[weejonnie]

Well a lot depends on the quality of the 'poor bloody infantry' - the directors at the clubs - to understand and apply law 16. The current laws are very strict, forcing a pass in such circumstances leaves no chance for any UI problems (as is the case for IBs of course, although some intelligence is needed).

As I have said before: sometimes an irregularity results in a result that appears to be unduly harsh (and of course the director has no leeway in the matter). The ACBL moved away from one form of harshness by embracing weighted scores (which seem to have been so successful that they are going to be the standard remedy), so it seems reasonable to allow 'comparable calls' if the tendency for the laws is to try and embrace fairness for both sides. If it turns out that the directors cannot work out how to enforce this adjustment - well there is always 2027.

[mycroft]

Currently we expect the PBI to handle "she may accept, if not then you can do what you wish, but your partner must pass [once/throughout],..." and resolve the "but that bid's forcing" "not when partner is forced by law to pass, it isn't"/ "but she just shot out 3NT and it made and nobody else is there; do they get rewarded for their infraction?" and all the other stuff that is currently there. Never mind Vampyr's idea that it's best to accept the IB and force them to play the weird auction rather than let them correct it and "get two bids in for free" (of course it's not free, and frequently not beneficial either).

I think if they can handle it now (they can't handle it now - I play in clubs, including some with very good TDs. But I bet not another in 100 notices how they get it wrong, and TDs-as-players get to suck it up a bit) they can handle the expansion.

Also, education. Education is key. My concern is more that this is a gross change (in the psychic meaning, not the adolescent meaning), and we will spend *years* answering "but doesn't he have to pass?" questions. Note that the last time I heard about "he won a trick with a card he could have played to the revoke trick, so..." (from one of those club TDs, no less - not one of the "very good" ones) was 20*15*. Good game, good game.

[Vampyr]

What I actually think is that you should never accept an insufficient bid unless you have agreed sensible ways to use the extra space.

[blackshoe]

It appears that the only reasonable solution is to take all four players out behind the barn and shoot them in the head. At least then they won't be repeating this mess. It may be difficult to get enough tables for a decent game next week though.

[weejonnie]

 blackshoe, on 2017-February-06, 21:50, said:

It appears that the only reasonable solution is to take all four players out behind the barn and shoot them in the head. At least then they won't be repeating this mess. It may be difficult to get enough tables for a decent game next week though.

But the NOS are entitled to a blindfold and cigarette. Agreed?

[WellSpyder]

 mycroft, on 2017-February-06, 16:32, said:

I hope that I will never see the creep in of "don't care" due to the ameliorating of the penalties. However, I haven't seen it so far.

I agree I haven't seen this with IBs. But the idea of lack of punishment seems quite prevalent with revokes these days - defenders seem aggrieved more often than not that there is still a penalty for a revoke even if it doesn't hinder declarer. In other words, they seem to feel equity should be restored for the OS as well as the NOS....

[blackshoe]

 weejonnie, on 2017-February-07, 02:32, said:

But the NOS are entitled to a blindfold and cigarette. Agreed?

Sure.

[mycroft]

Burn's rule will work. Really it will. Same issue with getting tables next week, though.

[jallerton]

 gordontd, on 2017-January-26, 07:22, said:

The proposed wording is:

Quote

A call that replaces a withdrawn call is a comparable call if it:
1. has the same or similar meaning as that attributable to the withdrawn call, or
2. defines a subset of the possible meanings attributable to the withdrawn call, or
3. has the same purpose (e.g. an asking bid or a relay) as that attributable to the
withdrawn call.

There's also the usual possibility of the TD adjusting if they have gained from the IB.

 Vampyr, on 2017-January-26, 08:40, said:

This s would still leave us with the mind reading aspect though. And the fact that it is anyway illegal for an insufficient bid to have any meaning at all.

 gordontd, on 2017-January-26, 08:50, said:

There's more to that law than I quoted, but you asked for an explanation of the term "comparable call" and the whole text is on a password-protected site, accessible law by law, so although we haven't been asked not to give any of it away, I'm reluctant to divulge too much.

That's why it uses the word "attributable".

How does using the word "attributable" help? How is a TD supposed to ascertain the purpose attributable to an insufficient bid? Is that any easier than determining the "meaning" of an insufficient bid? The proposed new Law requires the TD to consider both!

[gordontd]

 jallerton, on 2017-February-07, 17:48, said:

How does using the word "attributable" help? How is a TD supposed to ascertain the purpose attributable to an insufficient bid? Is that any easier than determining the "meaning" of an insufficient bid? The proposed new Law requires the TD to consider both!

It seems to me that we won't have to consider the intention of the player, just what meanings the call might appear to have to the rest of the table. But of course we'll need to see how it plays out in practice.

[weejonnie]

Would be interesting if any scenarios have been run through.

For instance - suppose the IB is an asking bid about partner's club holding and the comparable call is an asking bid about partner's spade holding? Presumably this is OK - although the withdrawn call shows that the IBer was interested in a different suit. (Obviously we can adjust if we feel the contract wouldn't have been reached had the IB not taken place or partner took advantage of the UI.)

Personally, I like the extension of the comparable call to include "the same purpose" as opposed to "the same meaning" - and extending it to BOOTS, as it gives the OS a better chance to play bridge rather than, as in the current laws, almost certainly awarding the NOS a top/ imps after a BOOT.

[Vampyr]

 gordontd, on 2017-February-08, 02:40, said:

It seems to me that we won't have to consider the intention of the player, just what meanings the call might appear to have to the rest of the table. But of course we'll need to see how it plays out in practice.

This is a little better in principle, but still how is the director supposed to determine this?

 weejonnie, on 2017-February-08, 04:15, said:

Would be interesting if any scenarios have been run through.

For instance - suppose the IB is an asking bid about partner's club holding and the comparable call is an asking bid about partner's spade holding? Presumably this is OK

Are you serious? Of course it's not OK. But again, how does the director determine that the bid was own asking bid about clubs?

Quote

Personally, I like the extension of the comparable call to include "the same purpose" as opposed to "the same meaning" - and extending it to BOOTS, as it gives the OS a better chance to play bridge

But that ship has sailed. "Playing bridge" involves adhering to the rules.

[weejonnie]

 Vampyr, on 2017-February-08, 05:34, said:

This is a little better in principle, but still how is the director supposed to determine this?



Are you serious? Of course it's not OK. But again, how does the director determine that the bid was own asking bid about clubs?



But that ship has sailed. "Playing bridge" involves adhering to the rules.

If you read the proposed law it says "e.g. asking bid" - it doesn't qualify it e.g. "a call requesting the same information" (as I agree it should)

[barmar]

 weejonnie, on 2017-February-08, 14:21, said:

If you read the proposed law it says "e.g. asking bid" - it doesn't qualify it e.g. "a call requesting the same information" (as I agree it should)

I don't interpret it as saying that all asking bids have the same purpose. It's just giving examples of categories of calls for which the criteria for determining whether they're comparable is that the replacement call has the same purpose as the withdrawn call. This is trying to fix the flaw in the old wording, which just used "meaning" as a catch-all term that encompassed both what a bid shows and what a bid asks.

Stayman and Blackwood are both asking bids, but we wouldn't say that they have the same purpose. Blackwood and Kickback are asking bids that have the same purpose.

But I can see how SB might twist this to his purposes. In discussions about alerting and explaining, many people say that when explaining an asking bid you should just say something like "Asks partner to further describe his hand" -- they don't believe that you should explain the meanings of partner's responses. By this logic, there is no difference between Stayman and Blackwood. This seems ridiculous to me, as everyone knows that these conventions ask very specific questions -- how could anyone really equate a bid that asks partner to show length in specific suits with one that asks partner to show controls?

[Vampyr]

 barmar, on 2017-February-08, 14:52, said:

I don't interpret it as saying that all asking bids have the same purpose. It's just giving examples of categories of calls for which the criteria for determining whether they're comparable is that the replacement call has the same purpose as the withdrawn call. This is trying to fix the flaw in the old wording, which just used "meaning" as a catch-all term that encompassed both what a bid shows and what a bid asks.

Stayman and Blackwood are both asking bids, but we wouldn't say that they have the same purpose. Blackwood and Kickback are asking bids that have the same purpose.

But I can see how SB might twist this to his purposes. In discussions about alerting and explaining, many people say that when explaining an asking bid you should just say something like "Asks partner to further describe his hand" -- they don't believe that you should explain the meanings of partner's responses. By this logic, there is no difference between Stayman and Blackwood. This seems ridiculous to me, as everyone knows that these conventions ask very specific questions -- how could anyone really equate a bid that asks partner to show length in specific suits with one that asks partner to show controls?

The ACBL LC is inviting suggestions for changes of wording. Perhaps someone who creates a suitable change can write to them.

[barmar]

 Vampyr, on 2017-February-08, 18:37, said:

The ACBL LC is inviting suggestions for changes of wording. Perhaps someone who creates a suitable change can write to them.

I've posted a question about it to the Yahoo group.

[Vampyr]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that "comparable call" and is a lot more complicated to determine then a call which is a subset of the replaced call. Plus the new fun twist is that now instead of talking the intention of the bidder as the "meaning", we are supposed to guess what all of the players think. The defenders, of course, may have a totally wrong impression, as the call may be artificial, unusual, etc. Perhaps the partner of the bidd should be asked what he thinks...

But anyway, we had a really good law: if old bid and new bid are not conventional, IB may be replaced by lowest sufficient bid in the same suit. Otherwise partner is silenced.

Was there a reason that anyone thought there was anything wrong with this?

[barmar]

 Vampyr, on 2017-February-09, 10:24, said:

Was there a reason that anyone thought there was anything wrong with this?

I guess they thought that was too severe in cases where it's relatively easy to replace the artificial call with an essentially equivalent call, so you could get a normal bridge result. Now in the 2017 version we're just clarifying how we define equivalent (the 2007 law referred to what a call shows, which didn't address calls that ask rather than show).

The old law had the same problem as the rewrites in that you have to discern the intended meaning of the IB, to know if it was artificial.

[mycroft]

Well, the biggest issue was the insufficient blackwood/2NT-2♣ issue. Many believed that the penalty this caused, when "everybody" knew what we meant, was massively excessive. Also, the issue of "oh good, they get to replace p-1♣-x-1♥; 2♦-1♠ w/o penalty (and without L16, but with the special "could not have been reached without the IB" section) to 2♠".

I'd really like to be able to say "okay, we've had a small issue, but everybody knows what was going on. Let's see if we can have a real auction without giving an advantage to the offenders, and without them having to "shot-in-the-dark" it (which the NOS is going to hate when it happens to matchpoint well, or the information they would have got in a normal auction that would lead to the correct defence goes away and they let through the contract everyone else breaks, or...) Similarly with calls out of turn, where the crapshoot auctions happen a lot ("oh crap, partner passed out of turn, and will have to pass this time. Oh well, blast 3NT and hope, I guess." Good luck defending that one well). So we're now trying to make those work.

I'm not sure this is the right way to go, as I said. But I think it's worth trying.

[gordontd]

 Vampyr, on 2017-February-09, 10:24, said:

Was there a reason that anyone thought there was anything wrong with this?

No, I expect the entire world thought it was great as it was, but they couldn't resist making the change in order to irritate you.