[georgianl]

Wondering if someone can help
East opened 1 dia
South overcalled 1 heart
West bid 1 spade
North bid 2 spades
East asked what did she (South)understand by that bid
She said it was an advanced cue bid
North,the bidder corrected her and said it showed strong spades !
The Director was called and did not know what to do
We settled on a 50/50 score
What is the correct procedure?
Thanks

[blackshoe]

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At this point, East enquired as to the agreed meaning of 2♠. What laws apply?

Quote

Law 20F1: During the auction and before the final pass any player may request, at his own turn to call, an explanation of the opponents’ auction. He is entitled to know about calls actually made, about relevant alternative calls available that were not made, and about inferences from the choice of action where these are matters of partnership understanding. Except on the instruction of the Director replies should be given by the partner of the player who made the call in question. The partner of a player who asks a question may not ask a supplementary question until his turn to call or play. Law 16 may apply and the Regulating Authority may establish regulations for written explanations.
Law 20F3: Under 1 and 2 above a player may ask concerning a single call but Law 16B1 may apply.
Law 20F5: (a) A player whose partner has given a mistaken explanation may not correct the error during the auction, nor may he indicate in any manner that a mistake has been made. ‘Mistaken explanation’ here includes failure to alert or announce as regulations require or an alert (or an announcement) that regulations do not require.
(b) The player must call the Director and inform his opponents that, in his opinion, his partner’s explanation was erroneous (see Law 75B) but only at his first legal opportunity, which is:
(i) for a defender, at the end of the play. (ii) for declarer or dummy, after the final pass of the auction.

So. South should explain North's bid. The explanation is UI to North for purposes of choosing calls or plays (see Law 16), but not for purposes of providing correct information to opponents. However, North is required to say nothing when South explains incorrectly. Instead, he is to wait until the appropriate time (see above). North's premature correction is UI to South.

The director should determine what the pair's actual agreement is. It might be as North said, it might be as South said, it might be something else entirely, such as "we don't actually have an agreement". Once that is determined, and North and South (and West, who may have UI from East's question — see Law 16) are informed of their obligations with respect to UI, he should allow the auction and play to continue and tell the players to call him back after the play is concluded. Then the director should determine if an irregularity has resulted in damage to the non-offending side, and if so, award an assigned adjusted score, based on what he determines would likely have happened had the irregularity not occurred.

Quote

Law 12C1: (a) When after an irregularity the Director is empowered by these laws to adjust a score and is able to award an assigned adjusted score, he does so. Such a score replaces the score obtained in play.
(b) The Director in awarding an assigned adjusted score should seek to recover as nearly as possible the probable outcome of the board had the infraction not occurred.
© An assigned adjusted score may be weighted to reflect the probabilities of a number of potential results, but only outcomes that could have been achieved in a legal manner may be included.
(d) If the possibilities are numerous or not obvious, the Director may award an artificial adjusted score (see C2 below).
(e) If, subsequent to the irregularity, the non-offending side has contributed to its own damage by an extremely serious error (unrelated to the infraction) or by a gambling action, which if unsuccessful it might have hoped to recover through rectification, then:
(i.) The offending side is awarded the score it would have been allotted as the consequence of rectifying its infraction.
(ii.) The non-offending side does not receive relief for such part of its damage as is self-inflicted.

If "we settled on a 50/50 score" means there was a negotiation between the director and the four players, or between the two pairs, well, that procedure is extra-legal. It's the director's job to adjust the score, not the players'. Also if play was halted when the director was called, that's director error (see above). When the director becomes aware of this error Law 82C applies:

Quote

Law 82C: If a ruling has been given that the Director subsequently determines to be incorrect, and if no rectification will allow the board to be scored normally, he shall award an adjusted score, treating both sides as non-offending for that purpose.

Note that "award an adjusted score" does not mean "award an artificial adjusted score". The director must award an assigned adjusted score if at all possible (see Law 12C1{d} above).

Note that 20F5{a} says that North (in this case) "may not" correct the explanation during the auction. The introduction to the laws says

Quote

Introduction to the Laws: Established usage has been retained regarding “may” do (failure to do it is not wrong), “does” (establishes procedure without suggesting that violation be penalized), “should” do (failure to do it is an infraction jeopardising the infractor’s rights but not often penalized), ”shall” do (a violation will incur a penalty more often than not), and “must” do (the strongest word, a serious matter indeed). Again “must not” is the strongest prohibition, “shall not” is strong, but “may not” is stronger – just short of “must not”.

This means that North should receive a procedural penalty "more often than not". In a club game or a low level tournament if North is inexperienced I would give him a warning and be sure that if he does it again he does get a penalty in match points or IMPs as appropriate.

I think that about covers it.

[sanst]

Blackshoe gives the appropriate laws and the 50/50 was not right. Sadly, many inexperienced TD’s think the best solution to a problem is an AAS.
What should have happened, is that the auction continued, S bidding according to his explanation, so with ‘knowing’ that N has a first control in spades. And N has to assume that S bids as if he, N, has strong spades. E, OTOH, is allowed to make use of the knowlegde that N has strong spades.
Without the hands it’s impossible to decide what would have been the outcome, but it looks it would have been some diamonds or hearts contract, which would have gone down the drain, maybe doubled.

[pescetom]

Not only did they disagree on what their bid meant, but both proposed meanings are somewhat unlikely as agreements. Once done with sorting out the mess, I would suggest that they play a simpler system for the remainder of the tournament.

[blackshoe]

pescetom, on 2019-April-16, 02:20, said:

Not only did they disagree on what their bid meant, but both proposed meanings are somewhat unlikely as agreements. Once done with sorting out the mess, I would suggest that they play a simpler system for the remainder of the tournament.

You can suggest it. I don’t think you can require it. If it were me, I’d suggest they agree not to make the bid until they have a firm agreement as to what it means.

[georgianl]

Many thanks for your speedy and thoughtful answer
On balance then 50/50 is about right

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2019-April-16, 06:04, said:

You can suggest it. I don’t think you can require it. If it were me, I’d suggest they agree not to make the bid until they have a firm agreement as to what it means.

Often the way a pair discovers that they lack a firm agreement is by making a bid and partner misunderstanding it. It's hard to know there's a problem until it bites you.

When I play with advanced, but not regular, partners I will occasionally assume that they have the same understanding of "expert standard" that I do. Sometimes I'm wrong.

E.g. in Memphis we had a competitive auction where the opponents had shown 2 suits (I think maybe one of them had bid Michaels or Unusual 2NT). I thought everyone knew that in such situations, a cue bid is showing a stopper, not asking, and partner should bid NT if they have the other suit stopped. I was surprised when my partner claimed to have never heard of this.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2019-April-16, 09:19, said:

Often the way a pair discovers that they lack a firm agreement is by making a bid and partner misunderstanding it. It's hard to know there's a problem until it bites you.

When I play with advanced, but not regular, partners I will occasionally assume that they have the same understanding of "expert standard" that I do. Sometimes I'm wrong.

E.g. in Memphis we had a competitive auction where the opponents had shown 2 suits (I think maybe one of them had bid Michaels or Unusual 2NT). I thought everyone knew that in such situations, a cue bid is showing a stopper, not asking, and partner should bid NT if they have the other suit stopped. I was surprised when my partner claimed to have never heard of this.

I would be surprised at that too with an advanced partner. But even then I wouldn't risk making the cue bid in the situation of the OP here, for which I don't think there is a predominant "expert standard" I can expect partner to follow.

The players in the OP moreover are clearly not advanced, so I would not give them much rope to claim undocumented agreements in such situations.

[weejonnie]

georgianl, on 2019-April-16, 09:06, said:

Many thanks for your speedy and thoughtful answer
On balance then 50/50 is about right

The fact that the director makes an error does not mean that an artificial adjusted score has to be applied - just that an adjusted score has to be applied. The director can still ascertain the probable results of the board and apply weighted rulings in accordance with the over-riding objective of score adjustment. i.e. remove damage suffered by the NOS and remove any advantage gained by the OS - Law 12B.

If he can do that then the NOS will (presumably) get a good score and the OS a poor one. It is only if no rectification can allow the board to be played normally do we assign an artificial score treating both sides as being non-offending. In this case the TD might decide that the results of the hand are numerous or not obvious - and thus award both sides 60%-60% on the play of the board - but I am pretty sure he can apply a procedural penalty for the comments North made.

[pran]

weejonnie, on 2019-April-17, 07:12, said:

The fact that the director makes an error does not mean that an artificial adjusted score has to be applied - just that an adjusted score has to be applied. The director can still ascertain the probable results of the board and apply weighted rulings in accordance with the over-riding objective of score adjustment. i.e. remove damage suffered by the NOS and remove any advantage gained by the OS - Law 12B.

If he can do that then the NOS will (presumably) get a good score and the OS a poor one. It is only if no rectification can allow the board to be played normally do we assign an artificial score treating both sides as being non-offending. In this case the TD might decide that the results of the hand are numerous or not obvious - and thus award both sides 60%-60% on the play of the board - but I am pretty sure he can apply a procedural penalty for the comments North made.

The director should never assign artificial scores when it is possible to assign adjusted score(s).

And weighted scores should never be assigned after a director's error, instead the director should assign split scores in such cases.
For each side the assigned score should be the best likely result for its side had there been no irregularity.

[blackshoe]

Also, if an artificial adjusted score is assigned in a case where there was a director's error, the phrase "considering both sides to be non-offending" in Law 82C means that the score will be average plus to both sides, so "50-50" is not "about right".

[barmar]

pran, on 2019-April-17, 08:59, said:

And weighted scores should never be assigned after a director's error, instead the director should assign split scores in such cases.

60%-60% is split scores, not weighted scores, although they're artificial scores. 12C1(d) authorizes the director to assign artificial scores instead of weighted scores if there are too many possible results to determine the weighted score. I think this is independent of whether the scores are balanced or split.

I'm not sure why this is dependent on whether the score is being assigned due to director's error.

[pran]

barmar, on 2019-April-17, 09:24, said:

60%-60% is split scores, not weighted scores, although they're artificial scores. 12C1(d) authorizes the director to assign artificial scores instead of weighted scores if there are too many possible results to determine the weighted score. I think this is independent of whether the scores are balanced or split.

I'm not sure why this is dependent on whether the score is being assigned due to director's error.

1: weejonnie wrote in the note which I commented: "The director can still ascertain the probable results of the board and apply weighted rulings" - just look for yourself
2: Of course artificial scores will be split scores when they do not add up to 100% for the two sides. But artificial scores shall never be awarded when it is possible to award assigned scores.

The point is that when a director's error calls for adjusted scores (whether artificial or assigned) the scores will most often be split scores for the simple reason that both sides shall be considered "non-offending".

[weejonnie]

To summarise, if the TD knows what would have happened if the TD had given the correct ruling originally then they should just correct it, however embarrassing. If the TD does not and a result has been obtained on the board then they should assign, treating each side as non-offending for the purpose, which will often result in split scores. The TD will frequently use their powers under Law 12C1 © to weight each of these scores. The TD only gives artificial scores if they have incorrectly cancelled the board.

EBU WHite Book.