BBO Discussion Forums: Insufficient Remedy - BBO Discussion Forums

 FrancesHinden, on 2015-March-06, 15:41, said:

I can only say that I do indeed connect to the address given and receive the content pages for the laws.

'http: // 158 .255.45.213 / departments / laws / internationalcode / Law18 . asp'

is the link I use directly to Law 18, but in order to avoid any changes of the string I have added quotes at the beginning and end of the string and also inserted several Spaces.
Copy the string and remove all the embedded Spaces before using the link. If that doesn't help I have no idea why it works for me and not for you.

 weejonnie, on 2015-March-06, 12:48, said:

Actually, they weren't added by the ACBL, they were removed by the WBF. Take a look at the 1997 law book (both versions have the headings).

Personally, I think the removal was a mistake.

 billw55, on 2015-March-06, 13:35, said:

There is an important distinction between Victor Mollo's original Secretary Bird and Lamford's character. The original SB knew the Laws of bridge and their correct meanings but his special characteristic was that he invoked the Laws at times when doing so disadvantaged his side. If SB was declarer and his RHO made the opening lead of a heart out of turn, SB would bar a heart lead even though it would turn out later that only a heart lead would let him make the contract.

The special characteristic of Lamford's SB, by contrast, is that he delights in inventing absurd readings of the Laws, which may have some basis in the Laws' literal text but which no one would ever imagine to be the correct meaning of the Laws. The more absurd the literal, textualist reading of the Laws, the better Lamford's SB seems to like it.

In this case, Lamford's SB doesn't do that well even on the text alone. True, he has noticed the oddity that Law 18 doesn't specify that players who bid are required to make sufficient bids. But, as others have pointed out, (1) Law 27 says that an insufficient bid can be "treated as legal," which clearly implies that it is otherwise illegal, (2) Law 27 is contained in a part of the Laws headed, "Irregularities in Procedure," which also clearly implies that insufficient bids are illegal, and (3) Law 27 references Law 23, which makes sense only if an insufficient bid is an irregularity. In interpreting the text of a law, one looks not only at the particular words at issue, but at the entire set of laws of which it is a part. Here, the full context of the Laws shows clearly that an insufficient bid is an irregularity.

And besides, as others have also pointed out, perhaps the most important point is that everyone knows an insufficient bid is an irregularity.

If I were the original SB, I would sue Lamford's SB for libeling my character. The original SB may make strategic errors in invoking the Laws, but at least he knows what they really mean.

 bixby, on 2015-March-06, 19:31, said:

Why should his matter? It is the laws which define bridge, not what "everyone knows".

 Vampyr, on 2015-March-07, 02:27, said:

Indeed. And why on earth should someone have to try to work out whether one can make insufficient bids by the context of other Laws when the section dealing with insufficient bids negligently omits to say that they are not permitted? I went to an auction the other day, and an object had a starting price and a reserve price. The program stated that I was not allowed to make a bid below the starting price, but I was allowed to make a bid below the reserve price, and also that bids had to be higher than and not equal to the previous bid. It further stated that if the highest bid was below the reserve price, the seller had the right to withdraw the object, but was not obliged to do so. Funny how I assumed the rules on bids were exactly as stated. I did not look elsewhere to find out what action would be taken if I made a bid below the starting price, etc. Some posters in this thread are defending the indefensible. The compilers of the Laws cannot even explain the basic rules of bridge properly.

Fine. Let's throw out the rule book and let everybody do whatever they like.

 blackshoe, on 2015-March-07, 04:06, said:

No, let us use this forum to debug and correct it.

 lamford, on 2015-March-07, 04:08, said:

Only the WBFLC and the ACBLLC can correct problems in the laws. In any case, this forum is not the place to be debugging or correcting the laws. I'll move this thread to the "changing laws" forum.

 blackshoe, on 2015-March-07, 04:48, said:

Agreed. My suggested correction is:
[Law 18: Bids] <snip>
D. Insufficient Bid A bid that fails to supersede the last preceding bid is an insufficient bid, which must not be made intentionally.

Others may have a better wording.

 weejonnie, on 2015-March-06, 15:12, said:

I suspect someone is confusing the titles of the individual laws with the chapter headings.

The ACBL version of the laws has them grouped into chapters, which have titles like "Chapter II - Preliminaries" (consisting of laws 1 through 5). Some of the chapters are further sub-divided into parts and/or sections. E.g. Laws 53 through 56 are in Chapter VI - The Play, Part III Irregular Leads and Plays, Section ONE - Lead Out of Turn.

The WBF version doesn't have any of these groupings, it just has the laws. I think the only purpose of them is to aid someone using the table of contents to find the laws relevant to a situation, they shouldn't affect the way the laws are interpreted. You can see this at: http://www.acbl.org/...cate-Bridge.pdf

I wonder if the lawmakers simply thought that the word "insufficient" itself implies that it is not a legal bid. "sufficient" means enough or adequate. Adequate for what? In this context, it could only reasonably mean adequate for the bid to be legal at that state of the auction.

 barmar, on 2015-March-08, 13:49, said:

That is possible. However they define "insufficient" in the context of "bids", without any suggestion of illegality. If a beginner's book said that raising 1S to 2S on AT8x x Axxx T9xx was insufficient because game would be missed too often, nobody would think it was illegal. Bidding 1H over 1S is insufficient, but a beginner would not know this unless it was defined.

 lamford, on 2015-March-07, 05:29, said:

I would certainly want a wording which makes an insufficient bid an infraction even if made unintentionally! "A bid that fails to supersede the last preceding bid is an insufficient bid. Players may not make insufficient bids" would be ok.

 lamford, on 2015-March-07, 03:56, said:

But aren't you one of them?

 lamford, on 2015-March-06, 09:07, said:

Personally, I think that it is ok to use common sense when the written laws are ambiguous or incomplete. If the events of this thread actually occurred, any director would simply rule as you would, that an IB is an irregularity. They would probably have a good laugh in the director's room about what a foolish jerk LSB is, and any appeal committee would keep his deposit.

 lamford, on 2015-March-06, 13:54, said:

As this topic is all about the correct wording of laws I feel compelled to point out that your second commandment should read "Thou shalt not make insufficient bids". An obligation on all players to make sufficient bids would change the nature of the game substantially.

I didn't read the whole thread, but here's my catch: I think the Secretary Bird definitely has reasons to suspect any action by his partner would be dangerous and decided to protect his side by "enforcing" a pass by partner. I would rule something like 4SX -1400.

I would dismiss the Secretary Bird's claims on the matter and give him an appeals sheet on request, after which it's not my problem anymore

Edit: having skimmed through the thread, I see the point of the discussion now. I think it is logical to treat an IB as an infraction. That certainly seems to be the spirit of the law, even though it might not be cast in the book.

 whereagles, on 2015-March-09, 15:37, said:

Yes, that is the point of the thread.

I think It would make a better story if north rose to the occasion by accepting the insufficient bid and then bidding 4♥. Now east is guaranteed to bid 4♠. Average, next board!

 blackshoe, on 2015-March-07, 04:48, said:

I must admit that I was unaware that the ACBL and the WBF have equal standing. Perhaps the WBF should be renamed e ROTWBF (Rest of the World Bridge Federation).

 barmar, on 2015-March-08, 13:36, said:

It is a pity that there is no table of contents. This makes the book difficult to navigate through if you are not extremely familiar wih it.

 billw55, on 2015-March-10, 06:08, said:

Very nice. Perhaps his failure to do so is SEWoG, so we should give EW -1400 and NS -100. Except that his not accepting the IB was related to the infraction ... if it was an infraction!

Although I've pointed out that the illegality of insufficient bids can be inferred by reading several laws together, I agree that it sure would be nice if Law 18 were written more like Law 44, which describes the normal procedure during the play period. In particular, 44C makes the requirement to follow suit paramount, much as making sufficient bids is paramount during the auction. A rule book that fails to mention clearly one of the most important rules of the game is obviously deficient.