[gwnn]

I think using three words instead of one means that you can artificially single out any one of the three and thereby focus on a suitably chosen interval in the degree of certainty. Enabling such logically unsound practices is hardly 'precisely nothing'.

[mikeh]

cherdanno, on May 15 2010, 09:17 AM, said:

I guess once we get to the point where someone argues that one of the most frequently cited sentences of the laws is so poorly phrased that it does not mean what it says it means, the discussion has officially become ridiculous.

It appears that this is precisely the issue: an issue that bedevils even those tasked with applying and interpreting the Laws.

At the risk of getting the thread back to the original issue, it seems there are 4 camps:

1. Those who rule that the result stands: this is, it seems to me, to be pran. However, I am sure that pran and any others involved on the committee had more info than has been posted....I don't mean that as a criticism of the OP...it is just that the OP didn't say much about what actually happened at the hearing, in terms of evidence.

2. Those (Cascade and me as part of the group) who say that we don't see that the BIT can be said to have demonstrably suggested that E bid slam: we see that the BIT cannot (so far) be shown to render bidding slam a net winner, compared to passing. We say that since on the info so far available, the pre-requisite for adjustment under the law has not yet been made out, we'd reserve judgement until after we heard evidence.

3. Those who don't care about interpreting the law. They see something suspicious that worked. They fall, it seems to me, into the common logic trap of: something happened, something happened next....the latter MUST have been caused by the former. In other words, they interprete the fact that someone bid 6♥ successfully as proving that the BIT suggested bidding 6♥. These people need lessons in logic and/or the interpretation of law. These people should also ask themselves: what would we do if there had been no BIT and E bid 6♥ anyway? Would they use the fact that E made an impossible bid to infer that some other form of UI was made available?

4. Those who accept that the law requires that an adjustment can only be considered if, as a first step, the committee determines that the BIT rendered bidding 6♥ more attractive than the a priori odds, but they believe exactly that.

dburn and awm and jdonn (I think) and others fall into this camp.

The difference between 2 and 4 is, I think, small but very real. One interesting, to me, point is that neither wayne nor I claim that we are 'right' in holding that the BIT renders bidding on less attractive....our point, it seems to me, is precisely that it is (virtually) impossible to answer this question. And until one can answer this question, positively, it cannot be said that the BIT demonstrably suggested bidding on. While those in camp 4 seem absolutely convinced of their being correct. Maybe they are right....but, if so, why can't they prove it? Adam tries, but he has put out nothing more detailed, nor more apparently supportable, than either Wayne or I have. We say: case unproved. They say: no...we are right...but offer no convincing evidence other than their gut sense.

I doubt that anyone would be happy with letting the result stand. All of us have been burned (no reference to david intended) by what we sense to be borderline, or worse, behaviour by opps. But as committee members, tasked with enforcing the Laws, we have to leave those feelings to one side.

[awm]

Another issue with Cascade's numbers is the assumptions about exactly what makes a problem hand. For example:

(1) He assumes that any hand with 8-11 and a singleton heart is a "problem hand." In fact these hands are roughly half the hands he considers as possible hesitations. However, I don't think it's that hard to raise 3♥ to 4♥ with a singleton queen (which he rates as reasonably common) especially if a side suit is wide open. In general, a lot of singleton heart hands are fairly obvious raises (stiff queen, weak side suit) or fairly obvious 3NT bids (slow cards in all suits). So only some of these hands are possible hesitations. On the other hand, I suspect that borderline strength hands are almost always "problem" decisions.

(2) He ignores the possibility of responder holding even more than 11 hcp. A 1♠ bid does not limit responder's strength. It's not clear that this pair has much in the way of methods to look for slam (given the 6♥ jump) so perhaps these hands would be difficult also? In fact the actual hand at the table had 12 hcp, so we have to conclude that such hands are at least a possibility (for this pair).

Using Cascade's same numbers with a different evaluation:

In-tempo 4♥, let's say 8-10 with 2 hearts, P(>12 double dummy) = 34.6%

Slow 4♥, one of:

Singleton and 8-12: P(>12 DD) = 29.4% over 221 hands
Doubleton and 7 hcp: P(>12 DD) = 18.7% over 111 hands
Doubleton and 11-13 hcp: P(>12 DD) = 76% over 150 hands
Three hearts and 10-11: P(>12 DD) = 71.5% over 99 hands

Assuming that about a third of the singleton hands are "easy" (the singleton queen ones cover about half of this according to Cascade's numbers, presumably there are about equally many "easy" ones for 3NT bids if not more) we would get:

P(>12 DD opposite SLOW 4♥) = 48.98%

Even if we count all the singleton heart hands:

P(>12 DD opposite SLOW 4♥) = 46.56%

That's a fairly big difference. We should also probably be counting singleton heart with 13 hcp as problem hands (this will further boost the success odds). And a few of the singleton heart hands that are not really problems should be counted as "in-tempo raises" (slightly reducing the odds on that side).

Of course all these numbers are high because of double-dummy assumptions, but that seems to change the percentages in roughly similar ways for all cases (i.e. reduce them all by about a quarter) so it won't effect the relative merits of the 6♥ call.

[mikeh]

nige1, on May 16 2010, 07:16 PM, said:

dburn, on May 16 2010, 06:11 PM, said:

It's not so much a question of removing the word "logical". What the Law probably ought to say is that the player "may not choose any action that could demonstrably have been suggested by the extraneous information, unless there is no logical alternative to the chosen action."

Yes. That is much better.

I don't think this change helps....certainly not in the case under review....we still need to resolve the primary issue: how do we interprete the phrase 'could demonstrably have been suggested'.

Moreover, the added qualifer adds nothing to the law.

If there is only one logical call, then it cannot be said that the BIT made that call more attractive than a priori: a priori it was, since it was the ONLY logical call, 100% indicated.

Outside of the world of professional athletes, 100% represents the entirety of the range...nothing can make a 100% clear action more clear.

I think that what is really being suggested, consciously or otherwise is an amendment the purpose of which is to enshrine a starting position that if there is a BIT, the offending side may not keep the fruits of subsequent action unless they can show that the action they took was the only logical action.

And that is a huge change to the law: it is the impostion of an 'if it hesitates, shoot it' approach.

[helene_t]

gwnn, on May 17 2010, 04:33 PM, said:

I think using three words instead of one means that you can artificially single out any one of the three and thereby focus on a suitably chosen interval in the degree of certainty. Enabling such logically unsound practices is hardly 'precisely nothing'.

Does the Heisenberg principle apply to semantics? Maybe it matters if two of the words are entangled.

[hotShot]

helene_t, on May 17 2010, 06:56 PM, said:

gwnn, on May 17 2010, 04:33 PM, said:

I think using three words instead of one means that you can artificially single out any one of the three and thereby focus on a suitably chosen interval in the degree of certainty. Enabling such logically unsound practices is hardly 'precisely nothing'.

Does the Heisenberg principle apply to semantics? Maybe it matters if two of the words are entangled.

, sadly some will miss the beauty of this remark.

[pran]

mikeh, on May 17 2010, 05:38 PM, said:

cherdanno, on May 15 2010, 09:17 AM, said:

I guess once we get to the point where someone argues that one of the most frequently cited sentences of the laws is so poorly phrased that it does not mean what it says it means, the discussion has officially become ridiculous.

It appears that this is precisely the issue: an issue that bedevils even those tasked with applying and interpreting the Laws.

At the risk of getting the thread back to the original issue, it seems there are 4 camps:

1. Those who rule that the result stands: this is, it seems to me, to be pran. However, I am sure that pran and any others involved on the committee had more info than has been posted....I don't mean that as a criticism of the OP...it is just that the OP didn't say much about what actually happened at the hearing, in terms of evidence.

2. Those (Cascade and me as part of the group) who say that we don't see that the BIT can be said to have demonstrably suggested that E bid slam: we see that the BIT cannot (so far) be shown to render bidding slam a net winner, compared to passing. We say that since on the info so far available, the pre-requisite for adjustment under the law has not yet been made out, we'd reserve judgement until after we heard evidence.

3. Those who don't care about interpreting the law. They see something suspicious that worked. They fall, it seems to me, into the common logic trap of: something happened, something happened next....the latter MUST have been caused by the former. In other words, they interprete the fact that someone bid 6♥ successfully as proving that the BIT suggested bidding 6♥. These people need lessons in logic and/or the interpretation of law. These people should also ask themselves: what would we do if there had been no BIT and E bid 6♥ anyway? Would they use the fact that E made an impossible bid to infer that some other form of UI was made available?

4. Those who accept that the law requires that an adjustment can only be considered if, as a first step, the committee determines that the BIT rendered bidding 6♥ more attractive than the a priori odds, but they believe exactly that.

dburn and awm and jdonn (I think) and others fall into this camp.

The difference between 2 and 4 is, I think, small but very real. One interesting, to me, point is that neither wayne nor I claim that we are 'right' in holding that the BIT renders bidding on less attractive....our point, it seems to me, is precisely that it is (virtually) impossible to answer this question. And until one can answer this question, positively, it cannot be said that the BIT demonstrably suggested bidding on. While those in camp 4 seem absolutely convinced of their being correct. Maybe they are right....but, if so, why can't they prove it? Adam tries, but he has put out nothing more detailed, nor more apparently supportable, than either Wayne or I have. We say: case unproved. They say: no...we are right...but offer no convincing evidence other than their gut sense.

I doubt that anyone would be happy with letting the result stand. All of us have been burned (no reference to david intended) by what we sense to be borderline, or worse, behaviour by opps. But as committee members, tasked with enforcing the Laws, we have to leave those feelings to one side.

As far as I am aware of all the information available to the AC has been referred by me on this thread.

Initially the AC was split but after evaluating both the laws and the situation we reached an unanimous ruling that the BIT could not be seen as demonstrably suggesting any call other than pass.

We found it at least as likely that the 3♥ bidder considered bidding 3NT as he might have considered a more aggressive call than 4♥.

It appears to me that this puts us in your category 2, not 1. In fact I have a problem seeing the difference between these two categories (other than that cat2 is completed with some reasoning).

[cherdanno]

I don't see anyone in this thread belonging to Mikeh's camp 1 or 3.

[mikeh]

Quote

As far as I am aware of all the information available to the AC has been referred by me on this thread.

Initially the AC was split but after evaluating both the laws and the situation we reached an unanimous ruling that the BIT could not be seen as demonstrably suggesting any call other than pass.

We found it at least as likely that the 3♥ bidder considered bidding 3NT as he might have considered a more aggressive call than 4♥.

It appears to me that this puts us in your category 2, not 1. In fact I have a problem seeing the difference between these two categories (other than that cat2 is completed with some reasoning).

Fair enough....you were there and I wasn't.

However, I am surprised that the committee (apparently) did not ask E why he bid 6♥. I recognize that his answer might not, ultimately, assist and surely would not often be determinative, but I would have thought that not only his answer but also his manner of answering would be important.

And even if I am wrong in that, which I admit may be true, the committee would either already know the skill level of the players involved or ask questions to establish that?

And maybe even ask questions about other hestitations or partnership agreements (explicit or implicit) surrounding auctions of the type that got to 4♥?

It may be that I am completely off base here, in terms of what a committee would ask. I'd appreciate learning if I am, since I have served on a number of committees and may do so again. If I've been operating on the wrong assumptions as to what information is relevant, it would be good to know, so I do it right next time.

As for categories 1 and 2: category 1 involves making a ruling, based on the info afforded by you, while category 2 involves saying we can't yet make a ruling...we need more info. If you said to me: make the ruling anyway: you are not getting more info...then I think I'd agree with your ruling. So you're probably right in saying that there is little, if any, difference.

[mikeh]

cherdanno, on May 17 2010, 04:57 PM, said:

I don't see anyone in this thread belonging to Mikeh's camp 1 or 3.

maybe you don't read kenrexford's posts or josh's first two posts...I think he gets a bit more nuanced later on, but his first two posts sure read to me as if he simply won't allow successful post-bit action with which he doesn't personally agree...without bothering with the requirement that the action be shown (by factors other than its success) to have been demonstrably suggested.

Anyway, I've had enough of this thread (I can almost hear the sigh of relief from other posters as I click on 'add reply')

[Cascade]

awm, on May 18 2010, 05:28 AM, said:

Another issue with Cascade's numbers is the assumptions about exactly what makes a problem hand. For example:

(1) He assumes that any hand with 8-11 and a singleton heart is a "problem hand." In fact these hands are roughly half the hands he considers as possible hesitations. However, I don't think it's that hard to raise 3♥ to 4♥ with a singleton queen (which he rates as reasonably common) especially if a side suit is wide open. In general, a lot of singleton heart hands are fairly obvious raises (stiff queen, weak side suit) or fairly obvious 3NT bids (slow cards in all suits). So only some of these hands are possible hesitations. On the other hand, I suspect that borderline strength hands are almost always "problem" decisions.

(2) He ignores the possibility of responder holding even more than 11 hcp. A 1♠ bid does not limit responder's strength. It's not clear that this pair has much in the way of methods to look for slam (given the 6♥ jump) so perhaps these hands would be difficult also? In fact the actual hand at the table had 12 hcp, so we have to conclude that such hands are at least a possibility (for this pair).

Using Cascade's same numbers with a different evaluation:

In-tempo 4♥, let's say 8-10 with 2 hearts, P(>12 double dummy) = 34.6%

Slow 4♥, one of:

Singleton and 8-12: P(>12 DD) = 29.4% over 221 hands
Doubleton and 7 hcp: P(>12 DD) = 18.7% over 111 hands
Doubleton and 11-13 hcp: P(>12 DD) = 76% over 150 hands
Three hearts and 10-11: P(>12 DD) = 71.5% over 99 hands

Assuming that about a third of the singleton hands are "easy" (the singleton queen ones cover about half of this according to Cascade's numbers, presumably there are about equally many "easy" ones for 3NT bids if not more) we would get:

P(>12 DD opposite SLOW 4♥) = 48.98%

Even if we count all the singleton heart hands:

P(>12 DD opposite SLOW 4♥) = 46.56%

That's a fairly big difference. We should also probably be counting singleton heart with 13 hcp as problem hands (this will further boost the success odds). And a few of the singleton heart hands that are not really problems should be counted as "in-tempo raises" (slightly reducing the odds on that side).

Of course all these numbers are high because of double-dummy assumptions, but that seems to change the percentages in roughly similar ways for all cases (i.e. reduce them all by about a quarter) so it won't effect the relative merits of the 6♥ call.

I didn't really attempt to qualify what a problem hand was except to assume that they were at the upper or lower end of the range or were hands with only one heart. I did make a little attempt to qualify in the later case by excluding hands with cards (stoppers) in all of the other suits.

Obviously the actual problem hands will typically be only a subset of those hands. The problem hands will probably vary from player to player - one players problem hand is another player's "wtp?"

Of course you will get a probability suggesting bidding on (or that partner is strong) if you take a weighting that is based on one value (7hcp) at the lower end and two or three values (10-11 hcp and 11-13 hcp) at the upper end. We could easily sway the numbers in the other direction by using 10 hcp and 11 hcp at the upper end and 6-8 hcp at the lower end.

I was certainly not intending to suggest that my numbers were definitive. Rather that an analysis of this type does not demonstrably suggest that partner's BIT is more likely to be based on a stronger hand than a weaker one.

[nige1]

dburn, on May 16 2010, 06:11 PM, said:

It's not so much a question of removing the word "logical". What the Law probably ought to say is that the player "may not choose any action that could demonstrably have been suggested by the extraneous information, unless there is no logical alternative to the chosen action."

nige1, on May 16 2010, 07:16 PM, said:

Yes. That is much better.

dburn, on May 16 2010, 09:01 PM, said:

As an afterthought, for next to nothing you could remove the words "that could demonstrably have been" without detracting from the sense.

Better still!

[pran]

mikeh, on May 17 2010, 11:14 PM, said:

Fair enough....you were there and I wasn't.

However, I am surprised that the committee (apparently) did not ask E why he bid 6♥. I recognize that his answer might not, ultimately, assist and surely would not often be determinative, but I would have thought that not only his answer but also his manner of answering would be important.

And even if I am wrong in that, which I admit may be true, the committee would either already know the skill level of the players involved or ask questions to establish that?

And maybe even ask questions about other hestitations or partnership agreements (explicit or implicit) surrounding auctions of the type that got to 4♥?

It may be that I am completely off base here, in terms of what a committee would ask. I'd appreciate learning if I am, since I have served on a number of committees and may do so again. If I've been operating on the wrong assumptions as to what information is relevant, it would be good to know, so I do it right next time.

As for categories 1 and 2: category 1 involves making a ruling, based on the info afforded by you, while category 2 involves saying we can't yet make a ruling...we need more info. If you said to me: make the ruling anyway: you are not getting more info...then I think I'd agree with your ruling. So you're probably right in saying that there is little, if any, difference.

We had his written statement on the appeal form (referred in a previous post on this thread):
"I was assessing my cards to be a very tough slam (and I usually bid them as well)"

Both sides had been informed when the hearing would take place but neither of them appeared available for further questioning, probably because they had already presented their views on the appeal form.

On the AC we had to come out with a ruling, we could not defer this to some later time and we felt we had all the information we needed including the written statements by each side on the appeal form. (This is required in Norway)

[dburn]

Cascade, on May 17 2010, 08:33 PM, said:

I was certainly not intending to suggest that my numbers were definitive.  Rather that an analysis of this type does not demonstrably suggest that partner's BIT is more likely to be based on a stronger hand than a weaker one.

For the sake of simplicity, I will grant this and say that partner is as likely to have a marginal game bid as a marginal slam try.

Equally, for the sake of simplicity I will assume that if partner has a marginal slam try, slam will make (certainly if I had this and my partner made any kind of slam try, I would bid a slam and expect it to be cold most of the time and good the rest of the time). If partner has a marginal game bid, then slam will not make very often, but it will make enough of the time that the overall expectation from bidding it is positive (not least because some of the time that slam does not make, game will also not make).

The question is not "what kind of hand does partner's BIT suggest?" but "given that partner has a hand that justifies a BIT, is one more likely to gain by bidding six than by passing four?" If the answer to the second question is "yes", as I believe that it is, then the BIT demonstrably suggests bidding six regardless of what the BIT actually suggests about partner's hand (as I have said above, I am happy to concede that it says nothing about partner's hand other than "I do not have a clear 4♥ bid").

[kenrexford]

mikeh, on May 17 2010, 05:20 PM, said:

cherdanno, on May 17 2010, 04:57 PM, said:

I don't see anyone in this thread belonging to Mikeh's camp 1 or 3.

maybe you don't read kenrexford's posts or josh's first two posts...I think he gets a bit more nuanced later on, but his first two posts sure read to me as if he simply won't allow successful post-bit action with which he doesn't personally agree...without bothering with the requirement that the action be shown (by factors other than its success) to have been demonstrably suggested.

Anyway, I've had enough of this thread (I can almost hear the sigh of relief from other posters as I click on 'add reply')

I don't think you caught the "nuance" of the early posts.

I continue to find the analysis here, and the apparent result of the AC, ridiculous.

The focus should be on the person bidding 6♥. If that call makes no sense with info available from the auction but would make sense if the person was relying on information external to the auction, and if there is a big fat source for the external information, then that person relied on the external information.

The fact that the person's reliance might have been mathematically unsound is irrelevant. He chose his bid on the basis of HIS assessment of the external information. It was demonstrably suggested to HIM by HIS READ.

Any other take is ludicrous.

There is a wild difference between a bid with which I disagree and a bid that has no plausible explanation internal to the sequence. Finding the line between "Ken would disapprove" and "absurd beyond plausibility" is tough and calls for a good TD or AC. If this doesn't count as clear, y'all are idiots.

[Vampyr]

kenrexford, on May 19 2010, 03:48 AM, said:

The fact that the person's reliance might have been mathematically unsound is irrelevant.  He chose his bid on the basis of HIS assessment of the external information.  It was demonstrably suggested to HIM by HIS READ.

Any other take is ludicrous.

Way to cut through a lot of the bullshit that is being spouted on this thread.

[axman]

Vampyr, on May 18 2010, 09:53 PM, said:

kenrexford, on May 19 2010, 03:48 AM, said:

The fact that the person's reliance might have been mathematically unsound is irrelevant.  He chose his bid on the basis of HIS assessment of the external information.  It was demonstrably suggested to HIM by HIS READ.

Any other take is ludicrous.

Way to cut through a lot of the bullshit that is being spouted on this thread.

To resurrect some bs a bit of perspective is in order.

The law provides the definition of LA in L16b1B. And there is a supposed codicil in the form of a LC minute that changes the law [without going through the actual changing] to include as LA the action that a player actually takes.

When one realizes that a LA derives by law to specifically be based upon one's method, then when a player takes an action that's 'out of this world' when the player's announced agreements are the only things being considered, but also taken while UI was available- this codicil imputes upon the player's partnership method that using UI is part of their agreement .

iow since passing UI back and forth is the partnership method and L73B1 specifically denotes it as the most heinous of crimes, the effect of the codicil is to convict such a player of cheating of the worst kind- despite the player satisfying L16B1b.

[Vampyr]

axman, on May 19 2010, 05:48 AM, said:

iow since passing UI back and forth is the partnership method and L73B1 specifically denotes it as the most heinous of crimes, the effect of the codicil is to convict such a player of cheating of the worst kind- despite the player satisfying L16B1b.

This is exaggerating a bit. It is true that the player must have "used" the UI, since his bid came from outer space, but he may not have been consciously aware of what he was doing, or may not have known that it was against the rules. Perhaps he even changed his mind after the 4♥ bid and felt that his hand was not a game invitation, but should have been a slam try; now once partner showed enough to move over 3♥, the extra values would now be enough for a slam.

What I am saying in general is that the player should be given the benefit of the doubt.

[jallerton]

pran, on May 18 2010, 07:08 AM, said:

We had his written statement on the appeal form (referred in a previous post on this thread):
"I was assessing my cards to be a very tough slam (and I usually bid them as well)"

Both sides had been informed when the hearing would take place but neither of them appeared available for further questioning, probably because they had already presented their views on the appeal form.

On the AC we had to come out with a ruling, we could not defer this to some later time and we felt we had all the information we needed including the written statements by each side on the appeal form. (This is required in Norway)

If I had been on the AC I would have been disappointed that East was not available at the appeal. On hearing his explanation for the 6♥ bid, I would ask him to confirm whether 3♥ was forcing and, if not, would ask him to explain why he was not on the previous round "assessing my cards to be a not quite so tough game." I would also talk to him about what odds he thinks he needs to bid NV games and slams at the prevailing form of scoring. During these discussions I would hope to get to the bottom of what really was going through East's mind when he decided to bid 6♥.

[One thought occurs to me. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that "barometer" scoring is quite common in Norway. Could East perhaps have heard about the contract at another table? Pure speculation on my part, but a more likely expanation than East coming up with some clever calculated gamble based on probabilities and the IMPs scale]

[pran]

jallerton, on May 20 2010, 11:54 PM, said:

[One thought occurs to me. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that "barometer" scoring is quite common in Norway. Could East perhaps have heard about the contract at another table? Pure speculation on my part, but a more likely expanation than East coming up with some clever calculated gamble based on probabilities and the IMPs scale]

Very unlikely. (And this is no wishful thinking)