2017 Laws?

[mycroft]

LOL I couldn't follow all the negatives, but I have thought of a new Christmas party rule. No one is allowed to make a bid that is not an infraction. A side benefit is that this will help players get accustomed to the 2027 laws!

I'm surprised you couldn't follow that line, because I was, I thought, pretty obviously thinking of you and your "law 16 does not apply" arguments to L27B1 that now will also apply to a lot more calls. I guess I'm just that confusing.

 

I like that rule...as long as you keep it at "bid". If it's "call", then, per rule, you can't have a third pass after a non-pass call, at least not without a call after that. But I do not want to be the TD having to adjudicate "he doubled his partner's 8♠ call, what happens now?"

[WellSpyder]

Well, clearly you never forget an ace is out, or play a trick ahead of yourself. I "never" do that, either, but only for bridge values of never. Why would I trade a 100% line for a 99.5% line? Why would you?

I think we just see the likely occurrence of these mistakes differently. I certainly don't maintain that I don't make such mistakes. Why, the very last time I played I forgot that the opposing trumps weren't breaking 3-2 when I was playing in a 7-card fit. This doesn't encourage me to claim, though. Equally, it doesn't discourage me from claiming, even though on this occasion my claim cost me an extra trick when a defender was able to ruff with his extra trump after I had set up his winner in a side suit. I happen to think I am more likely to lose tricks by claiming than by not claiming, You apparently think the opposite applies for you. But I suspect I still claim as often as you do, since it simply makes bridge a more enjoyable game.

[mycroft]

yeah, I guess so. I just know that I make those kinds of mistakes monthly, at least; and I make one, possibly two, bum claims a year. Therefore I'm reasonably certain I would make more mistakes "playing it out" when asked than the TD would adjudicate to my disfavour.

[barmar]

Yeah. I really hate this kind of tail-wagging-the-dog regulation. But in any case, isn't a request to play on a rejection of the claim?

That was my earlier point -- it's not necessarily a rejection, more like "I won't want to try to understand it." These are the same players who rarely claim even when the players at other tables can tell that the hand is over.

[Vampyr]

I'm surprised you couldn't follow that line, because I was, I thought, pretty obviously thinking of you and your "law 16 does not apply" arguments to L27B1 that now will also apply to a lot more calls. I guess I'm just that confusing.

 

Yes, I have made myself very clear on this point, and did know you were agreeing with that! But the last sentence was unclear to me.

[mycroft]

Then I am that confusing. I must continue to work on it.

 

What I meant was that I don't think you're wrong (although I'm not on your side - I don't actively agree with you, because apart from one hand, it has been clearly a net positive as a TD *) - the situation is potentially advantageous to the OS, and can be exploited against un-Laws-savvy opponents and bad directors, and absolutely, there seems to be "no incentive to not do it". However, the spirit of the game is still strong enough that "nobody" thinks to play this on purpose, and anybody who does gets known for it relatively quickly (like anybody else who plays loose with the regulations), and treated as such both by the community and the directors.

 

It's a legitimate concern. However, I think the masses, especially in this time of renewed interest in being provably ethical (or at least provably not "shady", at least) keep a better lid on this than punitive rulings for what are, to within rounding error, 100% accidental mistakes. I'm sure, if that changes, so will either the laws or NBO regulations.

 

* And that one had nothing to do with "making the call on purpose", but on "I was limited in what I could tell the OS would be allowed, and so the picked a reasonable call that, unfortunately, I couldn't allow continuation on." Should we expect people to think of things like "Fast Arrival applies in this situation, so I have to make the non-FA call to be legal here?" With only the prompting that the TD is allowed to give in these circumstances? I followed the Laws, but I did agree that the OS (after 4♠ enforced +2) were a bit jobbed by the corner I was put in.

[Vampyr]

I am not worried that people will make IBs on purpose. This does not mean they should not be penalised.

 

Why not just let it go, as the lawmakers want?

 

Well, an insufficient bid causes problems for the opponents.

 

1. They get options, the implications of which they may not understand.

 

1a.They are not even told whether there is a penalty-free replacement. This is unjust and ridiculous, but there you are.

 

2. A huge amount of UI is created, especially if he replacement call is a pass. If all is not already revealed, the lead penalties will create the UI.

 

3. Damage may be difficult to assess by less experienced players and/or directors, especially if the damage is from abuse of the llarge amounts of UI available. In addition, players may be reluctant to claim damage due to abuse of UI, because they will think it is like accusing their opponents of cheating

 

4. A comparable call may be trickier than a call that is a subset of the original call, because there may be negative inferences and the like. Allowing a call and then sorting out the UI afterwards will be a challenge. Especially if the opponents and/or director are unaware of just what UI has been made available. Which I believe will be a lot of the time.

 

5. Finally, more experienced players will have a significant advantage. They will be able to think fast and offer a meaning of the IB that will allow them a penalty-tree replacement.

[blackshoe]

I'm not sure the lawmakers want people to "just let it go". They haven't said that, AFAIK, and if they did want that why didn't they change the law to "if you make an IB, you must replace it with any legal call" and leave it at that?

 

I don't understand your reference to "huge amounts of UI". Either there is UI or there isn't. Besides, how do you quantify it?

 

If there is a penalty-free replacement, and the players are not being told that, the problem is not the law, it's the director, who is supposed to give the player with the choice all pertinent information about the choice before the player makes it.

 

players may be reluctant to claim damage due to abuse of UI, because they will think it is like accusing their opponents of cheating

Then they need to be educated.

[mycroft]

Well, we are instructed not to make decisions for the players, nor to pass information about what we learned about the thought patterns of the IBer, so we can only say whether we believe there is or is not a suitable replacement, not what it would be. As I said, I had to nail somebody who I believe truly was trying, but didn't think it through enough (and probably was still under Unauthorized Panic a bit, having never run into this before) because in RL, he replaced the IB with a fast arrival call when what he had was a slam try and didn't think through the FA nature of it.

 

If better players are at an advantage because they can spin the facts better, rather than tell the truth (perhaps in an advantageous way, sure), then it's up to the TD to handle that. If the TDs aren't good enough, educate them. If it's a random club game with the person least objecting to directing being the volunteer, then if the experienced player cares that much , there's a different problem than just less effective club TDs.

 

I believe that the steadying stream of "make it right, get a bridge result" as opposed to penalties is an issue, because I simply believe that you should pay a price for doing something wrong. It's not that it's an incentive to not do it or anything, just, like most other games or sports, "this is what you don't do. If you do it anyway, here's what happens." I don't even mind situations where the opponents have an incentive to induce an infraction - while I clearly prefer the offside rule in hockey to soccer, the fact that it is what it is means that the offside trap is a legitimate (if dangerous) play, and I have no problem with that.

 

But despite that, I don't think that the law changes have caused anything like the doom that Vampyr is describing. Especially given that one of the best (and most ethical - this was clearly a lack of knowledge issue) players in the province said, to a "lead whatever" after OLOOT, "well, guess it's best to take the penalty card off the table"; we're not really increasing the UI available to use too much are we?

 

As far as the C word is concerned, the "So, this happened, it was unusual, is there an issue?" pattern works very well to avoid looking like an accusation, especially if it's honest (I must admit that when I use that construction, it is frequently "sincerity is the key, son. When you can learn to fake that, you've got it made". But it's still polite, and it's still implying that the TD is the one to make that determination, not the opponent-who-frequently-TDs) Let's just teach that to the players.

[Vampyr]

I believe that the steadying stream of "make it right, get a bridge result" as opposed to penalties is an issue, because I simply believe that you should pay a price for doing something wrong. It's not that it's an incentive to not do it or anything, just, like most other games or sports, "this is what you don't do. If you do it anyway, here's what happens." I don't even mind situations where the opponents have an incentive to induce an infraction - while I clearly prefer the offside rule in hockey to soccer, the fact that it is what it is means that the offside trap is a legitimate (if dangerous) play, and I have no problem with that.

 

I agree with this. The example I was thinking about was that gymnasts don't step off the mat on purpose, but they still get penalised.

 

An idea I have had is to augment the Laws with PPs for infractions. This would achieve a "bridge result", but the OS would still suffer consequences.

[barmar]

I don't think we're ever going to rid the Laws of judgement calls. One of the things that makes this game so interesting is that it's about coming up with clever ways to encode information in the limited actions that are available, and much of that involves subjective meanings of things, inferences, etc. This means that when something goes amiss, we have to deal with its effects on those inferences. It's hard to imagine an objective solution short of something like "Cancel the board, award artificial scores", which is currently something we reserve only for irregularities from which there's truly no way to try to get an ordinary bridge result. But these types of irregularities happen too often to make that feel acceptable.

 

Smart people have been revising the Laws for about a century. Surely if there were some way around this, we wouldn't still have so many laws that necessitate judgement rulings. They just keep tweaking the language, in an attempt to parametrize the judgement calls.

[blackshoe]

I agree with this. The example I was thinking about was that gymnasts don't step off the mat on purpose, but they still get penalised.

 

An idea I have had is to augment the Laws with PPs for infractions. This would achieve a "bridge result", but the OS would still suffer consequences.

We already have laws that allow PPs for various infractions. The problem is not lack of availability of PPs, it's lack of will on the part of TDs to impose them.

[Vampyr]

We already have laws that allow PPs for various infractions. The problem is not lack of availability of PPs, it's lack of will on the part of TDs to impose them.

 

Well, yes, but this is no solution unless everyone does it, or else the club that awarded PPs for COOT, IB etc would become unpopular and unable to compete. Better if it was mandated or highly recommended in the lawbook.

[blackshoe]

TFLB already says that when a player fails to do something he "shall" do, he should incur a PP "more often than not". Of failure to do what he "must" do, the book says that is "a serious matter indeed". Seems like a strong recommendation to me. And yet TDs routinely ignore that whole paragraph.

 

I don't particularly like the idea of mandatory PPs. Just as I didn't like "Zero Tolerance" instead of "TDs, you have Law 74A2. Use it!"

[barmar]

TFLB already says that when a player fails to do something he "shall" do, he should incur a PP "more often than not". Of failure to do what he "must" do, the book says that is "a serious matter indeed". Seems like a strong recommendation to me. And yet TDs routinely ignore that whole paragraph.

I think the majority of players and directors simply don't take club games seriously, and they don't expect rigid adherence to these laws in games they're playing just for a fun afternoon/night out.

[blackshoe]

It's not just club TDs.

[barmar]

It's not just club TDs.

True. Club TDs grow up to be tournament TDs.

[Vampyr]

I think the majority of players and directors simply don't take club games seriously, and they don't expect rigid adherence to these laws in games they're playing just for a fun afternoon/night out.

 

I play in clubs where the players and directors take the bridge pretty seriously. EBU affiliated clubs usually have ladders, team competitions, trophies and the like, plus they send teams to the National Inter-Club Knockout, county and regional events like the Garden Cities, and hold heats for the National Pairs competitions.

 

The players you are talking about would not get value from any of those things. In England, they play at non-affiliated clubs. Probably in the USA too.

 

But it is probably best to limit Laws discussions to affiliated clubs, as non-affiliated clubs will not adhere to the national regulations and will probably have their own versions of how to apply the Laws.

[mycroft]

I've heard people, especially pros and pro-wannaplays, whose reaction to club games is "what do you expect? it's a club game. Don't go in expecting they'll play bridge, and you'll have a nice time."

 

I have issues with that. But I don't think we are going to make the game easy enough for TDs that don't care to successfully rule, unless we go with the Burn Solution - and then there won't be a game of bridge.

 

As people well know here, my answer is education - worked examples, case studies, discussions on whether X or Y applies in this hand, collated officially and handed out on a regular basis by the relevant NBO Laws Commission. Just like my fellow-TD-the-baseball-umpire gets (along with a test, but he does semi-pro and national level games; not sure the rec league umpires are that hardcore); just like all the lacrosse coaches and referees get (even the age 10-12 coaches); just like M:tG Judges get.

 

But bridge is the only game that I know of where lack of knowledge of the rules, even at the professional level, is a point of honour; so it will never happen.

[barmar]

But it is probably best to limit Laws discussions to affiliated clubs, as non-affiliated clubs will not adhere to the national regulations and will probably have their own versions of how to apply the Laws.

Practically all US clubs are affiliated with ACBL, so they can issue masterpoints.

[Vampyr]

Practically all US clubs are affiliated with ACBL, so they can issue masterpoints.

 

But do these casual players want masterpoints? In the EBU there is a fee per table for affiliated games. So a game with tthe same entry fee could use the extra money to:

 

• Increase the prizes
  
• Provide catering for special events
  
• Subsidise the club's away weekends, if they have them
  
• or just reduce the table fees or membership dues
  
• and of course if the club lacks a duplicating machine or electronic scorers, they can save up more quickly to buy them. I know, that is not very important since all clubs have them by now. But there may be other things like a new computer, refurbishing the premises if they own them, hiring adequate staff to man the bar if they have one. Even hiring directors if the club doesn't have enough willing and able volunteers.
  

 

There are a fair number of large non-affiliated clubs in London, and they are thriving.

 

And anyway, people who want to amass piles of masterpoints can't get enough in club games to achieve that. At least in England.

[barmar]

But do these casual players want masterpoints? In the EBU there is a fee per table for affiliated games. So a game with tthe same entry fee could use the extra money to:

...

And anyway, people who want to amass piles of masterpoints can't get enough in club games to achieve that. At least in England.

People like winning things, even meaningless things like masterpoints. They're not expecting to get lots of them, but they get a little thrill when they see a number next to their name int the recap every now and then, and it's nice to see the total increase in the masterpoint report on the back page of the bulletin.

 

From what I've read of the history of bridge, attendance at duplicate bridge clubs really surged when masterpoints were first instituted (I think it was the American Bridge League at the time).

[jallerton]

The 2007 laws had to be delayed until 2008 due to the very unfortunate wording in the original Law 27.

They just couldn't live with this error and the year had changed before they managed to correct it.

 

My Law Book still contains a "very unfortunate" wording in Law 27. I've had this version for nearly ten years, but I didn't realise that it had been corrected so long ago!

[Vampyr]

Well, we are instructed not to make decisions for the players, nor to pass information about what we learned about the thought patterns of the IBer, so we can only say whether we believe there is or is not a suitable replacement, not what it would be.

 

Perhaps someone could correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that the English guidance was not to tell them that there is a replacement, rather make them ask exhaustive questions about the opponents' methods and thereby perhaps work it out for themselves.

 

I believe that the steadying stream of "make it right, get a bridge result" as opposed to penalties is an issue, because I simply believe that you should pay a price for doing something wrong. It's not that it's an incentive to not do it or anything, just, like most other games or sports, "this is what you don't do. If you do it anyway, here's what happens."

 

Check out Laws 31 and 32. I honestly don't understand the lawmakers' motivation for making it optional to follow legal procedures.