[bluejak]

pran, on 2012-July-12, 10:30, said:

How much easier isn't it for a player, particularly after a long and complicated auction, to just sum up what can be told about both hands from the auction?

Easier, no doubt, but not always helpful or desirable. You are dealing with human beings, and there seems to be an instinct to shorten things. For example, if a player say that his partner has shown four hearts in a complicated system of responses to 1NT, that can mean one of two things:

• Four hearts but not four spades, or
  
• Four hearts and maybe four spades

No doubt a full summary should include this, but few players will. It is much safer to ask questions of individual calls.

The trouble with much of this thread is that some people assume that players are all pains in the behind who are going to be as unhelpful as possible, and others assume the reverse, that they will tell you all you want to know. Neither is anything like the truth.

[blackshoe]

bluejak, on 2012-July-12, 16:11, said:

No doubt a full summary should include this, but few players will. It is much safer to ask questions of individual calls.

The trouble with much of this thread is that some people assume that players are all pains in the behind who are going to be as unhelpful as possible, and others assume the reverse, that they will tell you all you want to know. Neither is anything like the truth.

The fact that players don't include all the information they should is why we can ask supplementary questions.

Some players are pains, some players tell all you want to know, some players try to tell all, but fail, some players don't have a clue.

[bluejak]

blackshoe, on 2012-July-12, 20:38, said:

Some players are pains, some players tell all you want to know, some players try to tell all, but fail, some players don't have a clue.

Oh, players. For a moment I thought you wrote posters ...