[barmar]

mycroft, on 2013-July-31, 17:38, said:

Of course, knowing that this pair is "in contention" is somewhat of a requirement for this category to trigger. Good Conditions of contest will either not make that easy, or avoid situations where contestants known not to be in contention are playing contestants known to be so.

Swiss Teams is a popular form of the game, and it's hard to avoid knowing who's leading. And unless the field is large, when you get to the late matches the teams in contention have played most of each other, so several of them end up playing against lower-ranked teams.

[gnasher]

nige1, on 2013-July-31, 04:31, said:

I admire Fluffy's honesty but, as in so many other IBLF topics, the consensus here is surreal

Suppose (just for the sake of argument) that "1N opener = flat 15-17" is written on a pro's system-card but he opens off-shape with a wider range. And the pro also employs a variety of other undeclared "tactical variations". His client partner isn't aware of these deviations (or, more likely, doesn't want to admit to them). Anyway, the client can't (or won't) disclose them. If his opponents don't know that the hog is a pro (or even a hog), then how are they meant to cope with all these undisclosed treatments?

Why do so many posters write that this is perfectly acceptable? How can directors be so complacent about regular deviation from declared methods? Do they really believe that this is a minor matter of style? Even then, isn't style disclosable?

IMO, assymetric systems should be legal (even simpler -- all declared systems should be legal). Then the hog's disclosure problem would disappear.

Repeated hogging by departing from your declared system is already covered by the disclosure rules. If one player keeps opening 1NT on 14-counts, it's an implicit agreement even if the other partner hasn't noticed.

[aguahombre]

gnasher, on 2013-August-01, 08:30, said:

Repeated hogging by departing from your declared system is already covered by the disclosure rules. If one player keeps opening 1NT on 14-counts, it's an implicit agreement even if the other partner hasn't noticed.

Agreement with whom? I would rather argue from the standpoint that it is unlikely partner hasn't noticed than concede he hasn't noticed and try to call it an agreement.

[mycroft]

barmar, on 2013-August-01, 08:21, said:

Swiss Teams is a popular form of the game, and it's hard to avoid knowing who's leading. And unless the field is large, when you get to the late matches the teams in contention have played most of each other, so several of them end up playing against lower-ranked teams.

I don't know how that invalidates anything that I said there :-)

But Swiss teams are (by and large) popular with the punters (even the ones contending for strat X that are basically in a last-round lottery of "who gets to play which Flight A team that has played all of each other", at least except for that last round), so we deal with the fact that it's fundamentally a bad CoC (it's just that anything fairer, like taking the top of the field out of the game after X rounds swisses them out, and letting the rest of the field play for the "top" spots of the rest, is even worse - as people don't really pay to win, they pay to play).

[nige1]

gnasher, on 2013-August-01, 08:30, said:

Repeated hogging by departing from your declared system is already covered by the disclosure rules. If one player keeps opening 1NT on 14-counts, it's an implicit agreement even if the other partner hasn't noticed.

But isn't that the kind of thing that hogs do? How else can they keep partner from declaring? Wouldn't a perusal of score-records easily reveal suspicious patterns? How often do such "implicit agreements" attract an adverse ruling? Rule-makers and enforcers seem to be "in denial", again Although some may find this regulation-engendered problem amusing

[iviehoff]

aguahombre, on 2013-August-01, 09:03, said:

Agreement with whom? I would rather argue from the standpoint that it is unlikely partner hasn't noticed than concede he hasn't noticed and try to call it an agreement.

There is a question of how systematic this is. If your partner frequently makes bids that depart from the stated system in assorted ways through incompetence, whisky, or whatever, I don't think this is disclosable.

[nige1]

iviehoff, on 2013-August-02, 02:43, said:

There is a question of how systematic this is. If your partner frequently makes bids that depart from the stated system in assorted ways through incompetence, whisky, or whatever, I don't think this is disclosable.

Here, "Whatever" is "hogging". In practice, Iviehoff's interpretation seems to coincide with that of other directors

[blackshoe]

Hm. This is, as I understand it, usually a "pro-client" problem - or at least one where one player thinks he's much better at declaring than his partner. How do they arrange to disclose this? The "client" may not even pick up on what's going on unless somebody points it out. Is the "pro" going to want to say "you have to tell the opponents that I tend to try to become declarer"?

[ggwhiz]

I see that this motion has been dropped. Too bad, I would like to know who is crazy enough to vote for it.

[gordontd]

When making up the numbers as a playing director, I used to tell my partners that the aim of the early part of the evening was for them to play as many hands as possible, so that I could go and do my administrative duties. Then as soon as I became dummy, I would claim the board as a success, regardless of the outcome.

[nige1]

nige1, on 2013-July-23, 15:38, said:

If a player adjusts his "style" to prevent partner playing the hand, on a regular basis, then, arguably, he isn't playing the same system as his partner. Anyway, presumably, his partner is oblivious to the details, so cannot disclose them, hence opponents are disadvantaged.

mycroft, on 2013-July-31, 17:38, said:

The issue I have with "asymmetric systems", especially ones where "nobody knows what's going on but me", is that there *are* going to be unavoidable disclosure issues that get good results because of the lack of disclosure.

gnasher, on 2013-August-01, 08:30, said:

Repeated hogging by departing from your declared system is already covered by the disclosure rules. If one player keeps opening 1NT on 14-counts, it's an implicit agreement even if the other partner hasn't noticed.

ggwhiz, on 2013-August-03, 08:19, said:

I see that this motion has been dropped. Too bad, I would like to know who is crazy enough to vote for it.

IMO the motion attempts to address the anomaly to which mycroft, gnasher, and I allude

gordontd, on 2013-August-03, 09:40, said:

When making up the numbers as a playing director, I used to tell my partners that the aim of the early part of the evening was for them to play as many hands as possible, so that I could go and do my administrative duties. Then as soon as became dummy, I would claim the board as a success, regardless of the outcome.

But most directors seem to believe that there's no problem

Suppose rule-makers came to recognise this as a problem. What could be done?

• Players may not even be aware of an opponent's undeclared hogging tactics and are unlikely to report them. Anyway, few directors would accept the evidence of a single board. Hence, to establish a pattern, the director would first have to systematically examine score-records. Traditionally, directors avoid such a pro-active role.
• An alternative would be to legalise asymmetric systems, so that hogs could start to declare the methods that they actually use.

[jallerton]

blackshoe, on 2013-August-03, 07:27, said:

Hm. This is, as I understand it, usually a "pro-client" problem - or at least one where one player thinks he's much better at declaring than his partner. How do they arrange to disclose this? The "client" may not even pick up on what's going on unless somebody points it out. Is the "pro" going to want to say "you have to tell the opponents that I tend to try to become declarer"?

It's not just "pro-client" partnerships. I can think of plenty of "husband-wife" partnerships in which the husband rarely becomes dummy.

[barmar]

This weekend I played a hand where partner reversed. I had AJxx in the 4th suit, so there was no particular reason why I was worried about it for NT. But instead of bidding NT myself, I bid the 4th suit, essentially forcing him to bid 3NT. Our agreement is that I should have at least constructive values for this bid, but I only had a flat 7 count. I joked that I bid this way because I add 1 trick for his superior declarer play.

I wonder if this kind of "anti-hogging" would also have run afould of the proposed new regulation?

[billw55]

ggwhiz, on 2013-August-03, 08:19, said:

I see that this motion has been dropped. Too bad, I would like to know who is crazy enough to vote for it.

What I want to know is who advanced the motion to begin with.

[blackshoe]

jallerton, on 2013-August-03, 14:24, said:

It's not just "pro-client" partnerships. I can think of plenty of "husband-wife" partnerships in which the husband rarely becomes dummy.

That's why I included the caveat.

[jillybean]

jallerton, on 2013-August-03, 14:24, said:

It's not just "pro-client" partnerships. I can think of plenty of "husband-wife" partnerships in which the husband rarely becomes dummy.

Hopefully these are self policing and become "ex-husbands".

[mycroft]

Oddly enough, there are several husband-wife pairs where the opposite occurs. Usually, in that case, though, the husband understands, if he doesn't outright encourage it. He's only out because he "has" to be.

It is unfortunate, that in both of these cases, they're only playing with their partner because they've run out of other partners :-)

[aguahombre]

The husband/wife stereotypes of domination (either way) are overstated, IMO.

What I see of the prominent spousal pairs is a partnership at the table. At the lower levels, I see very little handhogging from one side of a pair which is a couple.

[TylerE]

mycroft, on 2013-August-06, 10:25, said:

Oddly enough, there are several husband-wife pairs where the opposite occurs.

Most famously, perhaps, Charles Goren and Helen Sobel.

[gordontd]

mycroft, on 2013-August-06, 10:25, said:

Oddly enough, there are several husband-wife pairs where the opposite occurs.

TylerE, on 2013-August-06, 11:18, said:

Most famously, perhaps, Charles Goren and Helen Sobel.

They were married?