[pran]

lamford, on Feb 10 2010, 04:24 AM, said:

Your view is a perfectly reasonable one, but the principle of establishing rationality by considering only the remaining cards and the play to date is also understandable. The question is whether "irrational" means "irrational for that particular player" or "irrational for the bridge world as a whole". You think the former; some others think the latter. It does make sense, but you are quite entitled to your view that it is barking!

When we received the 2007 laws to prepare for translation (into Norwegian) we were informed that the reference to "irrational" together with "class of player" had been intentionally removed in order to make it clear that "class of player" should not (no longer) be a question when judging "irrational".

[bluejak]

If the WBFLC meant that the Law should make it clear. Something that is not there proves nothing.

The problem is that the way the Law reads, you have to decide whether a play is normal or irrational. Since normal means for the class of player involved - the Law says so - it is irrational that irrational does not.

[RMB1]

bluejak, on Feb 10 2010, 12:49 PM, said:

The problem is that the way the Law reads, you have to decide whether a play is normal or irrational.  ...

I don't think the laws do require us to decide whether a play is normal or irrational - meaning that these are (the only) alternatives.

[Excuse me while I indulge in some semantics/textual analysis]

Law 70C/D and Law 71 require us to decide whether plays are normal (or not) with no mention of irrational.

Law 70E1 requires us to decide whether plays that reveal the location of a card are normal (or not) and to decide whether plays that depend on the location of a card are irrational (or not).

Nowhere (not even Law 70E1 which is the only place that "irrational" appears) are we required to decide between "normal" and "irrational" for the same play.

Holding A10xxx opposite KQx we have to decide whether cashing KQ first is "normal" and then allow the claim when there is Jxxx on-side.

Holding A10xx opposite KQx we have to decide whether playing for one of 3-3 break or Jxxx on-side is irrational (given the previous play).

Because (on my reading of the laws) there is never a direct contraposition of "normal" and "irrational", it is possible for "normal" to depend on the class of player and "irrational" not to depend on the class of player.

Robin

[blackshoe]

Grattan once told me that "irrational" was to be taken to mean something like "implausible for the class of player involved". However, that was under the 1997 laws, and given the comment attributed to him here, it seems clear that there has been a change in the LC's view - and for once we have a word in the laws that actually means exactly what it says.