[Jlall]

Ken also writes about the Hyperbolic Cue in his next book: A Whole New World.

[jdonn]

Let me clarify. I don't see any hyperbole or exageration in the situation to which you were refering, to the point that I wasn't even sure you meant what I thought you meant.

[quiddity]

I don't understand the thrust of the OP at all. If people who "play bridge at the highest level" are so bothered by the randomizing effect of human mistakes, why not switch to a par-contest format or start playing against robots? Are certain types of mistakes more fun to encounter (and profit from) than others?

[blackshoe]

glen, on Jul 20 2009, 08:55 AM, said:

Trinidad, on Jul 20 2009, 07:52 AM, said:

... Are there really many (any?) pairs in serious tournaments who frequently screw up basic auctions? ...

Yes, there are pairs that will sometimes "screw up basic auctions" in serious tournaments. For example this will occur in the upcoming Bermuda Bowl.

"Sometimes" ≠ "frequently".

[blackshoe]

peachy, on Jul 20 2009, 02:23 PM, said:

Free, on Jul 20 2009, 01:02 PM, said:

Imo it might be difficult to differentiate between an error and a psych.

Little off topic since tis thread is about forgetting agreements, not about psychs.

A psych is a "deliberate and gross deviation from partnership agreement". A system forget is never a psych because if one does not know what the agreement is, one cannot deliberately (with intention) grossly deviate from it.

I suspect that the point was that it would be a Bad Thing™ if someone psyched and then got told "you're being penalized because you forgot your system".

[glen]

blackshoe, on Jul 20 2009, 06:53 PM, said:

glen, on Jul 20 2009, 08:55 AM, said:

Trinidad, on Jul 20 2009, 07:52 AM, said:

... Are there really many (any?) pairs in serious tournaments who frequently screw up basic auctions? ...

Yes, there are pairs that will sometimes "screw up basic auctions" in serious tournaments. For example this will occur in the upcoming Bermuda Bowl.

"Sometimes" ≠ "frequently".

True, but frequently was an over-requirement for this discussion

[kenrexford]

jdonn, on Jul 20 2009, 05:40 PM, said:

Let me clarify. I don't see any hyperbole or exageration in the situation to which you were refering, to the point that I wasn't even sure you meant what I thought you meant.

Well, I actually meant curvy in that context.

But, since you mention it, the hyperbole would be in exaggerating the issue of forgotten systems. Sure, it happens that forgetting one's system occasionally leads to fix results for the opponents. But, wanting to change the rules to punish that problem seems a bit much.

[kenrexford]

Jlall, on Jul 20 2009, 05:38 PM, said:

Ken also writes about the Hyperbolic Cue in his next book: A Whole New World.

Oh, that's definitely a cue of note. There are actually at least two versions of this.

The traditional "Hyperbolic Cue" is the cuebid that wildly overstates your values. That's been around for years.

The more modern version is the cue in a completely unexpected situation that leaves partner at least initially scratching his or her head. In that context, the "curve" meaning of the term is actually relevant, as in throwing partner a curve. I'm one of the zen masters of this type of cue.

[jdonn]

kenrexford, on Jul 20 2009, 07:21 PM, said:

jdonn, on Jul 20 2009, 05:40 PM, said:

Let me clarify. I don't see any hyperbole or exageration in the situation to which you were refering, to the point that I wasn't even sure you meant what I thought you meant.

Well, I actually meant curvy in that context.

But, since you mention it, the hyperbole would be in exaggerating the issue of forgotten systems. Sure, it happens that forgetting one's system occasionally leads to fix results for the opponents. But, wanting to change the rules to punish that problem seems a bit much.

It would help for the discussion if you didn't make up arguments for the other side that no one used, such as "I want to make this rule to punish opponents for the times they occasionally fix me."

[kenrexford]

jdonn, on Jul 20 2009, 07:28 PM, said:

kenrexford, on Jul 20 2009, 07:21 PM, said:

jdonn, on Jul 20 2009, 05:40 PM, said:

Let me clarify. I don't see any hyperbole or exageration in the situation to which you were refering, to the point that I wasn't even sure you meant what I thought you meant.

Well, I actually meant curvy in that context.

But, since you mention it, the hyperbole would be in exaggerating the issue of forgotten systems. Sure, it happens that forgetting one's system occasionally leads to fix results for the opponents. But, wanting to change the rules to punish that problem seems a bit much.

It would help for the discussion if you didn't make up arguments for the other side that no one used, such as "I want to make this rule to punish opponents for the times they occasionally fix me."

I'm not sure that there is much difference between wanting to punish people for handing out fix results and randomizing the event. But, I can easily change the terms used.

I get the basic idea -- get the idiots out of the game. If you have random results flying about, it hurts the game.

But, establishing penalties does not help anything. What is that helping? The boneheads who forget their agreements every two boards, and come in dead last because of the average effect of this, end up dead last by a greater margin?

I'm not sure what the solution is, or if there is one. But, what I do know is that the entire discussion seems to focus on one aspect of "randomizing results" over any number of others (like, the idiots stumble-bunnied against us, or he chose to psych against me, or whatever) because of a bias against system complexity. y point in response is that system "simplicity" is often illusory and often yields just as many problems in the real world.

[jdonn]

kenrexford, on Jul 20 2009, 07:39 PM, said:

I'm not sure that there is much difference between wanting to punish people for handing out fix results and randomizing the event.  But, I can easily change the terms used.

A wise move, since they mean different things.

Quote

I get the basic idea -- get the idiots out of the game.  If you have random results flying about, it hurts the game.

But, establishing penalties does not help anything.  What is that helping?

At least two ways were suggested earlier. People might not play conventions or systems they aren't able to remember. And people would have an incentive to practice their complicated conventions and systems more.

Quote

The boneheads who forget their agreements every two boards, and come in dead last because of the average effect of this, end up dead last by a greater margin?

Now who is using hyperbole?

Quote

I'm not sure what the solution is, or if there is one.  But, what I do know is that the entire discussion seems to focus on one aspect of "randomizing results" over any number of others (like, the idiots stumble-bunnied against us, or he chose to psych against me, or whatever) because of a bias against system complexity.

Not absolute complexity, just complexity relative to the capability of the players involved to use it. And once again you are presuming to know why people believe what they do with no evidence of it at all. Or is it just that people who believe the opposite of you about something are biased against you and all who believe as you do?

Quote

y point in response is that system "simplicity" is often illusory and often yields just as many problems in the real world.

No it doesn't, it's much more fair to me if my opponents have no agreement and tell me so than if they have some/no agreement and tell me it's something that it isn't.

[NickRW]

jdonn, on Jul 21 2009, 12:50 AM, said:

Quote

y point in response is that system "simplicity" is often illusory and often yields just as many problems in the real world.

No it doesn't, it's much more fair to me if my opponents have no agreement and tell me so than if they have some/no agreement and tell me it's something that it isn't.

Yeah, but that is MI and already against the rules anyway - we don't need a new Fred rule for that.

Nick

[jdonn]

NickRW, on Jul 20 2009, 07:56 PM, said:

jdonn, on Jul 21 2009, 12:50 AM, said:

Quote

y point in response is that system "simplicity" is often illusory and often yields just as many problems in the real world.

No it doesn't, it's much more fair to me if my opponents have no agreement and tell me so than if they have some/no agreement and tell me it's something that it isn't.

Yeah, but that is MI and already against the rules anyway - we don't need a new Fred rule for that.

Nick

The point isn't to recover my score, it's to play a bridge hand that isn't ruined.

[quiddity]

jdonn, on Jul 20 2009, 08:03 PM, said:

The point isn't to recover my score, it's to play a bridge hand that isn't ruined.

Again, why do system forgets "ruin" a hand while other types of mistakes apparently do not?

[Cascade]

It seems completely wrong to me to impose penalties for making bridge mistakes.

Unlike Josh I do not see any difference between bidding errors (including forgets) and card play mistakes.

It doesnt seem to me to be very important to worry about the relatively unlikely event that the opponents will have an error and land on their feet.

[NickRW]

jdonn, on Jul 21 2009, 01:03 AM, said:

NickRW, on Jul 20 2009, 07:56 PM, said:

jdonn, on Jul 21 2009, 12:50 AM, said:

Quote

y point in response is that system "simplicity" is often illusory and often yields just as many problems in the real world.

No it doesn't, it's much more fair to me if my opponents have no agreement and tell me so than if they have some/no agreement and tell me it's something that it isn't.

Yeah, but that is MI and already against the rules anyway - we don't need a new Fred rule for that.

Nick

The point isn't to recover my score, it's to play a bridge hand that isn't ruined.

Well, the last 2 monday nights, when I get to play with my best, regular partner, on the boards we played our way, we've scored pushing 70% - yet we won neither evening. When I compare our card to the pairs that won, to see if we've been slipping tricks in defence, what I actually see is that we were generally taking the same number of tricks as the pair that won - where we lost out was that they were defending games destined to go off while we were defending making partials - or that they were defending partials against pairs that should have been in game while we had to defend against the proper contract.

Such things are definitely frustrating - but the end results of showering the bone heads that can't bid very well with penalties will one or more of:

1) The club goes bust because less and less people play.
2) The bone heads come anyway - and just end even further down the order.
3) A lot of extra work for the director figuring out complex judgments.

I don't see that as a step in the right direction. I don't even see any justification either for picking on bidding errors versus play errors.

Nick

[fred]

I really would not have thought it necessary to explain this, but here is the difference between a card play error or a poor bid (ie a mistake) and a system-forget:

When the opponents make a mistake it is just a mistake. The mistake plays itself out and, whatever happens, happens.

When the opponents forget their system, however, they are saying that they have an agreement and they are providing you with information. Based on that information you might:

- decide what defensive bidding structure should apply
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and make bidding decisions based on that
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and make technical declarer play decisions based on that
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and make technical defensive play decisions based on that
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and base your defensive signalling strategy on that
- call the Director
- force the opponents to prove what their agreement really was
- get into time trouble

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

In the case of a pure mistake, one could argue that the opponents have not given you any information at all. But even if you don't buy that, the information they did give you ("I bid 3NT" or "I play the 3 of spades") is part of the normal mechanisms of bridge - it has nothing to do with an alleged partnership agreement.

I have to say that I am disappointed that those who traditionally argue for "liberal system regulations" (or no systems regulations at all) on these Forums all seem to want to have their cake and eat it too.

It would be nice if just one of them would step up to the plate and say "if we are going to be allowed to play our desired methods, despite the fact that many players do not want this, the least we can do is make sure that we know what we are doing".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

Suppose we go pretty far in the other direction, and implement the following rules:

1* Any time the explanation for a call does not match the actual hand held, the side giving the inaccurate explanation will be assessed a quarter-board penalty unless they can produce solid evidence that the explanation reflects their actual agreement and the call in question was in fact a (non-fielded) deviation/psych.

2* If a claim is made that there is no agreement about a particular call, but the hand actually held by the person making that call seems unusual or unexpected by the other side, then the directors will take a poll of players of comparable skill. If the overwhelming majority would interpret the "no agreement" call as not including the hand actually held, then it will be ruled that there was in fact an undisclosed agreement (if only by partnership experience) and the case will be resolved as misinformation (i.e. equity restored) as well as the quarter board penalty assessed as in 1.

These rules would apply only in NABC+ events or regional-level "flight A" events (i.e. not in regional-level stratified events or any limited-masterpoint event).

While such regulations may seem extreme, if partner and I forget system to the tune of a couple bottom boards per tournament, the extra half board procedural penalty is probably not that big of a deal. And having such a regulation has the nice effect of reducing the director's discretion about which agreements/players forgetting will be assigned penalties and which will not.

[Cascade]

fred, on Jul 21 2009, 02:14 PM, said:

I really would not have thought it necessary to explain this, but here is the difference between a card play error or a poor bid (ie a mistake) and a system-forget:

When the opponents make a mistake it is just a mistake. The mistake plays itself out and, whatever happens, happens.

When the opponents forget their system, however, they are saying that they have an agreement and they are providing you with information. Based on that information you might:

- decide what defensive bidding structure should apply
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and make bidding decisions based on that
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and make technical declarer play decisions based on that
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and make technical defensive play decisions based on that
- draw inferences about what the 52-card layout might look like and base your defensive signalling strategy on that
- call the Director
- force the opponents to prove what their agreement really was
- get into time trouble

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

In the case of a pure mistake, one could argue that the opponents have not given you any information at all. But even if you don't buy that, the information they did give you ("I bid 3NT" or "I play the 3 of spades") is part of the normal mechanisms of bridge - it has nothing to do with an alleged partnership agreement.

I have to say that I am disappointed that those who traditionally argue for "liberal system regulations" (or no systems regulations at all) on these Forums all seem to want to have their cake and eat it too.

It would be nice if just one of them would step up to the plate and say "if we are going to be allowed to play our desired methods, despite the fact that many players do not want this, the least we can do is make sure that we know what we are doing".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

To me in the most fundamental sense bridge is defined by the scoring table.

As such a mistake is a mistake is a mistake.

Almost invariably when I look through my results my good scores mostly come from my opponent's mistakes and my bad scores mostly come from my side's mistakes. Of course occasionally we profit from our mistakes and the opponent's profit from theirs. Last weekend for example my opponent mishandled their trumps and consequently were very happy to score up their game. Fred and I are agreed as we both want this to go unpenalized. However in the recent PABF partner and I had a misunderstanding and played in 2♣ on a marginal slam hand. Partner made only 11 tricks and I immediately thought this could be good we are plus and they just might go minus in slam at the other table. In fact they bid the slam but there was an extra chance which came in and the slam made. We lost 13 IMPs. Fred wants to penalize us to add insult to injury. Who knows what he would have for us if the slam had actually failed.

Fred lists a number of things that might happen if the opponent misbids. Some of those things occur also in the play of the cards. I have and I am sure that Fred has experienced a bad result because of a deduction made based on the opponent's card play only to find that the opponent had made an error and their play made no sense with the cards they held. Why should inferences from the opponent's bad card play be protected but inferences from the opponent's bad bidding be penalized? It simply doesn't make sense.

I would call deciding "what defensive bidding structure should apply" being prepared. And yes at times mean being prepared for the opponents not to have their bids either deliberately - a psyche - or accidentally - a mistake.

The introduction of "liberal system regulations' seems to me to be a red herring. My experience and I am sure the experience of many others is that typically it is much harder to get relevant information 'standard' bidders. The consequence of this under Fred's suggestion is that it will be much easier for those players to get away with their misbids (or bids not matching the description given). Certainly I don't think misbids are the domain of those who play unusual systems. Yes typcially the misbids in an artificial especially a relay system are usually more catastrophic but that just means that the opponents are more likely to benefit or conversely that our side is less likely to recover.

I don't think in my case that arguing for "liberal system regulations" and against penalize bidding mistakes is a case of "having my cake and eating it too". My current preferred system is to the best of my knowledge from reading the WBF documentation a WBF GREEN system. That is the most basic type of system. In some ways it is more natural than the typical North American methods - 4-card majors so no artificial 'short club'. Except for our 1NT opening, which it seems would fall foul of the ACBL regulations because we open some offshape hands with singletons, our system would as far as I can tell be GCC legal. Yes in the past I have played a more diverse range of systems and I have still have some interest in those systems. To me it illustrates the richness of this game - there are many ways to skin this particular cat. All of which appear to have some validity. I played transfer openings (Submarine Symmetric) for several years (these are legal in normal tournament play in New Zealand), for a brief period I played Forcing Pass with Relays and I still play infrequently a fairly vanilla version of Symmetric Relay in one partnership. Nevertheless for the main my arguments for "liberal system regulations" are not because I play those methods but because I believe my opponents should be allowed to play those methods against me. I am more than happy with my Natural methods.

Of course, whatever methods you play, the least you can do for your own partnership is to know what you play. Almost without exception partnership misunderstandings in a regular partnership or even in a casual partnership but about something that you have definitely agreed upon are the worst sort of mistakes. The cost of not knowing one's methods can be devastating. In a real way the better prepared you are the more devastating since being better prepared means that partners bids should be more precise and so when there is a misbid the conclusions that are drawn are more catastrophic.

From where I stand it is those that rally against "liberal system regulations" who seem to be the ones who "want to have their cake and eat it too". Here they want the advantage of the catastrophic misunderstandings but if by some chance that doesn't come you are advocating a penalty. For me this is just a rub of the green situation.

[Mbodell]

fred, on Jul 20 2009, 06:14 PM, said:

I have to say that I am disappointed that those who traditionally argue for "liberal system regulations" (or no systems regulations at all) on these Forums all seem to want to have their cake and eat it too.

It would be nice if just one of them would step up to the plate and say "if we are going to be allowed to play our desired methods, despite the fact that many players do not want this, the least we can do is make sure that we know what we are doing".

The issue I see, which I think is what Wayne, Adam, and Ken all point out is that it isn't liberal versus conservative conventions but instead explicit agreements subject to usually good disclosure but occasionally very bad MI (system forgets) versus implicit agreements subject to poor disclosure ("no agreement") but usually non-actionable MI ("no agreement" when really there is an implicit one).

I think everyone agrees that pairs should know the very, very basic parts of their system (I.e., any opening bid, system over 1nt etc.). Even those can get a little weird, if a pair plays a different defense against weak versus strong nt and then sees an unusual range and isn't sure if 12-16 nt is weak or strong, but arguably they have a responsibility to know that when they agree to different methods over "weak" versus "strong" nt. I agree with this.

But take the auction from a different older thread:

1♦-(3♣)-X-(P)
3♠-(P)-4♥?

If you ask people what the 4♥ bid means what are their responsibilities? If Ken's discussed it (or meta rules for it) with his partner, he should be required to explain that it is a slam going hand for spades lacking a club control (or whatever). But even if he hasn't explicitly discussed it, if he has an implied agreement that makes it likely this he should also be required to bid it. If, before Fred asked Brad what this sequence meant, he had bid it at the table, and someone asked Brad what it meant I think Fred and Brad have enough experience that they ought to have an implicit agreement and have to explain it as a hand that is nf natural and suggesting 4♥ as a good final contract if partner's hearts are good in context of the auction. This is made more clear by the fact that this is how each of them independently thought of the auction. The meta rules of "if it can be natural it is" and "if it can be nf it is" and their knowledge of their bidding is enough that they have this agreement even if they've never made it explicit. An explanation of "no agreement" is not right even if the agreement is implicit and not explicit.

The basic problem that I, and others, see is that it seems bad if either in practice or in definition that the "scientist" makes an explicit agreement here and ever gets it wrong he gets a Convention-Disruption while the "artist" may always hide behind a "no explicit agreement" and may intentionally not record results of this sort with partner to keep the agreements in the realm of poor disclosure not subject to the CD.

And the hard part of getting the "implicit" agreement right is if a Ken type is playing with a Fred type and they think they have an implicit agreement but they each think it is the other one then you'll get MI when explaining.

But the problem isn't that the "scientists" have explicit agreements of 4♥ in this auction even if they occasionally forget. The problem is everyone should equally have to have agreements in this situation, and we should punish those who don't disclose their agreements (both implicit and explicit) as well as those who habitually forget these agreements.

Which is what I think the 2 part strict rule that was suggested above by awm is supposed to do.

Because I agree that people shouldn't habitually forget their agreements. But I also think people should be required to have agreements. And in both cases it is a question of where the line is. If an auction is "simple" enough that a "no agreement" would get you laughed out of the room, then I'd agree that a punishment for forgetting the agreement might be ok. But if the auction is complicated that "no agreement" is a fine answer, then I think there should be no punishment (beyond the normal MI, rub-of-the-green, likely bottom) for forgetting that when this last came up 18 months ago rather than stick with "no agreement" you decided to be honest and come up with an agreement which you've now since forgotten.

Maybe it is enough to punish people whenever they forget their agreements but also file the equivalent of a recorder statement any time they explain as "no agreement" such that whatever they had at the table is recorded and it is assumed that they now have this implicit agreement from now forever more until they make a different explicit agreement and any future call of "no agreement" in a similar situation can check the recorded records to see if this is MI since they have an implicit agreement.

This has actually happened to me before at the Boston NABC when I was playing with a friend I'd never played with as partners before in a single session evening swiss. We talked about most of a card for 15 minutes before starting to play. When we were on defense partner lead a K and opponents asked what our agreements were for leading from AK. I truthfully said "no agreements" as we hadn't talked about this aspect. The director was called. The director told our opponents we had no agreement but also stayed until the end of the hand and told us that we now had to mark on our cards that we now had the agreement that we would lead K from AK since that was what partner had done (we probably could have made some other explicit agreement, but the point was we had to have an agreement now).

As long as this stuff is followed through on and people are responsible for having and disclosing both implicit and explicit agreements, then I'm fine with giving people penalties for frequently forgetting their systems and agreements - both implicit and explicit. As long as such a policy only penalizes explicit agreement forgetter's and not implicit agreement forgetter's and MI givers, then I don't think it is a fair rule.