[lamford]

 dcrc2, on 2012-January-30, 19:00, said:

The title makes it clear that it was not posted purely out of interest in the ruling.

Indeed.

[gnasher]

 dcrc2, on 2012-January-30, 19:00, said:

I'm very uneasy at finding out that half the posters in this thread were participants in the case.

And half of the posters were not.

Quote

Could you please have your private discussions in private and not disguise them as forum topics? The title makes it clear that it was not posted purely out of interest in the ruling.

This is a ruling about which there are conflicting opinions, held both by the participants and by others. It's interesting enough to have attracted comments from Cyberyeti, PaulG, Wank, Sasoic, Campboy, GordonTD, RMB1 and me, none of whom were involved in the ruling (so far as I know). It seems to me that this makes it suitable material for this forum, regardless of the original poster's reasons for posting it.

I also don't understand why you should object to the original participants expressing their opinions. Lamford is obviously best placed to explain why he considered his action to be legal, and the appeals committee members are obviously best placed to explain why they didn't.

I do understand that you might not like the acrimony evident in some of the posts, but that's a reason for asking people to be civil, not for asking them to go away.

[IanPayn]

 RMB1, on 2012-January-30, 17:24, said:

Similarly, when bluejak posted about a disciplinary incident, it did not take long to find his latest result at an event where one pair had results for three rounds and AVE- for the remainder. The pair matched the ages profile (one young, one older) so you could name the one who had caused the original problem and the one who had decided to leave.

++++And if memory serves, the pair in question, scoring Ave- for all but three rounds, didn't even come last. If only I could remember who did...

[Jeremy69A]

Quote

As a procedural matter, I think it is quite wrong, and insulting to those who have been polled, for the AC to ignore the TD poll,

In the event if a TD conducts a poll and reports the result to the appeal committee you seem to be suggesting that they may not overturn it. It was not ignored. It was however only a part of the evidence.

Quote

Alternatively, we can ban all posts about anything that happened in England. I've already told David I don't particularly like the latter idea, but if you all keep this up, I may change my mind.

And, of course if you change your mind then we all quake. Feel free. The alternatives will then be
a. live with it
b. invoke the help of Fred to rid us of this turbulent moderator(of course he may agree with you).
c. start up shop elsewhere. The plus of doing this would be to rid us of the current moderators and the minus would be to move from a forum area which has all the authority of BBO thus should not be undertaken lightly.

I've read all the thread. Many of you will have worked out I was one of this appeal committee. I don't mind anyone knowing this(or thinking I and the rest of the committee are wrong, muddleheaded, insane etc etc) and although I disagree with some of the views I have no problem with any of the posts save mild exasperation with the one I've quoted above but as it is roughly par for the course I should comment then ignore and move on.

There is a line in Blackadder when the wise woman gives some possible solutions to the problem of Blackadder being in love with his boy servant(who is really a girl but ,of course at this point he doesn't know that). She suggests killing her or himself or if that doesn't find favour the rest of the world. It's clear which camp Blackshoe would fall into!

[dcrc2]

 gnasher, on 2012-January-31, 05:23, said:

I also don't understand why you should object to the original participants expressing their opinions.

I don't. I'm objecting to the starting of the topic. It seems that both this thread and the previous one were started in the hope that the discussion would be embarrassing to some of the people involved. If I'm invited to comment on a ruling, I'd like to know that my opinions are being sought because the ruling is interesting - I don't want to find out later that I was merely helping someone score points off other forum members.

[gordontd]

 Jeremy69A, on 2012-January-31, 15:12, said:

There is a line in Blackadder when the wise woman gives some possible solutions to the problem of Blackadder being in love with his boy servant(who is really a girl but ,of course at this point he doesn't know that). She suggests killing her or himself or if that doesn't find favour the rest of the world.

Was the problem that he was a boy, or a servant?

[blackshoe]

 dcrc2, on 2012-January-31, 15:33, said:

I don't. I'm objecting to the starting of the topic. It seems that both this thread and the previous one were started in the hope that the discussion would be embarrassing to some of the people involved. If I'm invited to comment on a ruling, I'd like to know that my opinions are being sought because the ruling is interesting - I don't want to find out later that I was merely helping someone score points off other forum members.

This is the kind of thing I'm trying to support - that rulings sought here are dealt with on their merits, not as some kind of oneupmanship game.

[Jeremy69A]

Quote

Was the problem that he was a boy, or a servant?

That he was a boy. I don't think Blackadder was into the rights of man!

[jallerton]

 dcrc2, on 2012-January-30, 19:00, said:

I'm very uneasy at finding out that half the posters in this thread were participants in the case. Could you please have your private discussions in private and not disguise them as forum topics? The title makes it clear that it was not posted purely out of interest in the ruling.

I posted the hand but I was not a participant at the table, nor was I consulted by the TD about the ruling, nor was I on the AC.

My reasons for posting the hand were:

1. Another thread had been started in which one of the players was criticising the AC in this case. Her partner joined in and quoted the AC's written comments from the appeal form. But there was something rather important missing, namely the hand and the facts of the case. As I happened to have been told these by West (and assuming he had got the auction and timing of the alert correctly, it did not seem to me that he could have distorted the facts in any way) I thought that other forum readers might like to see the hand so they could judge for themselves.

2. Before hearing the AC's verdict, West also commented to me that he was seriously impressed with the AC for having taken over 45 minutes of their time hearing and considering the case. I told him his deposit must be safe (!), but the fact that the AC took so long implies that (at least in the AC's opinion) the ruling is worth discussing and not clear cut. Would you not agree that it's better to have this type of appeals case than completely obvious ones on this forum?

The topic title was my attempt at irony, inspired by the unfortunate topic title given to that other thread.

[bluejak]

 FrancesHinden, on 2012-January-29, 05:40, said:

The South player objected to the AC 'doing their own poll' at least partly on the basis that they were not all his peers.

It is always very easy to criticise people for the way they do things if you disagree with the result. An AC is a group of three people who have to work out from a limited amount of evidence what happened and what the facts were and what the legal position is and what the bridge judgement is and so on. At an AC discussion it is completely normal to find out what each person thinks - in fact it is fairly difficult to see how else you do it - and that involves some sort of poll amongst the members. It is completely normal, whether or not the members are peers of any or all of the players or not.

 Vampyr, on 2012-January-29, 15:57, said:

Yes, I took offence, and rightly so, against being accused of fielding a misbid. The accuser then said that he was just saying that it was something the AC should always consider, fair enough. And then classified it as amber...

Fielding a misbid means you have breached Law 40. It does not mean you have done anything wrong deliberately and there is no reason to take offence. It means someone disagrees with your judgement of the position. People are always disagreeing with each other's judgement of positions in bridge.

 lamford, on 2012-January-29, 16:31, said:

Apart from her reply clearly indicating she was on of the AC, which goes against bluejak's principle that they should remain anonymous, ...

I am not sure to what principle you refer.

 lamford, on 2012-January-29, 16:31, said:

As a procedural matter, I think it is quite wrong, and insulting to those who have been polled, for the AC to ignore the TD poll, and improper for them to conduct a 3-person "poll" amongst themselves, as the L&E advice clearly implies that such a poll would normally be conducted among non-AC members.

I don't. I think it is up to an AC to decide how to conduct themselves. A poll is an aid to judgement, and it is for the AC to decide what aids they need to their judgement. As stated earlier, polls within the AC are normal.

 FrancesHinden, on 2012-January-30, 17:08, said:

I'm not aware of any principle that the AC should remain anonymous if they don't want to be.

Nor me.

 dcrc2, on 2012-January-30, 19:00, said:

I'm very uneasy at finding out that half the posters in this thread were participants in the case. Could you please have your private discussions in private and not disguise them as forum topics? The title makes it clear that it was not posted purely out of interest in the ruling.

It does no such thing. The discussion is not private and is not confined to people who were involved. It is clearly of interest and there is no reason why it should not continue. People who do not like it should stop reading it.

 dcrc2, on 2012-January-31, 15:33, said:

I don't. I'm objecting to the starting of the topic. It seems that both this thread and the previous one were started in the hope that the discussion would be embarrassing to some of the people involved. If I'm invited to comment on a ruling, I'd like to know that my opinions are being sought because the ruling is interesting - I don't want to find out later that I was merely helping someone score points off other forum members.

There is no evidence to support this. When you get a situation where some people are rather upset over something airing it in public is a time-honoured approach. Nothing wrong in that.

Of course, being rude is not acceptable, but the idea that there is something wrong with the topic I find strange. What do you want: only topics that generate fewer than ten replies?

[jallerton]

 lamford, on 2012-January-30, 19:25, said:

3♣ was undiscussed, obviously. The poll by Frances had "Many of the respondents thought that partner's 3C bid was not necessarily particularly strong but if so was very distributional." Exactly my arguments to the AC, with "not" substituted for "so". If 3C is not game-forcing, your whole argument breaks down. How then can Pass of 3H be forcing?

You seem to have conveniently ignored the main finding of Frances's poll:

 FrancesHinden, on 2012-January-29, 05:40, said:

Following the ruling, I did a poll of a number of players I considered approximately peers of South (some rather better, some rather worse, no-one has an exact peer) together with a few much better ones. I tried quite hard not to ask too many people in my 'circle' whom I would often expect to agree with me. Another EBU referee who had been shown the hand did a poll of a group of 'county players' on his mailing list; I recognised most of the names and would also consider them, if not exact peers, at least similar in ability and experience. Both polls were carried out under my instructions:

- They were given the South hand, the vulnerability, form of scoring and identity of the opponents
- They were told that uncontested 1S-1NT-3C was game forcing, but that this auction was undiscussed
- They were asked if they agreed with the pass over 3Cx, and then, if so, or if they were prepared to live with it, what they would do on the next round.
- Polls were sent bcc i.e. no-one could see what anyone else said (this is a very important point)
- None of them had seen or played the hand

The results of the poll were as follows:

Pass: 1
3S: 14
Double: 1
4C: 1
Disagree strongly with pass on the previous round, would have bid 3D: 4 (of whom one would now pass, 2 would now bid 3S and one would now bid 4C)

So 16 out of 17 thought that either Opener's Pass was forcing or else Responder's hand was too strong to pass the hand out.

 lamford, on 2012-January-30, 19:25, said:

One final point; as Dburn wrote in May 2011, "One uses a poll not to determine what the methods of a partnership are, but to determine what logical alternatives exist given that the methods of the partnership are what they are." In this case, that has to be the methods the partnership thinks they would be. I told the TD when he arrived that I did not regard 3C as game-forcing, nor did I regard 3H as forcing. I asked partner today what she would bid in my authorised auction (if 1NT were natural) with something like AK10xx x xx AK10xx and she said "3C, but we probably need some methods here", before realising that they would not apply. She would not regard 3H in my authorised action as forcing." How our partnership would play 3C, and Pass over 3H, in the authorised auction should not be decided by a poll of what others would play.

As you point correctly point out, you and your partner had no specific agreement about the meaning of 1♠-dbl-1NT-P-3♣. When guessing the meaning of an undiscussed bid, people usually consider how the bid might generally be played. [If I had been on the AC, I would have asked North/South the meaning of 1♠-P-1NT-P-3♣ in their methods.]

In your own poll there was only one vote for a jump to 3♣ on that hand (compared with 17 votes for jumping to 3♣ on hands at least a working queen stronger). That seems a fair indication of what you could reasonably expect partner to hold based on the authorised auction. The fact that you have apparently found out a week later that your partner "would have bid 3♣" on such a weak hand over a natural 1NT is not really relevant: at the time you could not have known that.

This leads to a point which even dcrc2 may find instructive, if he is still reading our "should be private" discussions. Consider this scenario:

A player has UI, telling him that partner has not interpreted his bid as the player had intended.
The partner now makes a bid which is undiscussed in the authorised auction, but must logically have either meaning A or meaning B.
In the absence of UI, the player would have been able to guess whether meaning A or meaning B had been intended and choose his subsequent auction accordingly.

However, because the player has UI, in order to "carefully avoid taking any advantage" of the UI, he must assume whichever of meaning A and meaning B is more likely to make the earlier misunderstanding cause the auction to get out of hand.

In the present case, it is very convenient for South to assume a weaker meaning for 3♣ because that gives him an excuse to avoid getting to a silly contract. South knows that if he assumes the (normal) stronger meaning for 3♣ and has to keep the auction open, there is likely to be ambiguity about the meaning of subsequent bids, becase of the partners being on different wavelengths from the earlier auction.

[lamford]

 jallerton, on 2012-February-02, 18:04, said:

In the present case, it is very convenient for South to assume a weaker meaning for 3♣ because that gives him an excuse to avoid getting to a silly contract. South knows that if he assumes the (normal) stronger meaning for 3♣ and has to keep the auction open, there is likely to be ambiguity about the meaning of subsequent bids, becase of the partners being on different wavelengths from the earlier auction.

Many of Frances' pollees also assigned a weaker meaning to 3C. And the TD poll clearly did, or it would otherwise not have thought that it was unclear whether there was an LA to Pass. Combined with partner's failure to double 3H, and the RHO opponent having doubled twice, the authorised auction indicates that partner has a minimum for the auction to date. I assumed that minimum was roughly the "not necessarily strong but distributional hand" that is suggested by Frances' poll, much the same as I told both the TD and the AC. If partner had a maximum, perhaps AKQxx x Kx AKQxx, she would have an obvious double, as she would with any hand with extras. I do not agree that partner will pass with six spades and five clubs at these colours, as defending 3H is unlikely. Dburn argues that nobody chose 4S because they did not think of it. Those that choose 3S are not thinking that partner can double 3H, and therefore Pass is clearly non-forcing. Had there been no opposition bidding, we would have indeed been forced to 3S or 4C, because partner can have "a monster" but after the further double, there is no reason why North cannot distinguish whatever her minimum hand is, and the 21 count above that everyone would bid 3C on. Indeed it is poor bridge not to so distinguish.

In my view, the only possible meaning, from the AI alone, is a minimum hand. No alternative to double and pass was suggested by the TD poll, and only a few do so on this thread, as far as I can see, other than Frances' poll. The UI obliges me to select from LAs, not to select what I do not consider LAs. I cannot conduct a poll before bidding, therefore have to decide what they are by judgement. This thread and the TD poll vindicated my judgement. The AC disagreed. I think double is suggested over Pass because partner will have fewer clubs and Pass is suggested over double because partner will generally have more points. Therefore neither is demonstrably suggested. RMB1 argues, I think, that if double will end the auction it is suggested over Pass because it will damage the non-offending side. I am not sure this is so, and I may have misunderstood him as I would expect double to end the auction. I would have no idea that partner might bid 4C on the authorised auction. Are you suggesting I should do anything other than what I did, considering my L16 and L73 obligations, deciding what is authorised and unauthorised, and proceeding accordingly?

In a much discussed thread last year, you argued that the opponents' auction was authorised. Now you are arguing that I have to treat 3C as game-forcing, and hence Pass of 3H as forcing, despite evidence to the contrary from the authorised auction. And my partner should have been asked how she would play 3C with any partner that is not playing transfers. That would have confirmed whether my estimate of the strength of the bid was reasonable.

[Zelandakh]

 lamford, on 2012-February-02, 18:29, said:

Are you suggesting I should do anything other than what I did, considering my L16 and L73 obligations, deciding what is authorised and unauthorised, and proceeding accordingly?

I really do not get this at all. Obviously you should consider your obligations. You should also not be surprised to be ruled against when your peers have different views about what LAs are available. And that is the end of it.

Polls found that there was at least one additional LA (3♠) to the ones that you considered for your peers. This LA was likely to give a worse result given the misunderstanding. I agree that is difficult to judge what LAs your peers might consider at the table. There has been no suggestion that you deliberately used the UI, the AC merely ruled according to the evidence and the Laws. Did this decision really warrant (at least) 5 threads to debate the minutiae of the details?

[gnasher]

 lamford, on 2012-February-02, 18:29, said:

Those that choose 3S are not thinking that partner can double 3H, and therefore Pass is clearly non-forcing. Had there been no opposition bidding, we would have indeed been forced to 3S or 4C, because partner can have "a monster" but after the further double, there is no reason why North cannot distinguish whatever her minimum hand is, and the 21 count above that everyone would bid 3C on.

Perhaps I've missed something in the earlier discussions (some of which I only skimmed through), but there seems to be some new information here. Are you saying that:
- In this partnership, the uncontested sequence 1♠-1NT;3♣ is forcing only as far as 3♠.
- In this partnership, when you have forced to a particular (non-game) level in a contested auction, passes below that level are non-forcing and show a minimum.

Did you explain to the appeals committee that you had these agreements?

[lamford]

 gnasher, on 2012-February-03, 03:17, said:

Perhaps I've missed something in the earlier discussions (some of which I only skimmed through), but there seems to be some new information here. Are you saying that:
- In this partnership, the uncontested sequence 1♠-1NT;3♣ is forcing only as far as 3♠.
- In this partnership, when you have forced to a particular (non-game) level in a contested auction, passes below that level are non-forcing and show a minimum.

Did you explain to the appeals committee that you had these agreements?

In our partnership, uncontested, we play 3C as game-forcing. I told the TD and the AC that I regarded the auction with a double as "hugely different". Neither asked my partner how she would play 3C in a partnership where 1NT was natural. Partner is less likely to have a big hand, and the only reason 3C has to be forcing is that it could be huge. In other auctions pass might indeed be forcing, but here double of 3H is available to show a good hand, unambigously. "Many" of Frances' pollees think that 3C is "not necessarily strong but if not very distributional". How else can they show this not necessarily strong hand except by passing over 3H? I do think it is similar to our agreements that a Michaels cue bid is wide ranging, from a weakish 5-5 to a game-force. After 1H-(2H)-2S*-(P)-3H-(Dble) is extra values. Here the hand can be game forcing, but pass is not forcing, for obvious reasons. It is nothing to do with the level to which you were committed originally. It is the need to differentiate a wide ranging bid.

[lamford]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-February-03, 03:06, said:

There has been no suggestion that you deliberately used the UI, the AC merely ruled according to the evidence and the Laws. Did this decision really warrant (at least) 5 threads to debate the minutiae of the details?

3S was not regarded as an LA by me, nor by any of those polled by the TD. After the second takeout double and partner's failure to bid 3S, I think it is a poor bid. The poll conducted by Frances was very different to the conducted by the TD, and the one I conducted, and the one on here. I have no problem with the AC deciding according to the evidence and the Laws. But the issue of a PP is a suggestion that I breached either Law 16 or Law 73.

[Zelandakh]

 lamford, on 2012-February-03, 07:04, said:

3S was not regarded as an LA by me, nor by any of those polled by the TD. After the second takeout double and partner's failure to bid 3S, I think it is a poor bid. I have no problem with the AC deciding according to the evidence and the Laws. But the issue of a PP is a suggestion that I breached either Law 16 or Law 73.

The TD did believe you had breached Law 16. This is clear in the post from mamos (#3). We have not been given details of the TD poll that I am aware. The AC poll though is very clear and we are discussing the AC decision here given that this is the A&AC forum. I am aware that you think 3♠ is a poor bid; can you honestly say it is not a bid that you considered though? Of course the AC have to go by what your peers believe. Once you found out that your peers thought 3♠ was a LA then I really think that should have been an end to the subject.

[gnasher]

 lamford, on 2012-February-03, 07:04, said:

I have no problem with the AC deciding according to the evidence and the Laws. But the issue of a PP is a suggestion that I breached either Law 16 or Law 73.

Paul's quite right about the meaning of the PP. A score adjustment implies merely that your judgement is poor (as whose is not?). A PP implies that your breach of the rules was intentional or careless.

[lamford]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-February-03, 07:27, said:

Once you found out that your peers thought 3♠ was a LA then I really think that should have been an end to the subject.

The poll by Frances in which 3♠ was the main choice was conducted days after the event. I did not consider 3♠ an LA and only regarded pass and double as LAs. The appellant thought he would bid 4♣ on my hand, and I did not regard that as an LA either. I did not appeal, nor did I start this thread. The first I became aware of Frances' poll was in this thread. Neither the TD poll at the site, nor my poll at the site, including two by telephone, considered any bids other than Double and Pass. Around 18 months ago, I commented on an AC ruling where our side had appealed, and produced four opinions by top European directors at San Remo in our favour. Frances' reply was that she did not believe in polls conducted by one of the parties, as frequently the wrong or leading questions are asked, or words to that effect. I cannot find the thread now. However, that poll, of 4, was conducted just by showing the L&E minutes to those directors, and asking for their comments, without any other input from me. There is a similar danger in Frances' poll; for whatever reason, it produced a completely different result to both the TD poll and my poll. The exact votes of the TD poll are not stated on the appeal form.

The AC decision can only be appealed to the national authority under very strict requirements, clearly not fulfilled in this complex case. I have made representations to the L&E over the PP, as I did not regard it as intentional or careless. "And that is the end of it." as you say. I am not sure why I regard this as more important than completely merited PPs for careless things I have done in the past, such as playing the wrong board, or sitting at the wrong table, but it seems that way.

[lamford]

 gnasher, on 2012-February-03, 03:17, said:

In this partnership, when you have forced to a particular (non-game) level in a contested auction, passes below that level are non-forcing and show a minimum.

Did you explain to the appeals committee that you had these agreements?

In many partnerships, a one-round force does not oblige either partner to bid again. Do you play that 1D - (Pass) - 1S - (2C)-Pass is forcing? Or 1S - (Pass) - 1NT [forcing] - (2C) - Pass? They are not that similar, except that the need to define a wide-ranging bid is present. Our general agreement where double would be either takeout or extras is that pass is a minimum. At least that is how I have always played. Playing that all further bids by the 3C bidder are forcing is inefficient and poor bridge, IMHO.