridge game.

In my part of the world "no agreement" is extremely seldom used as explanation on calls that apparently are made with some hope that they will be correctly understood.

 

And if the agreement question cannot be resolved to the Director's satisfaction he will normally use Law 75C: the Director is to presume Mistaken Explanation, rather than Mistaken Call, in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

 

After all the obvious purpose of Laws 20F, 40 and 75 is to protect opponents from damage caused by concealed knowledge (of any kind).

[campboy]

Yes, and this is just another example of disclosable implied partnership understandings.

There is a big difference between implicit agreements (such as mgoetze's examples) and general bridge knowledge (such as the original case).

[mgoetze]

I think we should all just accept that pran has an extreme minority position on this issue and move on.

[pran]

There is a big difference between implicit agreements (such as mgoetze's examples) and general bridge knowledge (such as the original case).

Knowledge is not general unless it is general knowledge to all four players around the table.

 

Did all four players have the same understanding of the disputed call(s) in the original case?

 

However, I quit, I believe I have made my point.

[CSGibson]

Do you often make calls for which you have no agreement unless you feel some confidence that they will be correctly understood by your partner?

 

Actually, especially in serious partnerships where I am playing at the club, I do try to make calls for which we have no agreement, as the post-mortem on the call often allows us to make relevant agreements covering those previously undiscussed situations. My partner views club games the same way - as a way to experiment with putting partner in unfamiliar situations to see what comes of it.

[barmar]

Do you often make calls for which you have no agreement unless you feel some confidence that they will be correctly understood by your partner?

Not often, but occasionally. Sometimes it works out, other times you get to play in a cue bid, splinter, unusual NT, etc.

[aguahombre]

"Knowledge is not general unless it is general knowledge to all four players around the table."

 

I don't think this is correct, nor would it be correct if GBR were replaced by "common sense".

 

 

"Did all four players have the same understanding of the disputed call(s) in the original case?"

 

No, though I suspect three of them had an understanding of South's 2NT.

 

 

"However, I quit"

 

Probably best for this subject.

 

 

"I believe I have made my point."

 

I don't believe the point made was what was intended.

[barmar]

"Knowledge is not general unless it is general knowledge to all four players around the table."

 

I don't think this is correct, nor would it be correct if GBR were replaced by "common sense".

I agree. If that were the standard, there would be hardly any GBK other than the basic rules of the game, and it would be a pretty useless concept.

 

Yes, there can be a problem when you invoke GBK. Players with lots of experience have picked up lots of common understandings, sometimes dubbed "expert bridge standard". If beginners are playing against them, it's not a level playing field. They don't know the general treatment "no trump bids that don't seem like they could be natural can be used to show two-suiters", for instance.

 

But does that make this experience fall into the category of "special partnership understanding", which is what the Laws require us to disclose? It's not really special to this particular partnership, although that's true of most common conventions (that's what makes them "common"). But more to the point, when a player relies on this experience, the only partnership-specific knowledge he has is that his partner also has many years of experience, and is likely to have picked up on these common treatments as well. Does this make everything either partner has learned over their years of playing and watching bridge into an implicit agreement?

 

And don't forger, in f2f bridge it's usually the partner of the bidder who is required to alert and explain the bids. But we've been told many times that "I take it as ..." is not an appropriate answer to a request for explanation -- you're supposed to explain your agreements, not how you guess he means it. But if you haven't actually discussed it, and he's just hoping that you have the same understanding of expert bridge standard as he has, the best you can do is say how you take it. And then if it turns out you're wrong, we're back to trying to decide between misbid and misexplanation, because someone thinks "no agreement" is a cop-out.

 

What you've got is two ways to view the evidence:

 

1) Use of a convention is prima facie evidence that there's a (possibly implicit) agreement. "No agreement" is a mistaken explanation.

 

2) Since the other player didn't interpret the bid the way the bidder intended, i.e. they didn't agree on what his bid meant, this is by definition a lack of agreement.

 

Where things get confusing is if one player improvises a bid and his partner interprets it correctly -- now you no longer have #2. But this seems to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation: if partner guesses right, you can get your good result reversed by a ruling of misinformation; if he guesses wrong, the wheels will come off and you'll get a bad result.

[Rossoneri]

Knowledge is not general unless it is general knowledge to all four players around the table.

 

Did all four players have the same understanding of the disputed call(s) in the original case?

 

However, I quit, I believe I have made my point.

 

You really want to know?

 

Ok, 3 of them did.

[bluejak]

So the general attitude here is that when you use some convention trusting/expecting/hoping that your partner will understand it as intended although you have not explicitly discussed it with him then it is perfectly legal for you to conceal the meaning from opponents hiding behind "no agreement"?

No, and that is not what people have said. In some cases, especially ones where your trust or expect partner to work it out, you may have an implicit agreement. But you may also make such a call merely hoping that partner will work it out. This happens with reasonable frequency in clubs where people often change partners.

 

Sorry, that is not my understanding of Bridge as a game for Gentlemen and Ladies. Neither is it my understanding of WBFLC intentions. Players in general are not lunatic, they hardly use conventions without any expectation that partner will understand, agreement or no agreement.

Again, you saying something that has not been said. If a player has no expectation of it being understood, of course he does not make it. But if he thinks there is a chance partner might guess it, or deduce it from general bridge logic, especially if there is no alternative call that describes his hand adequately, he might try it.

 

I dislike your comment about "Ladies and Gentlemen" [that is the correct expression]. You want people who have no agreement to tell deliberate lies. Ladies and Gentlemen do not tell deliberate lies.

 

I despise "no agreement" as a means to conceal information from opponents. A player may be guessing, fair enough. But his guess is obviously based on some confidence. Why should it be legal to conceal this?

Because neither Laws nor personal ethics require him to disclose the basis for a call based on no partnership understanding. To do so is unnecessary, illegal and confusing.

 

Do you often make calls for which you have no agreement unless you feel some confidence that they will be correctly understood by your partner?

Of course not. Why should anyone do so "often"? It is only when there is no obvious call for your hand for which you do have an agreement.

[peachy]

That is just wrong. You do not have an implicit agreement with a player because you can make certain guesses based on his country of origin. For a start they may be wrong, so they are not agreements.

 

 

The guess may be wrong for many reasons. Maybe partner knows "I" am from a certain region/country and is bidding the way he thinks "I" would bid... Or maybe my assumptions about the style in partner's country/region are incorrect or outdated. David is absolutely right. Further - it would also be MI to pass on a guess as an agreement.

[pran]

The guess may be wrong for many reasons. Maybe partner knows "I" am from a certain region/country and is bidding the way he thinks "I" would bid... Or maybe my assumptions about the style in partner's country/region are incorrect or outdated. David is absolutely right. Further - it would also be MI to pass on a guess as an agreement.

Sorry, I can't help one more comment:

 

If I guess how my partner intended his call you flatly state that I am infracting the law when I tell opponents my assumption; it doesn't matter whether my estimate of making a correct guess is 90%, 10% or any grade between?

 

In either case my explanation is still just a guess so the only correct explanation should be that I don't know (no agreement)??

 

To me this sounds ridiculous, particularly when I know that the purpose of disclosure is to protect opponents.

[bluejak]

You think telling opponents the wrong thing and lying about your agreements protects opponents? :(

[blackshoe]

Law 40B6a: 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 knowledge and experience of matters generally known to bridge players.

 

If you have no agreement about a particular call, you must tell your opponents that. If you are going to base an assumption as to partner's intended meaning on general bridge knowledge, as ill-defined as that may be, you are not required to tell opponents that. Doesn't mean you can't. If you are going to base an assumption on other things, such as knowledge of what partner plays with others, or knowledge that he knows how you play it with others, or your partnership's meaning in other similar auctions, or your partner's general style, or his knowledge of yours, you should give that information to opponents. If you aren't sure which of these governs his intended meaning, you should tell them all of it. You should never tell them what you "assume" the call means. Give them the actual information you have and let them draw their own conclusions.

 

Some will argue that this takes too much time, or is too hard, or whatever. Tough. Do it anyway.

[pran]

You think telling opponents the wrong thing and lying about your agreements protects opponents? :(

No, I think that opponents shall have at least the same information as you possess. So when you conceal your qualified guess from opponents you actually conceal such information to which they are entitled.

 

The clause about general bridge knowledge is there to avoid forcing players to waste time by giving information that must be expected already known by opponents, not to allow players to conceal information which is "general knowledge" to them but not necessarily to opponents. (Hence my statement that knowledge is not "general" unless it is generally known to all four players at the table)

 

I notice with interest that nobody so far has commented on whether a guess with 90% confidence is an agreement or still just a guess, or for that sake at what confidence level a guess becomes a partnership understanding.

[blackshoe]

The opponents are not entitled to your guess. They are entitled to the basis for your guess, to the extent that basis is a matter of partnership understanding or experience.

 

A guess is a guess. The numbers game you propose is a red herring.

 

A guess becomes an agreement when both players agree to it.

[aguahombre]

The clause about general bridge knowledge is there to avoid forcing players to waste time by giving information that must be expected already known by opponents, not to allow players to conceal information which is "general knowledge" to them but not necessarily to opponents. (Hence my statement that knowledge is not "general" unless it is generally known to all four players at the table)

 

I don't think that is true. Information which is already known by the opponents is not usually asked. So, we give information on agreements, according to the rules; we educate the opponents about things we can figure out because of our general experience at our own discretion (and peril if we end up giving misinformation when what we figured out is not what partner intended).

 

It is inferences based on GBK that we are talking about, not agreements which we may assume everyone knows. Agreements, whether obvious to the planet or not, must be disclosed when asked.

[barmar]

The opponents are not entitled to your guess. They are entitled to the basis for your guess, to the extent that basis is a matter of partnership understanding or experience.

Are you saying that it would be appropriate to answer with something like, "We haven't discussed it, but he's from XXX, and I know it's common in that country for it to mean YYY"?

[mjj29]

Are you saying that it would be appropriate to answer with something like, "We haven't discussed it, but he's from XXX, and I know it's common in that country for it to mean YYY"?

Yes. Replies to questions I've given in the past also include "We've not discussed this sequence, but this other sequence would show X" or "... but everyone plays it as Y"

[blackshoe]

Are you saying that it would be appropriate to answer with something like, "We haven't discussed it, but he's from XXX, and I know it's common in that country for it to mean YYY"?

 

Certainly.

[barmar]

Yes. Replies to questions I've given in the past also include "We've not discussed this sequence, but this other sequence would show X" or "... but everyone plays it as Y"

I think it's the "everyone plays it as Y" type of answer that some think constitutes GBK. What could be more "general" than something "everyone" does?

 

But I'm not sure that's what the lawgivers meant in that clause, anyway. I think they may have meant that you're not required to give bridge lessons. For instance, if you describe a bid as invitational, and the opponent asks "how many points is he showing?", is that a question you have to answer? It's a matter of judgement, not an agreed point range.

[blackshoe]

In such a case, I would give a rough range, with the caveat "more or less" or something similar.

[mycroft]

Well, if I'm playing with my old buddies from Waterloo in Calgary, there are calls that we will have no agreement (we can remember) on, but I can still say "well, everybody out there plays it as XXX" even if everybody here plays it as YYY. Toronto-style 2/1 is subtly, but significantly, different from Calgary 2/1, and it does come up.

 

Also, things like "everybody at our club" or the like. At Our Club, that's GBK (to regulars); at the tournament, not so much.