[dburn]

cherdano, on 2011-February-27, 10:54, said:

I must be living on a different planet than everyone else

You may or may not be dismayed to find me as a potential fellow-inhabitant, but so I am. Not that I agree with you entirely, for...

cherdano, on 2011-February-27, 10:54, said:

1. I have shown 3540

No, you haven't. See below.

cherdano, on 2011-February-27, 10:54, said:

and my additional card is a diamond rather than the expected club.

Well, you have actually shown 2-5-4-0 and your additional cards include a possibly unexpected spade - continue to see below.

cherdano, on 2011-February-27, 10:54, said:

2. Partner doesn't have to have 5 spades. E.g. he could have Jxxx Kx Axx AQxx (why should he jump to 3NT when that would look extremely silly opposite 1642 or 0643?). In fact, since he didn't bid 4♠ after we showed 3 spades, I think he is rather likely not to have 5 spades.

When did we show three spades? After 1♥-1♠-2♦-3♣, would you not bid 3♠ with such as

♠Ax ♥KQxxx ♦Axxx ♣xx?

If you wouldn't, maybe this planet isn't big enough for the both of us. But no great matter, for...

cherdano, on 2011-February-27, 10:54, said:

3. Passing is definitely a logical alternative to me. In fact, I would pass!

So it is to me, and so would I. Of course, with a favourite partner I would not bid 3♠ over 3♣ - rather, I would bid 3♦ and then 4♠ over partner's next effort (even if that were 3NT). This is because I trust my favourite partners to respond 2♣ and not 1♠ with such as ♠Jxxx ♥Kx ♦Axx ♣AQxx, but I am aware that this is not a mainstream position. In the actual case, of course partner can have that hand - but if so, he would bid a very firm 3NT over 3♠.

cherdano, on 2011-February-27, 10:54, said:

4. It's not clear what a slow 3NT suggests exactly, but it definitely suggests doubts about 3NT being the right contract! Or maybe it shows doubt about whether 3♠ promised three spades - I wouldn't know, but maybe this partnership can guess. Therefore, the UI definitely suggests bidding on over passing.

I really don't understand why anyone would let 4♠ stand, given the information we have up to now.

Then here's my hand, my old companion,
And may neither one of us fall in a canyon.

Ogden Nash

[gnasher]

dburn, on 2011-March-01, 21:09, said:

This is because I trust my favourite partners to respond 2♣ and not 1♠ with such as ♠Jxxx ♥Kx ♦Axx ♣AQxx, but I am aware that this is not a mainstream position. In the actual case, of course partner can have that hand.

It's hard to get inside the head of a someone who plays 3♣ as natural, but can he really have a balanced 14-count with a double club stop? It seems to me that a club player who doesn't play Fouth Suit Forcing would have bid 3NT over 2♦ with that hand.

[lamford]

gnasher, on 2011-March-02, 03:39, said:

It's hard to get inside the head of a someone who plays 3♣ as natural, but can he really have a balanced 14-count with a double club stop? It seems to me that a club player who doesn't play Fouth Suit Forcing would have bid 3NT over 2♦ with that hand.

Many weaker players do not use fourth-suit forcing; some have not heard of it. They bid spades then clubs because they have spades and clubs. They probably have an unbalanced hand. We are only concerned with LAs for this class of player (assuming both are the same class), and that could include Pass. I think 4S is a better bid (it might play well in a Moysian with club ruffs in the short trump hand) and I expect a poll of players of a similar class would have most of them bidding 4S without the UI. However this is the bid that does not carefully avoid taking advantage of the UI, so this could be the rara avis of a 73C adjustment instead of a 16B adjustment.

[AlexJonson]

There seems an implication that when 3NT is a worse outcome [ and 4S is bid ], the contract is adjusted to 3NT under 73C. If 4S is a worse outcome [and 3NT is passed]we adjust to 4S under 16B (after a poll).

That does not seem satisfactory.

Edited for clarity.

[gwnn]

What do you mean by adjust to 4S? It is the initial outcome. The question is whether to adjust to 3N or not.

[AlexJonson]

gwnn, on 2011-March-02, 05:25, said:

What do you mean by adjust to 4S? It is the initial outcome. The question is whether to adjust to 3N or not.

See the edited version above.

[pran]

AlexJonson, on 2011-March-02, 05:05, said:

There seems an implication that when 3NT is a worse outcome [ and 4S is bid ], the contract is adjusted to 3NT under 73C. If 4S is a worse outcome [and 3NT is passed]we adjust to 4S under 16B (after a poll).

That does not seem satisfactory.

It certainly is not.

This would imply that regardless of which call is chosen we should rule that the chosen call was "demonstrably" suggested over the other. But no call shall ever be ruled "demonstrably suggested" simply because it is chosen, there must be some feature in the UI that will lead to such ruling. And when neither call can "demonstrably" be suggested over the other by the UI the correct ruling should be "no adjustment"!

[gwnn]

I have never seen a slow natural* bid being passed and the director called, let alone the director forcing the passer to bid! A slow offer to play a contract shows a certain desire to play somewhere else, so passing it is never suggested by the hesitation.

*suggestion to play there. also, both players knowing fully well that it is natural (i.e. not a situation like 1NT-4♥; 4♠-...oh my idiot partner thinks we play texas, well let's try 5♥ maybe he'll pass that.)

[pran]

gwnn, on 2011-March-02, 08:27, said:

I have never seen a slow natural* bid being passed and the director called, let alone the director forcing the passer to bid! A slow offer to play a contract shows a certain desire to play somewhere else, so passing it is never suggested by the hesitation.

*suggestion to play there. also, both players knowing fully well that it is natural (i.e. not a situation like 1NT-4♥; 4♠-...oh my idiot partner thinks we play texas, well let's try 5♥ maybe he'll pass that.)

I no longer remember the details, but I have once adjusted the result on a board from 5♥= to 6♥-1 on the ground that pass (to 5♥) rather than bidding 6♥ "could demonstrably have been suggested" by UI.

[gnasher]

lamford, on 2011-March-02, 04:08, said:

Many weaker players do not use fourth-suit forcing; some have not heard of it. They bid spades then clubs because they have spades and clubs. They probably have an unbalanced hand. We are only concerned with LAs for this class of player (assuming both are the same class), and that could include Pass. I think 4S is a better bid (it might play well in a Moysian with club ruffs in the short trump hand) and I expect a poll of players of a similar class would have most of them bidding 4S without the UI. However this is the bid that does not carefully avoid taking advantage of the UI, so this could be the rara avis of a 73C adjustment instead of a 16B adjustment.

I don't understand why the question of a Moysian would arise. If partner has an unbalanced hand, he has five spades, doesn't he? Or are you saying that he might be 4-5 in the blacks?

[aguahombre]

Wouldn't 4-5 in blacks have bid 2C first? Oh, wait...the BIT was because he re-arranged his hand.

[RMB1]

gnasher, on 2011-March-02, 11:24, said:

I don't understand why the question of a Moysian would arise. If partner has an unbalanced hand, he has five spades, doesn't he? Or are you saying that he might be 4-5 in the blacks?

I think they are.

It is often difficult to rule on unfamiliar bidding methods (e.g. fourth suit natural): although the perpetrators may usually land on their feet, they don't really have any clear understandings. Of course, when this occurs in a UI ruling, there will always be suspicion that endemic use of UI is what helps them to land on their feet in the absence of clear undertstandings.

[lamford]

gnasher, on 2011-March-02, 11:24, said:

I don't understand why the question of a Moysian would arise. If partner has an unbalanced hand, he has five spades, doesn't he? Or are you saying that he might be 4-5 in the blacks?

I thought he would probably be unbalanced, but like you I am guessing how somebody who plays fourth-suit natural and forcing might bid, so only having four spades is a distinct possibility. Perhaps he thinks he is too good for 3NT and bids 3C for that reason; after all 4NT is always Blackwood. He should be able to judge the final contract by the speed of your reply, and be able to describe his hand better by the speed of his next bid.

TD, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (WB 23:34)

[AlexJonson]

pran, on 2011-March-02, 08:20, said:

It certainly is not.

This would imply that regardless of which call is chosen we should rule that the chosen call was "demonstrably" suggested over the other. But no call shall ever be ruled "demonstrably suggested" simply because it is chosen, there must be some feature in the UI that will lead to such ruling. And when neither call can "demonstrably" be suggested over the other by the UI the correct ruling should be "no adjustment"!

But Pran, that exactly seems to be the result of allowing people to choose between Laws 73 and 16 when they rule (according to dburn and Lamford).

I notice that neither dburn or Lamford care to deal with that, do you?

[lamford]

AlexJonson, on 2011-March-02, 15:09, said:

But Pran, that exactly seems to be the result of allowing people to choose between Laws 73 and 16 when they rule (according to dburn and Lamford).

I notice that neither dburn or Lamford care to deal with that, do you?

I do not think a call is 'demonstrably suggested' because it is chosen. I am happy with accepted practice that a call is a 'logical alternative' because it is chosen. In this example you could argue that 4S is not demonstrably suggested, because partner could have several different hand types. You could argue that Pass is not a logical alternative, because not enough peers would select it. However, it is more likely after the BIT that 4S will be right, and there will be some people, if not the requisite percentage, who will seriously consider Pass. Selecting 4S therefore is not "carefully avoiding taking any advantage" of the UI. In a nutshell, if the BIT tilts us one iota towards the idea that 4S is the bid that is more likely to work, then selecting it is a breach of 73C. That does not say "any significant advantage"; it says "any advantage", and we must assume the lawmakers put in "any" for a reason. It is therefore much more restrictive. It also forces the player to consider what the UI suggests - rather than ignore it - in order to carefully avoid taking any advantage.

[StevenG]

lamford, on 2011-March-03, 03:35, said:

It also forces the player to consider what the UI is - rather than ignore it - in order to carefully avoid taking any advantage.

If you do not know what the UI is, or what it suggests, you cannot possibly be taking advantage of the UI by ignoring it.

That does not, however, absolve you of your responsibilities under Law 16.

[gwnn]

pran, on 2011-March-02, 10:12, said:

I no longer remember the details, but I have once adjusted the result on a board from 5♥= to 6♥-1 on the ground that pass (to 5♥) rather than bidding 6♥ "could demonstrably have been suggested" by UI.

I've spent the last 16 hours trying to come up with an auction where this makes sense and I don't see it. Could you give a possible example? I don't care about the actual details, just a possible case where it makes sense.

I think whenever we have a slam auction and I bid 5♥ slowly, I show that I think maybe 6♥ could be a better contract, either I wanted to bid 6♥ directly, or cuebid before. When partner passes 5♥, he carefully avoided taking advantage of my hesitation and should be commended.

The best I could come up with is something like
1H-4H
..5H-pass ? (i.e. the 5♥ itself is the slam try)
this case is very complicated. I suppose a slow slam try like this could show either a minimum or a maximum, and since a minimum is more likely than a maximum, raising is less likely to succeed.

[WellSpyder]

gwnn, on 2011-March-03, 05:09, said:

I've spent the last 16 hours trying to come up with an auction where this makes sense and I don't see it. Could you give a possible example? I don't care about the actual details, just a possible case where it makes sense.

How about a competitive auction in which one player makes a forcing pass of 4♠, then pulls partner's double to 5♥? Most people would play this as a slam try, bidding 5♥ directly over 4♠ if they just knew this was where they wanted to play. But if there was a long pause before pulling the double to 5♥ this would certainly suggest that the 5♥ bidder hadn't been planning all along to do this in order to show a slam try. So the hesitation could certainly suggest passing rather than bidding 6♥.

[gwnn]

Sure but that's about some sort of misunderstanding, which I tried to exclude in my query above. 3NT here is clearly natural and an offer to play 3NT. It is not a slam try, and should definitely not occur to anyone that it promises slam invitational values. Anyway, irrespective of what I meant to ask, or whether there are some special exceptions to the general rule, it is true that you're almost always OK if you pass slow natural bids by partner.

[pran]

pran, on 2011-March-02, 08:20, said:

It certainly is not.

This would imply that regardless of which call is chosen we should rule that the chosen call was "demonstrably" suggested over the other. But no call shall ever be ruled "demonstrably suggested" simply because it is chosen, there must be some feature in the UI that will lead to such ruling. And when neither call can "demonstrably" be suggested over the other by the UI the correct ruling should be "no adjustment"!

AlexJonson, on 2011-March-02, 15:09, said:

But Pran, that exactly seems to be the result of allowing people to choose between Laws 73 and 16 when they rule (according to dburn and Lamford).

I notice that neither dburn or Lamford care to deal with that, do you?

If TD can show that there is UI and that a player "who had a logical alternative has chosen an action that could have been suggested by such information" he "shall assign an adjusted score (see Law 12C) if he considers that an infraction of law has resulted in an advantage for the offender". (Law 73C leading to 16B3)

Violations of Law 73 other than those leading us directly to Law 16B3 are still subject to rectification and/or PP. Such PP is not depending on any advantage for the offender.