[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-10, 02:07, said:

I still don't have a substantive answer to the question I asked in the OP, but I suppose it's more interesting to discuss my shortcomings. Fine, enjoy yourselves. I'm done.

You are right that you didn't get an answer to your question.

Quote

What do people think about this practice of interrupting explanations?

I have never witnessed a real interruption of an explanation:

"He is showing a h..."
- "Thank you."
"?!?"
- "No, thank you."
"Whatever"

I have never seen this. I think it would be strange, and I could imagine that it would annoy me. I can only imagine something like this happening when the opponent right at that moment happens to see on the card what the bid means. (And in that case it would not annoy me, I would think it would be funny.)

What I have seen is:
"It's Multi. He has either a weak..."
- "Ok, thank you."

This is fine with me. It is meant to save time because the asker understands what Multi is. I can see that some people don't like this, but I can't see anybody having a serious problem with this.

But from your description it seems that none of this happened in your case. Your case seems to have gone something like:

"Well err.. we are a new partnersh..."
- "It's fine, I don't want to hear it."

If that is the case, than I really don't see anybody interrupting an explanation. You didn't give any explanation. You didn't even start to give an explanation. And it seemed that you were not going to give an explanation in the future. While your opponent couldn't be 100% sure about this, we actually know that you were not going to give an explanation ("I planned to eventually get to 'look at the card' "). And if you are not giving an explanation then it can't be interrupted.

So, it seems that your opponent interrupted you because you didn't give an explanation. The question:

What do people think about this practice of interrupting non-explanations?

has been answered. The consensus seems to be: That's fine, as long as it's done in a polite way.

But that is indeed an entirely different question from the one you asked. I have tried to answer your question in this post.

Rik

[blackshoe]

gnasher, on 2012-March-10, 03:28, said:

I ask a lot of questions at the table, often in situations where I have no immediate need to know. If, in the course of the answer, it becomes clear that they don't have an agreement, I sometimes interrupt in order to limit the opponents' UI problems. I'm surprised that you find such an attitude unusual.

Thanks, Andy, for your reply. Actually, I don't find it unusual. In fact, part of the problem is probably my lifelong experience with people interrupting me. It happened so often when I was young that I suppose I concluded that everybody thought anything I had to say was considerably less important than what they had to say, and so it's become a pet peeve, of sorts. At the table the other day, my opponent's brusque manner, as much as his interruption, triggered my annoyance. I got to thinking about it, and I wondered how others felt. I suppose there was an element of "if you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask", too.

[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-10, 09:05, said:

Thanks, Andy, for your reply. Actually, I don't find it unusual. In fact, part of the problem is probably my lifelong experience with people interrupting me. It happened so often when I was young that I suppose I concluded that everybody thought anything I had to say was considerably less important than what they had to say, and so it's become a pet peeve, of sorts. At the table the other day, my opponent's brusque manner, as much as his interruption, triggered my annoyance. I got to thinking about it, and I wondered how others felt. I suppose there was an element of "if you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask", too.

Of course, your opponent's brusque manner is impolite. Since it was so brusque that it annoyed you it was a breach of the conduct laws.

But there is nothing wrong with the interruption itself. You see an element of "if you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask". Your opponent sees: "If you are not willing to answer my question don't bother trying to answer another instead." I think you not answering his question and instead answering another may have annoyed him just as much as he annoyed you.

Part of the reason for the irritations is that people are different. People have different time constants. Some are annoyed by brusque interruptions, others think they are fine. But these others are annoyed by wolly explanations why they are not going to get an answer to their question, even before they get to hear that they won't get an answer to their question. The first category, then again, might find this wolly way more polite than the simple "We play his card. I am trying to remember what it said.".

Rik

[lalldonn]

Trinidad, on 2012-March-10, 03:45, said:

I have never witnessed a real interruption of an explanation:

"He is showing a h..."
- "Thank you."
"?!?"
- "No, thank you."
"Whatever"

I have never seen this. I think it would be strange, and I could imagine that it would annoy me. I can only imagine something like this happening when the opponent right at that moment happens to see on the card what the bid means. (And in that case it would not annoy me, I would think it would be funny.)

What I have seen is:
"It's Multi. He has either a weak..."
- "Ok, thank you."

This is fine with me. It is meant to save time because the asker understands what Multi is. I can see that some people don't like this, but I can't see anybody having a serious problem with this.

But from your description it seems that none of this happened in your case. Your case seems to have gone something like:

"Well err.. we are a new partnersh..."
- "It's fine, I don't want to hear it."

If that is the case, than I really don't see anybody interrupting an explanation. You didn't give any explanation. You didn't even start to give an explanation. And it seemed that you were not going to give an explanation in the future. While your opponent couldn't be 100% sure about this, we actually know that you were not going to give an explanation ("I planned to eventually get to 'look at the card' "). And if you are not giving an explanation then it can't be interrupted.

So, it seems that your opponent interrupted you because you didn't give an explanation. The question:

What do people think about this practice of interrupting non-explanations?

has been answered. The consensus seems to be: That's fine, as long as it's done in a polite way.

But that is indeed an entirely different question from the one you asked. I have tried to answer your question in this post.

Rik

+1

[aguahombre]

The bottom line is:

There are ways:

(1) to delay an explanation while gathering one's thoughts or proper wording, without appearing to be doubtful.
(2)to stop an answer to a question without appearing rude.
(3)to post a reply to the OP which shouldn't be taken as confrontational.
(4)to read such replies a second or third time before jumping into emotional mode.

We all fail to accomplish one or more of the four above, from time to time.

[Trinidad]

aguahombre, on 2012-March-10, 12:45, said:

The bottom line is:

There are ways:

(1) to delay an explanation while gathering one's thoughts or proper wording, without appearing to be doubtful.
(2)to stop an answer to a question without appearing rude.
(3)to post a reply to the OP which shouldn't be taken as confrontational.
(4)to read such replies a second or third time before jumping into emotional mode.

We all fail to accomplish one or more of the four above, from time to time.

I am well aware that I am in your category 3.

But let's face what is happening here:
- The OP is annoyed by something that an opponent did at his table.
- He posts it on the forum in the hope/expectation that everybody else will find it as annoying as he did.
- Instead, pretty much everybody (I hadn't posted yet), except for PrecisionL, made it clear that they found what OP's opponent did perfectly ok and maybe even a good idea. They also give reasons why this, in general, may be a good idea.
- Now the OP gets angry and says that some of the posters call him a cheat. When a poster says that he didn't intend to call him a cheat, the OP "remains unconvinced".

At that point it may be a good idea for OP to take a look in the mirror. It may also be a good idea to take a look at what happened from the point of view from his opponent. And it may be a good idea to seriously consider what the responses to the OP actually mean. That can be a little confrontational.

I made a conscious attempt to be somewhat confrontational (imo within reason): to hold up that mirror, to make the OP look at the situation from the other side and to try to make him take another look at the responses that he got.

My attempt seems to have been futile. I am sorry that it didn't have the desired effect and I am happy that I do not need to make a living out of this kind of work. But my somewhat confrontational approach had a purpose. You can call me silly for trying, tell me I should have minded my own business, tell me I shouldn't have cared. In that case, sorry that I cared.

The famous cartoon comes to mind again.

Rik

[barmar]

The way I see it, what the opponent did wasn't "perfectly" OK. I think he was trying to do something reasonable, but his manner was a bit rude. Not horrible, but just not perfect. We're human, we don't always get these kinds of things right. Sometimes you think you need to be abrupt to get a point across, but the other person will take it poorly.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, I think it avoids escalation of hostile feelings.

[blackshoe]

Trinidad, on 2012-March-10, 11:07, said:

But there is nothing wrong with the interruption itself. You see an element of "if you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask". Your opponent sees: "If you are not willing to answer my question don't bother trying to answer another instead." I think you not answering his question and instead answering another may have annoyed him just as much as he annoyed you.

No. You forget that I know this guy. What he sees is "You don't know what your agreement is, so whatever you're going to say, I don't want to hear it."

[blackshoe]

Trinidad, on 2012-March-10, 13:32, said:

But let's face what is happening here:
- The OP is annoyed by something that an opponent did at his table.
- He posts it on the forum in the hope/expectation that everybody else will find it as annoying as he did.
- Instead, pretty much everybody (I hadn't posted yet), except for PrecisionL, made it clear that they found what OP's opponent did perfectly ok and maybe even a good idea. They also give reasons why this, in general, may be a good idea.
- Now the OP gets angry and says that some of the posters call him a cheat. When a poster says that he didn't intend to call him a cheat, the OP "remains unconvinced".

Thank you for explaining to me why I started this thread. I had a completely different, and apparently wrong, idea why I did so. I also completely missed that the responses were all about how what my opponent did was okay, and not at all about how what I did was not okay. Next time I want to post something, I guess I better get you to vet it.

[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-10, 16:20, said:

No. You forget that I know this guy. What he sees is "You don't know what your agreement is, so whatever you're going to say, I don't want to hear it."

Of course he doesn't want to hear it. He is in the middle of an auction, asks about a bid in the first round of the auction and you are starting to tell him when you met your partner!

Would you want to hear it if in the middle of an auction, when you ask about a bid, he would start telling how he met his partner at the Cherry Blossom sectional in the Best Western motel in 1993 and that they started playing the convention that you are now asking about in the Summer of 1997 because they bought the book about it (Now what was the name of the author again?) in the regional at the Marriot back then and that he plans to tell you eventually what the bid actually means, if only he could remember the guy's name?

Something with a 'B'...

... Brad?

... Ben?

... Bob?

... Bill?

.Bill!!!

The name was Bill!!! It was Bill Flannery!!!!

My guess is that you prefer to hear immediately that it shows 11-15, exactly 4 spades, and exactly 5 hearts. My other guess is that your opponent preferred to hear: "We play his card, but I don't know what this means."

Rik

[Trinidad]

deleted

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2012-March-10, 18:19, said:

Of course he doesn't want to hear it. He is in the middle of an auction, asks about a bid in the first round of the auction and you are starting to tell him when you met your partner!

Come on, everyone knows that's not what was happening. He was just mentioning that this was a new partnership, presumably as an excuse for why he wasn't totally sure of the agreement. The opponent presumably didn't want to hear an explanation that he wasn't sure of, so he stopped him.

When I hear an opponent hemming and hawing when I ask for an explanation, I also will often stop them, perhaps asking to see their CC if I think it might answer the question. If they're not an established partnership, I don't want to hear speculation or "I'm taking it as...".

I wasn't there, so I can't tell the actual tone that was used -- if it was really rude, some kind of penalty might be in order. But I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with stopping an opponent from giving what sounds like it will be a speculative explanation. I can speculate myself, thank you.

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2012-March-11, 16:59, said:

I don't want to hear speculation or "I'm taking it as...".

And you would never hear that from me.

[mrdct]

Has anyone checked what the Laws say about this issue?

I'm not aware of any provisions in the Laws which allow a player to "unask" a question. Once a question is asked, Law 20F tells us that a reply should be given by the partner of the player who made the call in question "about calls actually made, about relevant alternative calls available that were not made, and about relevant inferences from the choice of action where these are matters of partnership understanding".

[ggwhiz]

blackshoe, on 2012-March-09, 14:22, said:

When RHO passed, I started to explain that we were a new partnership, etc. I planned to eventually get to "look at the card", but RHO interrupted

From the original post it appears that an explanation has not been requested but is being offered and if the facts are as stated (by him), blackshoe is plain wrong. This looks more like a personality conflict than a laws question.

[blackshoe]

ggwhiz, on 2012-March-11, 21:29, said:

From the original post it appears that an explanation has not been requested but is being offered

Wrong. Since everyone persists in misinterpreting what I wrote, I'm locking the thread and will probably delete it. Sorry if folks feel I've wasted their time.

[bluejak]

When a poster posits a situation it is because he is interested in that situation. There will often be criticism of what happened, and I suppose any poster who mentions something that happened to him personally is in danger of being criticised for his actions and beliefs. It is often common - it has happened to me enough times - that people misunderstand the position and criticism offered may be unfair. This matters much more when a poster is being criticised.

I believe that some of the posts here were based on a misunderstanding of the position. Furthermore, some posts here were a bit beyond tactless. Nevertheless, the subject is interesting so I have unlocked it. But I am going to ask that any further posts should be on the generality of the situation, and not critical of any actions taken by any specific poster.

I also ask generally that we are very very careful about criticising a poster for his actions. OPs here are often misunderstood, and often the whole case is not explained fully or clearly. A comment about some unknown player or TD can easily be withdrawn if different facts come to life, or can be less offensive is given as "If the player did such-and-such, then he is a nerd" which matters far less than a comment about some specific person.

[WellSpyder]

In my experience, when people start an "explanation" with words about being a new partnership, or whatever, then:

a) they are making clear that they are not sure about the agreement
b) opponents will quite often intervene to say that in that case they do not need to hear any more
c) the unspoken subtext is that they don't see any need to embroigle their opponents into any further UI
d) this intervention is usually welcomed by the player who is unsure about their agreements
e) indeed, there is probably quite often an unspoken invitation in the original "explanation" to stop them if you don't need to hear anything more
f) given e), it would be unusual for anyone to take offence at being invited not to continue with an explanation.

Having said all that, I suspect the law supports the position that if a player is asked for an explanation, then he is entitled (as well as required!) to give one to the best of his ability.

[bluejak]

When a player makes an explanation, he is often trying to be helpful, and where the answer is not immediately clear to him, he will often start with some sort of disclaimer. I have certainly known opponents who ask for the explanation to be stopped at that point.

Is this legal? Is it rude? Is it an accusation? Is it reasonable?

Legal, possibly not. As one poster pointed out, there is no legal basis for stopping an explanation once asked for. But the Laws on asking questions are based on the responder knowing the answers clearly and fully. I think we need to be practical here.

Rude? I think people who write things in print sometimes forget that what is said is not the main basis for whether something is rude or not: how it is said is everything. So whether it is rude to my mind depends on how it is said.

An accusation? What of? Cheating? Certainly not. Players who understand UI are about as common as soccer commentators who understand goalkeepers' rights in the penalty area. Yes, they may think the information may be used, but that is not an accusation of cheating.

Reasonable? This is the main question that Ed asked. He said

Quote

Granted that people do interrupt explanations, when they do it seems to me they're saying "I'm trying to prevent either (1) your partnership from having a UI problem or (2) your partnership from cheating". If it's (1) I wonder why an opponent would want to be so generous. If it's (2), well, hypothetically I would tell such an opponent to kiss my butt.

I think that (1) applies to about 5% of people and (2) to about 2% of people. How about:

(3) I'm trying to prevent complications from your explanation

Some people may think (3) is the same as (1) or (2) but I think that the real world is not like that. Most opponents are neither trying to be helpful nor accusatory: they just are avoiding a situation.

So in my view it is reasonable that opponents stop a part explanation when it is clear it is not going to be full and accurate. But they should try to do so tactfully!

[blackshoe]

Someone upthread suggested the proper way (or at least a proper way) to respond to a question about your partner's bidding when you aren't sure is "please look at the card". Is this a good approach, David?