[ArtK78]

I don't believe that it would be difficult to codify such a rule. You start with the basic principal that a partnership is responsible for knowing their agreements. From there you set a series of different levels of "partnership forgetfulness." For example, if a partner properly explains his partnership agreement but forgets some small aspect of it but the omission has no impact on the bidding or the play of the hand, it is a no harm, no foul situation. Perhaps there should be some admonition to the partnership about knowing and properly explaining their agreements.

On the other end of the spectrum would be a complete failure to remember an agreement, resulting in misinformation and having a decided impact on the bidding and/or the play of the hand. Clearly this would have significant consequences.

There can be several levels in between, which can be clearly defined.

No doubt the application of such rules would involve judgment calls by the TDs and Appeals Committees in assigning the level of the offense as applied to a particular case.

Penalties and adjustments can be assigned to each level of "partnership forgetfulness." Further, there can be additional penalties for repeat offenders.

[jdonn]

TimG, on Jul 21 2009, 08:45 AM, said:

jdonn, on Jul 21 2009, 02:06 AM, said:

So you certainly can disagree if you want, but are wrong to accuse Fred of trying to 'have his cake and eat it too' as he isn't trying to gain anything for his side in any of this.

From one of Fred's early posts in the thread that started this (in the Bridge Laws section):

Quote

The solution in this particular case is easy - if a spade lead would have worked better than the lead that was actually made, the TD can adjust the score (and bend over backwards to make sure that the non-offending side takes as many tricks as they could ever reasonably take).

This seems to me like the non-offending side "gaining" because that side is no longer subject to the rub of the green result.

That is different, it's a ruling based on a current law now due to misinformation. It has no punitive intent for the offending side, which is what's being discussed.

[Phil]

jdonn, on Jul 21 2009, 02:06 AM, said:

It's a tax on undesirable behavior, even if it's not on purpose.

After nine pages of this thread, this is the best characterization anyone has come up to describe the punitive nature of these penalties. It isn't enough for a pair to get a poor result from forgetting their methods. There should be a sanction in the form of a penalty, no different than your cell phone going off. I get it (better late than never).

Carrying this forward, I would also state that a seasoned partnership has a much higher burden to disclose their agreements to their opponents, but this is relative to the complexity of the sequence as well. I think its fine for first time partnerships to say "no agreement", but the person should also make a good faith effort to disclose the implicit meaning of the call, even if this extends into 'general bridge knowledge'.

[fred]

barmar, on Jul 21 2009, 03:13 PM, said:

I sympathize with Fred's point.  I think what's causing this debate to go all over the place is that it would be very difficult to codify the rule you're suggesting.  How would you write the regulation that would penalize the example you just gave, but not forgetting a small detail in Ken's scientific cue-bidding and splinter system?

Perhaps the rule could limit itself to forgetting something in the first two rounds of bidding.  The further you go into the auction, the less likely you're in familiar territory, so misunderstandings are more understandable at all levels.  Although there are also some common exceptions -- should players be allowed to forget what type of Blackwood they're playing?

Agree this is hard and I don't have any good answers. I was mostly trying to raise the issue because I think it is a problem that many people are not aware of (apparently I am right about that much!) - not because I think I know the details of how best to solve it.

I do think your "first two rounds of bidding principle" makes some sense for a few reasons:

1) This is when the opponents are most likely to care about receiving accurate information because this is where they will make most of their decisions relating to whether or how to compete in the bidding.

2) It is early in the auction in which the opponents rate to have agreements about how to defend against various conventions.

3) Most bid that come up early in the auction happen with reasonably high frequency. The deeper you go in the auction, the rarer any given sequence tends to become. To me these "frequency considerations" argue both that it is more reasonable to expect pairs to know what they are doing early in the auction and that the total amount of chaos caused by forgetting a given early-round bid rates to be greater than that which will be caused by forgetting a given late-round bid.

4) A forget early in the auction will often cause the entire auction to spiral out of control while the impact of a late round forget may be nothing more than, say, whether game or slam is reached (plus the faulty information the opponents have received of course).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

For what its worth, I think that its reasonable to require that partnerships playing in "serious" events be able to describe the meaning of bids two rounds into an uncontested auction.

I would hope that we would all agree that the same disclosure requirements should apply both to partnerships using natural methods as scientific (and that the penalties for being unable to provide adequeate description of methods should be the same)

Contested auctions make like much MUCH more difficult...

[kenrexford]

fred, on Jul 21 2009, 09:01 AM, said:

kenrexford, on Jul 21 2009, 12:18 PM, said:

fred, on Jul 20 2009, 09:14 PM, said:

This is all because the opponents have given you information that allegedly they had agreed upon, which turned out to be wrong....

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Choice of wording is important, IMO...

100 pages of system notes proves nothing.

During a recent ACBL National Pairs Event I played against 2 well known players who were using one of those systems where a 1C opening could be based on a bunch of different types of hands (including strong hands, weak hands, balanced hands, unbalanced hands, hands with long clubs, and hands with short clubs) and a 1D opening was defined by another collection of seemingly-unrelated possible hand types (including, if I recall correctly, minimum hands with zero diamonds and six+ clubs and minimum hands with zero clubs and six+ diamonds - hmmm).

This pair was not a regular partnership.

My RHO opened 1D (alert!), I overcalled 1H, and my LHO bid of 2NT (alert!).

Just in case the subtleties of this highly-obscure auction have not sunk in yet, I will display it using the traditional notation:

1D-(1H)-2NT

My partner asked what 2NT meant and was given a detailed answer. Unfortunately the type of hand the 2NT bidder held was completely different in terms of both expected distribution and expected strength than what my partner was told to expect.

When the hand was over we called the Director.

Not only were the opponents able to produce 100 pages of system notes to prove that the 2NT bidder had "just made a mistake". They proudly showed the TD at least 300 pages of system notes thereby proving just how extensive their partnerships agreements were!

Somewhere around page 187, the TD saw that the correct explanation of the 2NT call had in fact been given to us. The whole thing was just a mistake (oops).

Naturally the TD bought this, shrugged his shoulders, and walked away.

What a joke!

Perhaps needless to say, if my opponents during this (true) story were capable of screwing up such a basic auction as this one, I suspect that giving them a quiz of their alleged agreements as documented by their system notes would have revealed that, in many cases, their answers would have disagreed with what their system notes had to say.

Partners make agreements with each other. They do not make agreements with their system notes or convention cards. If a player frequently forgets what has been documented, there is disagreement (as opposed to agreement) between the partners.

For those who have argued against my basic point but still have not bothered to thoroughly read the initial post, please note that once again in this post I have made references to:

- a basic auction
- frequent system forgets
- forgetting alleged agreements
- serious tournaments

If you want to discuss examples of forgets in highly complex constructive auctions, very occasional forgets, auctions in which there was no agreement and hence nothing to forget, or forgets in club games, be my guest - I am sure that some of these subjects are interesting too.

But you will not be arguing against (or for) the point I was trying to make.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I understand the frustration with your actual example. However, a few observations:

1. This is only one hand. Who knows if these two get everything else right?
2. Opener had the agreements down right, as it was explained right.
3. Responder made some idiotic mistake, apparently. However, the fact that this happened this early in the auction suggests that maybe the "mistake" was actually psychic and yet Responder refused to admit this. I would be skeptical of the explanation of a "mistake" under these circumstances and would ask for an explanation as to why this "mistake" happened. Was there a recent change to the system? Does some other bid cover this hand? Stuff like that.

Thus, from this example, I'm not sure that the problem is necessarily one of forgetting system. If it is, I'd want to know why. If there is a reasonable explanation for the mistake, then so be it. I'd shrug my shoulders too.

Granted, if there are frequent mistakes, this does seem to be a problem. I once played with a man who literally made a systems mistake years ago in Philadelphia at an NABC on more that 50% of the hands dealt. This was embarassing and infuriating, as a result of which I stopped playing with him. It was his complex system that I had learned.

Fashioning a solution, though, is a mine-field, IMO, for reasons others have stated. My solution was economics based -- I changed partners because of the cost of playing with that man (embarassment, losing, head exploding, etc.).

[Echognome]

1) I want to note that I did suggest earlier in this thread that someone try to codify a rule and it might be more productive to debate that.

2) I think a big problem is intent. This is already a problem, if you think about it, between misbid and psych. That's why I like that the EBU treats them similarly (having green, amber, and red as classifications for both psychs and misbids).

Fred tells the story about his opponents that bid (1D) - 1H - (2NT) - ? and was given an incorrect description of what the hand actually held, yet the opponents were able to show that the explanation was correct. I'm unclear on what they did wrong. The way Fred tells it, the opponents have done he and Brad an injustice. But, the TD shrugs and walks away. So what should have happened? What exactly is the problem here? Is the problem that the opponents were playing something complicated so it was more likely they would have a forget? Or was it that the explanation didn't match the hand? I mean I'm sure Fred doesn't have a problem with the latter. People are allowed to psych and allowed to misbid. So, exactly what is the behavior we are trying to prevent? How do we figure out the intent? If we answer those, then it's easy enough to come up with an appropriate level of punishment.

[glen]

ArtK78, on Jul 21 2009, 11:29 AM, said:

... Penalties and adjustments can be assigned to each level of "partnership forgetfulness."  Further, there can be additional penalties for repeat offenders.

According to Fred's parameters (a basic auction, frequent, forgetting alleged agreements, serious tournaments) there are only penalties for repeat offenders. Thus, in Fred's example, the TD might say "well, this is the first time you forgot something somewhere around page 187, so you now get the preliminary warning".

[awm]

Some issues with misbids like the one in Fred's example:

(1) Given the opponents methods, partner will almost always be asked for an explanation. This means the "misbidder" will normally have the UI as to what his partner thinks he has, and may try to take advantage. Note that while screens might help with this issue, there are many "serious" events at least in ACBL where screens are not in use, and screens create another problem in that at least one opponent is likely to have been misinformed as to the agreement.

(2) Since it is hard to tell between a deliberate psych and a misbid, it may be unclear whether "misbidder" is taking advantage of the UI or has simply psyched, always remembered their agreement, and is trying to reach the best contract possible under the circumstances.

(3) Since the methods are highly complicated, there may effectively be "psychic controls" (or should I say, "forget controls") where certain subsequent calls are anti-systemic and indicate that an accident has occurred. Such agreements should not be permitted.

(4) Because of extensive partnership experience, misbidder's partner is likely to know not only their current agreement (if he remembers) but also what their agreement "used to be." This gives him a lot more ability to sort out misbidder's actual hand than the opponents are likely to have, and this information is not typically disclosed.

[Phil]

Against a very well known pair (I'll withhold names) in the Denver BAM a few years ago, I heard the following auction:

1♣ - pass - 1♦*

which was "semi-alerted". I asked and was told that 1♦ "denied a four card major".

Imagine my surprise when I had to find three discards against 3N, and chose to pitch away from ♠Jxxx when dummy held ♠Axx, and declarer did, in fact, hold ♠KQxx.

Fred, would you think this should be actionable?

[jdonn]

Echognome, on Jul 21 2009, 11:48 AM, said:

Fred tells the story about his opponents that bid (1D) - 1H - (2NT) - ? and was given an incorrect description of what the hand actually held, yet the opponents were able to show that the explanation was correct. I'm unclear on what they did wrong. The way Fred tells it, the opponents have done he and Brad an injustice. But, the TD shrugs and walks away. So what should have happened? What exactly is the problem here? Is the problem that the opponents were playing something complicated so it was more likely they would have a forget? Or was it that the explanation didn't match the hand? I mean I'm sure Fred doesn't have a problem with the latter. People are allowed to psych and allowed to misbid. So, exactly what is the behavior we are trying to prevent? How do we figure out the intent? If we answer those, then it's easy enough to come up with an appropriate level of punishment.

The answer to "what exactly is the problem" and "what behavior we are trying to prevent" is, at least very likely based on the story, the opponents are playing a system they simply can not handle. I mean I look at Ken mention the possibility that the opponents get every other auction in their system right and I just laugh. The auction was 1♦ (1♥) 2NT! It's not exactly breaking new ground.

[barmar]

If responder deliberately psyched the 1♦ response, there's no penalty. If the explanation was incorrect, you get a ruling based on misinformation.

If he legitimately forgot that his 1♦ bid denied a 4-card major, then Fred's proposal comes into play. And in this case, it matters whether this was an isolated incident or he has a history of forgetting this part of their system.

[helene_t]

Echognome, on Jul 21 2009, 05:48 PM, said:

Fred tells the story about his opponents that bid (1D) - 1H - (2NT) - ? and was given an incorrect description of what the hand actually held, yet the opponents were able to show that the explanation was correct. I'm unclear on what they did wrong.

Maybe they didn't have a common understanding of what it meant so the correct explanation would be "no agreement". Then one might wonder whether it is allowed not to have an agreement about such a basic auction.

I wonder if the TD is allowed to assess that they in fact did not have the agreement in spite of the system notes "proving" it. I have never heard about such a case, but if a non-regular partnership is able to produce 300 pages of notes and subsequently mess up such a basic auction, it smells like one of them copying his notes from another partnership and the other planned to have a look at it after Christmas.

[cherdanno]

Echognome, on Jul 21 2009, 11:48 AM, said:

Fred tells the story about his opponents that bid (1D) - 1H - (2NT) - ? and was given an incorrect description of what the hand actually held, yet the opponents were able to show that the explanation was correct. I'm unclear on what they did wrong.

Given that they were not a regular partnership and had many hundreds of pages of system notes, I it is questionable that they had a proper agreement about what 2NT meant.
Say I give you 100 pages of system notes the day before we play, and you tell me "yeah it looks fine" after half an hour, and I know that on page 59 there is the bazumba convention that I know you have never played, and this bid comes up during the play. Can I really assume that your bid is intended as the bazumba convention, and have I fullfilled my obligations when I alert and explain your bid means bazumba?
Of course, "no agreement" is not a good explanation either. Maybe you have read page 59, after all.

[Echognome]

Perhaps it should be a question of making better use of a recorder system?

[NickRW]

fred, on Jul 21 2009, 02:01 PM, said:

My RHO opened 1D (alert!), I overcalled 1H, and my LHO bid of 2NT (alert!).

Just in case the subtleties of this highly-obscure auction have not sunk in yet, I will display it using the traditional notation:

1D-(1H)-2NT

My partner asked what 2NT meant and was given a detailed answer. Unfortunately the type of hand the 2NT bidder held was completely different in terms of both expected distribution and expected strength than what my partner was told to expect.

When the hand was over we called the Director.

Not only were the opponents able to produce 100 pages of system notes to prove that the 2NT bidder had "just made a mistake". They proudly showed the TD at least 300 pages of system notes thereby proving just how extensive their partnerships agreements were!

Somewhere around page 187, the TD saw that the correct explanation of the 2NT call had in fact been given to us. The whole thing was just a mistake (oops).

Naturally the TD bought this, shrugged his shoulders, and walked away.

What a joke!

So the law got applied, and now you're crying about it. Tough luck.

Nick

[fred]

Phil, on Jul 21 2009, 05:00 PM, said:

Against a very well known pair (I'll withhold names) in the Denver BAM a few years ago, I heard the following auction:

1♣ - pass - 1♦*

which was "semi-alerted". I asked and was told that 1♦ "denied a four card major".

Imagine my surprise when I had to find three discards against 3N, and chose to pitch away from ♠Jxxx when dummy held ♠Axx, and declarer did, in fact, hold ♠KQxx.

Fred, would you think this should be actionable?

Barmar did a good job of summing up my thoughts on this when he said:

Quote

If responder deliberately psyched the 1♦ response, there's no penalty. If the explanation was incorrect, you get a ruling based on misinformation.

If he legitimately forgot that his 1♦ bid denied a 4-card major, then Fred's proposal comes into play. And in this case, it matters whether this was an isolated incident or he has a history of forgetting this part of their system.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Echognome]

By the way, there are a lot of "maybe's" floating around in response. Most of the explanations given are currently legal. I'd like to focus on Arend's example, because I think it was quite plausible in the given circumstance, although I'm not directing my questions at Arend per se.

How should the following be treated differently (if at all)? In all cases, assume these are the facts after one partner has made a misbid.

1a. The pair has explicitly had a discussion regarding the sequence and the sequence is "basic".
1b. The pair has explicitly had a discussion regarding the sequence and the sequence is "complex".

2a. The pair has co-edited a set of system notes, but has not explicitly discussed all of the sequences. The partnership is newly formed and has not played that much together yet.
2b. The pair has co-edited a set of system notes, but has not explicitly discussed all of the sequences. The partnership has played together for several years.

3a. One partner has sent the other partner a set of system notes and that partner has agreed to play them. The partnership is new.
3b. One partner has sent the other partner a set of system notes and that partner has agreed to play them. The partnership is experienced.

4a. The partnership is new and agrees to play a "standard" system, which is not clearly defined.
4b. The partnership is experienced and agrees to play a "standard" system, which is not clearly defined.

If you want to make a distinction between the a's and the b's, then you also have the problem of deciding what is a new partnership and what is an experienced partnership.

[TimG]

Take Fred's example auction of 1♦-(1H)-2N* and consider

1) Opener alerts 2N and gives the wrong explanation, there has been MI and the opponents may be due an adjustment; or

2) Opener alerts 2N and gives the right information, but responder has misbid (forgotten the agreement), here again there has been MI of a sort, but now the opponents are not due an adjustment.

It does seem a bit strange to me that these forgets are treated differently even though both result in the opponents being misinformed. (Of course, one problem is that if responder has forgotten, he can always claim that he intentionally misbid, and an intentional misbid is permitted.)

Is it a fair summary that Fred would like both 1) and 2) treated the same, possibly with procedural penalties and individual system restrictions in the case of repeat offenders?

I think it would be fine in theory to treat both of these forgets the same. But, it may prove rather impractical to consistently apply 2). Likely you'd have to have some sort of misbid tracking system.

ETA: Tracking will be problematic because people will only report opponents' forgets that adversely affect their score.

Tim

[fred]

TimG, on Jul 21 2009, 05:40 PM, said:

Take Fred's example auction of 1♦-(1H)-2N* and consider

1) Opener alerts 2N and gives the wrong explanation, there has been MI and the opponents may be due an adjustment; or

2) Opener alerts 2N and gives the right information, but responder has misbid (forgotten the agreement), here again there has been MI of a sort, but now the opponents are not due an adjustment.

It does seem a bit strange to me that these forgets are treated differently even though both result in the opponents being misinformed.  (Of course, one problem is that if responder has forgotten, he can always claim that he intentionally misbid, and an intentional misbid is permitted.)

Is it a fair summary that Fred would like both 1) and 2) treated the same, possibly with procedural penalties and individual system restrictions in the case of repeat offenders?

No - I do not think it is a good idea to treat 1) and 2) the same (at least not in some/most cases).

I do think that there should be *some* penalty for habitual offenders in major tournaments. Perhaps procedural penalties and/or individual system restrictions are the best alternatives, but I have not given the specifics a great deal of thought (nor am I really qualified to voice an opinion in this area due to my general ignorance of the laws).

It is entirely possible, IMO, that even the best solution would result in problems more serious than the one I would like to see addressed. I suppose the way this should work is, if the powers-that-be decide to strengthen the laws in this area, they can put their heads together and hopefully come up with viable, practical, and fair new laws.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com