[bluejak]

The following query was posted on a New Zealand TD forum. I have edited it slightly since it was written originally for an earlier Law book.


Some time ago I was asked how I would rule in a (historical) case like this. I had a problem with it then and I still do. (I never had any details but have made some up which fit the circumstances described.)

---

South's double was after an agreed hesitation

5♦ went 1 down; 5♠ would have been 2 down (3 aces and a heart ruff)

North thought he was being ethical by passing when he would normally prefer to bid 5♠ with such a powerful hand but with poor defensive tricks.
East-West accuse South of hesitating deliberately with no bridge reason in order to prevent North bidding on. South said he was honestly considering pass (thinking the best achievable outcome could be defending 5♦ not doubled) or double, but then deciding the pass would probably be interpreted as being forcing.

It does appear East-West were hard done by but what can be done to rectify that?
Where is the infraction?
Looking at Law 73:
D1 says “to vary the tempo ... in which a call or play is made is not in itself an infraction”
D2 says it is wrong to deliberately mislead an opponent through hesitancy but the opponents have not been misled here.

Law 16B says the score can be adjusted if a player chose from logical alternatives one that could demonstrably have been suggested by partners tempo. But how can Norths hesitation DEMONSTRABLY suggest South should pass? (A slow double indicates that player was considering something else which would invariably favour taking the double out with a marginal hand).
Nor can I see Law 23 applying “an offender could have been aware at the time of his irregularity that this could well damage the non-offending side”. There is no “offender” here because as we have just noted (quote from Law 73D1 above) a hesitation is NOT an irregularity.

So what can the director do?
Just tell East-West they were unlucky? Or is there an explicit law North or South can be deemed to have broken?
Or should he tell North his explanation for the hesitation is unacceptable (although in my view it seems plausible)?


I have my own view which I have posted in that forum. But I would be interested to see views here.

[AlexJonson]

bluejak, on 2011-April-05, 11:21, said:

The following query was posted on a New Zealand TD forum. I have edited it slightly since it was written originally for an earlier Law book.


Some time ago I was asked how I would rule in a (historical) case like this. I had a problem with it then and I still do. (I never had any details but have made some up which fit the circumstances described.)

---

South's double was after an agreed hesitation

5♦ went 1 down; 5♠ would have been 2 down (3 aces and a heart ruff)

North thought he was being ethical by passing when he would normally prefer to bid 5♠ with such a powerful hand but with poor defensive tricks.
East-West accuse South of hesitating deliberately with no bridge reason in order to prevent North bidding on. South said he was honestly considering pass (thinking the best achievable outcome could be defending 5♦ not doubled) or double, but then deciding the pass would probably be interpreted as being forcing.

It does appear East-West were hard done by but what can be done to rectify that?
Where is the infraction?
Looking at Law 73:
D1 says “to vary the tempo ... in which a call or play is made is not in itself an infraction”
D2 says it is wrong to deliberately mislead an opponent through hesitancy but the opponents have not been misled here.

Law 16B says the score can be adjusted if a player chose from logical alternatives one that could demonstrably have been suggested by partners tempo. But how can Norths hesitation DEMONSTRABLY suggest South should pass? (A slow double indicates that player was considering something else which would invariably favour taking the double out with a marginal hand).
Nor can I see Law 23 applying “an offender could have been aware at the time of his irregularity that this could well damage the non-offending side”. There is no “offender” here because as we have just noted (quote from Law 73D1 above) a hesitation is NOT an irregularity.

So what can the director do?
Just tell East-West they were unlucky? Or is there an explicit law North or South can be deemed to have broken?
Or should he tell North his explanation for the hesitation is unacceptable (although in my view it seems plausible)?


I have my own view which I have posted in that forum. But I would be interested to see views here.

The Laws say of tempo:

'However, players should be particularly
careful when variations may work to the benefit of their side.'

Here the TD will have to reach a judgement about the situation based on the evidence from the players. I think he will be entitled to conclude (not that he necessarily will) that the variation of tempo was serious enough, and the consequences predictable, such as to require a remedy.

[ahydra]

Quote

South said he was honestly considering pass (thinking the best achievable outcome could be defending 5♦ not doubled) or double, but then deciding the pass would probably be interpreted as being forcing.

I have little sympathy for this argument - if a player is at a level where he plays forcing passes, surely he can count to 3 trump tricks and work out that's enough to defeat 5♦, hence should never consider pass to play in the first place since double is always superior? It's not like opps have suggested they have anywhere to run.

ahydra

[nigel_k]

This is an auction where there could easily be doubt about whether pass is forcing, and I would tend to believe South if he says he took some time to consider whether that was the case. So I don't think there is any irregularity here that has to be rectified and I don't really have a problem with that.

It seems to me that E/W mainly suffered a bad result due to an extreme lie of the cards, combined with North taking a position to pass that is just wierd, regardless of the speed of the double. Sometimes you just have to accept a bad result when opponents do something crazy that happens to work.

[awm]

I think South's explanation for why his double was slow is a bit fishy. Surely 5♦ cannot be making (he has three sure tricks in his hand). Regardless of whether pass is forcing, North is surely more likely to compete to 5♠ over South's pass than he is to do so over South's double. While I understand that figuring out if this is a forcing auction might be non-trivial, that appears to have nothing to do with South's decision at the table.

Certainly South might be aware that a slow double has the effect of making it more difficult for partner to pull. Thus according to Law 73D1:

"However, players should be particularly careful when variations may work to the benefit of their side. Otherwise, unintentionally to vary the tempo... is not in itself an infraction"

This suggests that an intentional variation of tempo (i.e. with no bridge reason) or a variation of tempo which may work to the benefit of their side may in fact be ruled an infraction. That would seem to apply here.

[dburn]

This looks more like one of lamford's made-up hands than a real one, but this does not matter.

It also looks like the canonical "reverse hesitation", where one doubles slowly to stop partner bidding. The standard approach to that is "the Laws don't provide a remedy other than watching the pair in question to see whether or not they do it again". This approach is unsatisfactory for obvious reasons.

If this occurred in reality, I would be inclined to treat South's arguments with a degree of scepticism - but they could be honest; one would need to be the Director or the AC at the time in order to make a judgement. But there is obviously a potential irregularity: South may have been using the tempo of his pass to communicate (illegally) to North the message "don't pull this".

[richlp]

bluejak, on 2011-April-05, 11:21, said:

The following query was posted on a New Zealand TD forum. I have edited it slightly since it was written originally for an earlier Law book.


Some time ago I was asked how I would rule in a (historical) case like this. I had a problem with it then and I still do. (I never had any details but have made some up which fit the circumstances described.)

---

South's double was after an agreed hesitation

5♦ went 1 down; 5♠ would have been 2 down (3 aces and a heart ruff)

North thought he was being ethical by passing when he would normally prefer to bid 5♠ with such a powerful hand but with poor defensive tricks.
East-West accuse South of hesitating deliberately with no bridge reason in order to prevent North bidding on. South said he was honestly considering pass (thinking the best achievable outcome could be defending 5♦ not doubled) or double, but then deciding the pass would probably be interpreted as being forcing.

It does appear East-West were hard done by but what can be done to rectify that?
Where is the infraction?
Looking at Law 73:
D1 says “to vary the tempo ... in which a call or play is made is not in itself an infraction”
D2 says it is wrong to deliberately mislead an opponent through hesitancy but the opponents have not been misled here.

Law 16B says the score can be adjusted if a player chose from logical alternatives one that could demonstrably have been suggested by partners tempo. But how can Norths hesitation DEMONSTRABLY suggest South should pass? (A slow double indicates that player was considering something else which would invariably favour taking the double out with a marginal hand).
Nor can I see Law 23 applying “an offender could have been aware at the time of his irregularity that this could well damage the non-offending side”. There is no “offender” here because as we have just noted (quote from Law 73D1 above) a hesitation is NOT an irregularity.

So what can the director do?
Just tell East-West they were unlucky? Or is there an explicit law North or South can be deemed to have broken?
Or should he tell North his explanation for the hesitation is unacceptable (although in my view it seems plausible)?


I have my own view which I have posted in that forum. But I would be interested to see views here.

I know nothing about the class of players for NS. But to me this hand is a perfect example of the problems ethical, but non-expert, players face in hesitation situations. Even I would know that the hesitation clearly suggests pulling the double. But I would be very hard-pressed at the table to determine if pass is a logical alternative (FWIW I don't think so). Since I would be 100% to pull an in-tempo double I would not sit with the North cards. Should that be a winning decision I would also accept the director's ruling to roll the contract back to 5DX if a poll determined that pass really was an LA.

If I pass and a poll determines that pass really isn't a LA can the contract be set to 5S -1, since North admitted that his decision to pass was based on the hesitation and he (presumably) mis-analyzed the LAs.

[jallerton]

dburn, on 2011-April-05, 14:44, said:

This looks more like one of lamford's made-up hands than a real one

Well, we haven't been told who originally posted the hand on the New Zealand TD forum.

bluejak, on 2011-April-05, 11:21, said:

It does appear East-West were hard done by but what can be done to rectify that?
Where is the infraction?
Looking at Law 73:
D1 says “to vary the tempo ... in which a call or play is made is not in itself an infraction”
D2 says it is wrong to deliberately mislead an opponent through hesitancy but the opponents have not been misled here.

Law 16B says the score can be adjusted if a player chose from logical alternatives one that could demonstrably have been suggested by partners tempo. But how can Norths hesitation DEMONSTRABLY suggest South should pass? (A slow double indicates that player was considering something else which would invariably favour taking the double out with a marginal hand).
Nor can I see Law 23 applying “an offender could have been aware at the time of his irregularity that this could well damage the non-offending side”. There is no “offender” here because as we have just noted (quote from Law 73D1 above) a hesitation is NOT an irregularity.

So what can the director do?
Just tell East-West they were unlucky? Or is there an explicit law North or South can be deemed to have broken?
Or should he tell North his explanation for the hesitation is unacceptable (although in my view it seems plausible)?

I think you need to look at the earlier parts of Law 73:

Quote

LAW 73 - COMMUNICATION

A. Appropriate Communication between Partners

1. Communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of calls and plays.

2. Calls and plays should be made without undue emphasis, mannerism or inflection, and without undue hesitation or haste. But Regulating Authorities may require mandatory pauses, as on the first round of the auction, or after a skip-bid warning, or on the first trick.

B. Inappropriate Communication between Partners

1. Partners shall not communicate by means such as the manner in which calls or plays are made, extraneous remarks or gestures, questions asked or not asked of the opponents or alerts and explanations given or not given to them.

Although North would have not realised at the time, South was using tempo to communicate with him. That was an infraction of Laws 73A1 and 73B1.

South's double was not made "without undue hesitation". This was a breach of Law 73A2.

Having established that these Laws have been breached, use Law 23 to adjust.

[pran]

I have only one comment to this case:

Wherever the regulation is adopted that use of STOP is compulsory with every call in competitive auctions the hesitation by South before doubling shall NOT be considered BIT (unless of course if it is considerably longer than ten seconds).

We have that regulation in Norway, I have no idea in what other areas they have adopted this regulation which I believe was originated by WBF?

[Echognome]

I personally do not see how pass could be forcing. All our side has done is bid and raise suits. Only opener has shown strength (as in having an opening bid) and south has made a simple raise.

My point is that I can understand that South may need to work out if pass is forcing in this partnership. The follow up question is whether that is a bridge reason to think (I think it is). If so, then the remaining question is whether pass is a LA for North. For that matter, we have procedures. If not, then I think of this situation akin to the situation of hesitating on the play of the cards as defender without a reason. The classic example being leading up to KJx(x) in dummy and LHO holding Qxx hesitating. By the way, I have one time been awarded an adjustment when a defender did this to me (I needed only one trick). The particular player's partner came up to me after the hand and said "Thank you. She does that thing all the time, so I was glad to see her finally get caught for it." It is still a wonder to me why the guy played with her if he felt that way.

[nigel_k]

jallerton, on 2011-April-05, 15:44, said:

Although North would have not realised at the time, South was using tempo to communicate with him. That was an infraction of Laws 73A1 and 73B1.

South's double was not made "without undue hesitation". This was a breach of Law 73A2.

Having established that these Laws have been breached, use Law 23 to adjust.

I think it's better to apply only law 16B to UI cases and law 23 only to non-UI cases.

South's hesitation will always affect North to some degree, because North will be aware of his legal obligations and so may not choose some actions that he might have chosen South's call was made in tempo. But if you apply law 23 here, then it becomes irrelevant whether North chooses an action that could have been suggested by the UI. He will be forced to accept the worse result of passing or bidding 5♠ regardless. In fact you may as well rip 16B out of the law book entirely if you decide to rule this way.

[mycroft]

Well, the "reverse UI game", in either of its forms, is interesting.

1) DBurn's one: "am I allowed to use the fact that my partner is ethical, and with the UI I gave him, he still did X, so he will have a 'clear, unambiguous X', in my further decisions?"
2) this one: "what do we do with people who manufacture UI to 'force' their ethical partner to 'do the right thing'?"

I'm not sure that L16 can be used with 2, because the person with the 'UI' isn't the person we're ruling against here; so our only option is Law 73, and Law 23 is exactly the wording we want to use in the ruling, as "[the] offender [was] aware at the time of his irregularity (imProperly pausing to create 'UI') that this could well damage the NOS (in fact, that was the intent)." (now the ruling itself will use the exact words from Law 23, because no matter how much we think this was done on purpose, it "might not have been" (cue the real lawyers).

I'm not sure that 1 isn't in fact legal in the current Laws, and I'm also not sure that, if it is, it's not best to leave it that way (the fact that you've given UI to your partner is in fact UI to you? That rabbit hole is going to be fun.)

[inquiry]

Question for David.

Did East pause for about 7 to 10 seconds over the 4♠ bid, or did he bid 5♦ lickety split?

All the players are due time to think over 4♠ and if East bid quickly, that does not remove the fair time South get's to think.

Assuming EAST thought for a while BEFORE bidding 5♦, I will change the result to 5♠ (doubled or not). If east did bid quickly, i would allow south time think with ruling BIT unless it was really prolonged.

[lamford]

dburn, on 2011-April-05, 14:44, said:

This looks more like one of lamford's made-up hands than a real one, but this does not matter.

Assuming you mean deals, then you will know that the probability of each deal is identical, at 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000:1, so all deals have an equal chance of being randomly dealt. But in response to jallerton this is the first time I have seen the deal.

But I agree with adjusting, and I would not accept South's statement. Again this seems like a PP for a blatant attempt to gain from UI.

[awm]

mycroft, on 2011-April-06, 11:43, said:

I'm not sure that 1 isn't in fact legal in the current Laws, and I'm also not sure that, if it is, it's not best to leave it that way (the fact that you've given UI to your partner is in fact UI to you? That rabbit hole is going to be fun.)

Well, you can fix the whole problem by instructing players to ignore any UI and make their normal calls (rather than to try to guess what logical alternatives might be and thereby avoid making calls that they'd normally make). This would be augmented by the point that when a director is asked to judge whether a player has in fact successfully ignored the UI, he will do so by taking a poll of comparable players and determining LAs much as in current law. The actual procedure for adjusting results would be unchanged; only the instructions to ethical players would change (slightly). This would eliminate these issues where a player who knows he would normally take a particular action is forced to take an opposite action due to UI (as in this thread), and also eliminate any possibility of influencing an ethical partner's action by intentionally giving him UI (as in this thread), and also avoid any extraneous information based on the knowledge that partner is acting as instructed (as in dburn's thread).

[jallerton]

nigel_k, on 2011-April-05, 19:18, said:

I think it's better to apply only law 16B to UI cases and law 23 only to non-UI cases.

South's hesitation will always affect North to some degree, because North will be aware of his legal obligations and so may not choose some actions that he might have chosen South's call was made in tempo. But if you apply law 23 here, then it becomes irrelevant whether North chooses an action that could have been suggested by the UI. He will be forced to accept the worse result of passing or bidding 5♠ regardless. In fact you may as well rip 16B out of the law book entirely if you decide to rule this way.

No, Law 16B would be used if it were judged that North had not obeyed the UI rules. In this case there has been no breach of Law by North.

Here, South has (quite possibly deliberately) created UI to the benefit of his own side. I agree with mycroft that Law 23 was created for this sort of situation. Applying the "Probst cheat test", it morally right to adjust, and furthermore the Laws I mentioned above give us a legal basis for adjusting. What more do we need? [If law 23 did not exist, I'd be advocating using Law 12A1 instead!]

[Poky]

If NS are advanced+: adjustment + PP.
Reverse hesitation -> blatant breach of Law 23.

[bluejak]

inquiry, on 2011-April-06, 12:22, said:

Question for David.

Did East pause for about 7 to 10 seconds over the 4♠ bid, or did he bid 5♦ lickety split?

All the players are due time to think over 4♠ and if East bid quickly, that does not remove the fair time South get's to think.

Assuming EAST thought for a while BEFORE bidding 5♦, I will change the result to 5♠ (doubled or not). If east did bid quickly, i would allow south time think with ruling BIT unless it was really prolonged.

It is a clearly invented problem to try to find out the legal position, so this sort of question gets us nowhere. The question is whether there is any reason to adjust given the original facts and without inventing any more scenarios.

awm, on 2011-April-06, 12:45, said:

Well, you can fix the whole problem by instructing players to ignore any UI and make their normal calls (rather than to try to guess what logical alternatives might be and thereby avoid making calls that they'd normally make). This would be augmented by the point that when a director is asked to judge whether a player has in fact successfully ignored the UI, he will do so by taking a poll of comparable players and determining LAs much as in current law. The actual procedure for adjusting results would be unchanged; only the instructions to ethical players would change (slightly). This would eliminate these issues where a player who knows he would normally take a particular action is forced to take an opposite action due to UI (as in this thread), and also eliminate any possibility of influencing an ethical partner's action by intentionally giving him UI (as in this thread), and also avoid any extraneous information based on the knowledge that partner is acting as instructed (as in dburn's thread).

I think you are highly optimistic. Even if we ignore the somewhat unethical players, the whole point about people is that they rationalise things in their favour. So they do not know what call they would have made without th UI, but [surprise, surprise] in 93.774512% of cases they will decide they would have made the call that is in their favour.



I thought this a very interesting question and find it sad that so few replies are on point. If you do not like the example, why not change it to one that suits? Personally I thought the example was fine. The question is whether if a player doubles slowly with a hand very suitable for a really solid penalty double and if partner passes because the double was slow in an apparent attempt to be ethical there is any legal basis for adjusting.

[nigel_k]

bluejak, on 2011-April-06, 18:34, said:

I thought this a very interesting question and find it sad that so few replies are on point. If you do not like the example, why not change it to one that suits? Personally I thought the example was fine. The question is whether if a player doubles slowly with a hand very suitable for a really solid penalty double and if partner passes because the double was slow in an apparent attempt to be ethical there is any legal basis for adjusting.

I would definitely agree with adjusting if I thought double was really obvious, but it isn't.

The fact that you can beat 5♦ doesn't make double automatic when partner is known to have a void and your double would more typically be made on a hand like Axx Axx xxx xxxx. There is a good case to be made for just passing and hoping to collect a small plus against nothing. Plus the question of whether the auction is forcing. It is definitely nonforcing for me but many pairs are unsure in these kind of sequences so we can't just assume South is lying to us.

[inquiry]

Quote

Question for David.

Did East pause for about 7 to 10 seconds over the 4♠ bid, or did he bid 5♦ lickety split?

All the players are due time to think over 4♠ and if East bid quickly, that does not remove the fair time South get's to think.

Assuming EAST thought for a while BEFORE bidding 5♦, I will change the result to 5♠ (doubled or not). If east did bid quickly, i would allow south time think with ruling BIT unless it was really prolonged.

bluejak, on 2011-April-06, 18:34, said:

It is a clearly invented problem to try to find out the legal position, so this sort of question gets us nowhere. The question is whether there is any reason to adjust given the original facts and without inventing any more scenarios.

David,

I am sorry you are not willing to consider a legitimate question. The reason being, over stop bids, a lot of people don't hesitate even a second. Then, when the 2nd hand bids, cries wolf if South doubled quickly, East would be the first to complain if north leaves it it. If he takes his some time then double and his partner leaves it in, he cries if that is right, and if his partner pulls, he complains if that is right.

The ethical thing for south to do if East bids quickly (lickety-split) over the stop bid is to contemplate his bid before he makes it, rather or not he has a problem. That is, his pause is not a BIT. So I go back to my question and my statement.

• If East bid lickety split over 3S, then I would rule no BIT (see third bullet), and result stands. That is not re-inventing the problem
• If East properly paused, then bid 5D, then I would rule 5Sx.
• If East didn't pause bit south thoughts extended far beyond the 7 or 10 seconds (say 12 or more seconds) so that it was an obvious BIT, then I would also rule BIT and 5Sx, plus either a warning or procedural penalty

I don't know, but I have to admit I am surprised you are not concerned about whether there was a BIT, and if you, think a pause over a fast 5D is wrong when you have a clear double, then you are not as good of a director as I thought you were. Or perhaps, I should stop trying to bid in tempo over these fast bids by pausing rather I have a problem or not, and bid fast with no problem (bid or double) and pause only with real problems. But somehow that doesn't seem correct to me.