[Jinksy]

---

There was quite a bit of context to this hand, but I'll save it til after the initial ruling.

E produced the stop card before the 3♦ bid. When W then drove to slam, N/S reserved their rights, and called the director when it made, complaining that the Stop card gave UI suggesting extra strength, and sought an adjustment.

How would you have ruled?

[wank]

pp for west unless very inexperienced. tricky to decide what should happen though. some kind of weighted ruling obviously if you decide (with the help of a poll one presumes) that pass for west isn't a logical alternative, but i would say it is. if pass is a logical alternative, then 3d making 12 (no reveley rulings here).

[aguahombre]

It isn't easy to decide how the auction might have proceeded (even favoring the NOS). But, resting in a part-score would not be anywhere in the mix.

West clearly deserves PP, whatever the adjusted result.

[blackshoe]

"West clearly deserves a PP"

Does he really? I'd be doing some further investigation before I make any ruling at all here.

[Jinksy]

What do you need to know? I'll answer any questions as perspective-neutrally as I can manage.

[wank]

blackshoe, on 2015-July-04, 14:34, said:

"West clearly deserves a PP"

Does he really? I'd be doing some further investigation before I make any ruling at all here.

well, ok if they play some variety of lebensohl here it would make a difference, but we've no reason to assume they do. i expect we would have been told if they did and, in the circumstances, i'm sure E-W would be keen to point out they did to the director if that was the case.

[blackshoe]

Did the director ask East why the stop card? Did he ask West why he bid 4NT? If he did, what did they answer?

[Jinksy]

She did not ask either question (the director seemed really clueless)

What sort of answer to 'why' would you be looking for in each case? Maybe I can provide info.

[Cyberyeti]

What did the double mean ?

The W hand is very powerful, xx, KQxxx, K10xxx, x is a playable slam.

[aguahombre]

Why West would say he bid 4nt isn't relevant at all to me. West may have shown his 18 point hand and/or his 3 card heart support with that double, and we also don't need to know that. What we do know is East hadn't shown legally the extra values warranting a 4nt takeover unless there is something about that 3♦ bid we haven't been told.

Any West would go to game or probe for slam over 3♦, but launching 4nt is blatant flaunting that he used the UI he thought he had (well beyond warning zone)...hence the PP.

[blackshoe]

aguahombre, on 2015-July-04, 16:20, said:

Any West would go to game or probe for slam over 3♦, but launching 4nt is blatant flaunting that he used the UI he thought he had (well beyond warning zone)...hence the PP.

If West had been named "Aguahombre" I would give him a PP. But I have no idea what West thought he was doing, and I'm not going to give him a PP until I do. Same with East.

IMO, when a director makes a ruling, he should not only state the "bottom line" but also how he got there. I can't do that on the information provided so far. Not without making assumptions that may or may not be the case.

[Jinksy]

What do you mean what west thought he was doing? You mean how he justified the 4N bid as opposed to something less ambitious?

[PhantomSac]

Cyberyeti, on 2015-July-04, 16:16, said:

What did the double mean ?

The W hand is very powerful, xx, KQxxx, K10xxx, x is a playable slam.

That hand may bid "stop 3D" but it would not bid 3D if it saw the auction correctly lol.

I would roll it back to 3D unless EW bid up the line and east has shown at least as many hearts as diamonds.

[Mbodell]

Jinksy, on 2015-July-04, 18:10, said:

What do you mean what west thought he was doing? You mean how he justified the 4N bid as opposed to something less ambitious?

Well, for instance, image a West who credibly said over partner's 4♦ bid 4nt was clear. I.e., maybe they noticed the stop and diamonds and interpreted that as 4♦? Unlikely? Yes. But getting more information before a PP seems like a good idea.

[aguahombre]

blackshoe, on 2015-July-04, 17:26, said:

If West had been named "Aguahombre" I would give him a PP.

I think that was meant as a compliment I would throw the book at me.

I would also throw the book at me if I passed 3D with that monster and it worked (adjustment and PP).

Partner would hold Jxx Qxxx Kxxxxx v, thinking she was completing a Walsh bad 4-6 sequence and Righty had bid 1S.

No, this isn't a "shoot it" case. Any probe for the right strain and level over partner's 3D would be based on authorized information and would end in at least game.

[barmar]

West has a huge hand and probably an 8-card fit in one of the red suits, and at least 7 in the other, so I don't think Pass is an LA. But the jump to 4NT may be taking advantage of the UI.

However, he's still entitled to show his extra values, unless that's what the double showed. If he cue-bids 3♠, they might still get to one of the slams.

[Jinksy]

I'll now go into more detail about the context (and editorialise/rant rather more).

This E/W are the sort of players who would have long been suspended if the club had a less-than-infinite-tolerance policy. I've played against them there about three times, and each time they've been thoroughly obnoxious at the table. I won't go into the details of previous encounters (mainly because I can't remember the specifics), but this one was a level above anyway.

Before I give more detail about the OP hand, I'll rewind to the board before, the first of our two-board set. The bidding there, me (S) as dealer, favourable, went P 1♥ 2♠.

At this point, E asked me what 2♠ was, and I said 'at this vul and in this seat, very wide ranging'. They objected that I 'couldn't say that' and pressed me for an exact point range, so I said 'if you want a number, about 0-13 points'. They then became very aggressive, claiming that that 'wasn't an adequate description' (obviously precise phrasing here is from flustered memory, but as close as I can remember), and that it 'must' be 'weak, intermediate or strong'.

I followed the advice from here, and just offered as neutrally as I could to get the director involved. When she came over they immediately started shouting at her and telling her that I was 'obviously dodgy' before actually describing the scenario. When they finally did, she looked at them slightly puzzled and said 'yes, that's fine. Carry on'.

They let it be known that they were very dissatisfied with this, but we carried on. At some point between now and the next board, they looked at our card, which it turned out didn't have anything like 'preempts opposite a passed hand are wide ranging'. I know this is a fault - our card changes a lot and is packed with a lot of other stuff, so we occasionally don't realise something has been omitted. That said, they did not look at it until after asking me to describe the bid, shouting at us for it, accusing us of cheating, and getting the director ruling, so no-one can claim we misled them.

Anyway, the bad taste from that was part of the reason why I called the director on the next board for something I'd normally let go in a club. On the OP board, as soon as I reserved my rights at the end of the auction* they became very aggressive again. They were both attacking me at once, so I can't remember exactly what they said, and I don't think it was very consistent anyway. At the end of the play when slam made, I duly called the director back. The director was an elderly lady, who someone else from the club described to me after the session as 'very nice, but not really a director', and as soon as she arrived at the table, the opps started shouting at her that 'I was just trying to [do something bad. I don't remember their exact phrase]', and it took a good minute just to shut them up enough so that I could actually tell her the facts of what had happened. She looked slightly confused and just said 'that's fine, carry on'.

(* As a side query, my P said afterwards he thought doing this was discouraged now, and that we're advised to immediately call the director/that reserving rights has no legal function. Is that correct?)

At no point did she ask the opps to explain their behaviour, though they were talking enough that it was pretty clear: E admitted she had thought she was doing something stronger, and I think W even said something like 'she obviously had a strong hand' - he certainly never tried to argue that he could justify his bid from his own hand (admittedly neither of them seemed very coherent, or else I wasn't really absorbing what they were saying - it was obviously indignant noise rather than a proper discussion)

I made a token effort at trying to explain to her what I objected to about the auction, which she didn't seem to understand, then gave up since I didn't think I was going to get anywhere, and meanwhile she seemed slightly distressed by the whole thing. Meanwhile, the opps re-complained about the previous board, and, having found the system card omission pressed that point to her. She rebuked me for not having filled it in, and we carried on, them scoring 90% for this board.

For several reasons this has really ground at me:

• The system card thing was obviously in some sense our error, but it was also an obvious excuse for them to try and throw their weight around, and I'd bet serious money that if we read over theirs with a fine comb, we'd find plenty of similarly undisclosed 'just bridge'-esque agreements.
• If this was some rural club with the same 6 couples having shown up every week for the last three decades I might be less perturbed, but this was [modedit: removed exact location], a respectable enough place that it has its own premises and staff. I had no idea what to do when I encountered such weak directing. I could presumably appeal the board, but the board itself wasn't really the point - the flagrant attempt by this couple to bully us (and then to bully the director) was what really got up my nose.
• The couple in question aren't exactly strong, but they're experienced players. [modedit: removed info identifying players]
• As I said, they have a pattern of this kind of behaviour. This was by some margin the worst I've seen from them, but the same person I spoke to post-event said this matched her experiences - that they're tournament players who often try and exert their will on club players (though to be fair she did seem marginally better disposed to them than me, and didn't think they were normally outright hostile).

I'm thinking about writing a formal note to the EBU re this, not so much to complain as just to ask what I should do in situations like this - esp where, as I say, it's a prominent club that you'd expect to attract a few new players, who'd be even less well equipped to deal with this kind of crap than I was. I walked away from the table thinking 'no wonder this game is dying'.

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2015-July-05, 13:38
Reason for edit: Removed info identifying club/persons involved

[Cyberyeti]

PhantomSac, on 2015-July-04, 18:42, said:

That hand may bid "stop 3D" but it would not bid 3D if it saw the auction correctly lol.

I would roll it back to 3D unless EW bid up the line and east has shown at least as many hearts as diamonds.

Depends if it had 2 ways to bid 3♦ and which one this was.

IMO 3♦ is never being passed and the worst thing that's in any way likely to happen to EW is that they bid 6♦ rather than 6♥ which could be costly at pairs, but I expect with such good hearts E will convert it back.

I still don't know what the double was, it could have shown 3 hearts for example in which case 3♦ is forcing.

[sanst]

As Blackshoe has written, we don't know enough about the EW system to decide what would have happened if E hadn't pulled the stop card. I can imagine almost anything from 3♥ to 6 or even 7 NT, since all keycards are there... Passing 3♦ has nothing to do with bridge and is the wrong way to teach W a lesson to use that for an AS.
In post #17 the OP'er makes clear that this isn't about this particular board, but about the opponents who he doesn't like, to say the least. He also thinks the TD not up to her duties and has a problem with the club that has a infinite tolerance policy. Why bother to play there at all, I would ask. London has more than one club and this one doesn't seem to be the place to be.
The situation he describes is problematic for any TD who is called to the table and some can handle this better than others. But it's not something that you can learn, either you're able to solve it, or chances are that it develops into a full blown word fight or even worse.
For both the complaints about the opps and the TD the poster should turn to the club management, not to this forum. Without in any way doubting him or his description of what happened, only a TD who was present can say anything sensible about that.

[blackshoe]

Jinksy, on 2015-July-05, 01:45, said:

(* As a side query, my P said afterwards he thought doing this was discouraged now, and that we're advised to immediately call the director/that reserving rights has no legal function. Is that correct?)

No, it's not correct.

Quote

Law 16B2: When a player considers that an opponent has made such [unauthorized - ER] information available and that damage could well result, he may announce, unless prohibited by the Regulating Authority (which may require that the Director be called), that he reserves the right to summon the Director later. The opponents should summon the Director immediately if they dispute the fact that unauthorized information might have been conveyed.

Many people feel that "I reserve my rights" is too provocative. That has led to the custom of asking opponents if they agree that UI may have been conveyed. I suppose some may feel that this is pointless — if the opponents disagree, they almost invariably argue rather than call the director, and now the putative NOS has to do the calling, and there may be a bigger problem than just "might UI have been conveyed?" but the law is what it is, and no one can be faulted for trying to follow it.

Later on, another law comes into play:

Quote

Law 16B3: When a player has substantial reason to believe that an opponent who had a logical alternative has chosen an action that could have been suggested by such information, he should summon the Director when play ends*. The Director shall assign an adjusted score (see Law 12C) if he considers that an infraction of law has resulted in an advantage for the offender.

* It is not an infraction to call the Director earlier or later.

So technically, the reservation of rights should have happened when East put out the stop card and then made a simple bid. But that's a minor nit.

Were they really shouting? Or were they just talking rapidly and maybe a little loudly? IAC, attempts to intimidate opponents or the director are not acceptable, and I would have made that point at the table.

The EBU has a policy similar to the ACBL's "Zero Tolerance":

Quote

Best Behaviour at Bridge: If a player at the table behaves in an unacceptable manner, the director should be called immediately. Annoying behaviour, embarrassing remarks, or any other conduct which might interfere with the enjoyment of the game is specifically prohibited by Law 74A. Law 91A gives the director the authority to assess disciplinary penalties. This can include immediate disciplinary board penalties, and if a future violation is incurred at the same event, disqualification from future competition in that event. Any further violations may result in a disciplinary hearing where player(s) future participation in tournaments will be considered.

I'd be willing to bet, though, that in England, as in North America, players rarely call the director to invoke the policy, and the director rarely, if ever, actually issues penalties. Still, maybe you can start a new trend.

In the end, I suspect you are left with one option: vote with your feet — and hope you don't run into these opponents at a tournament. Although at a tournament you'll at least get more competent directors.