From: ted@sage0.gsfc.nasa.gov (Ted Ying)
Subject: Appeals Committee revisited
Keywords: 3S appeal
Organization: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 20:30:46 GMT


Well, here I thought that this would be a simple little problem and have
wound up creating the latest hot issue.  As I mentioned yesterday, I am
planning on a summary of the responses and details of the actual result.

I am only planning on summarizing the results here.  If anyone would like
a list of exerpts from the responses, let me know.  Additionally, to all
who responded privately by e-mail, please let me know if you have any
objections to your comments being included in a summary of responses.  I
will wait a few days before sending any response to such inquiries to give
all respondants a chance to read this and reply to me.

First of all, my partner was West and I was East.  We were the ones who
were bidding the 3S and 3NT call and also the ones who appealed the decision.

In the actual situation, when the appeal came up, we were reviewed by Ron
Smith of Tennessee, Jack Diskin of Washington, and Fred Steinberg of
Northern Virginia.  All three were good flight A players and all three
remembered the hand from the afternoon.  After listening to the testimonial
of the director, and all four players, they made a unanimous decision to
convert the score back to 4D* down 1 for NS +100.  The cited several
reasons for the decision including:

	Ron Smith mentioned that very few bridge players would make a
	force a gambling bid like 3NT out of partner and expect to sit
	in it doubled.  West bid for a sacrifice of 3NT thinking that
	undoubled it would definitely be a good score, and running if
	it got doubled.
	
	Jack Diskin also mentioned that since E/W had mentioned that
	they don't play too often that N/S should have known that an
	explanation made under these situations (1S-3S is a relatively
	uncommon bidding sequence) would be approximate and unlikely
	to be definite.  Under these situations, West's run was more
	understandable because he would definitely not want to sit
	doubled and East may *not* know better to sit.  He said he
	applied the bidding screen method of judging this.  If there
	had been bidding screens, then West would not have know what
	East had explained and would have been likely to panic from
	the double since this was a relatively undiscussed auction.
	Since West would have a good reason to pull without hearing
	the explanation, then the explanation shouldn't change that
	decision.  West knew that they were in undiscussed territory in
	the auction and should be able to take that into consideration.
	He agreed that this decision would have been a little different
	had East not mentioned that this was only an occasional
	partnership (which both N and S agreed had been included in the
	explanation).

	Finally, all mentioned that West made a panic bid and that
	could be justified (as per the bidding screen method), but
	this should have given NS more information to find their
	4H game.  North made a horrible double and wanted a double
	shot at the result.  They mentioned that a number of pairs
	in the Flight A game had the following auction:

		1S	3S	P	3NT
		X	4D	P	P
		4H	P	P	P

	Or something similar and ended up in their heart game.  In
	fact, the 3S bid helped find the heart game instead of 1S-5D
	which obscures the heart game.  N/S had a better chance to
	find their game and didn't.  All three committee panelists
	felt that the score (even under the circumstances) should be
	reversed back to 4D* off 100.

	Now, on to RGB thoughts...

	It seems that there was no real concensus about the result.  I
	have gotten a whole range of responses covering both extremes
	(E/W cheated and deserved their -1100 to N/S were doubled shotting
	and West made an understandable pull).  The funny thing I found
	was looking at the range of responses and noticing that every
	response was slightly different and there was no general
	agreement.

	I do agree wholeheartedly that the director (Betty Perkins from
	Atlanta, an R-3 rated director) did the right thing at the table
	and awarded in favor of the non-offenders.  I also agree with the
	panel's decision to reverse the score back to the original result.
	I know that I'm biased (being one of the participants), but I do
	believe that N/S had the chance to get the top, but due to a bad
	bid by N (that is a horrible penalty double), they ended up with
	a bad score and wanted to recoup their losses from it.

							-Ted.

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