[paulg]

Hi Luis,

As you are a much better player than me, with experience at a higher level, I just wanted to understand what you meant by

"In a f2f expert game I'd say that the guy with Tx was trying to read some kind of trump signal from his pd."

This implies that the hesitation with a singleton is acceptable. I'd expect an expert to realise that this is a situation where a hesitation is best avoided or take the consequences.

Or, is your point that this situation is so well known that a hesitation would never deflect declarer, and so it is inconsequential? Personally I think I would struggle to win this argument at our national tournaments - perhaps you can ask David Burn next time you are commentating together for his views, as I'd be up before him for this!

Cheers

Paul

[jillybean]

cardsharp, on Jun 6 2005, 08:00 AM, said:

Quote

Law 73 Communication

F Violation of Proprieties

2.   Player Injured by Illegal Deception
If the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from a remark, manner, tempo, or the like, of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have known, at the time of the action, that the action could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score (see Law 12C).

How can this law be used reliably when dealing with tempo issues in online tournaments? Possibly if there is a player history of uneven tempo, still I wouldn't want to be the TD penalising the player.

[paulg]

jillybean2, on Jun 6 2005, 03:33 PM, said:

cardsharp, on Jun 6 2005, 08:00 AM, said:

Quote

Law 73 Communication

F Violation of Proprieties

2.  Player Injured by Illegal Deception
If the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from a remark, manner, tempo, or the like, of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have known, at the time of the action, that the action could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score (see Law 12C).

How can this law be used reliably when dealing with tempo issues in online tournaments? Possibly if there is a player history of uneven tempo, still I wouldn't want to be the TD penalising the player.

The WBF have created an online version of the Laws (PDF) but they do not address issues caused by connection difficulties, cats, pizza deliveries and other crucial areas.

My advice is to regard all delays as connection problems when playing, and let the Tournament Director deal with these issues rather than worrying about them yourself.

Paul

[luis]

cardsharp, on Jun 6 2005, 03:33 PM, said:

Hi Luis,

As you are a much better player than me, with experience at a higher level, I just wanted to understand what you meant by

"In a f2f expert game I'd say that the guy with Tx was trying to read some kind of trump signal from his pd."

This implies that the hesitation with a singleton is acceptable. I'd expect an expert to realise that this is a situation where a hesitation is best avoided or take the consequences.

Or, is your point that this situation is so well known that a hesitation would never deflect declarer, and so it is inconsequential? Personally I think I would struggle to win this argument at our national tournaments - perhaps you can ask David Burn next time you are commentating together for his views, as I'd be up before him for this!

Cheers

Paul

Actually the defender could have been very ethical, let me explain it in this way: If you need to think about your defensive plan in the middle of the hand then you should do it when your hesitation can't carry any information to your pd or declarer. And a very good example is:

"Situations where a defender is clearly not thinking about what card to play but about something else"

When you have nothing and declarer is leading towards KJxxx of trumps in dummy after cashing the ace then you can think in the same way you can think when there's only one card left in a suit and you are about to play it. Then it's clear you weren't thinking about your play in the suit but about something else and there's no clear information about what that was.
Declarer's guess is not affected by your hesitation since with Qx you are not going to play the Q so you are clearly -very clearly- not thinking about what card to play but about something else.

In a recent f2f tournament exactly the same thing happened, declarer called the TD and the TD asked him to explain his reasoning after West hesitation, declarer said "well he must have Qxx and is thinking if he has to play low or the Q in his 2nd turn", the TD asked if that had any logic and declarer admited it didn't. So there was no damage, declarer can play from the top or finesse no matter what the defender does in the 2nd turn, nothing changes. West was also asked and he said he was thinking if he was going to falsecard in a side suit when declarer played that from his hand and he decided it was a good time to do that.

This is clear like the water to me. There're other positions where accidentaly a defender hesitation may induce declarer to make a mistake and then we can rule that it may have been done on purpose and change the result but in this case there's no way to damage declarer, with Qx you are never putting up the Q in front of KJ.

Luis

[paulg]

Luis,

Thank you, a very eloquent explanation.

At least I was right ... you are a better player

Thanks,

Paul

[luke warm]

this is one of the very rare instances when i disagree with luis... who gets the benefit of the doubt? the player who hesitated with the stiff? if that's so, the rules quoted above have no meaning.. how would one ever know when a hesitation was purposeful?

[luis]

luke warm, on Jun 6 2005, 11:12 PM, said:

this is one of the very rare instances when i disagree with luis... who gets the benefit of the doubt? the player who hesitated with the stiff? if that's so, the rules quoted above have no meaning.. how would one ever know when a hesitation was purposeful?

I don't think there's benefit of the doubt since whatever the defender was thinking there's no reason in the world to assume it had anything to do with the suit being played. I can only admit some adjustment or TD decision in a really really low level game. Again if you have Qx and dummy KJxx what are you thinking? Assume I think for a while and play then you finesse and the finesse is right are you claiming you found the right play because of the hesitation? I admit this is difficult to understand since many players hesitate on purpose to misslead declarer and deserve to be punished but this case I think is different. Maybe I wasn't able to explain it well.