[bluejak]

A natural redouble?

Of course it does not take away the double shot: the principle is that double shot attempts are wild or gambling.

However, some people thought that if you really did not play bridge at all you should not get redress. The ACBL referred to "failure to play bridge": the EBU did not follow this principle at all: the rest of the world disallowed redress for "irrational" actions. The current Law book has made it consistent worldwide under SEWoG.

So now we disallow redress when there is a WoG action because of the double shot, and we disallow redress for silly efforts like revoking under SE. As a result a serious error is rare - but it always was under the previous rules, especially outside the ACBL.

As to what constitutes "unrelated to the infraction" that is a judgement, and may be quite difficult. You could even argue that a revoke was related because of the strain of the infraction! But normally a serious error only denies redress when someone does something really silly.

[Trinidad]

Codo, on 2012-February-02, 07:37, said:

But if you take the borderline there, nearly nobody can be penaliszed for a "double shot" anymore.

I thought that I was pretty clear that double shots were wild or gambling actions. They are hard to describe, but easy to recognize. The case that I showed (bidding slam when the opponents saved) is a typical one. And, to be nitpicking, nobody is penalized for anything. The gambler is only keeping the result of his gambling action. That is not a penalty.

Codo, on 2012-February-02, 07:37, said:

They just made a "judgement error". Aren't we taking a good postion too far (as much leeway for the non-offending side), if we allow bids like 3 Club here to be without any consequence? If this is not "wild or gambling", which bid -besides jumps- would qualify?

This is what I meant with looking why the rule is there to begin with. "Leeway" or "punishing the NOS" have nothing to do with it. The idea is to remove the effect of the infraction. What would the score on the board have been if there would not have been an infraction? Therefore, in principle, we take everything after the infraction out of the equation.

There are two cases where we put things that happened after the infraction back into the equation:
- If the NOS now did something particularly stupid that is not related to the infraction we say that this would have also occurred without the infraction. Think of a revoke, consequences of penalty cards, ruffing partner's trick, etc.
- If the NOS tried to take advantage of the opponent's infraction by taking a gambling or wild action trying to obtain a better result than the AS that they would have gotten, "because there is the safety net of the AS that the TD will assign". Think of shooting a slam or, in declarer play, playing against the odds (on purpose). These are cases of: "At worst we will get the AS. Let's see if we can get something better."

So, in this particular case, wild or gambling doesn't come into the equation. There is no way that any action by West (pass, RDbl, 2NT, 3♣ or 7NT) would have gotten him a better result than the AS of 2♠-n, that he was already entitled to as long as he didn't revoke. In a gamble, you need to have a chance to win something. In this case, West's chance to win was 0 (zero). It can not have been a gamble.

So, West's aim was not to gamble. His aim was to get out of a bad contract. Given the situation he was in, this is a perfectly reasonable aim. Aiming for that cannot be gambling and aiming for that cannot be a serious error. I think that the path that mrdct chose to run (3♣) is a technical error. I think that mrdct didn't want to redouble for the reasons he gave (right or wrong) and that he overlooked that 2NT on this auction must also be some kind of a takeout action.

Given the fact that mrdct would have scored exactly the same if he would have taken the "correct action"* (redouble or 2NT), I do not see how his error has contributed to the result. In my opinion, the AC made a serious error ( ) when they ruled that, in this situation, running is a SEWoG. Running is not wild, not gambling and not an error. The 3♣ bid was, IMO, an error. But it led to the same result as any other running action (Rdbl or 2NT) would have led to. Therefore, the error did not lead to any damage.

*The fact that a pass would have happened to work best on this hand is completely irrelevant. West is supposed to assume that there was no infraction. In that case, North would have a hand with proper distribution for a double and West can expect a six card trump stack over the 2♠ bidder. Then, it is entirely reasonable to run. The fact that South doesn't have a six card spade stack is directly related to the infraction, because the spade length in the North hand is exactly what makes his double an infraction. If North would have had a 1444/1435 distribution, with an extra king or so, pass would not have been an LA and the double would have been fine.

Rik

[Codo]

Rik,

I hopefully understood a lot of what you said. One part ist still not understandable for me.
Lets say that David would have known, that the double was made because of the UI and that the TD most often will rule in his favour. (This has nothing to do with the given case, I am aware that he did not know it here.)
Would his 3 ♣ bid be fittig your definition of gambling? After all, he will win if 3 ♣ is a better spot and lose nothing if not.

[Trinidad]

Codo, on 2012-February-03, 05:56, said:

Rik,

I hopefully understood a lot of what you said. One part ist still not understandable for me.
Lets say that David would have known, that the double was made because of the UI and that the TD most often will rule in his favour. (This has nothing to do with the given case, I am aware that he did not know it here.)
Would his 3 ♣ bid be fittig your definition of gambling? After all, he will win if 3 ♣ is a better spot and lose nothing if not.

Let´s see it this way: The only person on this planet who really knows whether David tried to gamble with 3♣ is David. We will never know, but we can try to figure it out by reasoning what position David was in.

What does David "know":
- David knows that 2♠ is not going to make. It will go anywhere between -2 and -5. Let's call it -3.
- David strongly suspects that the TD will give an AS of 2♠ -3. This will give him a result on the board of -300. This is the result that he will get if he doesn't do anything strange.
- He can also be fairly sure that the opponents will not allow him to play any contract undoubled.
- At the point of his decision, David was sitting on a table result of 2♠X -3 or -800*.

According to the ideas behind the Laws, he is supposed to keep playing bridge, which means that he is supposed to try to get the best score possible under the circumstances. That means that he needs to try to get a better score than -800. That doesn't have anything to do with gambling. This is what he is supposed to do.

If he, however, wants to gamble, he shouldn't aim for beating -800. He should aim for beating -300. After all, if he doesn't gamble, he will -eventually, when the TD has given the AS- score -300. In order for him to achieve a table result that is better than -300, he will need to find a contract that goes down at most 1, because he knows that he will be doubled and down 2 doubled will give him -500.

Do you think that there was any action possible that would give David a table result that was going to be better than -300? This would mean going down at most 1. I don't think that it would be possible to escape for down 1 in any contract and I am pretty sure that David didn't think that either. So, David didn't try to beat -300 with his 3♣ bid. He tried to beat -800, as he is required to do. And therefore, David wasn't gambling (unless he is the worst gambler South of Kiruna), he was just trying to obtain the best table result possible.

So, no, 3♣ will not fit my definition of gambling. You say that he didn't have anything to lose (which turned out to be untrue since the AC shredded the 3♣ bid to pieces, but I tend to agree with you). But I say that he didn't have anything to gain over the AS that he already had. Or do you consider it possible that 3♣ would go down one only (or make)?

Rik

[lamford]

Trinidad, on 2012-February-02, 02:46, said:

On the other hand, I think that the link between serious error and the infraction should remain very strong. If a player makes a serious error that he simply couldn't have made without the infraction, it is related.

That makes a lot of sense. All serious play errors would still apply, but I tend to agree that bad misjudgements in the bidding after an infraction are related.

[benlessard]

I would give +200 NS and -500 for EW, In (3Dx/pass average) hes going to be -800 so I give 3C a cost of -300 pts. Giving a penalty/redress for 3C is clearcut imo.

Edited no hes going to be -1100 in 3D. I would average pass (-500) and 3Dx (-1100) for West expected result.

[Trinidad]

benlessard, on 2012-February-08, 00:24, said:

I would give +200 NS and -500 for EW, In (3Dx/pass average) hes going to be -800 so I give 3C a cost of -300 pts. Giving a penalty/redress for 3C is clearcut imo.

Edited no hes going to be -1100 in 3D. I would average pass (-500) and 3Dx (-1100) for West expected result.

Your post demonstrates how hard it is for people (TD, AC, bystanders) to figure out whether an action was indeed a serious error, given the knowledge that the player had. The TD and AC invariably see the whole hand. The player sees his own 13 cards and has the information from what happened at the table. He is supposed to play the best bridge assuming that there was no infraction.

In this case, that means that West should assume that North has a clear cut takeout double. That means that spades will break 6-1. Now, I know that spades will break 6-1 regardless of what suit will be made trump and that this is always bad news for EW. But you cannot fault West for thinking that he should run and that this might save 300 or 600 points. (The fact that spades actually didn't split 6-1 is completely irrelevant for determining whether West made a serious error.)

Since running is not a serious error, we cannot tell West that he should have passed, not even by averaging. IMO the 3♣ bid was an error, compared to other ways to run from 2♠X, but this error did not cause any damage. We only let the NOS pay for damage that was caused by their error. In this case, this damage didn't exist since we also expect a score of -1100 in 3♦X, hence we do not make West pay.

Rik

[benlessard]

The problem IMO is not assessing running vs not running, its assessing 3C vs others bids. I dont think you will find many players that think taht 3C is better than pass or XX. Since XX will lead to -1100 and pass will lead to -500, 3C deserve a penalty imo. Maybe -300 (over the -200 to give -500) is too much, but to give no penalty goes agaisnt the spirit of the rules IMO. Maybe the rule should make the distinction between a 2 way shot and a bad bid but they dont.

[Trinidad]

benlessard, on 2012-February-08, 03:19, said:

The problem IMO is not assessing running vs not running, its assessing 3C vs others bids. I dont think you will find many players that think taht 3C is better than pass or XX. Since XX will lead to -1100 and pass will lead to -500, 3C deserve a penalty imo. Maybe -300 (over the -200 to give -500) is too much, but to give no penalty goes agaisnt the spirit of the rules IMO. Maybe the rule should make the distinction between a 2 way shot and a bad bid but they dont.

Handing out penalties has nothing to do with this. We are talking about a non offending player. Non offending players do not get penalised. The only thing that comes into play is how much we compensate a non offending player when he was damaged by his opponents: We only compensate for the damage due to the infraction. We do not compensate for damage due to serious errors that are not related to the infraction.

- For starters: Running is not an error. It actually maybe the correct action. (I wouldn't consider a pass a serious error either.)
- Running, whether with XX, 2NT, 3♣, 3♦ or 3♥ is clearly related to the infraction. So even if it would be a serious error, it wouldn't be a reason to withhold compensation.

That should be more than enough reason to fully compensate EW.

It is debatable whether bidding 3♣ is a serious error. Usually, we think that serious error means something like revoking or ruffing partner's trick. While I think that 3♣ was an error, it was clearly not as serious as a revoke or ruffing partner's trick.

But even if we look further and would think that bidding 3♣ is a serious error and that it was not related to the infraction, we cannot come up with any reason to give a split score. If West made a serious error, his serious error would be that he bid 3♣ rather than redouble or bidding 2NT. The running itself cannot be a serious error if you expect a 6-1 trump split. And since bidding 3♣ leads to the exact same result as redouble and 2NT (-1100), this error didn't lead to any damage. Thus, 0 % of the damage was self inflicted and there will be full compensation.

I have rarely come across a case where the AC ruled a split score with this many reasons for not giving a split score.

Rik

[bluejak]

benlessard, on 2012-February-08, 03:19, said:

The problem IMO is not assessing running vs not running, its assessing 3C vs others bids. I dont think you will find many players that think taht 3C is better than pass or XX. Since XX will lead to -1100 and pass will lead to -500, 3C deserve a penalty imo. Maybe -300 (over the -200 to give -500) is too much, but to give no penalty goes agaisnt the spirit of the rules IMO. Maybe the rule should make the distinction between a 2 way shot and a bad bid but they dont.

I think they do. The principle behind SEWoG is that a double shot attempt is illegal if it involves wild action or if it involves gambling action. However, there is another different principle: that non-offenders should continue to play bridge. This is embodied in the fact that if they make a serious error then they lose redress as well.

[Poky]

Nothing except pass with north's hand is a LA. Not even close.
The guy has a minimum balanced hand with 3 spades. I mean, what kind of AC could say that doubling has no LA, even as a joke?!? Do they chose the most inexperienced and bad players around?!

Anyhow: Blatant use of UI. Automatic procedural penalty. Not much of a problem. 2♠ undoubled played.