[paulg]

gnasher, on 2013-September-20, 02:07, said:

I don't really understand the purpose of 27D, or why it applies only to rulings under 27B1.

It should be impossible to gain from an infraction where 27B1 applies, so there should never be a need for an adjustment. When 27B2 applies, on the other hand, it is possible to gain. so this is the situation where 27D ought to apply.

But in any case, if there is damage we have Law 23, so why do we need 27D as well? The only difference seems to be that 27D doesn't include the "could have known" test, but I think that test is passed by any insufficient bid. It doesn't say anything about knowing how the damage might occur.

gnasher's thoughts echo my own.

I see the problem of Law 23 is that it might not be applied consistently in IB situations. The OP has posted a case where everyone seems to agree that they should not be allowed to play in 4NT (some agree if the IB is told that he shouldn't bid it).

But suppose the IB was told that 4NT is effectively barred, or realises it himself, and decides to pass 4♠ and happens to get an excellent score. Will you adjust now?

What if there was a different sequence where a player makes an IB after his partner opens and is forced to make a call that will silence his partner. Having game values he plumps for 3NT and scores well because everyone else is in slam going down. Will you adjust now or is this just rub of the green?

I'd prefer to see 27D used consistently in IB cases.

[Zelandakh]

Both of those scenarios look like rub of the green unless there are additional circumstances. Neither provide a situation where the outcome could well have been different without the IB. A better example would be bidding 4♠ over their 4♥ after an IB, thereby avoiding a damaging forcing pass at the 5 level.

[gnasher]

paulg, on 2013-September-20, 02:53, said:

But suppose the IB was told that 4NT is effectively barred, or realises it himself, and decides to pass 4♠ and happens to get an excellent score. Will you adjust now?

No. In an unpolluted auction his options would have been to play in 4♠, 5♠, 6♠, 6♣ or 6NT. He tried to play in 3NT, so he can't have had a hand that he considered worth a slam try. Hence the auction would have been the same without the infraction, so no damage was caused by applying the IB laws.

Quote

What if there was a different sequence where a player makes an IB after his partner opens and is forced to make a call that will silence his partner. Having game values he plumps for 3NT and scores well because everyone else is in slam going down. Will you adjust now or is this just rub of the green?

He gained by inadvertently using the IB laws to silence his partner, so I'd adjust this.

[campboy]

paulg, on 2013-September-20, 02:53, said:

What if there was a different sequence where a player makes an IB after his partner opens and is forced to make a call that will silence his partner. Having game values he plumps for 3NT and scores well because everyone else is in slam going down. Will you adjust now or is this just rub of the green?

This sounds like a pretty standard "rub of the green" (ie law 10C4) case. The insufficient bid forces him to guess, and he has every reason to think that will put him at a disadvantage. Sometimes he will guess right, and there is nothing wrong with that.

[iviehoff]

campboy, on 2013-September-20, 04:46, said:

The insufficient bid forces him to guess, and he has every reason to think that will put him at a disadvantage. Sometimes he will guess right, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Which I suppose is precisely the reason that 27D doesn't apply to 27B2 cases, which I required to be reminded of by Gordon. We apply Law 23 in that subset of cases where one "could well have known": this is a "could well have known" case, but many shots in the dark after an IB are not.

The reason we have Law 27D in 27B1 cases is, I think, precisely because Law 16D has been disapplied and thus you can get somewhere you couldn't have got without the IB.

[pran]

gordontd, on 2013-September-20, 01:30, said:

I had exactly such a ruling once, and I adjusted it to 6NT-1. It was however made harder by the fact that in 5NT they had been allowed to make twelve tricks, but I considered that in 6NT they would have taken both their aces.

I don't understand.
Did the auction go something like:
4NT - pass - 5[something] - pass
5♠ - pass - 5NT - AP

and you adjusted the result (5NT= or 5NT+1) to 6NT-1 ?

(4NT is traditional 4 Ace Blackwood and Spades are not relevant for trump)
To me the 5♠ bid in this situation is an undisputable transfer to 5NT.

(5♥ is equally available if Hearts are not relevant for trump but spades are)

[gordontd]

pran, on 2013-September-20, 05:46, said:

I don't understand.
Did the auction go something like:
4NT - pass - 5[something] - pass
5♠ - pass - 5NT - AP

and you adjusted the result (5NT= or 5NT+1) to 6NT-1 ?

(4NT is traditional 4 Ace Blackwood and Spades are not relevant for trump)
To me the 5♠ bid in this situation is an undisputable transfer to 5NT.

(5♥ is equally available if Hearts are not relevant for trump but spades are)

The end of the auction was

4NT - 5S
5H/5NT

The player knew that bidding a new suit at the five-level was the way to get partner to bid 5NT to play!

[gordontd]

gnasher, on 2013-September-20, 02:07, said:

I don't really understand the purpose of 27D, or why it applies only to rulings under 27B1.

I think the explanation for all of this is in (recent) history. When the new laws were written, Law 27 was written poorly - so poorly that when the Laws were first made public, most readers thought they said the exact opposite of what was intended. So, very hurriedly (after at least one country had already printed them), they re-wrote this law, and chucked in L27D as a back-stop in case they had missed anything.

[Zelandakh]

I think the IB law/regulation should read that the bid cannot be corrected once the card has been placed on the table deliberately. The call can be changed between drawing it and it being deliberately placed but the UI laws then apply. Simple, clear and encourages players to pay attention while still catering to mispulls, sticky cards, dropped cards, etc.

[blackshoe]

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2013-September-20, 07:59, said:

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

When I sit down opposite Meckwell as dealer, I am so opening the bidding with -1♣.

[gordontd]

blackshoe, on 2013-September-20, 07:59, said:

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

So, when you have a disaster in the bidding, all you need to do is follow it with an insufficient bid and you get 40%?

[blackshoe]

Deliberately making an insufficient bid under the proposed law is cheating and should be treated as such.

[iviehoff]

blackshoe, on 2013-September-20, 08:35, said:

Deliberately making an insufficient bid under the proposed law is cheating and should be treated as such.

But deciding that a player has infracted deliberately to take advantage of the consequences is usually somewhere that directors don't like to go without incredibly strong evidence. That's the advantage of Law 23, which is entirely adequate in the present situation.

[pran]

gordontd, on 2013-September-20, 06:20, said:

I think the explanation for all of this is in (recent) history. When the new laws were written, Law 27 was written poorly - so poorly that when the Laws were first made public, most readers thought they said the exact opposite of what was intended. So, very hurriedly (after at least one country had already printed them), they re-wrote this law, and chucked in L27D as a back-stop in case they had missed anything.

Indeed. And I did alert Grattan on this at an early stage while we were translating the new laws. I do hope I was not the only one to note the problem, but at least I had the satisfaction that Law 27 was rewritten.

[pran]

gordontd, on 2013-September-20, 06:14, said:

The end of the auction was

4NT - 5S
5H/5NT

The player knew that bidding a new suit at the five-level was the way to get partner to bid 5NT to play!

Fine.
And if a partnership may need to stop in 5NT after a 5♠ response to their Blackwood bid there must be something seriously wrong with their use of BW.

Here you were of course in Law 27B2 territory with a follow up ruling under Law 23.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2013-September-20, 06:51, said:

I think the IB law/regulation should read that the bid cannot be corrected once the card has been placed on the table deliberately. The call can be changed between drawing it and it being deliberately placed but the UI laws then apply. Simple, clear and encourages players to pay attention while still catering to mispulls, sticky cards, dropped cards, etc.

So there would be no correction possibility with spoken bidding? The IB law comes down to us from the days when this was common. Some details have changed, but the general idea that it should be corrected in some way is hardly based on a presumption of mechanical error.

[Zelandakh]

That is why I wrote law/regulation Barry. I am making no reference to spoken bidding with this suggestion. Having a law work in a particular way for historical reasons rather than having the best law available strikes me as wrong.

[gnasher]

blackshoe, on 2013-September-20, 07:59, said:

If "could have known" must always be true, we don't need Law 23 either. Just change the law so it says "if you make an IB, you get an artificial adjusted score of average minus. Your opponents get average plus".

But that would lead to a different outcome.

With the current laws, we restore equity when there is damage and not otherwise. If we did away with 27B1 we would, I think, get exactly the same result as under the current Laws. With your suggested change, the NOS would sometimes benefit unfairly, and sometimes suffer unfairly.

[mycroft]

Apart from the classic "IB then 4NT", the other one (that has a different special law in place) is "IB, then 'takeout' double".

I usually find that if I'm even close to those cases, the players do understand the Probst Cheat explanation for these.

I was told when I took my TA exam that it was likely I would never run into a Law 23 case. So far, that has been true; there have been a couple of times I've had to investigate it, but never yet applied it. But I'm glad it's there.