[quantumed]

I encountered this sequence a few days ago, 1♠ - P - 3♣! - ? . 3♣ was alerted by not explained yet, it looked like some form of spade raise. I was holding a hand that wanted club lead, but I need to know the exact meaning of 3♣ before doubling, because in my agreement with partner if 3♣ shows something like mixed raise in spades my double would be t/o. So I asked about the meaning, explained as 4♠ 7-9, so I passed. Opponents ended up in 4♠.

This happened online and was a friendly match so it didn't matter. But what if this is f2f without screen? Since we are taught not to ask unless we wanted to act, my action clearly implied I wanted a club lead. I can't find anything illegal with my action, but I am sure my parnter (and my opponents) would be feeling uneasy if he's holding equally attractive holdings in club and another suit. Can something be done about it, or is this a loophole in the law?

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

Since we are taught not to ask unless we wanted to act

Well, that's silly. The obvious solution is to either always ask, or at least sometimes randomly ask when you have nothing in clubs. Then no inference can be obtained.

[Lobowolf]

I think the ethically safest thing to do is always ask. If you only ask when it matters, partner is probably ethically (and legally) prohibited from leading a club, if there's a logical alternative.

[quantumed]

Stephen Tu, on Aug 28 2008, 01:11 PM, said:

Quote

Since we are taught not to ask unless we wanted to act

Well, that's silly. The obvious solution is to either always ask, or at least sometimes randomly ask when you have nothing in clubs. Then no inference can be obtained.

Why is that silly? In f2f bridge without screen sometimes you don't want to remind opponents of their agreements.

[Stephen Tu]

The opponent's explanations are UI to each other. If after the board finishes you see that their explanation has woken the other up to a misunderstanding, and that the opp has broken the rules by taking action that is suggested by the UI, you can call the director & get an adjustment. So consistently asking shouldn't hurt your side.

[quantumed]

Stephen Tu, on Aug 28 2008, 01:35 PM, said:

The opponent's explanations are UI to each other. If after the board finishes you see that their explanation has woken the other up to a misunderstanding, and that the opp has broken the rules by taking action that is suggested by the UI, you can call the director & get an adjustment. So consistently asking shouldn't hurt your side.

Well that's true in theory but sometimes you can't always spot a UI with evidence, as it's not always obvious, and when they "woke up" their knowledge of the system might help them revert back to the right track. Say, someone stops relay and jump to 3NT, can't say much about it.

[Stephen Tu]

Depends on who you are playing. I would hope most experienced players playing a complicated relay system would also be ethical and take their lumps when an explanation reveals they have misbid instead of trying to unethically wriggle out. In my experience the wrigglers are usually less experienced players who were never taught any better that they aren't allowed to try to escape, aren't playing something ultra-complicated (usu just an obvious mixup on a gadget), and their wriggle is very obvious, easy to call the director and get the obvious ruling.

Certainly I always make the logical alternative bid I know is probably suicide if I get woken up & feel ethically constrained.

[jdonn]

Stephen Tu, on Aug 28 2008, 01:35 PM, said:

The opponent's explanations are UI to each other. If after the board finishes you see that their explanation has woken the other up to a misunderstanding, and that the opp has broken the rules by taking action that is suggested by the UI, you can call the director & get an adjustment. So consistently asking shouldn't hurt your side.

In a perfect world, that is true. However in practice if they thought 3♣ was a weak jump shift, then when you asked it was explained as a raise, how can you ever prove they took advantage? The same argument can be made the other way, you can only ask about the bid when you want to know (and thus avoid slowing down the game), and it's your partner who will be legally unable to take advantage. This is the way I have always preferred. However nothing is "wrong", as long as everyone is clear about avoiding alternatives suggested by UI etc.

[ArtK78]

This is a very interesting question.

If one follows the policy of asking about every call that is alerted, the result will be that the auction period will be lengthened considerably.

To avoid this, most players do not ask questions about alerts unless they need to know the meaning of a bid in order to determine whether they should be taking an action other than pass.

The downside of this practice is that the fact that a question was asked implies that the questioner was considering taking an action other than pass. Strictly speaking, that is unauthorized information. However, the alert system itself contemplates that the player following an alerted call is entitled to ask about the meaning of a bid without any penalty (assuming that the question posed or the manner that the question is posed does not convey any unauthorized information). Conversely, the player following in rotation an alerted call is under no obligation to ask about the alerted call. And there is certainly no penalty for asking or not asking a question about the alerted call.

So, assuming that the questioner does not ask any question or form any question in a manner that passes information rather than just request information, I would say that the mere asking of a question cannot constitute UI. It is a consequence of the alert system, not a result of any impropriety on the part of the questionning side.

Similarly, the failure to ask a question cannot constitute UI.

The partner of the questioner (or non-questioner) should act ethically and go out of his way not to take any inference from the fact that his partner asked a question (or did not ask a question).

My post is focusing on what I believe to be the issue raised by the original poster. Others have raised the issue of how the answer to the question asked may alert the partner of the answerer to some misunderstanding. That is an entirely different issue. The answer to an inquiry about an alerted call is clearly UI to the partner of the answerer. There really is not anything else to say about that.

[Lobowolf]

ArtK78, on Aug 28 2008, 01:59 PM, said:

The downside of this practice is that the fact that a question was asked implies that the questioner was considering taking an action other than pass. Strictly speaking, that is unauthorized information. However, the alert system itself contemplates that the player following an alerted call is entitled to ask about the meaning of a bid without any penalty.

Given that asking constitutes UI, the partner of the asker has to be constrained. That's not penalzing the asking side for asking; it's preventing them from benefiting by asking. If the leader has logical alternatives, if your "asking practices" suggest an action...

[Stephen Tu]

jdonn, on Aug 28 2008, 11:55 AM, said:

However in practice if they thought 3♣ was a weak jump shift, then when you asked it was explained as a raise, how can you ever prove they took advantage?

?? It would pretty obvious on this one if they tried, no? Opener rebids spades on his 5 bagger thinking it was a raise, responder tries to rebid his long weak clubs even though passing opposite long spades was a LA, etc., if they end up in clubs you will get the adjustment.

I prefer to be able to know my opps methods, I try to always ask if I don't know, then my partner has no UI to deal with.

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

If one follows the policy of asking about every call that is alerted, the result will be that the auction period will be lengthened considerably.

I don't think so, not in the ACBL at least. Most common treatments are unalertable and common alerts are announcements, so how many times do you have to ask, really? Only if you are up against some Precision pair or something & you aren't going to have to ask about say the 1c opener all the time, just their funky later round alerts.

[SoTired]

Can't be. If one player alerts and the next player says, "Explain" and the alerter then explains the alert, this constrains the partner of the person who said, "Explain"???? Nonsense.

Too many lawyers

[paulg]

I have always thought that the EBU states this well.

EBU Orange Book said:

3 E 1 A player has the right to ask questions at his turn, but should be aware that exercising this right has consequences. If a player shows unusual interest in one or more calls of the auction, then this is unauthorised information to partner. Partner must carefully avoid taking advantage, which may constrain the actions partner is permitted to take during the remainder of the auction or when on lead during the play. (Law 16B, 73C). Asking about a call of 3NT or below which has not been alerted may cause more problems than asking about an alerted call, as may asking repeated or leading questions. Asking about alerted calls in a (potentially) competitive auction is less likely to have adverse consequences, although it is not risk free.

If, therefore, at a player’s turn to call, he does not need to have a call explained, it may be in his interests to defer all questions until either he is about to make the opening lead or his partner’s lead is face-down on the table.

This is far more better, imo, that the ACBL's CoC: "When an Alert is given, ASK!, do not ASSUME".

Paul

[Lobowolf]

SoTired, on Aug 28 2008, 02:34 PM, said:

Can't be. If one player alerts and the next player says, "Explain" and the alerter then explains the alert, this constrains the partner of the person who said, "Explain"???? Nonsense.

Too many lawyers

This is an oversimplification of the problem. How about...

24 board match...

Before the match, in a general system discussion, N/S say among other things, "We play a modified Bergen...we'll alert it."

5 of the first 10 boards, south alerts one of north's bids, and east bids without asking.

On the 11th board, the action goes, well, as the given action (1♠ - 3♣), but for the first time, east asks and is told that 3♣ shows single raise values and a 4-card suit (typical Bergen raise). The E/W agreement is that for Bergen situations, a double of an artificial bid is takeout if the bid shows a weak hand, but lead directing if it shows at least a limit raise.

After finding out it's weak, east passes. South bids 4♠. West now leads a club from among reasonable choices, and finds partner with a good club holding. In fact, only a club lead beats 4♠.

N/S aren't entitled to redress? Nonsense.

There are only too many lawyers until you need one.

[Lobowolf]

Stephen Tu, on Aug 28 2008, 02:31 PM, said:

?? It would pretty obvious on this one if they tried, no? Opener rebids spades on his 5 bagger thinking it was a raise, responder tries to rebid his long weak clubs even though passing opposite long spades was a LA, etc., if they end up in clubs you will get the adjustment.

More likely problematic situation:

N bids 3C
S alerts
E/W ask and are told it's a weak jump shift
N frowns ever so slightly
E passes
S takes some more time to think about it, then says, "Gee, ya know, I forgot. It's actually a Bergen raise."
E calls the director
The director asks if S has bid yet, and everyone says "No."
The director asks if E would like to change his bid, and E says "No."
The director says "ok, you did the right thing to call me" and leaves.
S bids 3S

W leads to 3S, a 5-4 fit, instead of E leading to 3C, a 3-1 fit.

[Stephen Tu]

That situation I can live with, if North's "ever so slight" frown isn't especially blatant so that I'm sure South noticed it (if I'm sure I'll get the director to scold them). There's no guarantee that South wouldn't have taken his time and thought more and come up with the right answer had I not asked.

I think I can beat most of my opponents without needing them to play their 3-1 fits, random tops aren't that interesting to me anyway. I don't care to play events where opps can't remember basic agreements like this one.

And I can't remember really the last time an opponent woke up because of this and changed their explanation. Usually they stick to their guns, saying it out loud to the opp confirms it in their mind, and they do play their 3-1 fit. Or if the auction continues sometimes the partner of the alerter blatantly does something catering to the UI (I think maybe 75% of players just don't know their duties in such a situation, they really ought to include ethics & proprieties in beginner classes) and I get the adjustment.

[jdonn]

You are right my example was quite bad. The truth is I just find it a rather annoying thing to do, as well as one that will fall apart in practice as people start not-asking about bids they already "know" the meaning of. There are also cases where they can still take advantage undetected, such as the strength of a Bergen raise if their hand is close to the border. Also as pointed out above, I am not a fan of giving them opportunity to use black magic to figure their bids out.

I would put it another way. If this is what was intended, then instead of the procedure being to say "alert" when strange bids come up and only explain them if asked, the procedure would be to simply explain strange bids as they come up without being asked.

[Lobowolf]

Jlall, on Aug 28 2008, 06:27 PM, said:

I see no problem with asking only when the information is relevant and then partner not taking advantage of the UI if you end up passing. This is the most efficient method by far, creates less situations for them to have and use UI, creates less situations for director calls, etc.

Creating interesting probability calculations...

Should I ask? Let's see...30% of people play normal Bergen, so I'll get to make a lead directing double, but 70% don't, so on the 95% of that 70% of the time that he has a logical alternative, I'll have barred him ethically from leading a club, but he was probably only going to do that 33% of the time anyway...