Pict, on Mar 13 2010, 06:08 PM, said:
Despite some lengthy dissertations, and shorter ones with upper case ANY shouting at us, I still don't actually agree with the perverse reading of 73C that claims it is stronger than 16B, to the extent of making thinking (hesitation) effectively illegal.
I do not claim that thinking, or hesitation, or other transmission of unauthorized information is illegal - it is not; for although Law 73A2 says that:
"Calls and plays should be made without undue emphasis, mannerism or inflection, and without undue hesitation or haste."
it remains the case that a player with something to think about makes his call or play with "due" hesitation. But Law 73A1 says:
"Communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of calls and plays."
which means that if unauthorized information
has been transmitted, it must not be acted upon. That is, my reading of L73C claims only that it is stronger than L16B, not that it renders thinking illegal.
campboy said:
As others have said, if you do exactly what you would have done without UI then you cannot possibly have gained any advantage from it.
So Jeff Rubens used to argue in the
Bridge World, but what he ignored (and what his co-editor Edgar Kaplan insisted upon) is that the question is chiefly of perspective. Imagine if you will the following:
A stranger in a pub buys me a drink. It happens to be absinthe, and I hate absinthe, so I have no intention of drinking it.
Another stranger grabs me by the arm. "Don't drink that!" she cries. "It's poisoned - that fellow who bought it for you is a serial killer."
Now, how will this be reported in tomorrow's newspapers? "Man Saves Own Life By Hating Absinthe"? Or "Woman Saves Man's Life By Identifying The Absinthe Poisoner"?
The first is true, the second is not - but which would the public prefer to believe? Suppose in the next morning's papers, the headline was "Base Ingrate Refuses To Thank Woman Who Saved His Life - Says He Took No Advantage Of Her Information". Would I not be correctly vilified and driven to emigrate to, say, Tristan da Cunha or Wolverhampton?
Although I know in my heart that I did not take any advantage of the information received, no one else will believe it. The Laws of bridge are so structured that an umpire does not say (or need to say) "you did what you did because you acted on unauthorized information, so we will rule against you". Instead, he says "you did what someone acting on unauthorized information would have done, so although I am quite prepared to take your word for it that you hate absinthe, nevertheless I will rule against you as if you had acted on unauthorized information".
Campboy comes close to the right perspective when he says:
campboy said:
The difficulty, of course, is that just because a player believes he would always have bid 3NT without UI, that does not make it true.
The real difficulty is that just because a player correctly believes that he would always have bid 3NT (so that it is in fact true), that does not make it legal.