[Chris3875]

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East opened the bidding with a pass out of turn which was not accepted by South - South subsequently passed and West bid 4H - all passed. West went well off, but the question was later asked - would the director have awarded an adjusted score if the 4H bid had prevented N/S from reaching their own game contract or a slam? They would never have done it with this hand - but assuming they had 4S which they didn't bid because of the 4H (bid on 12 points with a pretty scruffy heart suit) would you look to adjust under Law 23 (or some other Law).

[iviehoff]

Chris3875, on 2013-October-21, 00:02, said:

would the director have awarded an adjusted score if the 4H bid had prevented N/S from reaching their own game contract or a slam? They would never have done it with this hand - but assuming they had 4S which they didn't bid because of the 4H (bid on 12 points with a pretty scruffy heart suit) would you look to adjust under Law 23 (or some other Law).

The application of Law 23 requires that the offender could reasonably be able to foresee that his actions could damage the opposing side. Committing yourself to pass on the next round encourages your partner to make a wild attempt. Does E have the kind of hand on which it is reasonably foreseeable that could be a good way to try to damage the opposition? I'm not entirely sure what kind of a hand might be good for such a trick, but I rather suspect that holding a long spade suit is unsuitable.

[campboy]

I think this is just rub of the green. East doesn't have the sort of hand where silencing himself is attractive (whatever that might be). West has UI (that partner has less than an opening hand) but seems to have carefully avoided using it (he bid game).

[paulg]

How far do you take the argument that West's 4♥ is taking advantage of UI?

I know that it is AI that his partner will be forced to pass, but is it AI that this is because he passed out of turn or because he opened, say, a weak 2♠ out of turn? As it seems highly unlikely that he would have opened 4♥ if he'd seen 2♠ removed.

[campboy]

Yes, the reason for the enforced pass is UI (but your example is irrelevant since if East opened 2♠ out of turn it would be West, not East, who was forced to pass).

So the UI West has is that partner has a hand which isn't worth an opening bid. If West didn't know this -- for example if East was forced to pass because West had dropped an honour card -- then 4♥ would be a better shot, since it would be plausible that EW have game values.

[paulg]

campboy, on 2013-October-21, 06:07, said:

Yes, the reason for the enforced pass is UI (but your example is irrelevant since if East opened 2♠ out of turn it would be West, not East, who was forced to pass).

Of course. I'd got into this train of thought ... typical for a non-director

[Chris3875]

I think the question the player was asking me was to discount the actual hand that was played in this instance and assume that East (who made the opening pass out of turn) had no points, South who passed had 4 spades but only 11 points - West made the 4H bid on the 12 points and the scruffy heart suit and now North with 16 pts and 4 spades passes so they miss out on their spade contract. Would the director look to adjust in this instance? In a normal bidding sequence West would have probably opened with 1H.

[RMB1]

Chris3875, on 2013-October-21, 13:50, said:

I think the question the player was asking me was to discount the actual hand that was played in this instance and assume that East (who made the opening pass out of turn) had no points, South who passed ...

Why has South passed? The OP shows West as dealer. If the Pass out of turn is cancelled, the auction reverts to dealer.

[Chris3875]

Yes, of course - sorry. South didn't accept the pass out of turn and the auction reverted to West who bid 4H.

[barmar]

I think the question is this: West has UI that the hand probably belongs to the opponents, unless his partner is at the top of the range for his pass. If he preempts aggressively, and this succeeds in keeping the opponents out of their game, is that taking advantage of the UI?

[iviehoff]

barmar, on 2013-October-21, 16:12, said:

I think the question is this: West has UI that the hand probably belongs to the opponents, unless his partner is at the top of the range for his pass. If he preempts aggressively, and this succeeds in keeping the opponents out of their game, is that taking advantage of the UI?

To make a very crude calculation, but probably good enough, the mean point count of a hand that is constrained to have a maximum point count of 10, computes to be 6.75. Using these probabilities here. http://en.wikipedia....e_probabilities (The fact we know that W has a specific point count changes the probs, but given W's point count a little over 10, probably not very much for the lower pointcounts.) So W having a 12 count himself, the expected strength of the opps is 21.25. The likelihood of the ops having 24+ is only 15%. Maybe increase that to 20% because pre-empt hands for partner are also ruled out. Of course some 24pt games go off, and some games make on weaker hands, but it is an indication of the likely odds.

So actually the UI that W has is that the ops probably don't have game on, at around 80%. That's part of why punting a 4H that is unlikely to make is carefully avoiding use of UI. A call like 2H, which seriously inconveniences the ops in finding their makable part-score, and is likely not to go too many down, would not be carefully avoiding use of the UI.

If W did actually have UI that the opponents are likely to have game on, eg, only had a 9 count himself, then things are different. But punting 4H on a 5-cd suit at unfavourable, which could easily be doubled, still isn't obviously taking advantage, though I think a call at say the 2-level would perhaps now be more ethical. At some point things swap over and it becomes difficult to evaluate in that area.

Edited to correct an arithmetic error that doesn't change anything else.

[blackshoe]

So we are ruling a violation of 73C here, not 16B?

[iviehoff]

blackshoe, on 2013-October-22, 08:31, said:

So we are ruling a violation of 73C here, not 16B?

To rule a violation of 73C but not 16B we would need
(1) to decide which among LAs was not suggested by the UI
(2) to observe that the action chosen was not even a LA
(3) to determine that the action chosen had a reasonable chance of being profitable relative to the ethical LA.

So probably an ethical LA is to call 1H and rebid diamonds if the opponents keep the auction going at a sufficiently low level when it comes back, since the opponents will often call. Whilst the ops may sometimes pass out 1H when we have game on, that won't happen very often. Sometimes they'll have whizzed on fairly high and we won't get a second bid and thus miss competing in diamonds. But this isn't terribly often. So the ethical call doesn't look like to produce a terrible score very often. So whilst 4H is likely not even a LA, I think it is bad enough, way bad enough, in comparison to an ethical call that it isn't a violation of 73C.

[blackshoe]

So what, precisely, is your ruling?

[iviehoff]

blackshoe, on 2013-October-22, 17:55, said:

So what, precisely, is your ruling?

Score stands. No offence committed.

[blackshoe]

Okay.

[mycroft]

To me, ruling under L73C would imply that the person failed to be Proper, whether out of lack of knowledge or "see if I can get away with it" or deliberate attempt to use UI, knowing it was wrong.

Not ruling under Law 16 would suggest that one of the cases Law 16 requires for an adjustment does not apply. Perhaps the LA not suggested by the UI would have led to the same contract and the same score assuming the players at the table know how to play.

But if a player tells me that "they had to bid it to remind partner what they're playing" as one did a couple of weeks ago after p-1♠;2♣ unAlerted-2♥; then they're getting a ruling under L73C even if, as happened(*), what would have happened without the reminder was the same score. It may simply be an explanation rather than an adjustment, of course.

(*) well, not really, because the Drury bidder was me. And I had a huge (for a passed) hand, made even bigger by the heart call (Axxx x in the minors). So I cuebid my diamond Ace. We got to 5 hearts; made the same 11 tricks we would have in 4 spades; then the table asked me why I bid 3♦ instead of waking up my partner :-)

[blackshoe]

And I hope you replied something like "because waking him up would be illegal".

[mycroft]

"because I'm not allowed to," actually.

Then we had a discussion about L73, after the other two boards :-)