[timjand]

EBU match. A player finds a bid in the bidding box and withdraws it briefly, without setting it on the table, then realises it is not his turn to bid and replaces it. Nobody saw what the bid would have been.

EBU Bidding Box rules says "A call is considered to have been made when it has been removed from the bidding box with apparent intent."

If the director is called, should the ruling be that this is a call out of rotation and that whatever bid was going to be made, is made and adjudicated accordingly?

Or could it be considered merely UI for partner?

Tim

[blackshoe]

Looks like a COOT to me.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2017-January-23, 10:01, said:

Looks like a COOT to me.

If you were rearranging your bidding box at the start of a round and your RHO opened, would you also consider yourself to have made a COOT? If your partner makes an artificial call and you accidentally pull out a pass card instead of the alert you were reaching for, is this also a COOT? How about if you have put the opps' CC at the back of the bidding box to save space and bring out a bidding card with it when wanting to check something? Or a hundred other scenarios where the "apparent intent" is clearly not to make a bid.

[mycroft]

Was it removed from the bidding box? Yes. Was it intentionally done so (and not for fixing L-'s box again *)? Yes, she was trying to open.

Therefore, in the EBU, it's a call out of turn. Put it on the table, and let's dance the dance.

In the ACBL, with its much more lax bidding box rules (can we *please* fix this?), it's not a call, and there is a ton of UI, and we dance to a different tune.

* We have a player in our area who isn't willing to put in the time to learn how to use a bidding box, and just dumps the cards back wherever (behind the passes, in front of 7NT, upside down, as I said, whatever). He always sits E-W, and can usually get through a round without not being able to find the bid he wants (although he needed to call the TD twice in one swiss match this month because he couldn't find his call). The player following, however...

[sanst]

Zelandakh, on 2017-January-23, 10:48, said:

If you were rearranging your bidding box at the start of a round and your RHO opened, would you also consider yourself to have made a COOT? If your partner makes an artificial call and you accidentally pull out a pass card instead of the alert you were reaching for, is this also a COOT? How about if you have put the opps' CC at the back of the bidding box to save space and bring out a bidding card with it when wanting to check something? Or a hundred other scenarios where the "apparent intent" is clearly not to make a bid.

All of that is clearly not the case here. From the OP: " player finds a bid in the bidding box and withdraws it briefly, without setting it on the table, then realises it is not his turn to bid and replaces it". So the player wanted to make a call, got the card out of the box and then realises that it's not his turn to bid. Under EBU rules, as under the Dutch, the call is made and should be dealt with accordingly. That there are hundreds of reason why somebody removes a card from the box, is besides the point here. We know why the card was pulled.

[Zelandakh]

sanst, on 2017-January-23, 13:06, said:

All of that is clearly not the case here.

Perhaps it is a language issue then. I took the OP to mean that the player had found a bidding card in the wrong place and corrected that. That is naturally different from the case of a player choosing a bid and withdrawing it intending to make the call. Re-reading the OP I see it can be read either way. Perhaps Tim can clarify precisely what took place on this occasion.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2017-January-23, 10:48, said:

Or a hundred other scenarios where the "apparent intent" is clearly not to make a bid.

Which is the whole reason for the "with apparent intent" qualification.

Actually, the example of pulling the pass card when you intend the alert card may not fall under this, since you did apparently did intend to pull a card out, just not that card. If it were in rotation, this would fall under the law about unintended calls. I'm not sure precisely how it fits in when what the intention relates to is whether you meant to make a call (versus alert) in the first place, not whether you intended to pull a card from the bidding box.

[mycroft]

I think that it's obvious to all when it was an aborted bid versus when it was a rearrangement or cleanup, or even a pull to see what 3♠x+1 would have been last round, same as it's obvious to all when it's rearrangement of dummy to make room for dead cards and when it's "I know what he's going to ask for" and when it's "I know what he should be playing here (and he may not)".

At least I have never had a disagreement about it at the table, and I have never had a lack of agreement when as the TD I arrive at the table. Definitely there are "where did the bid get to" arguments, but not "was it a bid or just fiddling" (even "was it thinking with the fingers or just squaring the box") issues.

[barmar]

mycroft, on 2017-January-23, 15:24, said:

I think that it's obvious to all when it was an aborted bid versus ...

I'm sure that in a certain North London club it's not always so obvious, and a player who looks and sounds like SB will find a way to exploit it. RR will fiddle with the box at a time when a player "could have known" that it would work to his benefit.

[mycroft]

Given that he has accused someone of realizing that deliberately scalding oneself on a tea-urn in order to "drop" a card to the table that would "persuade" declarer into requiring the Rabbit to switch to the winning defence, all in time to actually do said scalding; I agree with you. But practically, everyone knows the difference and agrees at the table (doubling partner out of rotation actions notwithstanding, and even that was solved by "oops, not far enough up", pull the Alert card instead).

[barmar]

+1 for dredging up one of the most outlandish SB stories.