[Trinidad]

jallerton, on 2014-October-23, 14:58, said:

That could be interesting. It sounds like you'll be awarding PPs to these two experienced TDs:

I seriously doubt that these two experienced TDs would blatantly use UI when they have been clearly instructed not to do that. If they would not agree with my ruling that the value of the penalty card is UI, then they will know their options. Simply ignoring the TD's ruling (even if it would be completely wrong) is not one of them. If they would indeed ignore the ruling, they fully deserve the PP.

Rik

[mycroft]

I thought it was reasonably clear. To paraphrase my at the table paraphrase:

"I realize this may be difficult to understand, but the Law says that while you are entitled to know that partner will play the ♠Q at the first legal opportunity, the fact that she has it, the fact that she wanted to play it, and any information you can get from the fact that she wanted to play it, you may not know, and must carefully avoid using."

Which gets me back to my original comment in this thread:

You can not use the fact that partner has the ♠Q to choose to lead spades if some other Logical Alternative exists.
If there is no Logical Alternative to a spade, you are allowed to know that playing the A will crash the Q, and if that is not helpful, you don't have to play the A (or the K).

Which seems to be what GordonTD said above.

[campboy]

Trinidad, on 2014-October-23, 15:17, said:

But law 50E1 doesn't allow you to know that your partner must play the ♠Q at his first legal opportunity.

It allows you to know that partner has a card that he needs to play at his first legal opportunity. You are even allowed to know that it is the card that is lying face up on the table. But the knowledge that the card that is lying face up is the ♠Q is UI (50E2).

I can see that this would be a reasonable interpretation of the law, but it is not the interpretation which is generally accepted as correct. In fact, looking in the White Book I discovered there is a minute about it, albeit one which was written for a previous version of the laws.

WBFLC minutes 1998-08-24#3 said:

Information that the player must play the penalty card as the law requires is authorised and partner may choose the card to lead from the suit on the basis of that knowledge (e.g. may lead small from KQJx when partner’s penalty card is the Ace). Information based on sight of partner’s penalty card is unauthorised so that, for example, the player may not choose to lead the suit if the suit is suggested by the penalty card and play of a different suit is a logical alternative.

[Trinidad]

That minute is pretty clear. The example is pretty much exactly what we have here. So, I stand corrected.

Nevertheless, I think that if that is what they intended as the meaning of Law 50E, they should have rewritten it.

I also think that the minute is a strange contruction: For the purpose of selecting which suit to lead the penalty card is UI, but for selecting which card in that suit to lead it is AI. And this, we are supposed to be able to conclude from Law 50E, which doesn't mention any distinction between choosing suits and cards within suits.

Am I the only one who finds that odd?

Rik

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2014-October-23, 11:14, said:

- What the penalty card is, is UI. (Not only is he not allowed to know it, he needs to "bend over backwards".)
- When partner has played the penalty card, the defender is allowed to take into account that his partner was forced to play it. As a concrete example, in this case, if partner leads the ♠Q, the defender does not have to assume that this promises the jack and denies the king

These seem inconsistent with each other.

If you're not allowed to know what the PC is, why are you allowed to know that when he plays this card that it was the PC, and hence may not have its normal meaning as a signal?

I was initially thinking along the same lines as you, but whenever I try to turn it into examples of how to play or rule, I keep running into problems like this. Could the lawmakers really have intended something like the aforementioned minutes, where it's UI for choosing a suit to lead, but AI for choosing a card within the suit? That seems like a very weird and arbitrary distinction.

[jallerton]

Trinidad, on 2014-October-23, 17:58, said:

That minute is pretty clear. The example is pretty much exactly what we have here. So, I stand corrected.

Nevertheless, I think that if that is what they intended as the meaning of Law 50E, they should have rewritten it.

I also think that the minute is a strange contruction: For the purpose of selecting which suit to lead the penalty card is UI, but for selecting which card in that suit to lead it is AI. And this, we are supposed to be able to conclude from Law 50E, which doesn't mention any distinction between choosing suits and cards within suits.

Am I the only one who finds that odd?

Rik

No, you are not, In post #12 I said:

jallerton, on 2014-October-18, 02:34, said:

It seems to me that there are two possible interpretations here:

(a) If "Knowledge of the requirements for playing a penalty card" means that I am allowed to know partner has ♠Q then I can lead whatever I like; or
(b) If "Knowledge of the requirements for playing a penalty card" does not include allowing me to know partner has ♠Q then I must 'carefully avoid taking any advantage of the UI' (Law 73C) and 'may not choose from among logical alternatives one that could demonstrably have been suggested over another by the extraneous information' (Law 16B). In this case Law 73C tells me that I must not lead a low spade.

Whichever of (a) and (b) is supposed to apply, I can't see the relevance of whether or a not a top spade lead is the only logical alternative.

There was no equivalent of Law 50E in the 1997 Laws, and I assume that the 1998 WBF minute quoted by Campboy was intended to deal with that. Now that the penalty card UI/AI is dealt with in the 2007 Law 50E, the 1998 minute is superseded and we should be using the new Law 50E instead.

Reading another of the 2007 Laws, I now know why I prefer my interpretation (a) over interpretation (b). The answer lies in the Law immediately above:

Law 50D2 said:

When a defender has the lead while his partner has a major penalty card, he may not lead until declarer has stated which of the options below is selected (if the defender leads prematurely, he is subject to rectification under Law 49). Declarer may choose:

(a) to require* the defender to lead the suit of the penalty card, or to prohibit* him from leading that suit for as long as he retains the lead (for two or more penalty cards, see Law 51); if declarer exercises either of these options, the card is no longer a penalty card and is picked up.

(b) not to require or prohibit a lead, in which case the defender may lead any card; the penalty card remains a penalty card**. If this option is selected Law 50D continues to apply for as long as the penalty card remains.

Please note the part I have put in bold. It says "may lead any card". It does not say, for example, "may lead any card (subject to Law 50E2)".

So I think the Laws say this:

1. The player can lead any card (Law 50D2).
2. The fact that his partner holds♠Q, and has to play it at the first legal opportunity, is authorised information (Law 50E1).
3. The fact that his partner is likely to hold ♠J (assuminng they lead top of sequence) and is unlikely to have an attractive sequence to lead from in another suit is unauthorised information (Law 50E2).
4. If the defence gained by this player knowing that his partner held ♠Q, we adjust the score to what might have happened had the penalty card not existed (Law 50E3). [Presumably a weighted score could be a possibility here - Law 12C1C.]
5. If the player fails to carefully avoid taking any advantage of the information about ♠J/attractivenesss of lead in other suits, then the TD may adjust the score under the general UI Laws (Laws 73C/12A1 and/or Laws 16B/12C].

[weejonnie]

jallerton, on 2014-October-24, 09:16, said:

No, you are not, In post #12 I said:



There was no equivalent of Law 50E in the 1997 Laws, and I assume that the 1998 WBF minute quoted by Campboy was intended to deal with that. Now that the penalty card UI/AI is dealt with in the 2007 Law 50E, the 1998 minute is superseded and we should be using the new Law 50E instead.

Reading another of the 2007 Laws, I now know why I prefer my interpretation (a) over interpretation (b). The answer lies in the Law immediately above:



Please note the part I have put in bold. It says "may lead any card". It does not say, for example, "may lead any card (subject to Law 50E2)".

So I think the Laws say this:

1. The player can lead any card (Law 50D2).
2. The fact that his partner holds♠Q, and has to play it at the first legal opportunity, is authorised information (Law 50E1).
3. The fact that his partner is likely to hold ♠J (assuminng they lead top of sequence) and is unlikely to have an attractive sequence to lead from in another suit is unauthorised information (Law 50E2).
4. If the defence gained by this player knowing that his partner held ♠Q, we adjust the score to what might have happened had the penalty card not existed (Law 50E3). [Presumably a weighted score could be a possibility here - Law 12C1C.]
5. If the player fails to carefully avoid taking any advantage of the information about ♠J/attractivenesss of lead in other suits, then the TD may adjust the score under the general UI Laws (Laws 73C/12A1 and/or Laws 16B/12C].

1. Subject to the leader carefully avoiding taking advantage of UI.
2. Agree
3. Agree
4. A weighted score is possible (EBU) - but must not include any defence where the UI could have been used.
5. Agree

Now all you have to do is work out a speil to explain this to the player at the table - before you call the next round.

[Trinidad]

barmar, on 2014-October-24, 08:29, said:

These seem inconsistent with each other.

If you're not allowed to know what the PC is, why are you allowed to know that when he plays this card that it was the PC, and hence may not have its normal meaning as a signal?

Perhaps it helps to think of a time line:

Initially, you are allowed to know that partner has a PC, but not which one it is.
After the PC has been played, you are allowed to know that partner doesn't have a PC anymore. And, of course, you are allowed to know what cards partner has been playing.

So, here you are, knowing that partner has a PC, until suddenly, right after partner has played the ♠Q, you know that he doesn't have a PC. What could that PC have been?

So, you are allowed to know that the ♠Q was a penalty card once it has been played, because that is readily available from AI. You are allowed to know that it might not be the card that partner would normally play (e.g. to signal) since the knowledge that partner is forced to play the PC (which was the ♠Q) is AI.

Rik

[VixTD]

jallerton, on 2014-October-24, 09:16, said:

2. The fact that his partner holds♠Q, and has to play it at the first legal opportunity, is authorised information (Law 50E1).

Trinidad, on 2014-October-24, 10:05, said:

Initially, you are allowed to know that partner has a PC, but not which one it is.

I disagree with both of these interpretations.

I believe the original draft of this law made the identity of the penalty card unauthorized for the offending side, then the law was changed to mitigate the effects of offender's partner crashing honours, which was considered too high a price to pay for exposing a card. So offender's partner is not allowed to know that offender has ♠Q, but if the restrictions upon them still permit them to lead a spade or play to a spade trick, they are allowed to know that the card offender must play to this trick will be the queen and use that knowledge to, for instance, avoid crashing honours.

[barmar]

I can believe that was their intent. But if so, I hope we can agree that they expressed it incredibly poorly. Most of the time you can use a little common sense intuition, or resort to knowledge of bridge tradition and history, to disambiguate confusing laws or deal with potentially conflicting laws. But this one doesn't seem amenable to any of that.

[Trinidad]

barmar, on 2014-October-28, 08:49, said:

I can believe that was their intent. But if so, I hope we can agree that they expressed it incredibly poorly.

I cannot understand how one can write an interpretation of this Law in the WBF minutes in 1998 and then -when this law is rewritten in 2007- write it up in such a way that it accidentally goes against the minutes of 1998.

If it was the intent of the WBFLC that this Law should be interpreted as in the 1998 minutes, they could have simply copied and pasted the minutes into this Law. Instead, they came up with a whole new formulation, not mentioning anything from the 1998 minutes. One can only conclude that it was the WBFLC's intent to throw the interpretation from the 1998 minutes out of the window.

Rik

[dburn]

Until I read (with more or less total incredulity) the White Book's pronouncement that it's OK to go around underplaying KQJ when your side has committed the infraction of producing the Ace as a penalty card, I had thought that:

"Knowledge of the requirements for playing a penalty card" meant simply that you were allowed to know that partner played a penalty card because he had to; you did not have to treat (say) the 10 as the start of a peter, or as an encouraging signal, because you were allowed to know that partner had to play it.

"Other information derived from sight of a penalty card" meant simply that you weren't allowed to know what the card actually was until partner had played it (just as if it weren't a penalty card at all, but had remained concealed in his hand until he exposed it in the normal course of leading or following suit).

I still think that's what the law says. Has the WBF made any pronouncement?

[jallerton]

dburn, on 2014-October-28, 11:04, said:

Until I read (with more or less total incredulity) the White Book's pronouncement that it's OK to go around underplaying KQJ when your side has committed the infraction of producing the Ace as a penalty card, I had thought that:

"Knowledge of the requirements for playing a penalty card" meant simply that you were allowed to know that partner played a penalty card because he had to; you did not have to treat (say) the 10 as the start of a peter, or as an encouraging signal, because you were allowed to know that partner had to play it.

"Other information derived from sight of a penalty card" meant simply that you weren't allowed to know what the card actually was until partner had played it (just as if it weren't a penalty card at all, but had remained concealed in his hand until he exposed it in the normal course of leading or following suit).

I still think that's what the law says. Has the WBF made any pronouncement?

David: the pronouncement you have read with incredulity is not something invented by current or former editors of The White Book, or even by the EBU L&E Committee of which you are probably the longest serving current member. The offending paragraphs are marked [WBFLC] which means that they are taken directly from a WBFLC misinterpretation.

Whilst I stick by my earlier contention that the 1998 minute should be superseded by the 2007 Law 50E (whatever that means), I think I understand the reason why it it still features in the current White Book.

In October 2008 (so just after the 2007 Laws had come into force), the WBFLC published the following:

Quote

Law 50E

Mr. DiSacco asks that examples be provided of the application of this law.
A distinction must be made between the requirement that the player must play this card and information the player has the card. Initially the underlead from KQJx to partner’s Ax is allowed, but subsequently the Director may decide that 50E3 applies. Mr.Bavin observes that the player must convince the Director that he has not gained from the information that the player possesses the card. This continues the WBF Laws Committee decision made in previous years.

The last sentence is confusing. Does "decisions in previous years" refer to the 2007 Laws, or to the 1998 minute as well?

[jallerton]

VixTD, on 2014-October-28, 08:00, said:

I disagree with both of these interpretations.

I believe the original draft of this law made the identity of the penalty card unauthorized for the offending side, then the law was changed to mitigate the effects of offender's partner crashing honours, which was considered too high a price to pay for exposing a card. So offender's partner is not allowed to know that offender has ♠Q, but if the restrictions upon them still permit them to lead a spade or play to a spade trick, they are allowed to know that the card offender must play to this trick will be the queen and use that knowledge to, for instance, avoid crashing honours.

You refer to the "original draft of this Law", but can you explain why this interpretation is consistent with 2007 Law 50E?

[dburn]

jallerton, on 2014-October-28, 17:33, said:

David: the pronouncement you have read with incredulity is not something invented by current or former editors of The White Book, or even by the EBU L&E Committee of which you are probably the longest serving current member. The offending paragraphs are marked [WBFLC] which means that they are taken directly from a WBFLC misinterpretation.

I am, I think I have remarked,
Terrifically old.
The second Ice Age was a farce -
The first was rather cold.

But either I have gone completely gaga or the White Book has. On the one hand it says:

"partner may choose the card to lead from the suit on the basis of that knowledge (e.g. may lead small from KQJx when partner’s penalty card is the Ace)"

and on the other hand it says:

"However, they may not act as though they know partner has that card."

when no one would actually lead low from KQJx unless they knew that partner had the Ace.

What jallerton says about what the WBFLC published in October 2008 is illuminating. Not that it casts any light on what should happen when players have penalty cards - indeed, it casts that question further into darkness - but...