Insufficient - then Conventional

[pran]

I had exactly such a ruling once, and I adjusted it to 6NT-1. It was however made harder by the fact that in 5NT they had been allowed to make twelve tricks, but I considered that in 6NT they would have taken both their aces.

I don't understand.

Did the auction go something like:

4NT - pass - 5[something] - pass

5♠ - pass - 5NT - AP

 

and you adjusted the result (5NT= or 5NT+1) to 6NT-1 ?

 

(4NT is traditional 4 Ace Blackwood and Spades are not relevant for trump)

To me the 5♠ bid in this situation is an undisputable transfer to 5NT.

 

(5♥ is equally available if Hearts are not relevant for trump but spades are)

[gordontd]

I don't understand.

Did the auction go something like:

4NT - pass - 5[something] - pass

5♠ - pass - 5NT - AP

 

and you adjusted the result (5NT= or 5NT+1) to 6NT-1 ?

 

(4NT is traditional 4 Ace Blackwood and Spades are not relevant for trump)

To me the 5♠ bid in this situation is an undisputable transfer to 5NT.

 

(5♥ is equally available if Hearts are not relevant for trump but spades are)

The end of the auction was

 

4NT - 5S

5H/5NT

 

The player knew that bidding a new suit at the five-level was the way to get partner to bid 5NT to play!

[gordontd]

I don't really understand the purpose of 27D, or why it applies only to rulings under 27B1.

I think the explanation for all of this is in (recent) history. When the new laws were written, Law 27 was written poorly - so poorly that when the Laws were first made public, most readers thought they said the exact opposite of what was intended. So, very hurriedly (after at least one country had already printed them), they re-wrote this law, and chucked in L27D as a back-stop in case they had missed anything.

[Zelandakh]

I think the IB law/regulation should read that the bid cannot be corrected once the card has been placed on the table deliberately. The call can be changed between drawing it and it being deliberately placed but the UI laws then apply. Simple, clear and encourages players to pay attention while still catering to mispulls, sticky cards, dropped cards, etc.

[blackshoe]

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

[Zelandakh]

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

When I sit down opposite Meckwell as dealer, I am so opening the bidding with -1♣.

[gordontd]

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

So, when you have a disaster in the bidding, all you need to do is follow it with an insufficient bid and you get 40%?

[blackshoe]

Deliberately making an insufficient bid under the proposed law is cheating and should be treated as such.

[iviehoff]

Deliberately making an insufficient bid under the proposed law is cheating and should be treated as such.

But deciding that a player has infracted deliberately to take advantage of the consequences is usually somewhere that directors don't like to go without incredibly strong evidence. That's the advantage of Law 23, which is entirely adequate in the present situation.

[pran]

I think the explanation for all of this is in (recent) history. When the new laws were written, Law 27 was written poorly - so poorly that when the Laws were first made public, most readers thought they said the exact opposite of what was intended. So, very hurriedly (after at least one country had already printed them), they re-wrote this law, and chucked in L27D as a back-stop in case they had missed anything.

Indeed. And I did alert Grattan on this at an early stage while we were translating the new laws. I do hope I was not the only one to note the problem, but at least I had the satisfaction that Law 27 was rewritten.

[pran]

The end of the auction was

 

4NT - 5S

5H/5NT

 

The player knew that bidding a new suit at the five-level was the way to get partner to bid 5NT to play!

Fine.

And if a partnership may need to stop in 5NT after a 5♠ response to their Blackwood bid there must be something seriously wrong with their use of BW.

 

Here you were of course in Law 27B2 territory with a follow up ruling under Law 23.

[barmar]

I think the IB law/regulation should read that the bid cannot be corrected once the card has been placed on the table deliberately. The call can be changed between drawing it and it being deliberately placed but the UI laws then apply. Simple, clear and encourages players to pay attention while still catering to mispulls, sticky cards, dropped cards, etc.

So there would be no correction possibility with spoken bidding? The IB law comes down to us from the days when this was common. Some details have changed, but the general idea that it should be corrected in some way is hardly based on a presumption of mechanical error.

[Zelandakh]

That is why I wrote law/regulation Barry. I am making no reference to spoken bidding with this suggestion. Having a law work in a particular way for historical reasons rather than having the best law available strikes me as wrong.

[gnasher]

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

But that would lead to a different outcome.

 

With the current laws, we restore equity when there is damage and not otherwise. If we did away with 27B1 we would, I think, get exactly the same result as under the current Laws. With your suggested change, the NOS would sometimes benefit unfairly, and sometimes suffer unfairly.

[mycroft]

Apart from the classic "IB then 4NT", the other one (that has a different special law in place) is "IB, then 'takeout' double".

 

I usually find that if I'm even close to those cases, the players do understand the Probst Cheat explanation for these.

 

I was told when I took my TA exam that it was likely I would never run into a Law 23 case. So far, that has been true; there have been a couple of times I've had to investigate it, but never yet applied it. But I'm glad it's there.

[aguahombre]

Apart from the classic "IB then 4NT", the other one (that has a different special law in place) is "IB, then 'takeout' double".

 

I usually find that if I'm even close to those cases, the players do understand the Probst Cheat explanation for these.

 

I was told when I took my TA exam that it was likely I would never run into a Law 23 case. So far, that has been true; there have been a couple of times I've had to investigate it, but never yet applied it. But I'm glad it's there.

I run into potential L23 situations often enough that it remains in the forefront of my mind whenever there is an IB and in a few other common situations. I don't understand the other part, though. Am I wrong to tell the IB'r he is not allowed to subsitute a double ---except when he is making one of those "same or more narrow meaning" doubles which don't bar partner?

[mycroft]

No, you are not wrong...Law 27B3. My meaning was that "IB then double, silencing partner, when I have a clear penalty double and no other way to show it" is a big enough issue that, like "IB then 'blackwood', only way to get to play 4NT", it has a special Law written.

 

Certainly you should have L23 in your head when ruling in these cases. Just don't expect to have to apply it. There are many cases where "they happened to get lucky after being put under restrictions" (legal, L10C4) that are not L23 cases, because it isn't clear that, at the time of the infraction, it "could well be" of benefit to impose the restrictions the infraction would impose.

[blackshoe]

But deciding that a player has infracted deliberately to take advantage of the consequences is usually somewhere that directors don't like to go without incredibly strong evidence. That's the advantage of Law 23, which is entirely adequate in the present situation.

Perhaps, but you're avoiding the dilemma (if that's the right word) that I presented. It seems to me that someone suggested that "could have known" is always true in IB cases. If so, we don't need Law 23, we just award an ArtAS - but the law has to allow that, and it currently doesn't.

 

The question is "how does the TD decide when Law 23 should be applied? What criteria does he use?" It seems some want "he made an IB, therefore apply Law 23". That cannot be the intent of this law.

[gnasher]

Perhaps, but you're avoiding the dilemma (if that's the right word) that I presented. It seems to me that someone suggested that "could have known" is always true in IB cases. If so, we don't need Law 23, we just award an ArtAS - but the law has to allow that, and it currently doesn't.

 

The question is "how does the TD decide when Law 23 should be applied? What criteria does he use?" It seems some want "he made an IB, therefore apply Law 23". That cannot be the intent of this law.

Who wants "he made an IB, therefore apply Law 23"?

 

I want "He made an IB, and he gained as a result of the prescribed rectification; therefore apply Law 23". Or "He made an IB, and any gain was not as a result of the prescribed rectification, so he keeps his score."

 

How on earth do you get from this to "He made an IB, so award 60:40"?

[blackshoe]

Go back and read what I actually said. I'm pretty sure you can figure it out.

[gnasher]

Go back and read what I actually said. I'm pretty sure you can figure it out.

I've read all of your posts in this thread several times. Sorry, but if I haven't so far understood the point you were trying to make, there's no possibility of my understanding it without further explanation. So why not humour me and explain it again?

[campboy]

The question is "how does the TD decide when Law 23 should be applied? What criteria does he use?" It seems some want "he made an IB, therefore apply Law 23". That cannot be the intent of this law.

Typically the criterion I use is some version of the Probst test.

 

If you were allowed to deliberately silence partner, would it have been a reasonable tactic in this situation?

[barmar]

That is why I wrote law/regulation Barry. I am making no reference to spoken bidding with this suggestion. Having a law work in a particular way for historical reasons rather than having the best law available strikes me as wrong.

Ahh, you're saying that it has always been a bad law, we never should have allowed correcting an IB. That's a reasonable position to take.

[blackshoe]

I've read all of your posts in this thread several times. Sorry, but if I haven't so far understood the point you were trying to make, there's no possibility of my understanding it without further explanation. So why not humour me and explain it again?

My post #30 was a response to paulg's #6 and your #20, which seemed to be saying that Law 23 (almost?) always applies. My response was that if that's the case, the law should be changed to simply award an ArtAS in all IB cases. That is where 60-40 came from.

 

Under the current law, we don't do that, of course, so we need to know when Law 23 applies, and when it does not. That's the question I asked in #43.

 

Someone, perhaps you, pointed out that the inclusion of "well" in Law 23 is important. "Well", in this context, means "very probably". So it seems to me that there must be a high probability that a player "could have known" that his IB might cause damage. As someone else (Barry, perhaps?) pointed out, this is rarely the case. So it seems to me that the approach to using Law 23 should be that it is unusual to do so, not that "there was damage, so we apply Law 23", or even "this is obvious; he bid 3NT (IB) because he wanted to stop in 4NT".

[paulg]

My problem is with the wording: a sentence that has two 'could' phrases in it gives complete freedom to the director in IB cases. It might as well say that the Director should adjust if he thinks it is right to do so.

 

If the intent, as seems both likely and reasonable, is to adjust when a player successfully reaches a contract that otherwise would be unlikely without the IB, then say that. The lawmakers have removed intent and replaced it possible intent, because burden of proof is so difficult. I think they should remove worrying about intent completely.