[aguahombre]

There is nothing "normal" about a bid equal to or lower than a bid which partner has made.

I am comparing, say:

(1C) 3H (1S), where we (IMO) shouldn't be allowed to make any bid between 1S and 3H, AND

(1C) 1H (1D), where we should be allowed to accept 1D and bid 1S...but don't want to have to bid 2S if the correction of 2D is allowed.

[Vampyr]

aguahombre, on 2012-October-12, 21:08, said:

There is nothing "normal" about a bid equal to or lower than a bid which partner has made.

I am comparing, say:

(1C) 3H (1S), where we (IMO) shouldn't be allowed to make any bid between 1S and 3H, AND

(1C) 1H (1D), where we should be allowed to accept 1D and bid 1S...but don't want to have to bid 2S if the correction of 2D is allowed.

Bizarre.

[jeffford76]

aguahombre, on 2012-October-12, 21:08, said:

There is nothing "normal" about a bid equal to or lower than a bid which partner has made.

I am comparing, say:

(1C) 3H (1S), where we (IMO) shouldn't be allowed to make any bid between 1S and 3H, AND

(1C) 1H (1D), where we should be allowed to accept 1D and bid 1S...but don't want to have to bid 2S if the correction of 2D is allowed.

Whether this is a good idea or not, I am fairly confident the law will never be made this complicated.

[bluejak]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-12, 20:51, said:

There is a reason that disallowing the acceptance of insufficient bids, bids and leads out of turn, etc, which is that it is unfair to put the onus of not accepting them on the NOS. The latter might not notice and might dozily follow. So now the NOS are offenders too, and probably cannot be sorted out sensibly.

Why are they offenders if they accept an insufficient bid?

[pran]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-12, 20:51, said:

There is a reason that disallowing the acceptance of insufficient bids, bids and leads out of turn, etc, which is that it is unfair to put the onus of not accepting them on the NOS. The latter might not notice and might dozily follow. So now the NOS are offenders too, and probably cannot be sorted out sensibly.

bluejak, on 2012-October-13, 18:01, said:

Why are they offenders if they accept an insufficient bid?

As far as I can see Vampyr commented on the suggestion that accepting an insufficient bid should be made illegal.

[Vampyr]

pran, on 2012-October-14, 02:34, said:

As far as I can see Vampyr commented on the suggestion that accepting an insufficient bid should be made illegal.

Quite.

Those who feel that the NOS should not be permitted to use the extra space are barking up the wrong tree. They should be lobbying for the following change: The insufficient bidder may substitute any legal call (arguable whether to include double or redouble). Partner is barred for the remainder of the auction.

This is simple and easy to understand and follow, and would result in virtually no insufficient bids being accepted.

[aguahombre]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-14, 12:36, said:

Those who feel that the NOS should not be permitted to use the extra space are barking up the wrong tree.

That would not be the correct characterization of what I posted. NOS should be permitted to use extra space, but not bids which are insufficient (equal or below) to what their partner has bid.

(1C) 3H (1S)...accepting 1S and being allowed to bid 1NT is "bizarre", to use your word.
(1C) 3H (1S)...accepting and being able to bid 4H (which we couldn't do if righty bid 4S) is a "quite" proper use of space provided by the IB.

[pran]

aguahombre, on 2012-October-14, 13:03, said:

That would not be the correct characterization of what I posted. NOS should be permitted to use extra space, but not bids which are insufficient (equal or below) to what their partner has bid.

(1C) 3H (1S)...accepting 1S and being allowed to bid 1NT is "bizarre", to use your word.
(1C) 3H (1S)...accepting and being able to bid 4H (which we couldn't do if righty bid 4S) is a "quite" proper use of space provided by the IB.

This suggestion goes against one of the fundamentals of the laws: NOS has the option of not accepting an irregularity so that it must be immediately corrected (with possible further rectifications) or accepting and irregularity so that auction or play continues from the position immediately following the irregularity without any rectification at all.

If the above suggestion should be adopted then the only logical consequence would for instance be that also no call or lead out of turn shall ever be acceptable. This will deprieve NOS from occationally gain by opponents' irregularities by accepting them if they see fit to do so. And what is worse: It will lead to many situations where NOS rather than OS is effectively penalized by an irregularity, namely if they initially overlook the irregularity.

This whole mess has come up because of the (excuse me silly) regulation in some jurisdictions that no partnership is allowed to have any predefined fundamental partnership understanding on how they might utilize the situation after an irregularity has been committed by an opponent.

Good players do not need to having discussed such situations, they often know their own system well enough to understand on the fly how to utilize the situation, honestly claim that the situation is "undiscussed" if asked, and be confident that they fully understand the actions selected by their respective partner.

But can "undiscussed" be a correct disclosure of an apparently existing implicit partnership understanding in such situations? I shall stop right here.

[Vampyr]

aguahombre, on 2012-October-14, 13:03, said:

That would not be the correct characterization of what I posted. NOS should be permitted to use extra space, but not bids which are insufficient (equal or below) to what their partner has bid.

(1C) 3H (1S)...accepting 1S and being allowed to bid 1NT is "bizarre", to use your word.

What would you consider a proper penalty for accepting it by accident?

Quote

(1C) 3H (1S)...accepting and being able to bid 4H (which we couldn't do if righty bid 4S) is a "quite" proper use of space provided by the IB.

In the second example, there is no extra space being used unless not accepting the bid would mean RHO is forced to bid 4♠. It would be a very interesting game, one that I think I would enjoy, if an insufficient bid had to be "made good" and raised a level beyond to boot. However, it would not be bridge.

[aguahombre]

pran, on 2012-October-14, 13:51, said:

This suggestion goes against one of the fundamentals of the laws: NOS has the option of not accepting an irregularity so that it must be immediately corrected (with possible further rectifications) or accepting and irregularity so that auction or play continues from the position immediately following the irregularity without any rectification at all.

Yes, Pran. Suggested changes to laws do go against existing laws, from time to time. That is why we call them suggestions for changing laws.

[pran]

pran, on 2012-October-14, 13:51, said:

This suggestion goes against one of the fundamentals of the laws: NOS has the option of not accepting an irregularity so that it must be immediately corrected (with possible further rectifications) or accepting and irregularity so that auction or play continues from the position immediately following the irregularity without any rectification at all.

aguahombre, on 2012-October-14, 15:03, said:

Yes, Pran. Suggested changes to laws do go against existing laws, from time to time. That is why we call then suggestions for changing laws.

I have the laws for duplicate contract bridge back to 1932 and haven't noticed any law change that goes against the fundamentals of the laws.

Since the beginning of duplicate an offender's LHO has always had the option to accept a lead out of turn, a call out of turn and an insufficient bid.

[Vampyr]

pran, on 2012-October-14, 16:28, said:

Since the beginning of duplicate an offender's LHO has always had the option to accept a lead out of turn, a call out of turn and an insufficient bid.

Perhaps it is more significant, though, that there are very good reasons for this.

[aguahombre]

I guess someone decides what is fundamental. For a long time I thought 100-300-500-700-900 was fundamental, and that a revoke carried a certain penalty regardless of whether the OS won the trick and/or took any successive tricks; closer to subject, didn't it used to be fundamental that finger fumbles were handled the same as brain farts?

I just don't see a fundamental need to be able to bid 1NT over partner's 3H bid.

[CarlRitner]

So then, to merge an idea from another topic,

1C ....

7NT - (Pass) - Pass - (Dbl)
Pass - (Pass) - (Rdbl) - (Pass)
Pass - 1C

IB accepted could very well make the news some day.
Unless 7NTxx ends the auction....

[Vampyr]

aguahombre, on 2012-October-14, 18:17, said:

I just don't see a fundamental need to be able to bid 1NT over partner's 3H bid.

Why does this bother you so much? I know that there must be some people who approve of the WBFLC approach towards the failure to observe the basic mechanics of the game, but even they have not gone this far.

Anyway, since your position on the morality of accepting an insufficient bid has not shifted, perhaps it would be better to focus on the practicalities.

If an innocent opponent mistakenly bids over the IB, there will now be (at least) two illegal bids on the table, from both sides, and the deal will likely be impossible to be played.

Another factor to consider is that the current Laws allow some possibility of damage to the NOS after an insufficient bid, so it seems only fair to let them decide if they can instead gain an advantage by accepting the bid. OK, I guess this is back to the moral side, but the perception of this unfairness will be detrimental to the enjoyment of those who bid legally, and thus detrimental to the game.

Why not solve the problem at your own table by making legal bids? Then the matter is really no concern of yours.

[gnasher]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-14, 19:38, said:

Why does this bother you so much?

It bothers me that someone at another table will be allowed to bid 1NT over his partner's 3♥ bid.

Quote

I know that there must be some people who approve of the WBFLC approach towards the failure to observe the basic mechanics of the game, but even they have not gone this far.

They haven't gone anything like far enough, in my view. I would like to see all the rules relating relating to insufficient bids, bids out of turn, leads of out turn, revokes, etc thrown out and replaced by rules that restore equity, instead of randomly handing out non-bridge results of arbitrary value.

[pran]

gnasher, on 2012-October-15, 00:54, said:

It bothers me that someone at another table will be allowed to bid 1NT over his partner's 3♥ bid.

Whether he shall be allowed to do so is at the mercy of his LHO.
His LHO will most likely not accept this unless he (LHO) can expect to gain from it.

Or are you thinking of the situation after RHO made an insufficient bid below 1NT?
In that case he sees a probable gain by accepting the IB and make the now legal bid of 1NT. What should be wrong with that?

This post has been edited by pran: 2012-October-15, 03:01

[gnasher]

pran, on 2012-October-15, 02:58, said:

Or are you thinking of the situation after RHO made an insufficient bid below 1NT?

Yes.

Quote

In that case he sees a probable gain by accepting the IB and make the now legal bid of 1NT. What should be wrong with that?

What's wrong is that the effects are abritrary and nothing to do with bridge. It's roughly equivalent to a rule that says:

"After a player makes an insufficient bid, the director shall
(a) Determine what score would have occurred without the infraction
(b) Generate a random number between that score and 100% of the available matchpoints on the board
(c) Assign the result of (b) as the score for both pairs."

[pran]

gnasher, on 2012-October-15, 03:24, said:

What's wrong is that the effects are abritrary and nothing to do with bridge. It's roughly equivalent to a rule that says:

"After a player makes an insufficient bid, the director shall
(a) Determine what score would have occurred without the infraction
(b) Generate a random number between that score and 100% of the available matchpoints on the board
(c ) Assign the result of (b) as the score for both pairs."

Bridge is a game that is defined by its rules. One of the fundamental rules is that an offender's LHO in certain cases have a choice on what action to take after an irregularity (including actions that might not have been available without the irregularity). The rules further explicitly state that there is no restriction, whether legal or ethical, for a non-offending side to select an action which to them seems most favourable.

Your "roughly equivalent" example most importantly lacks information on how the Director shall be able to determine the score that would have occurred without the infraction. How can he do that when neither the contract, nor the opening lead or the play as such is yet known?

Your logic reminds me of a suggestion that instead of wasting hours of playing competitions we should instead simply compute the expected result of the competion from the current masterpoint status for each competitor and simply issue prizes according to such computed results. In order to allow for some uncertainty we could introduce a randomizer with each computed result.

Think of it: Instead of spending several months to have a nation-wide champion we could have the championship completed within half an hour!

LOTTO next.

[gnasher]

Sven, I think you missed my point. What I am saying is that the current rules are like a random number generator. The current rules for insufficient bids are already like LOTTO; I would like them to be more like bridge.

If I were rewriting the rules, Law 27 would read:

"If a player makes an insufficient bid, the insufficient bid is cancelled, and may be replaced with any legal call. The information that the player intended to make an insufficient bid is unauthorised to the offender's partner, and authorised to the opponents."