Insufficient 25A

[aguahombre]

Exception: when he is programmed to "freeze" pending arrival of the TD.

[pran]

Exception: when he is programmed to "freeze" pending arrival of the TD.

(Without) "pause for thought" begins when the offender becomes aware of his mistake, not when the Director arrives at the table and certainly not when the Director has completed explaining "all matters in regard to rectification".

[barmar]

Because what is expressed by a call is according to partnership understanding, not player's hand.

 

When the Director makes a ruling based (more or less) on knowledge of a player's hand then the ruling itself reveals information about the hand, not only about the partnership understanding.

Partnership understandingss describe how your bids relate to your hand.

 

The player explains to the TD, "According to our system, bidding X shows Y -- and look at my hand, it contains Y, so obviously my bid of Z was inadvertent."

 

You don't need to look at the hand if you're trying to apply the part of the law that says that an IB can be replaced with a bid with the same or more specific meaning -- then it's just the meaning that matters, it doesn't matter whether it actually matches your hand. But there are other contexts where the player is trying to explain why he bid (or misbid) a certain way, and comparing his hand with their agreements seems like it can help in judging this.

[iviehoff]

If the player is honest (which we always believe him to be unless we are otherwise convinced) then it makes absolutely no difference whether we ask his intention or just judge from his attitude.

 

But if his attitude tells you that he (probably) had a slip of the mind you can always just tell him that his attitude seemed to indicate he at the time really reached for the 1♣ bid card and that you therefore cannot rule inadvertent call.

 

However, if you instead now ask him what he intended and he says "Stayman, 2♣ of course" (he may even believe himself that this is true) then you are stuck. Not ruling Law 25A now is an insult and calling him a liar.

I did not suggest asking the player what his intention was, and like you I agree it is a mistake to ask it. But I think it is an even worse mistake to judge from attitude.

 

The question "What card did you think you had in your hand at the time you placed it on the table?" seems to me to carefully distinguish precisely what the director needs to know. Of course we need an honest answer.

 

Thinking that you can judge intention from attitude has been scientifically demonstrated to be a mistake, at least in the case of policemen. Experiments carried out on policemen has shown that those who think that they are good at telling from people's attitude whether they are guilty are in fact worse than the rest, and no one is very good at it. (See Nobel Prizewinner Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking fast, thinking slow").

[bluejak]

Three cases:

 

1. South bids 1♣ insufficient and West accepts by bidding 1♥. Now South notices the insufficient bid and without a pause for thought wants to change it to 2♣ Stayman.

 

This one is easy. Both 1♣ and 1♥ get cancelled, South gets to bid 2♣ and 1♥ is UI for NS.

 

2. South bids 1♣ insufficient and North / East notices the insufficiency. The director is called but before he arrives, West says he will accept 1♣ and bids 1♥. Now what?

 

3. South bids 1♣ insufficient and West points this out. South corrects it to 2♣ again and West calls the director, saying that we wanted to accept 1♣, as allowed by Law 27A, which says:

Any insufficient bid may be accepted (treated as legal) at the option of offender's LHO.

 

The Laws seem to suggest that the solution for (3) is to allow West to bid 1♥ and then afterwards allow South to correct his bid, giving East a free shot to take advantage of the 1♥ bid. Is that correct?

I do not understand your decision in case #1 since South may not change it under Law 25A unless 1♣ was inadvertent - and my experience is that insufficient bids very rarely are.

 

Anyway, in all three cases, the TD has to decide whether the 1♣ was inadvertent. If it was it is changed to 2♣. Law 27A does not apply since there was no insufficient bid in effect.

 

If the TD decides it was not inadvertent, which seems most likely, then West may accept and bid 1♥. South's attempt to correct to 2♣ is UI to partner and AI to the opponents.

[Quartic]

my experience is that insufficient bids very rarely are [inadvertent].

 

Tonight one of my opponents started to pull 2♣ out over her partner's 2NT bid, but noticed before she placed it on the table so corrected it to 3♣. Perhaps this is as rare as you say (or maybe you were only referring to cases where the bidder notices later), but I don't think it's so unusual myself.

[pran]

Tonight one of my opponents started to pull 2♣ out over her partner's 2NT bid, but noticed before she placed it on the table so corrected it to 3♣. Perhaps this is as rare as you say (or maybe you were only referring to cases where the bidder notices later), but I don't think it's so unusual myself.

Was (according to your regulations) the 2♣ bid made or just in the process of being made?

[Quartic]

Was (according to your regulations) the 2♣ bid made or just in the process of being made?

 

I think in this case it would be considered being made (I don't know the relevant (EBU) regulation here, but the bidding card hadn't moved very far from the box.) - but I think my opponent could easily have not noticed until it had been made, so I don't think the distinction is really so important.

[bluejak]

Tonight one of my opponents started to pull 2♣ out over her partner's 2NT bid, but noticed before she placed it on the table so corrected it to 3♣. Perhaps this is as rare as you say (or maybe you were only referring to cases where the bidder notices later), but I don't think it's so unusual myself.

Sure, and no doubt she was allowed to change it unchallenged. But are you really sure it was inadvertent? At the moment her hand went towards the bidding box do you know she meant to bid 3♣? Are you sure she did not mean to bid 2♣ forgetting that it needed to be 3♣ to be sufficient?

[Quartic]

Sure, and no doubt she was allowed to change it unchallenged. But are you really sure it was inadvertent? At the moment her hand went towards the bidding box do you know she meant to bid 3♣? Are you sure she did not mean to bid 2♣ forgetting that it needed to be 3♣ to be sufficient?

 

I think it was more likely a slip of the hand than of the mind, but I concede we can never know for certain either way. I think (particularly) before any other player has called it is better to believe a player made a mechanical error than a mental one. In my experience people are more often honest than not. (Maybe I'm unduly optimistic, and will develop a suitable pessimism with more experience!)

[aguahombre]

I do not understand your decision in case #1 since South may not change it under Law 25A unless 1♣ was inadvertent - and my experience is that insufficient bids very rarely are.

My experience is slightly different. A 1♣overcall or a 1♣ response to partner's opening bid seems quite often to be a slip of the fingers, unless the "offender" has totally ignored that there are any bid cards on the table.

 

We did have one situation a while back where the newbie freely admitted he forgot NOTRUMP outranks a suit bid.

[Vampyr]

Sure, and no doubt she was allowed to change it unchallenged. But are you really sure it was inadvertent? At the moment her hand went towards the bidding box do you know she meant to bid 3♣? Are you sure she did not mean to bid 2♣ forgetting that it needed to be 3♣ to be sufficient?

 

Does it matter, though? As long as the bid had not cleared the idding box, it was not made.

[gordontd]

Does it matter, though? As long as the bid had not cleared the idding box, it was not made.

The post said ", but noticed before she placed it on the table".

[bluejak]

I think it was more likely a slip of the hand than of the mind, but I concede we can never know for certain either way. I think (particularly) before any other player has called it is better to believe a player made a mechanical error than a mental one. In my experience people are more often honest than not. (Maybe I'm unduly optimistic, and will develop a suitable pessimism with more experience!)

Of course people are honest, but the do not know what a mechanical error is. I do expect to find out by questioning them. But just assuming it without question is a mistake. Most insufficient bids, in my view, are not mechanical errors, and I expect to find that out as a TD, but not by assumption.

 

Does it matter, though? As long as the bid had not cleared the idding box, it was not made.

Nothing in the OP suggests the calls have not cleared the box.