[Cascade]

What are the logical alternatives?

Weakish player on the club's Senior/Senior Reserve (experience not age) playing night. The club is graded into Junior, Intermediate, Senior Reserve and Senior. The player is graded Senior Reserve whatever that means and Senior/Senior Reserve players are a minority in the club. South is a stronger player.

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Non-Leaping Michaels is not available for this player.

As an aside, I am wondering whether a database of actions actually taken at the table would be more useful in determining logical alternatives than the current method of polling players. A database would have the obvious advantage of potentially hundreds or thousands of similar hands rather than a handful of opinions about what someone would seriously consider and actually do in theory (as opposed to what they might actually do at the table). Certainly there would less problem collecting such a database for online play where everything is recorded. For face to face play it might be more problematic to collect a representative sample. It would be wrong for example to note an unusual bid or play and then decide to add that hand into your database.

[sfi]

Don't you want to let people choose more than one option from the first poll?

I think only 4H and double are serious options for most people.

[Cascade]

sfi, on 2015-July-11, 17:36, said:

Don't you want to let people choose more than one option from the first poll?

I think only 4H and double are serious options for most people.

Yes thanks

[aguahombre]

I would reject Double, but consider it, because partner might well leave it in with a balanced hand (say 4-3-2-4) where we are cold for slam.

If partner tanked in his senior reserve moment, I think I have to choose Double and let that happen. To me, the tank and pass here would strongly suggest he actually does have values and no direction and doubling will give us a less favorable result.

I lament not having NLM for two reasons. 1) If partner has (say) 4-1-4-4 my 4♥ bid will not be pretty. And, 2) Double will work out better so I will lose to the TD's ruling.

[sfi]

aguahombre, on 2015-July-12, 02:30, said:

If partner tanked in his senior reserve moment, I think I have to choose Double and let that happen. To me, the tank and pass here would strongly suggest he actually does have values and no direction and doubling will give us a less favorable result.

I was struggling with what a putative hesitation might mean. My first thought is that it shows a hand that wants to defend doubled, so this should be ruled out. But the vulnerability makes it highly unlikely partner could have a hand that warranted hesitating here, so I'm not sure what to do. We do have a fair bit of defence though, so a double could easily work out well for us even here. In the end I didn't get anywhere useful so gave up and did something useful with the Sunday morning.

[lamford]

aguahombre, on 2015-July-12, 02:30, said:

I would reject consider Double 4H, but consider reject it, because partner might well leave it in with xxxx x Kx KQxxxx when we are cold for 7C

I don't think either of double or 4H are demonstrably suggested over each other, and I think they are the only LAs.

[sanst]

Since NLM is not possible, I choose double because it's the most versatile. I've defensive values, so partner can pass, bid 3NT - probably not very wise given the vulnerability - or anything else, hopefully not diamonds. Pass is no LA for me with this hand.

[aguahombre]

My experience is that a player beyond B/I level will pass in the appropriate tempo with some spade length and less than opening values, even with a fairly long suit of his own. XXXX X KX KQXXXX is not remotely possible after a tank. Here, the auction tells me Partner has four (maybe 5) Spades; the strongest player at the table on my right did not bid 4♠. The tank tells me (not just could suggest) Partner has around 15 HCP and is balanced, or even more points and 4 small Spades.

I "know" (not just could infer) from the unauthorized information that a double might very likely be left in and be an inferior result. Therefore, I would feel constrained to Double. I still can come out alive with the Double. If partner has the Magic 4-3-3-3 with nothing in Spades and everything else, she can bid a directionless 4♠ and we are launched.

Many years ago, I held a stronger 5-3-5-0. 3♣ p p to me. Partner hadn't merely tanked; I was worried about a coma until he passed. We actually had what is now called leaping Michaels in our tool kit, but I used the above reasoning and Doubled. Sure enough, it was left in. The result was not what I expected.

Neither the TD nor the AC thought 2-2-2-7 could have been suggested by the BIT; everyone, including the opponents, got a good laugh and the result stood.

[FrancesHinden]

LAs are supposed to be those considered by your peers, not those chosen by the players on your database. The point of polling players is to poll peers of the player concerned (when I do a serious poll i.e. one that will result in a genuine ruling I try hard to poll only peers of the player concerned)

p.s. the other problem with the database is that it doesn't distinguish those who play double as penalties, and those who play NLM. (And yes, there are still players in the world who play double as penalties)

[StevenG]

Quote

A logical alternative action is one that, among the class of players in question and using the methods of the partnership, would be given serious consideration by a significant proportion of such players, of whom it is judged some might select it.

It's not easy to know what the LAs are without knowing what a double would mean in this partnership. Any database would surely have to contain the partnership methods and an estimation of their peers as well as the bidding sequence.

[aguahombre]

If we do double, the concern is only whether Double has a logical alternative... then whether it and/or something else could have been suggested by the BIT or other UI.

If we do something else, I would stipulate without database or poll that Double is an alternative which would have been considered and actually done by players, even though logic would tell me not to double....then the only concern would be whether double with UI could demonstrably lead to an inferior result and damage to the opponents.

[wank]

i can't imagine what partner might have done/said that i'd be unable to choose whatever i liked from double or 4h. obviously passing isn't an LA.

[aguahombre]

wank, on 2015-July-12, 10:20, said:

i can't imagine what partner might have done/said that i'd be unable to choose whatever i liked from double or 4h. obviously passing isn't an LA.

I understand. But, the hitch & pass in particular is a case where the partner of the tanker must (IMO) seriously consider what it could suggest and must reject that. There certainly are other UI situations where ignoring the UI and just bidding what you think is right is the way to go.

BTW, I am posting from the point of view of the player and trying not to preach about how a ruling should be handled. I believe I am right about what I am required to do, but might lose to a TD/AC in a different camp.

[Cascade]

FrancesHinden, on 2015-July-12, 08:52, said:

LAs are supposed to be those considered by your peers, not those chosen by the players on your database. The point of polling players is to poll peers of the player concerned (when I do a serious poll i.e. one that will result in a genuine ruling I try hard to poll only peers of the player concerned)

p.s. the other problem with the database is that it doesn't distinguish those who play double as penalties, and those who play NLM. (And yes, there are still players in the world who play double as penalties)

Of course a database can include information about the players and about the meanings of bids. I do not think those objections are valid.

[Cascade]

Here is the kicker:

• There was no hestitation
  
• This east passed out 3♠

As I write this the poll was unanimous that pass would not be seriously considered and yet it was the action chosen at the table by an 'experienced' bridge player albeit a weaker player - but there are a lot weaker at the club.

My theory is that these weaker players will sometimes take actions that an unbiased observer after the fact would not believe anyone would take. I think this happens often enough that in very many cases bids that would appear not to be a logical alternative based on a poll are in fact logical alternatives based on actions actually observed at the table. Perhaps there is a 'poll bias'. That is perhaps players respond to a poll in a different way than they respond at the table in the heat of battle.

In a previous post I presented a hand

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where most would bid but again it was passed out by a weaker player.

This happens often enough that too me it seems that for these weaker players even clear cut actions may have logical alternatives.

What do others think?

I understand the problems extrapolating from one example to this sort of theory but theory is not dependent on these particular hands. This is in part what made me think that a database of hands that do get passed (and the frequency with which they get passed by players of various 'classes').

[wank]

this poll just goes to show that people on here are not peers for the sort of clueless players who inhabit bridge clubs. when it's an issue of finding LAs for clueless bridge players you need to ask clueless bridge players.

[Fluffy]

lamford, on 2015-July-12, 04:02, said:

I don't think either of double or 4H are demonstrably suggested over each other, and I think they are the only LAs.

I think a weak player's slow pass suggest double over 4 hearts more than a strong player's slow pass. Strong players are trianed to pass quickly with a trap pass.

[blackshoe]

One part of the UI problem is "what is 'normal tempo'?" For these weak club players, I submit they don't have a 'normal tempo'. Their tempo is all over the map. So perhaps they can't transmit UI from their tempo. There's also the question whether their weak partner — who also doesn't have (or understand) 'normal tempo' will infer anything at all from his partner's tempo.

[aguahombre]

Cascade, on 2015-July-13, 04:06, said:

As I write this the poll was unanimous that pass would not be seriously considered and yet it was the action chosen at the table by an 'experienced' bridge player albeit a weaker player - but there are a lot weaker at the club.

This one instance would show up in the collected database (the hypothetical one of this discussion). But, so might some other off-the-wall bid not even mentioned in this poll. These aberrations would contaminate the data; they still might not meet the standard for a logical alternative --- considering an action implies some thought process and this person may well have done no thinking or accidentally ended the auction.

Further, there would be auctions in the database where irregularities had occurred (with or without TD involvement), hands where TD error was not equitably corrected, etc.

[barmar]

A few years ago Uday and I did some experiments, trying to use our archive of hands played on BBO to help the robots bid better. Although the hand records don't include information about system, we figured that the majority played standard methods, so the unusual systems would fall into the noise. The same would probably be true if we tried to do it for LAs, but determining "peers" would be difficult, and even if we could do it, it would probably make the sample size too small.

It didn't work too well, though. Classifying similar hands was one problem. We didn't want to be too specific, because then the sample size would be too small.