lamford, on 2011-March-24, 18:52, said:
I am still "fairly dismissive" of the claim by South that he would have doubled 2NT, and the fact that I have not reiterated my opinion should not persuade you otherwise.
Good, I'm glad I wasn't being unduly "black and white" in interpreting your comments that way.
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You argue that South said he would have done. As Mandy Rice-Davies said of Lord Astor in the Profumo affair, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" It is in South's interests to make this statement, as the TD will never give him a worse result for the double that never was.
He
might say that disingenuously, but he would also say that if it were true (or if he believed it to be true). I think that when a non-offending player makes a credible statement about what he would have done, we should usually believe him. Most people are honest.
Obviously in judging the veracity of such statements the TD should use his experience and knowledge of the players, ask relevant questions, and examine any available documentation. Sven is an experienced and competent director, and I expect he did that.
One thing that I think he not should do, when making a ruling about what a Norwegian would have bid, is to consider what is the standard meaning of a call in England or New Zealand.
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As Burn has observed, they often open 2NT showing the minors in Norway, and perhaps they don't bother to alert it. In fact they don't really care much about rules at all - they might even agree a match drawn without any play."
In my experience the standard of ethics of Norwegian bridge players is excellent.
It certainly seems wrong to extrapolate from one incident which was dealt with firmly by the Norwegian authorities, and from this events in this thread, to conclude that "they don't really care much about rules at all". In fact, the evidence is that the Norwegian authorities care very strongly about the rules.
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And finally you indicate that his action on the second round was indicative of desiring to take action on the previous round. I fail to see the connection. As you state in another post there will be plenty of hands that take action after the opponents have subsided in 3C that would not be suitable for action on the previous round, whatever your methods. But you already knew that.
My point was that considering the three approaches:
(1) pass throughout
(2) pass then double 3m
(3) double 2NT then take no further unprompted action
you might well choose (1), but if you were going to choose one of the others, (3) is both safer and (depending on their methods, obviously) more descriptive than (2).
So the fact that South thought that the hand merited some action lends credence to his claim that he would have acted on the first round.
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More importantly, you fail to indicate how North-South were damaged.
That may be more important to you, but I'm going to continue to discuss only the things that it pleases me to discuss.