Explanation Interruptus

[blackshoe]

You can write -4000 down on the score card and accept the bottom you deserve for not knowing your system inside-out (-;

 

A more serious suggestion is that I think it's perfectly fine to say "I'm not 100% sure, I believe we have an agreement, but I can't remember what it is. If you like you can either check the system card or we can ask the director if he can help us out" - or something along those lines. Possible other things, depending on the circumstances, might be "We have no agreement, since we've not played together before, but we have these other, similar agreements".

 

Some people might interrupt you still, I guess your options here are to keep talking anyway, to accept them not wanting to know and if that turns out to be an issue, let the director sort it out (or, probably, to give the rest of the explanation when the auction is over and they are now less likely to stop you), or call the director over yourself to demonstrate you _do_ in fact know how to give the right explanation without speculation in these cases.

 

I would get "I'm not 100…" out, then be told to STFU (okay, not in those words). I can't say "We have no agreement" when I suspect there's one on the card and I missed it.

 

Any of the solutions in that last paragraph is likely to get me labelled persona non grata by somebody.

[blackshoe]

My jurisdiction, Australia, has a specific regulation that deals with this situation quite nicely:

 

The only thing the ACBL reg says is that if it's alertable, I must alert, even if I don't remember the meaning.

[aguahombre]

Apparently, the Australian 7.7 agrees with ACBL. I like the rest of the stuff attributed to the Aussies on this topic.

[barmar]

The problem with telling the opponent to look at the system card is that it may not be very detailed. If it's an ACBL CC, the information is most likely just a checkbox or a convention name. So handing them your CC is much like just giving a convention name in answer to the question, and I think most jurisdictions say that this is not sufficient.

 

There may be some cases where you can work around this. For instance, if you can't remember whether you're playing regular or puppet Stayman, you can hand the opponent the card and say "If puppet Stayman is checked, it means ...; if not, it means ...".

[Trinidad]

In the case of the OP, it seems that the only agreement they had was to play what was on the card. In that case you shouldn't offer more details than what is on the card anyway.

 

Rik

[PeterAlan]

Blackshoe, your annotation of the bidding says that W "after Pass asked about 2♠". It's not clear to me from your OP whether the sequence was:

 

(1) (late) Alert, Pass by W, Question, or

 

(2) Pass by W, late Alert, Question

 

but I'd have thought (a) if it was (1), W has no business to be asking questions at that point, and (b) if it was (2) calling the TD would strictly have been the appropriate action by W if there was any likelihood of him wanting to change his call.

 

Also, I don't know about your local bidding systems and Alert rules, but is there any likelihood that W could have believed 2♠ was natural?

 

This is all a bit formal, of course, and in the context of a club game I can understand W just wanting to get on with the hand in as straightforward a way as possible. To answer your question, I think it would be better manners for W to be patient whilst you at least got out your explanation of the new nature of the partnership, and, if he felt it necessary to interrupt a bit further down the line, to do so in as low-key a way as possible, say with a hand gesture that says "Nothing more's needed" and / or perhaps saying "That's OK". So my sympathies are with you, but we all need a thick skin for some aspects of this game and I don't think you should take what actually happened too much to heart. Given your experience is so vastly greater than mine, I don't suppose you really need me to tell you that!

[blackshoe]

Blackshoe, your annotation of the bidding says that W "after Pass asked about 2♠". It's not clear to me from your OP whether the sequence was:

 

(1) (late) Alert, Pass by W, Question, or

 

(2) Pass by W, late Alert, Question

 

but I'd have thought (a) if it was (1), W has no business to be asking questions at that point, and (b) if it was (2) calling the TD would strictly have been the appropriate action by W if there was any likelihood of him wanting to change his call.

 

Also, I don't know about your local bidding systems and Alert rules, but is there any likelihood that W could have believed 2♠ was natural? I doubt my opponent would have thought it was natural, unless I didn't alert, but I could be wrong.

 

This is all a bit formal, of course, and in the context of a club game I can understand W just wanting to get on with the hand in as straightforward a way as possible. To answer your question, I think it would be better manners for W to be patient whilst you at least got out your explanation of the new nature of the partnership, and, if he felt it necessary to interrupt a bit further down the line, to do so in as low-key a way as possible, say with a hand gesture that says "Nothing more's needed" and / or perhaps saying "That's OK". So my sympathies are with you, but we all need a thick skin for some aspects of this game and I don't think you should take what actually happened too much to heart. Given your experience is so vastly greater than mine, I don't suppose you really need me to tell you that!

 

The alert and pass were simultaneous, I think. If not, the alert was a little bit later, maybe a half-second or so.

 

Very few around here play 2♠ as natural any more, but there are several different possible artificial meanings, all of which require an alert.

 

I'm generally pretty thick-skinned. In fact, at the table, I was mildly annoyed, but I just ignored that and shut up. It was here that I got really pissed off (and yes, I should have a thick skin here too).

[iviehoff]

So with West having passed before he could reasonable be expected to have perceived your alert, and you having alerted sufficiently late he could not reasonably be expected to perceive it, I think you recognised that you were in a MI situation, as mentioned in Law 20F4 "If a player subsequently realizes that his own explanation was erroneous or incomplete he must call the Director immediately. The Director applies Law 21B or Law 40B4." So the correct legal basis for this thread is the correct procedure in relation to correction of misinformation, not the correct procedures for giving explanations at the normal time. Unfotunately the law is even less helpful on this than on giving explanations in the first place.

 

Curiously, as far as I can see, the law does not at any point specify that a player who identifies he gave an incomplete or erroneous explanation should correct it or make it complete. It tells him only to call the director. The director is not told to instruct the player to correct the explanation either. At law 75B, players who recognise their partner's misexplanations are instructed to correct it at the proper time, as well as calling the director, but players who recognise their own misexplanation are given no instructions with regard to correction, well none that I can find. The player who made his bid with incomplete or erroneous information is given the option to change his bid, 21B1a. Surely he must first get the MI corrected, but the law doesn't say so. I know how much you hate making the law up, but every time we correct MI in this situation, we are all making it up.

 

We had a discussion in another thread about whether it was now that player's "turn" to bid again, for the purpose of seeking an explanation of the entire prior auction, without coming to consensus. Here I make a distinction between correction of the MI, and seeking explanations of the whole prior auction. It seems logical that the MI must be corrected, but do we extend that to a right to seek an explanation of the whole auction at this point? Although elsewhere I said in my opinion it looks like he can't, unless he does seek to exercise his right to change his bid, so it becomes his "turn" to bid again, I don't think that is really satisfactory. Others sought to argue that it becomes that player's "turn" again just because they have the right to consider whether to change their bid. I think that would be a good idea, but currently the law doesn't say so.

[barmar]

OK, now I think I see what was going on. You were trying to excuse the slight hesitation before the alert (because your mind was occupied trying to remember what you'd seen on the card), not warn that you weren't sure of the agreement. But the opponent apparently assumed you were doing the latter, and abruptly cut you off. Does this seem right?

[blackshoe]

OK, now I think I see what was going on. You were trying to excuse the slight hesitation before the alert (because your mind was occupied trying to remember what you'd seen on the card), not warn that you weren't sure of the agreement. But the opponent apparently assumed you were doing the latter, and abruptly cut you off. Does this seem right?

 

Yep.

[mrdct]

So what should I say? I can't say "we're a new partnership", I can't say "I'm not sure", I can't say "look at the card", I can't say "I'm not sure, but..." (this one will get interrupted), I can't say "I have no clue " (which would be untrue). So what can I say?

Director please!

[iviehoff]

Director please!

Law 20F4 says that he "must" do that. My guess is that he is himself the Director.

 

On the question Blackshoe originally wanted to ask, rather than the numerous matters arising that arose from the context:

 

In general if a player tells me to stop giving him information part way through, thus failing to learn something substantive, I would tend to think "Thank you. That insulates me from any adverse MI ruling on this point."

[blackshoe]

In general if a player tells me to stop giving him information part way through, thus failing to learn something substantive, I would tend to think "Thank you. That insulates me from any adverse MI ruling on this point."

 

Good point, Ivie. :)

[mrdct]

Law 20F4 says that he "must" do that. My guess is that he is himself the Director.

Since when does being a playing director preclude one (or even excuse one) from calling the director?

[blackshoe]

My guess is that he is himself the Director.

 

If by "he" you mean me, no, not this time. Had I been a playing Director, there was at least one other director playing there that day, and I would have called her.