[blackshoe]

Spiel: "South, when it is your turn to call, you are required to pass throughout the remainder of this auction. You must actually put out a pass card. West, even though South is required to pass when it is his turn to call, until he does so it not your turn to call. However, if you do call before South passes, per Law 28A that will not be considered a call out of rotation. Do you both understand?"

[c_corgi]

PeterAlan, on 2013-January-23, 08:20, said:

... at what point do you suppose that the turn to call has passed from S to W?

When both South and West think it has. Given that the director has apparently condoned it, I don't see how it could possibly still be South's turn.

[iviehoff]

c_corgi, on 2013-January-23, 07:56, said:

I think it is West's turn to call. This is because South considers that his enforced pass has been effectively made, West appears to have accepted this and considers it his own turn,

What VixTD originally said was:
"West reached uncertainly for the bidding box, wondering if we were all taking South's pass as read."
So I don't think you can assert that West now considers it his turn to call, rather he is demonstrating active uncertainty on the point.

But thanks for the confidence in the rest of my reasoning.

[barmar]

iviehoff, on 2013-January-23, 09:19, said:

What VixTD originally said was:
"West reached uncertainly for the bidding box, wondering if we were all taking South's pass as read."
So I don't think you can assert that West now considers it his turn to call, rather he is demonstrating active uncertainty on the point.

I'd say that he was uncertain, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was his turn.

[PeterAlan]

c_corgi, on 2013-January-23, 08:57, said:

When both South and West think it has.

This isn't really a basis for a simple, objective ruling is it? And much more to the point, it's unnecessary.

There was some reference above to the logic of the Laws. I can't help feeling that it's helpful to apply Occam's Razor, and not to create problems for ourselves when there's no need to do so. There's every reason to suppose it's S's turn to call and it creates no problems if we do so; similarly, there's every reason to regard N's cancelled bid as cancelled and not triggering a move from Law 30A and into Law 30B, and no difficulties or inequity arising from this either.

Combine the contrary notions, however, and it leads to the difficulties that pran elaborates, to the counter-considerations that iviehoff has very reasonably put forward, and to suggestions of awkward criteria like this one. It also, as Vampyr pointed out, leaves the board less playable in any meaningful way with only one player on each side able to bid. Why bend the Laws and stretch their interpretation in order to end up there? It's all so pointless.

[campboy]

Yes, we could interpret the law in such a way that it is a 30B case rather than a 30A case, just as we could interpret the laws in such a way that if someone were now to bid 1♣ it would be insufficient. We don't.

[bluejak]

pran, on 2013-January-21, 16:04, said:

Consequently the ruling should be that from now on both South and East must pass whenever it is their respective turn to call.

Vampyr, on 2013-January-21, 16:29, said:

Do you think that the board is playable after this ruling?

Yes, of course. There is a growing idea both here and on RGB that we have to have normal auctions after infractions. But that is not the way the Law works. When the Law requires someone to be silenced we are not going to get a normal auction - but that does not make a board unplayable.

iviehoff, on 2013-January-22, 11:08, said:

It is called Equity. It is nothing other than the principle that a player should not be disadvantaged by the other side's transgressions. Do you really not know that one?

You rule by the Laws. You only apply equity when the Laws require it - and they do considerably more rarely than people seem to think!

It is the lawmakers' responsibility how much, when, and in what circumstances equity applies, not the TDs.

[Vampyr]

bluejak, on 2013-January-27, 15:21, said:

Yes, of course. There is a growing idea both here and on RGB that we have to have normal auctions after infractions. But that is not the way the Law works. When the Law requires someone to be silenced we are not going to get a normal auction - but that does not make a board unplayable.

It's a bit worse, though, when one player from each side is silenced.

[bluejak]

True but so what? Why not just follow the Laws?

[barmar]

bluejak, on 2013-January-27, 15:21, said:

You rule by the Laws. You only apply equity when the Laws require it - and they do considerably more rarely than people seem to think!

Indeed. The preamble states that the laws are primarily intended to restore equity. But that doesn't mean it achieves this goal consistently. Where it doesn't, it's a potential area for improvement in future versions, not something for TDs to work around.

[Zelandakh]

bluejak, on 2013-January-28, 04:42, said:

True but so what? Why not just follow the Laws?

There is a question here about what following the Laws actually results in here. Is the cancelled call a call made or a call annulled?

[iviehoff]

bluejak, on 2013-January-27, 15:21, said:

You rule by the Laws. You only apply equity when the Laws require it - and they do considerably more rarely than people seem to think!

But that is not what I was talking about. The problem here is that it was unclear what the laws meant in this situation, and we were selecting among the possible interpretations of the law in the complex situation, which the written law hadn't anticipated.

It is for that purpose only that I suggested that an interpretation of the law that offended against equity made it a particularly unattractive choice, since equity is a far more basic criterion for selecting which interpretation we might prefer, than the alternative line of reasoning proposed.

[bluejak]

I have no problem with the alternative views as to which interpretation applies and was not commenting on that. I merely object to people cancelling a board because they do not like the effects of applying the Laws.