[mycroft]

irretrievably spoilt? Even when the auction goes 2NT-p-2♥? Even when the auction goes ...4NT-(5♥)-5♦ and they play some reasonable system over interference?

If an IB (I assume that isn't covered by L25A) irretrievably spoils the hand, I guess so does an OLOOT, a revoke, an OPOOT, ...

I guess dburn is going to get his wish, then. If we're lucky, -1100 will be the most common score in the game, and all hands will be "slam or A-, grands if NV"

Yes, I'm going over the top, but I really don't see where L25D spoils the game more than any other option (save the "I get to restrict everyone's choices through barring partner *and* through 'use of UI'! How fun!") I also realize that it feels like we're babying those who don't care to pay enough attention to actually follow the basic laws of the game (you must bid sufficiently, you must play in the right order, you must follow suit) and those of us who do try to follow those laws get nothing for our efforts. I don't particularly like it either - but the LC thinks that's the way to go, and I'm sure they have their reasons. "I couldn't comment on that."

[Edit: yet again (see #4) I ask, show me "reward". Not "most of the time I get away with it", but how there's actually a reward for doing things wrong.]

[jeffford76]

 blackshoe, on 2014-October-23, 00:06, said:

It should be pretty clear that post #1 in this thread is not a "starter" post, since it quotes another post that isn't in this thread. But if you like, I'll edit your post, and put in a disclaimer over my name that I split your post and the following ones off from another thread.

While my preference is for moderators not to yank posts out of a thread and start a new one, if they're going to do it, I think this should be standard operating procedure when they do, also including a link back to the original thread.

[Vampyr]

 mycroft, on 2014-October-23, 10:28, said:

[Edit: yet again (see #4) I ask, show me "reward". Not "most of the time I get away with it", but how there's actually a reward for doing things wrong.]

just for starters:

In the case of a revoke, "getting away with it" can result in being rewarded if you gain a trick thereby (or several if you influence declarer's line of play and he never discovers the revoke).

When it is an insufficient bid, the bidder's partner is allowed to know that his partner may have misdescribed his hand when choosing a penalty-free correction. Not all of these cases will be subject to 27B, and so the offenders will gain.

Sorry. I thought these things were obvious.

[aguahombre]

 Vampyr, on 2014-October-23, 15:58, said:

just for starters:

In the case of a revoke, "getting away with it" can result in being rewarded if you gain a trick thereby (or several if you influence declarer's line of play and he never discovers the revoke).

When it is an insufficient bid, the bidder's partner is allowed to know that his partner may have misdescribed his hand when choosing a penalty-free correction. Not all of these cases will be subject to 27B, and so the offenders will gain.

Sorry. I thought these things were obvious.

The unnoticed revoke can obviously gain for the offenders.

The IB can only gain if the TD doesn't bother to use the appropriate Laws which allow him to adjust if the offense gained...or to adjust if the offender could have foreseen the gain...either route works.

[Vampyr]

 aguahombre, on 2014-October-23, 16:51, said:

The IB can only gain if the TD doesn't bother to use the appropriate Laws which allow him to adjust if the offense gained...or to adjust if the offender could have foreseen the gain...either route works.

Would that it were so simple, but it's not. The IBer's partner is permitted to know 1. That his partner made an insufficient bid, and what it was, and 2. That the penalty-free correction may have been a distortion (neither of these pieces of information is contained in the replacement bid, but this fundamental inconsistency of philosophy is another discussion for another day).

So, the partner is allowe d this information, but only if the conclusions he draws are incorrect? Considering how ill-thought-out many of the @aws are, this would not shock me, but meantime there must be a sensible reconciliation between the above and L27D, but I don't know what that is. Anyway the intention is clear that sometimes the offenders are permitted to gain.

[aguahombre]

 Vampyr, on 2014-October-23, 18:35, said:

Would that it were so simple, but it's not. The IBer's partner is permitted to know 1. That his partner made an insufficient bid, and what it was, and 2. That the penalty-free correction may have been a distortion (neither of these pieces of information is contained in the replacement bid, but this fundamental inconsistency of philosophy is another discussion for another day).

So, the partner is allowe d this information, but only if the conclusions he draws are incorrect? Considering how ill-thought-out many of the @aws are, this would not shock me, but meantime there must be a sensible reconciliation between the above and L27D, but I don't know what that is. Anyway the intention is clear that sometimes the offenders are permitted to gain.

Apparently, only some of us believe that:

Although 27B1 tells us 16D does not apply, 27D says "Don't fret about 27B1 disallowing 16D adjustment; just do it anyway, if the information*** was used to the offending side's advantage." So, that is what I do; and, have L23 in reserve.

*** (from above) === We don't even have to override 27B1 and its exclusion of 16D...because we just don't call the information which was used "unauthorized". We just say that without that information --obtained from the infraction-- the result would have been different.

[gnasher]

 Vampyr, on 2014-October-23, 09:44, said:

The board has been spoilt so a "normal" result is impossible. The current solution is very poor as it often rewards the offenders.

I do not think that Robin's suggestion was serious but it might in fact be best.

I don't think it's best, but it's certainly better than your suggestion. If we're going to give an undeserved and unnecessary bonus to the non-offenders, let's at least keep the size of the bonus under control.

[steve2005]

In others sports there are penalties of 5 yds. for offside, for example. Why not give AVE+ to non-offending side AVE- for offending side. Maybe people will pay better attention.

[nige1]

 VamApyr, on 2014-October-21, 21:35, said:

How about... When an insufficient bid is made, bidder's partner is barred for the rest of the auction, but there is no further penalty except under L23. Could anyone possibly disagree with that?

 RMB1, on 2014-October-23, 06:18, said:

Simpler would be the age-old recipe of cancel the board and award AVE+ to non-offenders, AVE- to the offenders.

 Vampyr, on 2014-October-23, 09:44, said:

The board has been spoilt so a "normal" result is impossible. The current solution is very poor as it often rewards the offenders. I do not think that Robin's suggestion was serious but it might in fact be best.

Vambyr's or RMB1's suggestion would be fairer and would encourage players to be more careful. Unfortunately, both flout the law-maker's perverse concept of "equity". More in keeping with the spirit of the law, would be to award av+ to offenders

[pran]

 steve2005, on 2014-October-24, 09:57, said:

In others sports there are penalties of 5 yds. for offside, for example. Why not give AVE+ to non-offending side AVE- for offending side. Maybe people will pay better attention.

Yes, wouldn't it be very easy to automatically award AVE+ and AVE- instead of having the director figure out the most likely result had the irregularity not occurred?

Very satisfactory it would be for the OS who then would have the expected 10% score automatically changed to 40%.

Or do you want to reintroduce additional special laws to take care of such special situations in a fair way and thus abandon your automatick simple ruling law?

[jeffford76]

It definitely would be bad if I could notice that my auction was completely off the rails, and then make an insufficient bid to get back to 40%.

[mycroft]

An unnoticed revoke can gain. Having said that, an unnoticed OBOOT or OLOOT can gain, too; so can putting up the K into AQ on dummy if it's unnoticed and declarer takes the finesse.. People should be paying attention, and there should not be unnoticed revokes. Having said that, revokes that are noticed before the end of the scoring error period will still not gain - won't be penalized, but equity will be restored if you can prove it.

Your IB will only gain if the TD is incapable of processing L27D. If the auction was "reasonably" going to get there anyway with legal bidding, neither L27D nor L16 apply, but the IB didn't gain (didn't lose though). If the non-offenders were damaged by the fact that information from the IB would not have been presentable by a normal legal auction, then L27D applies, and equity is restored. The non-offenders don't gain from the offender's mistake, but the offenders do not gain either.

I realize that it offends some people's sense of propriety that people that follow the Laws frequently don't have an advantage over people who don't; and I could be one of them. But the statement that "offenders can gain with the current Laws" requires either non-offenders who don't pay attention (who I have no sympathy for, this is a game of mistakes after all) or TDs who don't read the book or can't rule properly (which I certainly believe both exist and are a problem, but that's not the Laws' fault).

[pran]

 mycroft, on 2014-October-24, 12:23, said:

[...]
Your IB will only gain if the TD is incapable of processing L27D. If the auction was "reasonably" going to get there anyway with legal bidding, neither L27D nor L16 apply, but the IB didn't gain (didn't lose though). If the non-offenders were damaged by the fact that information from the IB would not have been presentable by a normal legal auction, then L27D applies, and equity is restored. The non-offenders don't gain from the offender's mistake, but the offenders do not gain either.
[...]

The suggestion was that Law 27 shall simply say: "AVE+ to NOS and AVE- to OS" without any L27A, L27B, L27C or L27D.

There will be no simplification if you want to keep "if non-offenders were damaged" or similar clauses in L27.

[mycroft]

pran@#33:I'm sorry, I should have provided context. I said *currently*, we are in a "heads we lose, tails we break even, and yes, it's a weighted coin, in the offender's favour" situation. Vampyr disagrees. I asked for cases. She gave some. I gave a rebuttal.

What we *should* do - that's another story. One I am carefully avoiding :-)

[aguahombre]

 mycroft, on 2014-October-24, 12:23, said:

Your IB will only gain if the TD is incapable of processing L27D. If the auction was "reasonably" going to get there anyway with legal bidding, neither L27D nor L16 apply, but the IB didn't gain (didn't lose though). If the non-offenders were damaged by the fact that information from the IB would not have been presentable by a normal legal auction, then L27D applies, and equity is restored. The non-offenders don't gain from the offender's mistake, but the offenders do not gain either.

Not quite. We are restoring equity for these two pairs....the NOS was damaged by the fact that the offending side didn't have, or didn't choose to use a legai method of (say) showing the values and support it actually held. The OS at this table gained by that, via the IB and same-suit replacement at the higher level.

So, the adjustment is not to restore what a competent pair would have done...but rather what the result most likely would have been if the OS couldn't/didn't show what they showed.

[barmar]

 pran, on 2014-October-24, 11:51, said:

Very satisfactory it would be for the OS who then would have the expected 10% score automatically changed to 40%.

We have another law that says you're not allowed to break a law intentionally, even if you're willing to pay the penalty. So you mustn't intentionally revoke or IB to turn your expected 10% back to a 40%.

Of course, the TD has to be able to figure out that you did it intentionally.

[RMB1]

 barmar, on 2014-October-27, 09:27, said:

We have another law that says you're not allowed to break a law intentionally, even if you're willing to pay the penalty. So you mustn't intentionally revoke or IB to turn your expected 10% back to a 40%.

Of course, the TD has to be able to figure out that you did it intentionally.

Is this how we want to rule in the case of the "slow insufficient bid" (ignoring the slow/UI aspect): 1H-4H, 4NT-5S, 5H
?

[pran]

 barmar, on 2014-October-27, 09:27, said:

We have another law that says you're not allowed to break a law intentionally, even if you're willing to pay the penalty. So you mustn't intentionally revoke or IB to turn your expected 10% back to a 40%.

Of course, the TD has to be able to figure out that you did it intentionally.

And as I couldn't know that I was heading for a 10% score, and that nobody could show good evidence that I committed the irregularity with intent I still claim that I did it without.

So I shall strongly object to any allegation that I intentionally violated Law 72B1 by intentionally committing an irregularity.

[blackshoe]

Yeah. I objected to such an allegation once. The director said "we're just gonna let that slide".