[blackshoe]

I'm not objecting to your efforts to clean up the laws, only to the concept of "mandatory PPs". And who knows, maybe TPTB will agree with you. Here in the ACBL we do have one situation in which (in theory anyway) PPs are mandatory: zero tolerance violations. OTOH, I well remember a club game in which I called the TD for a ZT violation (the ACBL has told me that *anyone* can do that, at any time, even if attention has not formally been drawn to the violation), he got within about ten feet of the table, saw that I was dummy, and said "Ed, you know dummy is not allowed to call the TD", and walked away. I called him back. "I don't know any such thing, because it isn't true". He still refused to deal with the problem. That has nothing to do with not wanting to feel mean, it's pure incompetence.

[barmar]

semeai, on 2012-September-08, 12:49, said:

Strangely I can't find in the laws any comment that one should, shall, or must make sufficient bids and bids in turn. Law 17 just states that the players make bids in succession, with the dealer making the first call (no use of these words there). Law 18 describes what proper form is for bids and describes what sufficient and insufficient mean (again no use, and not even a comment that players do make sufficient bids or some such). Law 27 describes what you must do when an insufficient call is made. Similarly for Law 31 and bids out of turn. No comment on the making of it, actually, as far as I can see.

Law 17 describes correct procedure. The definition of "irregularity" is "A deviation from correct procedure". So a BOOT is an irregularity.

Law 18 isn't quite as clear. It describes both sufficient and insufficient bids, never actually indicating that one is correct and other is not. I think what we're supposed to understand is that the Laws are intended to be read by people who know the game. We don't actually need the laws to tell us that bids must be made in turn and must be sufficient -- if you don't know this, you don't know how to play bridge in the first place. Laws like 18E, which states the order of the denominations, are in there for completeness, but we would have no problem applying the Laws if they were omitted.

What this means is that you can't learn how to play bridge from the Laws. That's OK, that's not what they're for. They're mostly for describing details that are not part of everyone's basic knowledge of the game, and for describing how we deal with deviations from correct procedures. The fact that insufficient bids are deviations is general bridge knowledge, regardless of whether it's stated explicitly in the Laws.