[Trinidad]

Same problem with DONT. Ask anybody with DONT in their profile what 1NT-2♦-Dbl-2♥ means. Most will not know or they will think they know, but they will know something different from their partner.

And it can be even simpler: At my club (with a decent standard, one of the stronger clubs in the Netherlands) many pairs will not know what the agreed strength for 1♠-Pass-2NT is (invitational/better, game invitational/ slam invitational, or simply GF), nor do they know whether it promises 3 or 4 card support.

Rik

[blackshoe]

Beginners do have to learn. More advanced players adopting new conventions also have to learn. But there has to be a point (which may be hard to identify at the table) where the learning period should be considered to be over. Not saying that's the case here, mind you, just that it's a consideration.

[mwigor]

The director clearly stuffed up this ruling (he allowed table result to stand).

As he correctly ruled there has been an infraction of misinformation (in the absense of clear evidence to the contrary the director must assume misinformation not misbid).

Under 12C1c the director is empowered to award a weighted combination of scores. It is not certain that West would double the final contract given the information that 3D is pass or correct - but there is some chance that he would. The director should award some percentage of the final contract doubled and some percentage of it undoubled.

[blackshoe]

mwigor, on 2014-November-11, 23:32, said:

(in the absense of clear evidence to the contrary the director must assume misinformation not misbid).

The word "clear" does not appear in that part of the law. The actual wording is "the Director is to presume mistaken explanation, rather than mistaken call, in the absence of evidence to the contrary." This means only that if there is evidence the call might have been mistaken, a mis-bid, then the director cannot presume MI.

[pran]

blackshoe, on 2014-November-12, 09:12, said:

The word "clear" does not appear in that part of the law. The actual wording is "the Director is to presume mistaken explanation, rather than mistaken call, in the absence of evidence to the contrary." This means only that if there is evidence the call might have been mistaken, a mis-bid, then the director cannot presume MI.

No, it implies that the evidence for misbid must be significantly stronger than the evidence for mistaken explanation.

(Any statement by a player to the effect "I misbid" is evidence, but without corroborating evidence it will hardly be sufficient.)

[mycroft]

Significantly is implied nowhere. I've always read it as "there has to either be physical evidence (CC, notes) or a reasonable chain of logic that the explanation given is righter than the alternative." Otherwise the alternative: "their real explanation could be <crazy system only one or two people around play> in which case that's the correct bid and we got a misexplanation, in which case the UI says... and the MI leads to..." and we get the lamford DONT case elsethreads in a situation where, frankly, it's highly likely they're playing the local standard system and the bidder hand a braino. But it's not *significantly* more likely...

Having said that, it is possible that this was done under screens; in which case the differing ideas become differing explanations to E/W, and it could be that it's only after the match in discussions that the differing explanations came to light.

The EBU has a very sound suggestion, that while the TD "should" be called when there is an irregularity, that "should" is closer to a requirement in a few cases, one of which is "correcting significant misexplanation" (another one is "correcting own misexplanation", and I *really* like that idea). I don't know when south made clear that he wasn't sure, or he thought the agreement was the "obvious" one, but this all goes away if South calls the TD, and explains the situation and explains the potential misexplanation, before the opening lead.

[pran]

mycroft, on 2014-November-12, 11:16, said:

Significantly is implied nowhere. I've always read it as "there has to either be physical evidence (CC, notes) or a reasonable chain of logic that the explanation given is righter than the alternative." Otherwise the alternative: "their real explanation could be <crazy system only one or two people around play> in which case that's the correct bid and we got a misexplanation, in which case the UI says... and the MI leads to..." and we get the lamford DONT case elsethreads in a situation where, frankly, it's highly likely they're playing the local standard system and the bidder hand a braino. But it's not *significantly* more likely...

So how do you handle the situation where you find evidences for both misbid and misinformation, neither of which is absolutely conclusive?
By your own logic, if you discard the requirement for "significantly" then you do have evidence for misbid and have to rule that way.

mycroft, on 2014-November-12, 11:16, said:

Having said that, it is possible that this was done under screens; in which case the differing ideas become differing explanations to E/W, and it could be that it's only after the match in discussions that the differing explanations came to light.

The EBU has a very sound suggestion, that while the TD "should" be called when there is an irregularity, that "should" is closer to a requirement in a few cases, one of which is "correcting significant misexplanation" (another one is "correcting own misexplanation", and I *really* like that idea). I don't know when south made clear that he wasn't sure, or he thought the agreement was the "obvious" one, but this all goes away if South calls the TD, and explains the situation and explains the potential misexplanation, before the opening lead.

I do not understand why you apparently limit your attention to Law 9B when Laws 20F4 and 20F5 clearly state that the Director "must" be called in cases of (possible) misinformation?

[blackshoe]

blackshoe, on 2014-November-12, 09:12, said:

The word "clear" does not appear in that part of the law. The actual wording is "the Director is to presume mistaken explanation, rather than mistaken call, in the absence of evidence to the contrary." This means only that if there is evidence the call might have been mistaken, a mis-bid, then the director cannot presume MI.

pran, on 2014-November-12, 09:46, said:

No, it implies that the evidence for misbid must be significantly stronger than the evidence for mistaken explanation.

(Any statement by a player to the effect "I misbiod" is evidence, but without corroborating evidence it will hardly be sufficient.)

l disagree with your first sentence. If you read what I said, you should recognize that I did not say that any evidence at all of a misbid is sufficient to rule misbid. What I said was that you cannot presume mis-explanation in the presence of evidence of misbid — you have to consider all the evidence.

mycroft, on 2014-November-12, 11:16, said:

Significantly is implied nowhere. I've always read it as "there has to either be physical evidence (CC, notes) or a reasonable chain of logic that the explanation given is righter than the alternative." Otherwise the alternative: "their real explanation could be <crazy system only one or two people around play> in which case that's the correct bid and we got a misexplanation, in which case the UI says... and the MI leads to..." and we get the lamford DONT case elsethreads in a situation where, frankly, it's highly likely they're playing the local standard system and the bidder hand a braino. But it's not *significantly* more likely...

Having said that, it is possible that this was done under screens; in which case the differing ideas become differing explanations to E/W, and it could be that it's only after the match in discussions that the differing explanations came to light.

The EBU has a very sound suggestion, that while the TD "should" be called when there is an irregularity, that "should" is closer to a requirement in a few cases, one of which is "correcting significant misexplanation" (another one is "correcting own misexplanation", and I *really* like that idea). I don't know when south made clear that he wasn't sure, or he thought the agreement was the "obvious" one, but this all goes away if South calls the TD, and explains the situation and explains the potential misexplanation, before the opening lead.

I wish that I had never pointed out that the use of "must" in the 1997 Law 9 implied that failure to call the director after attention was drawn to an irregularity should draw a PP. The Drafting Committee decided they didn't like that implication, so they changed "must" to "should". The problem with "should" is that, within the laws of bridge, if you fail to do something you "should" do, you have committed an infraction of law, while in common usage, failure to do something you "should" do carries a connotation of "no big deal, 'should' means it's optional". In the laws of bridge, it's not optional.

[barmar]

pran, on 2014-November-12, 12:22, said:

So how do you handle the situation where you find evidences for both misbid and misinformation, neither of which is absolutely conclusive?
By your own logic, if you discard the requirement for "significantly" then you do have evidence for misbid and have to rule that way.

If you have evidence of both misbid and MI, you weigh the evidence and decide which is more likely. The clause in the Laws is just intended to be used as a default when there's no evidence either way.

However, I think some common sense needs to be applied. As someone mentioned upthread, there's never NO evidence, because you always have the player's statement of what happened as evidence. What we're actually being asked to judge is whether to believe that statement -- if that's the ONLY evidence, it's circular to use it to make the ruling.

[blackshoe]

Circular? How so?

[aguahombre]

blackshoe, on 2014-November-13, 10:41, said:

Circular? How so?

Good question. If there is only one piece of evidence, there is no path of reasoning which circles around and comes back to it; you just go with it. However, there is rarely only one piece of evidence. Here, we have lots of other evidence. Sven's post #10 follows a logical path.

We also have evidence that the TD's conclusion was arbitrary.

[Trinidad]

barmar, on 2014-November-13, 10:25, said:

As someone mentioned upthread, there's never NO evidence, because you always have the player's statement of what happened as evidence. What we're actually being asked to judge is whether to believe that statement -- if that's the ONLY evidence, it's circular to use it to make the ruling.

In practice, it is never the only evidence. The bidder has bid according to meaning I, the explainer has explained meaning II. As soon as there is a MI case, these two pieces of evidence are always there: The explanation is evidence for meaning II, the fact that his partner intended it to mean I when he bid is evidence for meaning I

In order for Law 75D to make any sense these two pieces of evidence should be disregarded as "evidence". They should be regarded as the two positions for which evidence is saught. We disregard this "He said - He said" part and look for anything else. That is where "evidence to the contrary" has to start, another interpretation doesn't make sense. (And fortunately this is the accepted interpretation.)

Rik

[blackshoe]

hm. I think we need to be careful here, Rik. If the bidder has said he bid according to meaning I, that's evidence. But if the TD looks in his hand and says "clearly he bid according to meaning I" that's not evidence, it's assumption. It's probably a pretty good assumption, but it's still an assumption.

[aguahombre]

blackshoe, on 2014-November-13, 14:38, said:

hm. I think we need to be careful here, Rik. If the bidder has said he bid according to meaning I, that's evidence. But if the TD looks in his hand and says "clearly he bid according to meaning I" that's not evidence, it's assumption. It's probably a pretty good assumption, but it's still an assumption.

We just back up one tick, and call what the TD saw "evidence", and then call the next thing a conclusion rather than an assumption.

[blackshoe]

So it's just not possible he made a mistake and his bid has no relation to what's in his hand?

[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2014-November-13, 14:38, said:

hm. I think we need to be careful here, Rik. If the bidder has said he bid according to meaning I, that's evidence. But if the TD looks in his hand and says "clearly he bid according to meaning I" that's not evidence, it's assumption. It's probably a pretty good assumption, but it's still an assumption.

Simple example:
The auction is 1NT-Pass-2♦*-Pass; 2♥-All Pass *Announced/alerted and explained as a transfer to hearts.

Declarer goes down 6 in 2♥, since dummy comes down with a Yarborough with 7 diamonds. The -300 is a top since the opponents are cold for 4 or 5 hearts.

Declarer explained meaning I (transfer), dummy has meaning II (natural sign-off). The cards that dummy held and the bid that he made are evidence ("evidence" not "mathematical proof") that dummy thought they were playing natural sign-off responses. The explanation by declarer is evidence that declarer thought they were playing transfers.

Now, we have the classic stand-off. Was there MI or was declarer correct and did dummy misbid (or who knows: even psych)?

Only at this point Law 75D comes in. We are going to look for evidence supporting that the pair agreed to play transfers (or natural sign-offs or something else). Any evidence is fine, as long as it is independent: A system book would be nice, a CC is great, but another player stating that they used transfers two rounds before, their bridge teacher saying that they play transfers, even the TD knowing that the pair plays transfers, or simple bridge logic (not applicable here, but in other situations) are also sufficient evidence for me.

But if there is nothing at all to support that the explanation is correct then I will assume misinformation.

Rik

[blackshoe]

I don't disagree with anything in that.