From: altus@leland.Stanford.EDU (Steve Altus)
Subject: Re: Procedural Penalties
Keywords: example hands
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 09:42:21 GMT


In article <1992Dec18.001334.27899@cbnewsc.cb.att.com> rainbow@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (Rob Buchner) writes:

i'm glad you posted your examples, because i think they 
help show the one reasonable, intelligent thought buried
in my senseless, obnoxious flame (i know this sounds sarcastic,
but i'm being serious, hang with me folks!)...  that was that
you are being totally honest and have reasons to believe everything
you said, but that you don't 100% understand the situation, although
maybe i'm wrong and it's the powers-that-be in your area who don't
100% understand...

>
>First, let me qualify that these people are all well
>respected players with a few thousand masterpoints each.
>
>EX1)	1C(1)	2C(2)	P	2S
>	2NT	P	3NT	P
>	P	P
>
>	(1) Precision, strong club
>	(2) Alerted as Michaels, was meant to be natural
>

Michaels over an ARTIFICIAL bid?  isn't michaels a cuebid?
i dunno, am i being closed minded?  do people really 
think that Michaels should apply over a strong & ARTIFICIAL
club?  

in any case, this sort of thing people SHOULD be responsible
for...

>
>EX2)	1H	dbl	4C(1)	P
>	4H	P	P	P
>
>	(1) Alerted as splinter, was meant to be weak jump shift
>
>Long time partnership. Result was a near bottom. Director

this again is a different matter.  a LONG-TERM partnership, if
they're going to play a CONVENTION, has to have agreements about
when it does and does not apply.  in this case, i think the pair
SHOULD be penalized.  Again, this is not the same as some obscure
2NT or double in the third round of a competitive auction...
also if this were a pair who played once each three months or was
only playing for the second time or so, i think letting this slide
wouldn't be the end of the world...


>
>EX3)	2C	P	2D	dbl(1)
>
>	(1) Alerted as major suit takeout, was meant as diamonds.
>
>In addition to the adjusted board, a procedural penalty was assessed.
>
>EX4)	2D(1)	2H	4H(2)	dbl
>	4S	5H	dbl	P
>	P	P
>
>	(1) artificial 18-21 balanced
>	(2) not alerted, but described as spade transfer when asked,
>		however, it was meant as a minor suit takeout.
>
>No damages were proven since everyone made their normal bids, but
>the committee assessed a procedural penalty for the misexplanation.
>

so far, all your examples have dealt with the misuse of conventions.
this has ALWAYS been penalizable...  five years ago any infractions
of not knowing when conventions applied or having one member of a partner-
ship forget conventions consistently always resulted in threats that after
many offences the pair in question could be restricted to only "Class A"
conventions, although i never actually saw this happen to anyone.

however, the next example is a little better...


>EX5)	1H	P	1NT(1)	P
>	2C	P	2S(2)	P
>	3C	P	P	P
>
>	(1) one round force
>	(2) no alert, when asked, the explanation was no agreement.
>
>Director assessed a procedural penalty for not having an agreement.
>It was meant as a good club raise. Systematic bids must be explained.
>

"systemic bids must be explained" and "for not having an agreement" 
is contradictory.  if it's systemic and explainable, then obviously
they have an agreement.  but if they didn't discuss it, i think it's 
perfectly reasonable to bid 2S here figuring that partner will probably
work it out...  what ELSE would 2S be?  NOW, if you ask the 2C bidder
what it is, do you really want her or him (is it hir, asya?) to say,
"I'm taking it as a good hand with clubs."????  this is just making
trouble for everyone...  maybe it puts the 2S bidder in a difficult
ethical situation, maybe it leads to your side thinking that's what
2S is when it isn't, etc.  isn't it better just to let everyone try 
to figure it out?  now, if it just so happens that they have no agreement
about what 2S is but they DO have the agreement that 3C would be preemptive,
they should tell you that, and if they've seen their partner bid 2S
before with strong club raises but never actually discussed it, I think
they should tell you that also...  but to just tell you what they GUESS
2S is, that's silly...  Now Rob, i honestly think you think this is
silly, too...

...but i also think that maybe most of the hands you're talking about
are more like the first four, which have always been dealt with--this
should be nothing new... 

when i flamed you, i wasn't saying that you obviously had been sniffing
too much glue, and i wasn't saying that you were speaking without any
evidence, etc....  i was saying that maybe you were a little confused 
between two different things, and i still think that what you said is
all true for hands like the first four, but not for ones like the last
one, or for auctions (between partnerships who do NOT have sixty pages
of notes!) like:


1S  2C  2S  P
P   2NT


what's this?  now, when i was a kid (i think i was 16) i was playing with
a VERY good east coast player who played in a few regional events with me 
because he's a nice guy and his daughter liked me, and he bid this 2NT
with me the second time we ever played together (and we certainly hadn't
discussed this auction!) and i thought to myself:  "self, (that's what
i call myself!) what in the world does he have?  why didn't he overcall
1NT immediately, and how can he have spades when i have xxxx and they bid
and raised them?  maybe it's takeout...  but he didn't reopen with a double,
so it can't be three-suited...  hmmm, maybe it's takeout with only clubs
and diamonds, like an unusual notrump of some sort, yeah, i'll bet that's
it!"  so on my 3-4-4-2 piece of garbage i bid 3D and sure enough he had
a 1-2-4-6 hand, and the opponents wanted to know why i hadn't alerted 2NT.
now, if they ask, and i say no agreement, i'm not sure that Bobbie S. or
anyone is going to give me a procedural penalty or anything, because i 
figured out what his bid meant by a combination of THINKING and looking
at my hand...  and this isn't the sort of thing that every casual partner-
ship should have discussed.  



>Needless to say there are a lot of unhappy players around here.

if there really are a bunch of unhappy players around there, then 
maybe the directors there are really misapplying this stuff to hands
like #5 and the one i showed...  now, maybe they're confused, or
maybe all the unhappy players are confused, or maybe lots of people
were lying about agreements/tendencies/negative inferences etc., in
which case it's the old elementary school thing about 98% of the 
people suffering for the other 2%'s actions, i dunno...

>The third and last case is when a partnership claims not to
>have an agreement, or no understanding, etc. At the directors
>discretion, or committees discretion, if they feel a partnership
>should have discussed the given auction sequence, or they are

ok this is better, IF...  now, if only we could get some consistently
good committees!  :-)  (for the record, every committee i've had out
here has been good, tho i can't say that for every committee i've seen
anywhere...)

but you said "AUTOMATIC" before, which is just a wee bit different
than "at the director's discretion"...  yes, pairs must be responsible
for 1H-p-1S but not for the "EVERY auction" you claimed in your earlier
post...


>They will expect partnerships and good players to have explicit
>agreements on anything which isn't an obscure/isoteric auction.
>In other words, anything under the realm of a systematic bid.
>

which is actually a SMALL fraction of the auctions that come up,
unless you have a long-term established partnership OR are in 
the market for screwing up in the truly ILLEGAL manner of hands 
1 through 4 above...


--steve altus




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