[kruba]

A normal Duplicate in England.

---

5C* makes. At the end of the hand, North calls the Director. The Hesitation is agreed.
Do you allow the 5C bid? Is Pass a Logical Alternative. Or rule back to 4S?
If you rule back to 4S, what is your ruling on 4S making?

[RMB1]

I think very few would Pass and (without the benefit of consultation) would rule Pass is not a logical alternative.
Double is suggested over 5♣ as it allows for more of the hands partner might hesitate with.
So I allow 5♣ and table result stands.

(and I don't have to think about the play in 4♠ )

[Jeremy69A]

Normal to bid 5C IMO. Result stands.

[kruba]

Does the Standard of player bidding 5C, make any difference.
Are Logical Alternatives different for Experts and Beginners?

[trevahound]

 kruba, on 2013-July-04, 10:51, said:

Does the Standard of player bidding 5C, make any difference.
Are Logical Alternatives different for Experts and Beginners?

As I understand it, a Logical Alternative is always "class of player" dependent. The definition includes that -- it's either in law 12 or 16, I forget and am too lazy to look it up verbatim.

[kruba]

If an Expert would bid 5C, what would a Beginner do? Would passing be a LA for a Beginner?

[jallerton]

 kruba, on 2013-July-04, 10:51, said:

Does the Standard of player bidding 5C, make any difference.
Are Logical Alternatives different for Experts and Beginners?

Yes, that's why the correct approach would be to poll peers of East. However, I agree with Robin and Jeremy: the poll is likely to show that virtually all peers of East will bid 5♣.

[trevahound]

 jallerton, on 2013-July-04, 12:41, said:

Yes, that's why the correct approach would be to poll peers of East. However, I agree with Robin and Jeremy: the poll is likely to show that virtually all peers of East will bid 5♣.

At the risk of stating something you nearly certainly already know, when you poll those peers, give them the auction plain, without any tempo breaks by anyone. The question isn't what might you do after partner's BIT, but rather what might you do without possessing any UI at all.

[paulg]

 kruba, on 2013-July-04, 12:35, said:

If an Expert would bid 5C, what would a Beginner do? Would passing be a LA for a Beginner?

I would expect a beginner to bid five clubs even faster than an expert.

[blackshoe]

Let's see. Everyone takes their hand out of the board, counts their cards, and sorts their hand. Now everyone evaluates. This takes some number of seconds, say 5. Opener bids 2♠, and second seat pauses for ten seconds while contemplating his hand. What, that didn't happen? Sheesh.

Usually that's a BIT which may cause problems for the NOS, since third seat is expected to bid "in tempo" and he didn't get time to think about what to do with his hand in the face of partner's preempt and RHO's overcall. In this case, however, it's overcaller's partner who has been deprived of thinking time by the overcaller's BIT. Too bad for them, but if it were me I'd be having a talk later with my partner about his tempo in these situations.

That said, I agree, I think, with "pass is not a logical alternative".

If pass were a logical alternative, I would have to rule on the basis of a 4♠ contract by NS. In the ACBL, I think 4♠= both sides. In the rest of the world, some weighting like:

4♠= 40%
4♠-1 60%

I thought about including 4♠X in the weighting, but I don't know if the hesitation might indicate West might have been thinking of doubling. If he might have been thinking of doubling, then it should probably be included, on the grounds that he might have doubled (and I might, in the ACBL, award EW -590 for 4♠X= ("the most favorable result that was at all probable"). If the doubled contract is a possible result, it still might make or might go down, so that's two more weighting, I think, though I'll pass on how much weight to give them, and how much to take away from the other two. Perhaps someone who's used to giving weighted rulings might suggest one or two, with or without the double.

If West doubles, does that make it more or less likely that East will bid 5♣?

"Logical Alternative" is defined in Law 16B1{b}.

[CSGibson]

If West cannot double, East surely cannot - don't bother considering doubled calls, Ed. You can't make West double because he hesitated before passing.

[blackshoe]

 CSGibson, on 2013-July-04, 17:08, said:

If West cannot double, East surely cannot - don't bother considering doubled calls, Ed. You can't make West double because he hesitated before passing.

I'm not making him do anything. I'm judging whether he might have done something. Perhaps he wouldn't. That's fine with me.

[CSGibson]

 blackshoe, on 2013-July-04, 17:11, said:

I'm not making him do anything. I'm judging whether he might have done something. Perhaps he wouldn't. That's fine with me.

What I mean is that West's call was not influenced by UI, so it cannot be changed. If you were to consider doubled auctions, it would be because E would have been influenced away from doubling by his partner's hesitation, which I do not believe to be the case.

[gnasher]

 blackshoe, on 2013-July-04, 16:29, said:

Let's see. Everyone takes their hand out of the board, counts their cards, and sorts their hand. Now everyone evaluates. This takes some number of seconds, say 5. Opener bids 2♠, and second seat pauses for ten seconds while contemplating his hand. What, that didn't happen? Sheesh.

What makes you think that didn't happen? There's nothing in the OP to suggest that East bid too quickly, and it says "England".

[blackshoe]

 CSGibson, on 2013-July-04, 17:38, said:

What I mean is that West's call was not influenced by UI, so it cannot be changed.

Again, I'm not changing any calls. Besides, what law says that?

It is true the West has no UI. It is also true that he may have been thinking about doubling 4♠, even though he didn't. So I don't see why 4♠X, and doubled by West, is not a potential result (see Law 12C1{c}). I grant one would give it a pretty small weighting.

[c_corgi]

 blackshoe, on 2013-July-05, 08:40, said:

Again, I'm not changing any calls. Besides, what law says that?

It is true the West has no UI. It is also true that he may have been thinking about doubling 4♠, even though he didn't. So I don't see why 4♠X, and doubled by West, is not a potential result (see Law 12C1{c}). I grant one would give it a pretty small weighting.

Where does this stop? Are you going to include situations where East chose an alternative call to 3C at his first turn (as he plausibly might have done) in your weightings? Surely the only possible scores are those that arise from alternative calls from East at his second turn, when his choice at the table is disallowed.

Incidentally, I don't consider anything other than 5C at East's second turn an LA.

[CSGibson]

 blackshoe, on 2013-July-05, 08:40, said:

Again, I'm not changing any calls. Besides, what law says that?

It is true the West has no UI. It is also true that he may have been thinking about doubling 4♠, even though he didn't. So I don't see why 4♠X, and doubled by West, is not a potential result (see Law 12C1{c}). I grant one would give it a pretty small weighting.

It seems pretty basic. A first time director should get it right, and I'm shocked that you don't see it. Ask your colleagues, and people knowledgeable of the law - changing west's call is not within your rights, and would be overturned by every appeals committee because W's call was not influenced by UI, and therefore not under your jurisdiction, so to speak.

[blackshoe]

 c_corgi, on 2013-July-05, 09:04, said:

Where does this stop? Are you going to include situations where East chose an alternative call to 3C at his first turn (as he plausibly might have done) in your weightings? Surely the only possible scores are those that arise from alternative calls from East at his second turn, when his choice at the table is disallowed.

Incidentally, I don't consider anything other than 5C at East's second turn an LA.

I'm gong to follow the law. If you think I'm not doing that, show me exactly how the law says I'm not.

[blackshoe]

 CSGibson, on 2013-July-05, 09:34, said:

It seems pretty basic. A first time director should get it right, and I'm shocked that you don't see it. Ask your colleagues, and people knowledgeable of the law - changing west's call is not within your rights, and would be overturned by every appeals committee because W's call was not influenced by UI, and therefore not under your jurisdiction, so to speak.

Again, show me the law that says so.

Look, I don't try to read the lawmakers' minds. I don't rely on what the laws said 50 years ago, or what somebody thinks they said. I read the words in the law book. It's true that sometimes David Stevenson or someone else comes along and tells me "the laws don't really mean that" or "best practice is to do this other thing", and I usually go along with it, albeit reluctantly. But in the main, I read and try to follow what the law says, not some after the fact "we don't do things that way".

[CSGibson]

Well, Ed, in the ACBL manual, under law 12 it says that

"the objective of a score adjustment is to redress
damage to a non-offending side and to take
away any advantage gained by an offending side
through its infraction. Damage exists when, because
of an infraction, an innocent side obtains a
table result less favorable than would have been
the expectation had the infraction not occurred"

The italics were added for emphasis by me.

In this case, the infraction would not be the hesitation, or anything prior to the hesitation; it would be the use of information gained from the hesitation in choosing subsequent calls.

It seems that this is very clear in that you should not adjust scores because of actions that are not infractions, like the perfectly legal action of taking time to think, then passing.