[kb49]

EBU

Can you please help me with the following problem? If I intend to open the bidding with 1S but I actually bid. 1C. Left hand opponent bids 1D at this stage I realise my. Is take and I call the Director. I believe I am entitled to change the bid to a spade because my partner has not bid and my left hand opponent may then change his bid. Is this correct?

[pran]

 kb49, on 2015-March-17, 16:21, said:

EBU

Can you please help me with the following problem? If I intend to open the bidding with 1S but I actually bid. 1C. Left hand opponent bids 1D at this stage I realise my. Is take and I call the Director. I believe I am entitled to change the bid to a spade because my partner has not bid and my left hand opponent may then change his bid. Is this correct?

If you convince the Director that you never intended to bid 1C but all the time intended to bid 1S then the answer is yes.

[NickRW]

 pran, on 2015-March-17, 16:27, said:

If you convince the Director that you never intended to bid 1C but all the time intended to bid 1S then the answer is yes.

Yeah, but if it were me I'd take some convincing. 1H, 1NT and 2S are relatively plausible mechanical errors if intending to bid 1S, but 1C? I don't tend to buy it unless there is some other supporting argument.

Nick

[pran]

 pran, on 2015-March-17, 16:27, said:

If you convince the Director that you never intended to bid 1C but all the time intended to bid 1S then the answer is yes.

 NickRW, on 2015-March-18, 06:24, said:

Yeah, but if it were me I'd take some convincing. 1H, 1NT and 2S are relatively plausible mechanical errors if intending to bid 1S, but 1C? I don't tend to buy it unless there is some other supporting argument.

Nick

Fair enough. (I did say convince!)

[kb49]

Thank you for your replies, it is much appreciated. Can you please clarify the following. Law 25 states 'but only if he does so, or attempts to do so without pause for thought'
This seems to indicate that the correction must be made immediately. There is a possibility that LHO takes some time before bidding. Are you still within your rights to ask for the correction even after this delay?

[gordontd]

"Without pause for thought" means that he needs to make some indication as soon as he realises that the call on the table was not the one he intended to make.

[blackshoe]

 gordontd, on 2015-March-18, 08:33, said:

"Without pause for thought" means that he needs to make some indication as soon as he realises that the call on the table was not the one he intended to make.

Yes, and that often does not occur when the call was made, but later. So long as partner has not called, 25A will still apply.

[axman]

 kb49, on 2015-March-17, 16:21, said:

EBU

Can you please help me with the following problem? If I intend to open the bidding with 1S but I actually bid. 1C. Left hand opponent bids 1D at this stage I realise my. Is take and I call the Director. I believe I am entitled to change the bid to a spade because my partner has not bid and my left hand opponent may then change his bid. Is this correct?

The best way to be convincing is to watch your hand pull the bidding card- and immediately say 'not this' as the image becomes visible. I personally then put the bidding cards on the table (assuming they were from the correct section) removing extra cards if too many or fetching the missing cards if too few.

[sanst]

The title you choose is 'mechanical error', but in your post you use 'mistake'. A truly mechanical error can be changed, but it takes a lot to convince the director that it's that. Bidding 1♣ instead of 1♠ is hard to explain as a mechanical error since the cards are on different sides of the bidding box. From your post I gather that you indeed made a mistake and you're certainly not allowed to change that.

[campboy]

 blackshoe, on 2015-March-18, 11:44, said:

Yes, and that often does not occur when the call was made, but later. So long as partner has not called, 25A will still apply.

"Often"? I see lots of 25A corrections (several times a session at least) and the vast majority of those are corrected straight after the cards come out of the box. A significant majority are corrected immediately after they hit the table. Anything later than that is vanishingly rare, in my experience.

The laws are written assuming spoken bidding, when it is perhaps more plausible that one would not immediately realise that a slip of the tongue has occurred (and it might become obvious later if an opponent overcalls 1♥ when you meant to say 1♠, for example). When using bidding boxes it is much harder to see how a player would fail to notice that what came out wasn't what he meant, since it is right there in front of him.

[Vampyr]

 campboy, on 2015-March-18, 16:16, said:

When using bidding boxes it is much harder to see how a player would fail to notice that what came out wasn't what he meant, since it is right there in front of him.

Well, it has happened to me

[blackshoe]

 sanst, on 2015-March-18, 13:13, said:

The title you choose is 'mechanical error', but in your post you use 'mistake'. A truly mechanical error can be changed, but it takes a lot to convince the director that it's that. Bidding 1♣ instead of 1♠ is hard to explain as a mechanical error since the cards are on different sides of the bidding box. From your post I gather that you indeed made a mistake and you're certainly not allowed to change that.

You mean the tabs, not the cards.

If, at the time the player makes a call, that call is the one he was thinking he was making, then he's not allowed to change it, even if he immediately recognizes that his thought process was flawed. I don't see anything in the OP that leads me to believe this was the case here.

[aguahombre]

 blackshoe, on 2015-March-18, 22:31, said:

You mean the tabs, not the cards.

If, at the time the player makes a call, that call is the one he was thinking he was making, then he's not allowed to change it, even if he immediately recognizes that his thought process was flawed. I don't see anything in the OP that leads me to believe this was the case here.

Interesting. Should it have been stated in the OP that the tabs for 1♣ and for 1♠ were in their proper places in the bid-box? I would assume they were, unless stated otherwise; then, absent seeing anything in the OP to the contrary, I would be led to believe L25A shouldn't be used here.

[StevenG]

 aguahombre, on 2015-March-19, 02:37, said:

Interesting. Should it have been stated in the OP that the tabs for 1♣ and for 1♠ were in their proper places in the bid-box? I would assume they were, unless stated otherwise; then, absent seeing anything in the OP to the contrary, I would be led to believe L25A shouldn't be used here.

They are much the same colour and shape. That's good enough for my rather poor eye/brain co-ordination.

[mycroft]

If you still have one table's worth of those old-style wrong-way-up bidding box cards, it's amazing what kind of L25A situations happen. While "1♠" pulling out 5♣ is reasonably easy to feel, as there's way too many cards (unless you're a card picker, in which case good luck to you), I have seen more than one Strong, Artificial and Forcing 2♣ call made with a 4=3=4=2 12-count.

Frequently, L25a "oops, wrong card" as it's coming out of the box happens, yes (less so in the ACBL, as a lot of these "L25A" changes are "no call has yet been made, potential UI" changes here, due to our regulation on when a call is made); frequently L25a is pointed out by partner or opponents' unexpected Announcement or Alert (frequently enough that we had to make specific case law about it) - at which point the clock starts when the mispuller notices her mistake, not when she made it.

Frequently, of course, it's just one of those "oh, wait, what?" things.

Occasionally it's a "you can't double your partner out of turn!" thing (Oops, I mean the big blue card, not the smaller red card. Sorry)

[barmar]

I actually had a true mechanical error a few days ago in New Orleans. I pulled the 1NT card, and the 2♣ card stuck to it. I was mildly surprised that partner forgot to announce "forcing", then I looked down and noticed that the card wasn't what I thought I was pulling. Everyone believed me when I said that the cards stuck together -- bidding cards at NABC get so heavily used that they're in horrible shape. While they start with fresh decks of playing cards at the beginning of the tournament, I don't think they replace the bidding cards very often.

[aguahombre]

 barmar, on 2015-March-22, 00:17, said:

Everyone believed me when I said that the cards stuck together --

IMO, L25 is really easy to determine when it applies and when it shouldn't be used... in real life. The opponents can tell from the circumstances, the reaction of the fumbler, etc., and many times confirm the fumbler's case.

Not the case on-line. TD's at OKB allow undo's on a mere claim of "misclick" to the point of absurdity.

[Zelandakh]

 aguahombre, on 2015-March-22, 04:16, said:

Not the case on-line. TD's at OKB allow undo's on a mere claim of "misclick" to the point of absurdity.

I do too during the hand. Of course if I find out later they were lying they get removed and blacklisted. Online bridge is good for that; they don't let me blacklist the cheats confused players at the club.