[Trinidad]

barmar, on 2013-December-19, 14:33, said:

I've always interpreted the phrase "If any call differs in any way" to refer just to the calls; i.e. if you see the same bidding cards on the table, the auctions are the same and the hand proceeds.

So, your opponents were the wrong pair. The original pair started the auction: 1♣-1♦. They play Acol.
In comes the correct pair. They have the same auction, except that they play Precision.

You know that your opponents have a strong hand with clubs and a 6-7 HCP hand with diamonds, where the opponents have only told each other that they have any 16+ hand opposite any 0-7 hand. How is that fair?

I have always interpreted this Law as: "The board gets canceled, unless the auction was not affected in any way."

Rik

[jeffford76]

ggwhiz, on 2013-December-18, 12:12, said:

Recently on a bridge winners post a Director was called to the table when South opened at North's turn to bid. He rotated the board 180 degrees and left. It was a team match where the board had not been played at the other table yet and everyone laughed and carried on.

This was in a midnight zip knockout, making it quite irrelevant to real bridge.

[blackshoe]

jeffford76, on 2013-December-19, 21:30, said:

This was in a midnight zip knockout, making it quite irrelevant to real bridge.

Wrong question. The question is whether the laws of bridge are relevant to this event. I can think of no reason to suggest they're not, unless the Conditions of Contest explicitly said so. Did they?

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2013-December-19, 14:33, said:

I've always interpreted the phrase "If any call differs in any way" to refer just to the calls; i.e. if you see the same bidding cards on the table, the auctions are the same and the hand proceeds.

I assume you are joking, suggesting that the Law is poorly written?

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2013-December-19, 23:17, said:

Wrong question. The question is whether the laws of bridge are relevant to this event. I can think of no reason to suggest they're not, unless the Conditions of Contest explicitly said so. Did they?

I guess you've never played in a midnight KO. Many of the players, and often the TD, are drunk, and it's treated very informally. Players (mostly juniors) often use whacky systems that don't conform to any convention regulations. I remember a few tournaments where junior pros partnered with caddies, and they played an asymmetric system where the caddy's bids were all transfers, while the pro's were natural, so the pro always declared.

[mycroft]

Yeah, "it's bridge, Jim, but not as we know it." Another standard call in Midnights: "Director, please" "REALLY?" from half the room, "There's no Director Calls in Midnights" from the other half. Expect the TD to be in one of those halves, as he walks over to actually take the call.

I brought in a prepared bidding box to the midnights in Penticton. The auction went p-1♣-p-1♠; 1 No Chance. The table stopped for a minute until we could think again. I didn't warn my partner that it was coming, either - and she'd never played with me before, and didn't *really* understand midnights yet...

[blackshoe]

Ah. Well, so be it then.

Hm. I see the potential for some very squirrelly rulings. How far dare the director go in these things?

[PeterAlan]

paulg, on 2013-December-19, 03:51, said:

I believe we all vary our psychs based on our opponents and their methods.

This of course leads to the interesting topic in the metaphysics of bridge, namely how you disclose such variations. Of course you must, as over time you would otherwise develop a concealed partnership understanding. Isn't the game wonderful?

[FrancesHinden]

gnasher, on 2013-December-19, 05:56, said:

Taken literally, it's a nonsensical rule. The set of hands on which one player will take a given action is different from the set of hands on which any other player will take the same action. For any sequence containing at least one call from each side, the meaning of the sequence will differ at least slightly. It would be better if the rule said "differs significantly" rather than "differs in any way".

Yes, I've always thought this rule made no sense, except (possibly) in some very very limited circumstances, such as the problem being discovered before second seat has a chance to act.
Even apart from people having different styles with the same methods (e.g. the intersection of your 3S jump overcall and my 3S jump overcall is more precise than playing against only one of us) you get problems such as

try 1: 1NT Pass...
try 2: 1NT Pass...

but the first player who passed over 1NT was playing 2C for the majors and everything else natural.
the second player to pass was playing (say) multi-landy. So you know from the first auction that LHO doesn't have a natural 2D overcall; you don't know this the second time.

This reminds me of 27b1b, another law that taken literally can never apply.

[jeffford76]

mycroft, on 2013-December-20, 11:40, said:

Yeah, "it's bridge, Jim, but not as we know it." Another standard call in Midnights: "Director, please" "REALLY?" from half the room, "There's no Director Calls in Midnights" from the other half. Expect the TD to be in one of those halves, as he walks over to actually take the call.

I did have to make one director call in the midnights in Phoenix. LHO was in the tank for a couple minutes, RHO said, "C'mon, it's the midnights", and LHO said, "I play my best on every hand of bridge I play and I will take as long as I need to make the right play no matter what the event."

[mycroft]

jeffford76, on 2013-December-21, 22:31, said:

I did have to make one director call in the midnights in Phoenix. LHO was in the tank for a couple minutes, RHO said, "C'mon, it's the midnights", and LHO said, "I play my best on every hand of bridge I play and I will take as long as I need to make the right play no matter what the event."

• "why did you enter this event, then? Did you not know what the Midnights are?"
  
• Did you put in a note that if this player attempts to enter the Fast Pairs, his entry should be denied?
  
• 5 minutes later: "Okay, round's over, finish the board you're playing; team 2 gets 3 IMPs/board that didn't get played at table 4."

[McBruce]

Why, in a Laws version with an Introduction that says "Directors have been given considerably more discretionary powers" must a TD cancel the board? Why not let the players play it out and then decide whether/how the extra information affected the result?

If the wrong pair bids 1N P 6N and the new, correct pair starts 1N P 5N we are forced to stop everything and give both sides an artificial adjusted score, unrelated to clear evidence of what was almost certainly about to happen. If opener has a maximum and 13 tricks are ironclad, 15C has just deprived the innocent pair of a well-earned good result. It's no harder to work out how the extra information might affect the result than it is to adjust a score based on many other types of misinformation that we deal with all the time.

I think the Lawmakers forgot to update 15C to match the Introduction. The most commonly heard complaint when I am forced to cancel a board is "why is this different from other UI situations where we play on and wait for your decision?" Then later I hear "that ridiculous rule prevented us from getting a good score!"

Let's fix this to something sensible for the next version: the vast majority of the times it comes up, cancellation is required but there is such a small variation that rectifying would be easy if even necessary. Consider 16C3, which allows a TD to let play continue if a player receives UI (such as overhearing an auction which must be on the same board from a nearby table) after an auction has begun. Why is hearing part of an auction at another table so different from hearing part of an auction from the wrong opponents and then hearing a slightly different one from the correct opponents? The Laws allow a TD to use his judgment for the former, but do not for the latter.



I'm not arguing that the restriction that the pair bidding the same deal a second time make the same calls be lifted; but I think if they have a reasonable bridge reason for the deviation based on the opponents' methods or tendencies it should be considered. I know it will lead to logical nightmares to tell a pair that they are non-offending but have UI from the first auction that they must ignore. But this Law just seems to cause more results to disappear, and quite often the board could be played normally.