[pran]

bluejak, on 2010-December-24, 10:33, said:

Law 9A1 gives you the right to draw attention to an irregularity. So if they fail to alert and you know it is alertable, Law 9A1 gives you an absolute right to point it out.



Strange: my piccy has disappeared again!

matmat, on 2010-December-24, 11:05, said:

And remind LHO that they might have forgotten one of their agreements?

Or possibly be told that what you believe you know is wrong; the call isn't alertable. (They may for instance have changed their agreements since last time you played against them - this has happened to me!)

So I think it is better to ascertain that an irregularity really has occurred before calling the director under law 9A1.

[bluejak]

wank, on 2010-December-24, 13:01, said:

well, whenever i've played bridge in a club noone had convention cards. it would be pretty excessive to expect them - clubs are supposed to be predominantly social, hence the term 'club', no?

No, I do not think so. They are a mix of people who have a social view, people who have a competitive view, and the majority who have some of each. And I do not understand the word 'supposed': they are not supposed to be anything. They just are.

[bluejak]

Of course it depends in part where you play. If I play at an EBU clubs I expect about 100 pairs out of 99 to be playing transfers.

But I am not saying what you should do anyway: I am telling you what is [a] legal and [b] what I would do. If I am confident someone has forgotten to say "transfer" then it is [c] legal and in my view [d] sensible to draw attention to this.

[mfa1010]

Trinidad, on 2010-December-24, 08:08, said:

In many jurisdictions you are supposed to protect yourself. This means that you should ask about the not alerted bid. That may work for the use of the fourth suit or for a cuebid in our suit, but it breaks down as soon as the probability that the bid was natural increases. My point of view is 100% opposite: You should be able to rely on the explanations and (non-)alerts made by the opponents. If the opponents err (which may happen and should not be a big deal), you should be protected by the laws and regulations without any need to protect yourself "just in case the opponents were breaking the rules"

The principle of protecting oneself is imo indispensable. But should be ruled upon with care. The alternative of having it is to allow players positively to speculate in MI while being markedly in bad faith. This would be lucrative because the rules regarding MI are really nice to the nonoffending side, who gets a free double shot plus the 'best result likely' when TD is correcting.

a. (1♣)-1♠-(2♠)-?
2♠ was not alerted as it should in this jurisdiction. So 4th hand passes with his spade support and later claims damages.

b. (1♥)-p-(2NT)-?
2NT is by pure accident explained as "4-card spade support and GF". 4th hand's thinking with a huge spade suit: "Hah, no reason to make my obvious spade bid now." ...!

c. (1♠)-p-(4♠)-p, (4NT)-p-(5♣)-p-(6♠)
Screens. No alerts although it was a RKC sequence.
Opening leader chooses an aggressive but unfortunately ♥ from the K. "Director, I thought that there would be a threatening club suit in dummy and declarer had a balanced hand, so I had to be aggressive. If I had known about (...) I would have gone passive".

How would you cope with these? Strong players.
It is the "My point of view is 100% opposite"-part of your post that worries me.

[bluejak]

The principle behind protecting yourself is one of damage. Consider a simple auction where all artificial bids are alertable.

Simple Blackwood: alerted

---

4NT is Blackwood, alerted. 5♥ shows two aces, not alerted.

North has an obvious heart lead [KQJ, say] which beats 6♠ but he does not make it because, he says, he thought 5♥ showed a suit, not being alerted. Do we adjust?

Now, many people will say "North should protect himself". We might, in certain jurisdictions, point to a regulation. But what do we mean?

What we mean is that the result was due to North's failure to act sensibly. With 4NT alerted as Blackwood he has no reason to suppose the 5♥ bid is natural, and the damage is caused by North's failure to ask and his failure to act sensibly rather than by the failure to alert.

Now, suppose North is a novice, playing his second game of duplicate after coming out of the beginner's class. He has been taught, he will explain if asked, to lead his best holding from the unbid suits, and he has been told that does not include alerted suits since they do not count. Do we adjust?

Yes, we do. You can either say that it is unreasonable for this North to protect himself, or you can say that the failure to alert caused the damage.

I would not worry too much about whether there is a regulation that a player must protect himself: I would worry as to what caused the damage: was it failure of the non-offenders to act reasonably, or failure of the offenders to follow the rules and alert?

[Trinidad]

mfa1010, on 2010-December-26, 04:45, said:

The principle of protecting oneself is imo indispensable. But should be ruled upon with care. The alternative of having it is to allow players positively to speculate in MI while being markedly in bad faith. This would be lucrative because the rules regarding MI are really nice to the nonoffending side, who gets a free double shot plus the 'best result likely' when TD is correcting.

I agree that there is a potential for a double shot. But what is often overlooked (or brushed aside) is that the non offenders will be put in a difficult situation when they do protect themselves. Suddenly they may be limited due to UI that arose. The odd thing is that this situation occurs when the "suspected offenders" (non alerters) happen to be non offending (i.e. the bid was indeed natural). Now the original "non offenders" who were protecting themselves are suddenly in trouble.

Quote

a. (1♣)-1♠-(2♠)-?
2♠ was not alerted as it should in this jurisdiction. So 4th hand passes with his spade support and later claims damages.

Yes, this is a typical example. And quite often the alert of the cuebid is forgotten, because people are already thinking how to respond.

And I agree with you that "protecting yourself" will very rarely hurt. Nobody plays 2♠ as natural, except for a beginner. And if 2♠ was natural, you will not have a been thinking of raising spades, so the UI is limited.

Quote

b. (1♥)-p-(2NT)-?
2NT is by pure accident explained as "4-card spade support and GF". 4th hand's thinking with a huge spade suit: "Hah, no reason to make my obvious spade bid now." ...!

This example is pretty exotic. I have never encountered it, though I have seen people mentioning the wrong suit. "Protecting yourself" will hardly give any UI since it is pretty obvious that "spade" and "support" are contradicting each other. Asking for a clarification is harmless. (You could even ask: "Did I miss an alert on your transfer opening?" )

Quote

c. (1♠)-p-(4♠)-p, (4NT)-p-(5♣)-p-(6♠)
Screens. No alerts although it was a RKC sequence.
Opening leader chooses an aggressive but unfortunately ♥ from the K. "Director, I thought that there would be a threatening club suit in dummy and declarer had a balanced hand, so I had to be aggressive. If I had known about (...) I would have gone passive".

This is beyond exotic. But please notice that you are talking about two infractions by the offending side here: The missing alert (and written explanation) for 4NT and the missing alert (and explanation) for 5♣.

Quote

How would you cope with these? Strong players.
It is the "My point of view is 100% opposite"-part of your post that worries me.

My point is that the "You should have protected yourself" phrase is horribly overused. That is what I am acting against. And it should be kept in mind that not alerting alertable bids is an infraction. It should not -by default- be the task for the non offending side to fix the offender's problems.

By default it should be the offender who is liable for his offense. I would rather let a non offending side "get by" a few times then let the offending side put a non offending side at a disadvantage. After all, all the offending side needed to do to prevent the non offending side from "getting by" was follow the rules. The non offending side needs to evaluate time and again whether this is a situation where they need to protect themselves or whether the TD will protect them if there would be an infraction, just because their opponents may be too lazy to alert properly.

A typical area where in my opinion protecting oneself is overused is in fourth suit forcing sequences. Quite often the alert of the fourth suit bid is forgotten. One may want to double it, if it is the fourth suit, but a significant amount of players plays it as natural (or showing a fragment/values/whatever). And, of course, in some situations the fourth suit convention pretty much denies values in the fourth suit (typically when probing for 3NT) whereas in others it doesn't say much about the fourth suit (e.g. when fishing for 3 card support).

Another area is Jacoby transfers in competition, e.g.:
(1NT)-2♦¹-(2♥)-??      ¹DONT: ♦+a major

Until relatively recently Jacoby transfers were not alertable in The Netherlands¹. In competition, however, they were alertable. Experienced players were supposed to realise that an opponent might have forgotten to alert. So, if it promises spades and you want partner to compete in hearts since you have some hearts yourself, you would want to double. But if it is natural you might not want to compete if you don't have spades.

If you now ask and it turns out that it was natural, you might just as well show your four trumps to declarer. If you don't ask and the bidding continues with the completion of the transfer, you are too late and you will hear that you should have protected yourself.

Rik

¹ As a consequence, people continuously forget to alert Jacoby transfers now that they are alertable. Of course, this leads to problems too.

[barmar]

bluejak, on 2010-December-26, 07:14, said:

I would not worry too much about whether there is a regulation that a player must protect himself: I would worry as to what caused the damage: was it failure of the non-offenders to act reasonably, or failure of the offenders to follow the rules and alert?

But the regulation is what helps define what "act reasonably" means. It clarifies that experienced players who don't protect themselves are being unreasonable. Without this regulation, they might "reasonably" argue "It's their job to alert properly, not my job to figure out what they're doing, even if it seems obvious."

Problems with this regulation are inevitable, since there's so much judgement involved, about the NOS's experience level (there's a whole continuum between expert and beginner) and whether the situation is one where they could be expected to protect themselves.

[mfa1010]

Trinidad, on 2010-December-26, 12:35, said:

Quote

c. (1♠)-p-(4♠)-p, (4NT)-p-(5♣)-p-(6♠)
Screens. No alerts although it was a RKC sequence.
Opening leader chooses an aggressive but unfortunately ♥ from the K. "Director, I thought that there would be a threatening club suit in dummy and declarer had a balanced hand, so I had to be aggressive. If I had known about (...) I would have gone passive".

This is beyond exotic. But please notice that you are talking about two infractions by the offending side here: The missing alert (and written explanation) for 4NT and the missing alert (and explanation) for 5♣.

The main point of this example is: If opponents are supposed to be able to rely 110% on alerts no matter what, then the opening leader is (in spite of clear knowledge to the contrary for an experienced player) perfectly entitled to make a deduction as I describe it. What should stop him?
The setup is certainly realistic, so I think you call it exotic only because this in not how bridge is played. Why? Because some "bad faith" principle does kick in afterall in TD judgements, call it "to protect oneself" or not.

But I agree with most of what you says.

[bluejak]

The point which I feel I should make is that there exists a general view that players should protect themselves for the reasons I gave both in jurisdictions with a relevant regulation and in other jurisdictions. How far is just another judgment decision.