[mikeh]

Scoring: IMP

Flt 'A' VP Swiss, experienced but not strong NS, as will be apparent from what happened: the uncontested auction went:

P 1♦
3♠* 4♣
4♠ 4N
5♣ 6♦

Diamonds were 4-3 with the jack dropping, and the club Q was onside so this silly contract sailed home.

The 3♠ call was alerted and explained as a splinter...

The 4♣ call came after protracted, apparently agonizing thought (conceded to be a long BIT), 4♠ was bid in a flash, subsequent bids were each accompanied by hesitations.

Declarer stated at the table that 4♣ was intended to be gerber (yes, this was Flt A), but responder was confused in his explanations...understandably so given that he hadn't meant to splinter at all) and declarer, on being asked, repeatedly, by the committee, to explain 4N, gave differing answers, ranging from signoff (!) to 'not sure'.

What troubled us more than anything was the Director ruling. Had the director said... that's unlucky, EW, but what can I do?, we might have left it there. But the Director ruled as follows:

After the alert and explanation, I won't let N bid 4♠. Instead, I make him bid 5♣ because he has clubs if 4♣ was natural and has a cue if 4♣ was a cue in support of spades (N had intended 3♠ to be invitational and natural). Now I make S, who thinks N has splintered, bid 6♦.

We felt that S could not be allowed to let alone forced to bid a slam in an auction in which N had denied a heart control and had shown a stiff spade... how on earth could N be made to cue 5♣ and hold the heart Ace?

And why set aside the 4♠ bid anyway? Even if S still interpreted the spade bid as a splinter, and didn't work out that the opps must hold AJxxxxxxxxx between them if 4♠ showed a void (and neither had bid at the 1-level), he still has to expect to be off the heart A and maybe to have trouble in clubs... so slam is not assured. If 4♠ were the stiff Ace, that explains the opps' silence but then makes the risk of being off two heart tricks very real.

This ruling would mean the difference between our tying for 1st or winning outright so we had some interest in the outcome.

---

[hrothgar]

Hi Mike

Couple comments:

1. Regardless of what i thought about the ruling, you aren't going to get an adjustment. The opponents stumbled into a piss poor contract that happened to make. Normally, this would have resulted in a big plus for all y'all. In this case, you got harmed. Cheer up... This doesn't happen all that often.

2. I'm not particularly enamoured by the director's logic. I can't udnerstand his claims about the bidding and I wouldn't be particularly happy to by on the receiving end of his work product. A case can be made that this incident should be escalated in order to correct the director rather than the score. In an ideal world, the director will learn something about the game, allowing him/her to produce better rulings in the future. In practice, the director will feel aggrieved and be pissed at you for making him look bad...

I don't see any real percentage in moving forward with this, which is not to say that I wouldn't do so...

[kenrexford]

First, these people are utter idiots.

3♠?!?!? That's not even close to a 3♠ call by any definition I have heard of. It's just bizarre.

But, if I focus on North's bidding alone (the problem), I don't get 4♠. 4♣ had to be a cue in support of spades OR a rejection of spades with a minor two-suiter. In the former event, passing 6♦ is insane -- bid 6♠. In the latter event, I'm not sure what is going on.

But, I think the TD was wrong for making North bid 5♣ and then passing 6♦. This MUST be a grand try in spades. Whether 6♠ or 7♠, a bid is required.

The funny thing is that I lack info. Suppose a heart lead is made. Declarer wins the Ace, plays a club to dummy, and runs the top three diamonds, ditching two hearts and one club. At this point, the diamond Jack falls out somewhere.

If West had Jxx, a fourth diamond forces West to ruff. If the ruff is with the trump Ace, Declarer ditches a second club and may well make 6♠. If not, something nice might happen to allow the contract to make anyway. Worst case scenario, Declarer ends up relying on a club finesse.

Who has the club Queen???

From South's perspective, 4NT might not make sense, unless the pair uses "Ace first" cuebidding. Need more info. Or, 4♥ might have been RKCB or something. 4NT seems plausibly right, depending on their agreements. After the response, 6♦ seems weird, but then who knows what is going on here? I cannot find fault with South because I have no idea what they play or what any of the nonsense would mean to South, let alone what inferences were or could have been taken.

[peachy]

What was the actual NS agreement for the 3S call? Without having established what their agreement was, TD cannot begin any ruling so surely he did that first.
If they had no agreement, then there was extraneous alerting. If they had an agreement that 3S was splinter, then N apparently used UI to bid 4S to put partner on track that he actually had spades.

It is always a mess when partners don't know what they are playing and sometimes it happens that they land in a lucky place. If no law was broken on the way, unlucky for you. But I think to judge whether yes or no on that, need to know what their agreement was.

[Lanor Fow]

I'm not sure it actually matters what there agreement is, unless Mike or his partner were to claim to be damaged by misinformation, which I dont think he is claiming.

Without any claim of damage through misinformation it becomes purely a UI case, and tehre agreements dont matter. Either north has bid systemically and has the UI that his partner has thought it was something else, or north has forgotten the system and still has the UI that south thinks its a splinter. He cannot be woken up by this, so in either case the UI received is identical, and the ruling will surely proceed along the same lines.


As for the ruling, it seems the director has decided that 4 spades has been demonstratably suggested by the UI and that 5 clubs is a logical altenative.

If both of these are true then it becomes interesting as to what south thinks 5 clubs is. South says that 4c was geber, if so what does a 5c responce to gerber mean? That north has denied heart controls I think is an incorrect conclusion, becuase they are not, according to south, in a cue bidding auction.

[helene_t]

North abused the UI and bid 4♠ in an attempt to cancel the splinter, thereby showing two aces. South bid 4NT asking for kings and heard non so he bid only 6.

Without the UI, it is not clear what N would have bid but in most cases (unless N passes 4♣ which is a real possibility I would say), S would probably bid the slam anyway.

Even if it was the use of UI that helped them to the slam, I think Richard is right that you can't get an adjustment. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

As for the TD's ruling it was a little weird but he probably wasn't thinking to hard about it since his thought was that no matter what was more likely to happen without the UI, the result would stand. My guess.

[kenrexford]

This seems to be another example of one of my favorite "Leah Conventions." A "Leah Convention" is a bid made by my wife, Leah, that works in an amazing manner that I cannot truly understand.

Her convention was a 3♠ "splinter or suit" call like this. I held AKQxxx in hearts (very similar), opposite her stiff in hearts. I forced to 6♥, like this South did.

When hearts split 3-3 (functional equivalent), 6♥ made. 6♠, on the other hand, fails, because the lead needed to come into my hand.

So, apparently this 3♠ call, as "either short or long spades" works, so long as you declare with Responder's short suit as trumps, if Opener initiated that suit. I have now seen two hands where this convention was used, and both times the best contract was in Responder's short suit. Seems to be proof.

I don't know why this works. The bridge theory is too advanced for me.

[mycroft]

So, most people who are requiring club raises are effectively saying "no, they don't play Gerber, even though they say that". Frankly, even in Flight A, people who bid like this probably *do* play Gerber-When-Obvious. He said it was Gerber, he bid to slam as he had to with all the Aces; it may be "self-serving", but that means it has less weight than non-self-serving evidence, not no weight.

4S is clearly what is described elsewhere as "Unauthorized panic"; when partner says you are showing a different suit than you have, rebid the one he doesn't know about at the cheapest level FAST. I, too, have no idea what 4NT is (it wouldn't surprise me if it was "Checkback Blackwood", even), but I can't see anything that stops 6D. So put yourself in North's shoes - you've shown a hand that wants to play in Spades, only (why, I don't know); partner takes captaincy, and doesn't let you back in - 6C for instance, or 5NT as pick-a-slam. Doesn't correcting to 6S seem like taking advantage of the UI, over leaving him in his hopeless diamond contract (or, assuming they're slightly better, assuming that he does have the "all I need are your two aces" hand)? Yes, it turns out that 6D is less hopeless than 6S (this time); usually when you're 4 trumps short of your bid, it won't be.

I think there's a stiff warning to be given here over the unauthorized panic - perhaps even a 1/4 board "warning", depending on their actual skill (as opposed to what they showed here, or the number of their attendance points) - but I can't see any grounds for adjudication. I think they unsuccessfully tried to hang themselves (in the end) as they were supposed to, and that if they hadn't, and that (4S, 4NT, whatever) had worked, they'd be in 6D-x.

I'm sorry for you, Mike - I hope they played that well for the rest of it so you could get it back.

[mikeh]

mycroft, on Apr 20 2009, 03:08 PM, said:

I'm sorry for you, Mike - I hope they played that well for the rest of it so you could get it back.

thx


We actually expected to lose the appeal, but took it primarily because, as a team, we were annoyed at the director... not for the ruling about the result but about the attitude of and the method used by the director.

It seemed to us that the director could and probably should have ruled that even tho confusion was evident, this was one of those unlucky situations in which the opps landed on their feet.. leave the auction and result unchanged... or, if you decide that UI impacted the auction, adjust the score to the least favourable plausible result for NS... and, above all, do not impose on this demonstrably inept partnership a logical auction to a slam... why not a logical auction to a grand (after N promises the stiff spade A, the heart A and long diamonds) or to 5♦, etc?

So we wanted the director told off.. but in the result, the inconsistent statements made by declarer... at the table, 4♣ was gerber, in committee, it might not have been, and at committee he couldn't explain 4N... persuaded the committee, so I was told later, that they decided that it would be offensive to allow the result to stand. I am not at all sure that that is an appropriate basis for a ruling...

Anyway, while we were all pissed off by the director, having got the unexpected ruling, I now feel badly for the team that finished 2nd instead of tied for the win... it wasn't the team involved in this match, btw I have this sneaking feeling that we should have tried to solve our problem by discussions with the head director rather than the AC.

[Phil]

Well, 1♦ is OK

3♠ is eccentric. I don't like the bid, but we aren't here to give lessons to these two.

4♣ Gerber. LOL. But why wouldn't it be Gerber over a natural 3♠ as well?

A fast 4♠ call is the mark of a club player, and there is no scope for this behavior in a deciding match of an A/X Swiss. Obviously North didn't take it 4♣ as Gerber, so this represents a 2nd misunderstanding. Should North be allowed to bid 4♠, much less a fast 4♠? No of course not. I would have asked if North understood 4♣ as Gerber. If the answer is no, then I would ask why North didn't think 4♣ was a cue bid for spades, or natural. If its a cue for spades, then 4♥ looks clear (yes I see its also the answer for Gerber), but if 4♣ is natural, then 5♣ looks warranted.

4N appears to be asking for Kings, since North 'obviously' has 2 aces, but in reality, South had lost his/her map on the bidding and 4N is one of those "I don't know what is going on". South's decisions have been colored by pard's blatant UI, so its hard to do the right thing, when you don't know what the right thing is. When South was questioned what 4N was, South couldn't answer, since South didn't know.

5♣ says "you really didn't see my fast 4♠ bid, so I'll just answer 1430 and be done with it".

6♦ is just a guess. It is totally unlucky for you that it worked out.

I take it the NS cc is silent on 1m - 3M, or that 'Gerber is always on'. Maybe they play criss-cross minorwood. Who knows.

This is a really terrible result, but the opponents guessing right in the end and it working. In fairness, there is nothing about the bidding that suggests that anyone took advantage of anything, except for the questionable 4♠ call, but that doesn't seem to affect the end result.

[Stephen Tu]

4♠ call clearly is suggested by the UI and they are not allowed to gain advantage because of it. It doesn't matter that the 6d making result was "lucky", if some other allowed logical call could lead to a different final contract, then the offending side does not get to land in the lucky 6d.

To me an auction of 1d-3s-4c-5c-5d-p is not totally implausible, I would have ruled 5d+1.

[mikeh]

Phil, on Apr 20 2009, 04:14 PM, said:

A fast 4♠ call is the mark of a club player, and there is no scope for this behavior in a deciding match of an A/X Swiss.

Just to be clear.. this was the deciding match only in the sense that an adjustment added a couple of VPs to our total.. this was the 2nd or 3rd match in the first session.. the opps were not in contention after this match so the committee result didn't impact their finish, as far as I know.

[Phil]

Stephen Tu, on Apr 20 2009, 04:44 PM, said:

It doesn't matter that the 6d making result was "lucky", if some other allowed logical call could lead to a different final contract, then the offending side does not get to land in the lucky 6d.

If South is going to taking a stab at the final contract, I don't see why

1♦ - 3♠
4♣ - 5♣
6♦

is any less plausible than the actual auction.

Quote

4♠ call clearly is suggested by the UI and they are not allowed to gain advantage because of it.

So if it hesitates, shoot it. I don't see how an 'in-tempo' 4♣ versus the slow 4♣ (which is the only call in the auction that contained UI that I can see) makes bidding 4♠ any more attractive. South alerted 3♠ as a splinter, and this North player seems hell-bent on saying, "I have spades".

[jdonn]

Phil, on Apr 20 2009, 05:51 PM, said:

Stephen Tu, on Apr 20 2009, 04:44 PM, said:

It doesn't matter that the 6d making result was "lucky", if some other allowed logical call could lead to a different final contract, then the offending side does not get to land in the lucky 6d.

If South is going to taking a stab at the final contract, I don't see why

1♦ - 3♠
4♣ - 5♣
6♦

is any less plausible than the actual auction.

But maybe just maybe, south only took a stab because north bid 4♠ like a shot, so south figured out his alert was wrong?

Quote

Quote

4♠ call clearly is suggested by the UI and they are not allowed to gain advantage because of it.

So if it hesitates, shoot it. I don't see how an 'in-tempo' 4♣ versus the slow 4♣ (which is the only call in the auction that contained UI that I can see) makes bidding 4♠ any more attractive. South alerted 3♠ as a splinter, and this North player seems hell-bent on saying, "I have spades".

But maybe just maybe, north was only hell bent on spades because south's alert didn't match north's hand?

[Lobowolf]

Phil, on Apr 20 2009, 05:51 PM, said:

So if it hesitates, shoot it. I don't see how an 'in-tempo' 4♣ versus the slow 4♣ (which is the only call in the auction that contained UI that I can see) makes bidding 4♠ any more attractive. South alerted 3♠ as a splinter, and this North player seems hell-bent on saying, "I have spades".

Since the explanations are internally inconsistent (i.e. south's explaining his own call 2 different ways), I think it's reasonable to draw inferences from the players' actions and at least look beyond the calls and explanations. 4♣ was purportedly Gerber, in which case 4♠ let declarer know that his side had all the aces (all the keycards and the queen of trump, in fact), yet declarer, upon receiving that response, bids 4NT, which he explained at one point as a sign-off.

I'm definitely inferring that somewhere between 4♣ and 4NT, south received and acted on some UI, himself, whether it was the tempo of the 4♠ bid, or some facial expression. 4♣ may have been Gerber, but somewhere before the auction came back around, he got the (unauthorized) impression that 4♠ certainly wasn't.

That's not to say that it led to damage, per se. You're allowed to land on your feet. But there's more going on than the tank before 4♣. I'd not the UI-laden call that needs extreme scrutiny, it's the UI-laden misexplanation.

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

So if it hesitates, shoot it

What do the hesitations have anything to do with it? The UI is from the explanation of the 3s call as a splinter, the hesitations on this hand don't really seem to have any bearing on the ruling as far as I can tell.

It's "if it takes a call clearly suggested by the UI, when other logical alternatives are present, which people really ought to know they aren't allowed to do, then shoot it".

South isn't allowed to "guess right" on the hypothetical alternative auction to bid 6♦, after North actually bid the disallowed 4♠, because you rule with doubtful points in favor of the unoffending side. If North had actually bid 5♣ (or really anything other than 4s), not taking the clearly disallowed alternative, and South had guessed to bid 6♦, then I would have ruled "result stands", because then I don't see how anyone took a call suggested by UI, no rule broken, then the opps just randomly landed on their feet.

[Lobowolf]

The first question is, "What are the logical bids available to responder, assuming that he thought that opener knew that he had a natural, invitational hand in spades, and then bid 4♣?"

[mycroft]

Stephen, tell me, just looking at the N-S cards, if you want to be in 6D. In fact, wouldn't you *much rather* be in 4S?
Tell me, just looking at the auction (through 4S), if South isn't going to get "shot" if she's not in some slam. Does that change if partner bids 4H (proper response to 4C)? What about if we're going to believe that they're snowing us and they don't play GWO, and it goes 4C-5C?
Given that, tell me what call you are going to allow? Only the one that doesn't happen to work at the table? In other words, if the diamonds were 4-3 with the J not dropping, and they stopped in something else, would you force 6D on them?

"If it hesitates, shoot it." s/hesitates/provides UI/
Whether by luck or good management, N/S seem to have ended up in their L73C-mandated contract, and the 15ish% ("silly", per OP) thing came home. Oh well.

[Stephen Tu]

mycroft, on Apr 21 2009, 10:07 AM, said:

Stephen, tell me, just looking at the N-S cards, if you want to be in 6D.  In fact, wouldn't you *much rather* be in 4S?

Whether one "wants to be in 6d" is completely irrelevant. Just because a contract is bad single dummy doesn't mean that the opponents get to profit from using unauthorized information. This is well established in case law. Say on some completely different hand, there is a classic "hesitation blackwood" auction. Spades are trumps, South bids blackwood, North answers, South takes 30 seconds before bidding 5S. North raises to slam. Say they aren't missing 2 aces, but still the slam is "terrible", still requiring a finesse & a 3-3 break in a suit, 18% slam. But it makes. Do N-S get to keep their slam because it was lucky? No, because if North had followed the law, not bid 6s based on UI, E-W wouldn't have been in that position, they were damaged by the using of the UI. The final contract being bad has no bearing on North not being allowed to use the UI. Bad bidding doesn't give you permission to use UI!

Quote

Tell me, just looking at the auction (through 4S), if South isn't going to get "shot" if she's not in some slam.  Does that change if partner bids 4H (proper response to 4C)? 

On the actual auction, I don't believe the Gerber statement because South tried to sign off in 4nt after getting the "2 ace" response, and also North gave the wrong answer to Gerber, using the UI. If the auction had actually gone 4c-4h-6d, or 4c-5c-6d then result stands, because then North didn't take a call suggested by the UI, there's no infraction.

Quote

Given that, tell me what call you are going to allow?  Only the one that doesn't happen to work at the table?  In other words, if the diamonds were 4-3 with the J not dropping, and they stopped in something else, would you force 6D on them?

*If North *doesn't* bid 4s, I think they get to keep their score, there is no infraction, unless there are more UI issues later in the auction.

*After North *does* bid 4S, then it depends what happens. If they end up in 6d on their own, if it goes down they get to keep the score, since then they didn't profit from the infraction. If they stop in 4S, or 5d, then the director has to disallow 4S, then figure out plausible continuations with other bids not suggested by the UI, and give E-W the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think I'd automatically force 6d going down on South given the spade wastage and partner being a passed hand. It depends on what sort of auction they perpetrate and if there is further UI being passed.

Quote

Whether by luck or good management, N/S seem to have ended up in their L73C-mandated contract, and the 15ish% ("silly", per OP) thing came home.  Oh well.

Just because it's 15% doesn't mean they get to keep it. They profited from the use of UI = adjustment if it is plausible they stop lower if a non-UI using sequence was chosen. The laws only say "adjust if there is profit" from use of UI. There is no exception for "but profit is OK if they only did so because of extreme luck".

Quote

"If it hesitates, shoot it." s/hesitates/provides UI/

This isn't accurate either. "If it *uses* UI, shoot it". If North doesn't use the UI to bid 4S, N-S get to keep whatever they reach on other auctions if no infractions.

[mycroft]

But what else does South do after 4C-4S? Are you going to allow him to stop short of slam - in fact, are you not going to say "you used the fast 4S to wake you up to the fact that he may not have 2 aces, that's the only reason you aren't in slam"? So that's that potential UI.

North used UI when he bid 4S. But what is a logical alternative? If you believe that 4C is Gerber, then the only LA (frankly, the only A) is 4H. Do you think that with South's hand, after the correct one-ace 4H, he isn't going to get to 6D?

If you don't believe in Gerber, is North doing anything but passing 4NT also use of UI? If not, again, can South do anything but 6D?

Basically, what you are saying is "if it is plausible". What I and others are saying is "you can't just say 'it's plausible' (in fact, by law, 'likely', as far as the non-offenders are concerned; let's assume for the moment we don't care what result we're going to apply to the offenders (which only has to meet the "at all possible" test)) - you have to show how a likely road leads to anything that scores worse than 6D. And I can't do that, for any reasonable definition of "likely".

What I am also saying (and, with your last explanation, I'm less concerned about it here - I will admit I was looking more at the UI from the fast 4S than the UI leading to the unauthorized panic) is that if, after UI is transmitted, there is no path of calls that, should it happen to be the right one, won't be rolled back to something that fails, then you're in "if it hesitates, shoot it", and that's wrong. There has to be some call that won't be ruled as using UI.

Again, focussing on the 4S call as use of UI and not anything South did with the unauthorized panic reduces my concern.