[Free]

Yes, I see, blind aparently In that case I think Todd is right

[nikos59]

[mikestar]

While the non-offender's failure to play good bridge can be a factor in denying an adjustment in UI, misinformation, etc. cases, it has no relevance whatever to disputed claims.

[Gweny]

true but this is funfishy

[the hog]

Nikos,
your comment:

"Well, the bidding and vulnerability is not given, but
my humble opinion is that anyone who leads the
H4 on this hand deserves anything that may happen
to him afterwards.

When inept defensive play allows declarer to make
an overtrick in a doomed 3NT on a mere 20 points,
it does seem funny to see the defenders trying
to win back the board on dubious legalisms.

On a normal opening lead (any minor will do) 3NT has
to go one or two down. Even a spade lead probably beats it!
So, NS blew a couple of tricks with their inept lead (or,
inept bidding if it was the bidding that caused the lead).

If I were a member of an appeal committee on this,
I would suggest retaining the deposit."

is nonsense I am afraid. Whether the opening lead and defence is good bad or indifferent bears no relation to declarer's claim whatsoever. It is pretty obvious that declarer lost track of the H suit. This is not a dubious legalism, rather it is definitely a case of declarer receiving UI in my view, from the rejection of the claim. Todd's main failure was to fail to call the director to the table and to fully explain the issue. If I were a member of an appeal committee, I would not only roll back to 3N-1, but I would apply a procedural penalty if declarer tried to squirm his way out of it by claiming "misclick".

One possibility might be to have the software request claimer state a line if the claim is rejected, and not to allow play to continue.

Gweny, Funfishy or not you still have to adhere to the rules.

Ron

[Gerardo]

No, the line MUST be stated at the moment you make the claim, in any case BEFORE opps reject it.

Can't state your line AFTER opps reject it, as it could not be the original one.

If no line is stated, and claim is wrong, or depends on something not said, it should be ruled against claimer.

[dogsbreath]

Hi .. I have nothing to add other than to agree that some infringment occured. A better claim mechanism would be useful .. i was berated by a p in a tourney recently for rejecting a declarer claim .. different situation tho .. declarer 'claimed' one off in a 4Major contract , thinking defenders had trump winner. Although we did have trumps left, it was impossible on any play for us to score a trick - so I rejected the claim as I believe it is not within either the rules or the ethics of the game to accept a false claim in this situation , even tho is in your favour, simply because the software allows it. The proposed improved 'claim' mechanism earlier in this thread would be nice for teams/good quality tourneys but I fear it will only delay other events even more - I was going to say 'friendly' tourneys but it seems we have few of these nowdays

Rgds Dog

Quote

furnulum pani nolo

[nikos59]

Some useful lessons from the thread:
a. The claim mechanism must be modified; however, the proposed
cumbersome procedures will prove unworkable; I propose a very
minor change that will probably work well:
"The software should make it impossible to claim unless claimant
(or dummy if claimant is declarer) has the lead"

b. There are some bridge players whose lawyer skills are
much greater than their bridge playing skills.

n.

[Dwayne]

Nikos said:

Quote

If I were a member of an appeal committee on this,
I would suggest retaining the deposit.

I can find no better quote in this entire thread that encapsulates the injustices committed to Dr Todd and his partner in this sorry saga.

Dwayne

[Fluffy]

I have heard many times that the laws should be aplied, and many links to NABC or another NBO wich has not to be applied at all over the net.

If there are any laws that havbe to be applied it has to be fred, sheri or uday to tell about them (or so I think), or to let the torunament directors stablish them before tourney starts.

Bridge base online has a software that lets you play after a claim rejection, why?, jsut because the software was planed to be made for the main bridge club, ,where there aren´t any tournament directors.

It has a point to have the claims being autoruled by players: directors don´t have many time to waste on such appeals.

The fact the way I think about the claims is against 'the law' (wich law?) doesn´t mean I am wrong at all, I still think you should claim as fast as possible to save everyone´s time, and that includes not writing a bunch of lines.

PD: I am sorry DrTodd, I said before you losed nothing by losing an online trick, losing the qualification for another or jsut continue on a survvor/ko tournament is probably the only thing you can, by now, lose playing online. I can understand your anger, but still think you are wrong.

[inquiry]

Fluffy, on Jun 9 2004, 08:21 AM, said:

If there are any laws that havbe to be applied it has to be fred, sheri or uday to tell about them (or so I think), or to let the torunament directors stablish them before tourney starts.

(snip). I can understand your anger, but still think you are wrong.

Hi Fluffy,

Dr. Todd is wrong if the tourneyment was run in funfishy. Gweny has the right to establish whatever laws she wants to use there.

The larger issue here, however, is for tournments that follow the laws. Especially the ACBL ones, which have to follow ACBL guidelines and use ACBL certified directors. There, my reading of the laws suggest that if a claim is contested (as this one was), play can not continue, and a director has to adjucate the result. The director may, say making, or may say down one. It is a director's decision. None of us should tell the director how to rule. But what can't happen is what happened here, play continued. At least, that is my reading/understanding of the rules. And BTW, playing in these tournments, PLEASE BE SURE to state your line when claiming... you can type "see private chat" on the claim button text place, and then explain away in private (or publci) chat...since play stops anyway.

Ben

[DrTodd13]

I believe Gweny says in her conditions of contest that the worldwide laws of bridge apply. Even if she doesn't, that has to be the assumption. If you don't want to use those laws then you should have to explicitly say they are not in force.

I would say that I'm more a stickler for the philosophy behind the rules than the rules themselves. I don't think it is unreasonable to establish an online rule that says play can continue after a rejected claim. However, the philosophy behind the current rules is good and I think would dictate that declarer now has potential UI after a rejected claim. At a minimum, he must make an honest attempt to make the number of tricks that he claimed. If everyone explained when they claimed then most of the miscounts and misclicks would be taken care of by the explanation. However, without an explanation, we must believe that they meant what they said when they clicked the number of tricks. In some cases, I believe that UI may enter into the mix just with a defender's request for an explanation or a rejected claim. Explanations after the fact are subject to an analysis for how self-serving they are.

Whatever we end up doing with the rules for online claiming, there has to be a punishment mechanism for the unethical abuse of said system. Sure, in most cases there is absolutely nothing at stake...no masterpoints are awarded and there are no ratings but that actually causes a problem because there is no way to punish people for bad behavior. What upset me so is that the only thing resembling punishment is an admonition from a TD and that wasn't forthcoming. If the case was fuzzy then I wouldn't have pressed the issue but I believe that those skilled in the law and the philosophy of the laws would get the right answer to this one. I think most people would be really upset if they thought their opponent behaved unethically and the director dismissed it. I think we need an ethics committee that can review suggestions from TD's for punishment and can also handles appeals from non-TDs. This committee would have the power to ban a player from BBO for some numbers of days as punishment or maybe a temporary scarlet letter.

[guggie]

Well it just occurred to me that the online claim reject machinery has different pro's and cons than in real life. rejecting and ensuing continue to play could yield UI, but if you cannot work out the consequences of a 5-1 split it will not help you very much.
On the other hand, after a rejected claim defense is double dummy. That huge disadvantage for the decllarer would discourage unjust claims. And just claims will not be disturbed by them. Actually, a neat feature of online bridge and quite a penalty for unjust claiming.

[McBruce]

The defense being allowed to play seeing all the cards after a claim is in fact no advantage at all. It is their right according to the Laws. They have the right to any extra tricks coming to them that can be gotten by any line of play except for an irrational play by declarer. The Laws specify that hands are faced so that disputed claims can be adjudicated. There is no advantage in being given something that is rightfully yours.

I still advocate an OPTION for tournaments to disallow all play after a claim. You make the claim and if rejected, the hand ends and the TD looks at the play and the claim statement and the objections of the defense when he has a moment. If the declarer makes no statement, it had better be obvious. If the defense makes no statement and the TD sees no way to beat it, he allows the claim.

There is no reason this would cost any more time for a TD than, say, the common scenario where a player has claimed the wrong number of tricks and wants an adjustment. You look at a .lin file, or minimize it on your screen until you have time, and deal with it when you can. It takes less than a minute usually.

[mpefritz]

Back to the original problem:

I am going to make several claims, each of which is a variation of what happened/could have happened. How are these different/same?

"Claim 7 Tricks"

"Claim 7 tricks: 2S+1C+1D+3H"

"Claim 7 tricks: 1C+3H+1D+2S"

"Claim 7 tricks: 3H+1C+1D+2S"

"Claim 7 tricks: 2S+1C+1D+2H"

"Claim 7 tricks: 2H+1C+1D+2S"

"Claim 6 tricks"

"Claim 6 tricks: 2S+1D+1C+3H"

"Claim 6 tricks: 3H+1D+1C+2S"

"Claim 6 tricks: 2H+1D+1C+2S"

fritz

[DrTodd13]

[quote]Back to the original problem:

I am going to make several claims, each of which is a variation of what happened/could have happened. How are these different/same?[/quote]

For all of these, defense at least gets the benefit of the doubt in assuming that clubs will be led next.

[quote]"Claim 7 Tricks"[/quote]

The case already described. Adjust to -1.

[quote]"Claim 7 tricks: 2S+1C+1D+3H"[/quote]

On the club lead declarer must cash hearts first before going to dummy so it is the same as above, adjust to -1.

[quote]"Claim 7 tricks: 1C+3H+1D+2S"[/quote]

Do people assume that the order implies something? I've never assumed or believed that. Therefore, this case is the same as the above 2.

[quote]"Claim 7 tricks: 3H+1C+1D+2S"[/quote]

Same as above.

[quote]"Claim 7 tricks: 2S+1C+1D+2H"[/quote]

Here I believe he has misclicked 7 instead of 6 and he gets awarded 6 more tricks.
There is the remote possibility that he intended to say "3H" rather than 2H but especially since only 2 hearts are good I think the most likely case is that the 7 was the misclick.

[quote]"Claim 7 tricks: 2H+1C+1D+2S"[/quote]

Same as above. Appears to be a misclick. Declarer gets 6 tricks.

[quote]"Claim 6 tricks"[/quote]

He gets 6 tricks.

[quote]"Claim 6 tricks: 2S+1D+1C+3H"[/quote]

This is a tough one. I would tend to think that the explicit statement of what tricks are going to be taken takes precedence over the sum of the number of said tricks. Either he misclicked 6 when he meant 7 (in which down 1 is in order) or he can't add (explicit list takes precedence) or he misclicked the "3H." Maybe a question is in order to ask the declarer to rectify his claim...saying...hey...one part is inconsistent with the other...what did you mean? If he rectifies to 7 tricks then he is down 1 if he says he only meant 2H then he gets his 6 tricks. I don't think asking the inconsistency to be resolved would create UI.

[quote]"Claim 6 tricks: 3H+1D+1C+2S"[/quote]

Order to me is not important so same as above.

[quote]"Claim 6 tricks: 2H+1D+1C+2S"[/quote]

Finally, the correct claim. He gets 6 tricks.

[Fluffy]

DrTodd13, on Jun 9 2004, 06:10 PM, said:

I think we need an ethics committee that can review suggestions from TD's for punishment and can also handles appeals from non-TDs. This committee would have the power to ban a player from BBO for some numbers of days as punishment or maybe a temporary scarlet letter.

There is enough trouble with cheaters to take care about subjective issues, in my opinion unethic play (I don´t talk about unethic behaviour, people that insult others should be banned forever), is an insignificant problem compared to cheaters.

[McBruce]

I assume mpefritz is trying to poke holes in my suggested option to include a 'reject and call TD' option. His point seems to be that the TD, by himself (the players are on to the next board) with the claim statement and the opponent's objection(s), may not have a clear idea of what declarer actually meant by his claim statement, whereas a TD at the table would be able to ask declarer to clarify.

Or would he?

Nothing in the Laws allows declarer to clarify his original statement. The TD is supposed to ask him to repeat it. Similarly, online with my suggested revision of the claim mechanism, if a claimer claims and the order of tricks is vital, he risks his result if he does not mention the order specifically.

I agree with DrTodd that statements like "6 tricks: 2H+3C+1D" do NOT imply an order. If the order is important the claimer should say 'hearts first' or something. Quite often, as in the specific case we are discussing, the order will be relevant but only one sequence will allow declarer to win all the tricks he is claiming: in that case I think declarer deserves the benefit of the doubt.

In cases where declarer claims 7 tricks and lists only 6 or 8, I think the whole statement is discarded and the claim is a claim for seven without a statement. I don't like the idea of the TD re-asking, since there are inferences to be had when this happens.

The general effects of my revised procedure will be far closer to the real world and to the Laws than the current situation:

--no play will be allowed after a claim is rejected
--anytime the claim statement is complicated, claimers will learn to play on before claiming until it is easily explained
--I still think that, especially mid-trick, claiming x more tricks is confusing, and the software should display the intended result: "I claim 5 more tricks, making four."

[mpefritz]

My post was with the intent to probe into whether order COULD be implied from a claim statement.

As I understand it, then, DrTodd would make me go down 1 if I stated "Claim 7 tricks 2S+1D+1C+3H" THAT would likely lead me to an even newer level of anger than DrTodd experienced. A ruling like that, in my mind, would be much more offensive than what happened to DrTodd.

I would likely decide that "Claim 7 tricks " or "Claim 7 tricks: 1C+3H+2S+1D" would lead to cashing the hearts before cashing the other winners, leading to the loss of 4 more tricks -- (depending on the pitches of the defense).

2S+1C+3H+1D would lead to the loss of only 2 more tricks

2S+1D+1C+3H would lead to taking 6 of the last 7 tricks.

I would consider a 3H+1D+1C+2S to be nonsensical and rule for only 3 of the remaining 7 tricks.

The reason I think order is important is that it CAN be used to imply order of taking tricks, else just use S,H,D,C order if total trick order is not important.

Just a thought.

fritz

McBruce: Sorry about the Flames. Condolences from a long-suffering Cubs fan.

[the hog]

I agree with you mpefritz. Certainly in ftf bridge here in Oz 2H 3S and 1C means that I am cashing them in that order. I think the same thing can and should be applied in on line bridge.