Two Potential Infractions

[bluejak]

I think anything that is general bridge knowledge [GBK] must be obviously generally known in your locality. In another thread I tried to describe the meaning of the term "Second and fourth" in England. In England it is GBK that a player who is asked about their leads will lead high from a doubleton outside trumps if he says he plays "Second and fourth", but it is not GBK what that means he leads in trumps, nor what it would mean in Australia or Poland.

 

It has to be completely obvious to be GBK. The meaning of a cue-bid when the opponents bid a suit, or two suits, is not universal enough to be considered GBK. But in most sequences it is GBK that such a bid is not an attempt to play there.

 

I don't believe that GBK exists in a partnership. Either it is generally known, and thus there is an expectation that opponents will know it, or it is not GBK.

 

As to thinking about whether something is GBK or not, that's easy: if you have to think about it, then it isn't GBK.

[barmar]

Last night, an opponent asked our defensive methods, and I said "upside-down everything". I quickly added "not leads, of course", but declarer interrupted me, saying she knew what I meant (upside-down count, attitude, and discards).

[mycroft]

When I played "upside-down everything", that's *not* what we meant. We meant "U/D attitude, count, and suit preference". So...

 

(granted, when we explained, we used the phrase "Upside-down everything, including suit preference". Wasn't fair otherwise.)

[Trinidad]

So both partner and opponents may well be ignorant of what Trinidad terms "general" bridge knowledge?

Exactly.

 

However, the term "General bridge knowledge" cannot be found in the law book. The law that deals with what we call GBK is law 40F6a. It speaks of "matters generally known to bridge players" and it deals with "inferences from his knowledge and experience of matters generally known to bridge players". It specifically says that this last category (inferences from the individual player's knowledge...) does not need to be disclosed.

 

Here is law 40F6a (emphasis mine):

When explaining the significance of partner’s call or play in reply to opponent’s enquiry (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.

In simple terms, this law says: Explain what you know about your partnership. Do not explain what you know as an individual player. So we are indeed talking about knowledge to which both partner and opponents may be ignorant.

 

Law 40 also refers to law 20 (emphasis mine):

[An opponent] is entitled to know about [lots of things] where these are matters of partnership understanding.

 

Same thing.

 

In this case the partnership (presumably) had agreed to play penalty doubles after a double of 1NT in an otherwise natural system. The opponents are entitled to that knowledge. South had the knowledge and experience that enabled him to draw the inference that 3♦ could not exist as a natural bid. It seems that his partner didn't have that knowledge and experience. Then there is no partnership understanding.

 

Note how that is different from a partner who forgets a convention. In that case there is a partnership understanding.

 

Rik

[pran]

[...]

On Pran's point, 73B1 covers communication by partners and the fact that says "questions asked of opponents" is not that relevant. Your argument that the absence of a question arises from the legal procedures in the Laws is more convincing, although I am not sure that the absence of something can "arise" from something else. Perhaps an example is, from a dictionary of idioms, "This whole problem arose from your stubbornness" where quite possibly the stubborn person did nothing.

73B1 effectively says that information arising from the fact that a player asked or did not ask a question is unauthorized to that player's partner.

 

However, any information arising from explanations given by an opponent is of course authorized, also when such explanations are answers to questions asked by own side.

[aguahombre]

However, the term "General bridge knowledge" cannot be found in the law book. The law that deals with what we call GBK is law 40F6a. It speaks of "matters generally known to bridge players" and it deals with "inferences from his knowledge and experience of matters generally known to bridge players". It specifically says that this last category (inferences from the individual player's knowledge..." does not need to be disclosed.

 

Here is law 40F6a (emphasis mine):

In simple terms, this law says: Explain what you know about your partnership. Do not explain what you know as an individual player. So we are indeed talking about knowledge to which both partner and opponents may be ignorant.

It looks to me as if GBK is an accurate short way of saying "matters generally known to bridge players". It even has derivatives of the same 3 key words (know, general, Bridge)

 

At risk again, because this is the only language I know how to try a communicate with, I will restate for Nige1 and Lamford (Thanks for trying to do that, Rik):

 

We should disclose, when asked, what we know about partner's call, including any inferences from our partnership experience. We should not disclose what we guess about partner's call based on our own experience only. It doesn't matter what we think the opponents might or might not be expected to know, or what we think Bridge players in our region or anywhere else should know---if they ask, we tell them what WE know about our bidding, and we don't dismiss follow-up questons just because we believe they should be able to assume the rest.

 

I believe I am correct that the concept of GBK was never meant to apply to what we think the opponents might or might not know. It was meant to differentiate between (1)partnership agreements and (2)first-time inferences about partner's bidding or play based on our own knowledge of what is generally known.

[Vampyr]

From Law 40B3:

 

This implies that such variation is normally allowed, but the RA can override this.

 

Yes. In the EBU, however, this Law as written is considered to be nonsense.

[mycroft]

I believe (No old Rule Book Handy) that the phrase that is currently "information generally known to bridge players" was "General bridge knowledge" in previous FLBs, and that it was changed to make its intent clearer. However, it's likely to require GBH to remove GBK from people's vocabulary (I heard "in the same breath" and "everyone's responsible for dummy" on the weekend, from a TD and a GLM, respectively). Ah well.

[blackshoe]

Yes. In the EBU, however, this Law as written is considered to be nonsense.

Considered by whom? And what does that mean really? Do TDs ignore it?

[Vampyr]

Considered by whom? And what does that mean really? Do TDs ignore it?

 

While it is permitted in the EBU to have agreements over the opponents' irregularities, it is not permitted to have agreements over your own. Nor is it permitted to vary your agreements based on questions asked or answers given by your side. And it is not considered, as far as I know, to have been the intention of the lawmakers to make these things legal. The intention, as far as I know, is unknown.

 

I think that having an agreement to vary your defense according to the opponents' question or lack of a question is also not an intended area of understandings, and I think that if it is legal it leads to an extremely confusing state of affairs.

 

EDIT: Corrected language in italics

 

Added:

 

Can some I be AI when you are not allowed to use it?

[blackshoe]

It seems, in several laws, that the lawmakers have had difficulty in clearly saying what they want the law to be. If I agree with Nigel Guthrie about anything it's that that ought to be cleaned up.

[iviehoff]

This AI thing seems to oblige the opponents to engage in a complicated strategy of when to ask questions -- not based on whether they need to know the answer to the question, but based on what inferences they want the opponents to draw. This is not a game I wish to play.

Quite the reverse - what you suggest would be an offence against the proprieties. Provided you are quite unscheming in your decisions in asking questions, but rather ask what you need to know, you will have no legal problems with the opponents; and any conclusions the opponents choose to draw from your questioning behaviour will be at their own risk. Though you may suffer the "problem" of leaking genuine information to the opponents, just as your honest hesitations and honest facial expressions will leak genuine information to the opponents. If you don't want to leak honest information to the opponents through the questions you ask, you should study the fully completed convention card they are obliged to provide you with, so you don't need to ask questions.

 

It is an offence against the proprieties to choose your questions to manage the inferences you want the opponents to draw, just like it is an offence against the proprieties to choose the tempo of your play or your facial expressions explicitly to manage the inferences you want the opponents to draw. In this context, maintaining an even tempo and a poker face is not considered to be "managing", any more than "asking what you need to know" would be. Likewise, hesitating when you need to think and grimacing when something has gone wrong would not cause any problems with the opponents, just with partner.

 

I have a suspicion that W was sure E's 2S bid was natural precisely because E didn't ask about 2D - and that is an abuse of UI: W is not allowed to draw conclusions on that basis, only the opponents are. As N or S, (if I had thought of it in time) I would have asked E, at the end of the auction or hand, "if you had been aware that my partner's 2D bids showed spades, would it have been your understanding that your partner's 2S bid showed spades". And if he had said "no", there would be prima facie evidence of an offence.

[mjj29]

We should disclose, when asked, what we know about partner's call, including any inferences from our partnership experience. We should not disclose what we guess about partner's call based on our own experience only. It doesn't matter what we think the opponents might or might not be expected to know, or what we think Bridge players in our region or anywhere else should know---if they ask, we tell them what WE know about our bidding, and we don't dismiss follow-up questions just because we believe they should be able to assume the rest.

Depends on where your experience is from. If you both play in the same bridge club with different partners where something is the norm - that is disclosable information. It is not known to bridge players _generally_. If something is 'known generally' then I would say that it would have to be extremely rare that any given opponent would not know it. If you think your opponent might not know it, I don't think that falls within 'extremely rare', so yes, I think that _is_ relevant.

 

Another way to put it is that if a matter undiscussed with your partner comes up and you expect them to get it right, but would not expect a partner who had never played with you, anyone else you know, or anyone else from your age group/country/etc - that's not general knowledge.

[nige1]

Richard Hills has posted relevant amusing and informative deliberations by David Burn on a similar appeal case in BLML (Bridge Laws Mailing List)

[aguahombre]

Depends on where your experience is from. If you both play in the same bridge club with different partners where something is the norm - that is disclosable information. It is not known to bridge players _generally_. If something is 'known generally' then I would say that it would have to be extremely rare that any given opponent would not know it. If you think your opponent might not know it, I don't think that falls within 'extremely rare', so yes, I think that _is_ relevant.

 

Another way to put it is that if a matter undiscussed with your partner comes up and you expect them to get it right, but would not expect a partner who had never played with you, anyone else you know, or anyone else from your age group/country/etc - that's not general knowledge.

It really can't be that hard to figure out. If they ask about partner's call, assume they don't know what it means in your partnership. If you know (not guess) what it means in your partnership, you answer. The concept of "general Knowledge" as opposed to partnership knowledge applies to you, not to them.

[bluejak]

Yes. In the EBU, however, this Law as written is considered to be nonsense.

 

Considered by whom? And what does that mean really? Do TDs ignore it?

It is an excellent Law. It says what it means clearly and unambiguously, and leaves a whole raft of matters to the Regulating Authority. It is an excellent Law. I have never heard anyone who suggests it is nonsense before now. There are lots and lots of far worse Laws.

[iviehoff]

Richard Hills has posted relevant amusing and informative deliberations by David Burn on a similar appeal case in BLML

This is truly excellent, and I find Jeffrey Allerton's Ex nihilo argument that Burns reports very interesting. Whilst I agree with the general principle, I am not as convinced as Jeffrey that there has been no infraction.

 

In both the present case, and Burns' case, a player has made a bid, in the absence of a clear agreement, in the hope that partner will get the gist; and if he does understand it as intended, then it is clearly alertable. However the partner has neither understood it that way nor alerted it. What Jeffrey is saying in effect is, if one does get through to partner in an undiscussed situation, then there is an understanding; but if one doesn't get through, then there isn't an understanding, and the bid was in effect a misbid in its intended but not understood meaning.

 

There is some pleasing logic to that argument, but I fail to be convinced, or at least not in general. The difficulty with it has its origin in the thought "who is being more stupid - me for thinking you'd understand my bid that way, or you for failing to understand my bid that way". Perhaps partner was being really rather dense today in failing to understand it, and on a better day he would have done. Can we really decide whether something is an infraction depending upon how well a player is playing today? I think the director can't simply say "it wasn't agreed, he didn't understand it or alert it, therefore it was a misbid". He does have to take a position on who was being more stupid, and remember the injunction to lean in the direction of saying MI rather than misbid.

[aguahombre]

In both the present case, and Burns' case, a player has made a bid, in the absence of a clear agreement, in the hope that partner will get the gist; and if he does understand it as intended, then it is clearly alertable. However the partner has neither understood it that way nor alerted it.

I don't agree. In the "absence of agreement", there is no agreement. Alerting or not alerting based on whether you "get the gist" is providing UI. When you don't alert a call upon which you have no agreement, you are not providing UI.

[RMB1]

Richard Hills has posted relevant amusing and informative deliberations by David Burn on a similar appeal case in BLML (Bridge Laws Mailing List)

 

The Appeals Booklet containing this write up is available: 2010 Appeals, APPEAL No: 10.045.

[barmar]

If you don't want to leak honest information to the opponents through the questions you ask, you should study the fully completed convention card they are obliged to provide you with, so you don't need to ask questions.

I defy any partnership with any significant amount of history to create a convention card that would answer every potential question. Or even half. And if it's an ACBL CC, it can't really answer anything but the most basic aspects of the players' system. For instance, there are checkboxes for the agreements that are part of Inverted Minors, but nowhere to indicate whether the meaning of single raise is dependent on whether there's interference.

 

If you play against Meckwell, are you suggesting studying their hundreds of pages of system notes?

 

I don't think it's at all practical to suggest that we can avoid asking questions.

[lamford]

It seems, in several laws, that the lawmakers have had difficulty in clearly saying what they want the law to be.

[nige1]

It seems, in several laws, that the lawmakers have had difficulty in clearly saying what they want the law to be. If I agree with Nigel Guthrie about anything it's that that ought to be cleaned up.

If Bridge rules were unified, restructured and simplified it would be easier to clarify them. But it would still be a hard task to get rid of unnecessary sophistication, without altering the fundamental enjoyable nature of the game.

[mjj29]

It really can't be that hard to figure out. If they ask about partner's call, assume they don't know what it means in your partnership. If you know (not guess) what it means in your partnership, you answer. The concept of "general Knowledge" as opposed to partnership knowledge applies to you, not to them.

Inferences based on other relevant partnership understandings and those based on shared experiences other than explicit discussion are disclosable

[campboy]

The Appeals Booklet containing this write up is available: 2010 Appeals, APPEAL No: 10.045.

Link fixed. There is also a thread about this appeal on these forums.

[iviehoff]

I don't agree. In the "absence of agreement", there is no agreement. Alerting or not alerting based on whether you "get the gist" is providing UI. When you don't alert a call upon which you have no agreement, you are not providing UI.

The EBU's regulations (and these hands happened in England) clearly say that if you are going to act as if your partner's bid had an alertable meaning, you must alert it. The laws refer to "understanding", not "agreement". If your partner makes a bid with an alertable meaning, and you understand it with that meaning, then I would say you have a partnership understanding, even in the absence of an agreement.