[Trinidad]

Vampyr, on 2015-April-20, 08:53, said:

I think that the meaning of L25A can be understood if we think of the old 25B2(b)(2).

Under this (1997) law you were allowed to change a bid based on a slip of the brain and play on for Average Minus. This law was widely ridiculed and did not make in into the 2007 version.

It is clear that the simple omission of this law does not suddenly mean that brain-slips can be corrected with no penalty.

You are confusing things. The old Law 25B2(b)(2) was about changing an intended call. Law 25A is about changing an unintended call.

You splintered with 4♥ in response to partner's 1♠ opening. You did so consciously and decided for 4♥ since you valued your singleton and then you made the bid. Once you had made the bid, you figured out that 4♥ wasn't a splinter but natural. That is not a "slip of the brain" that is a bidding error.

Under the old Law 25B2(b)(2) you were allowed to change that intended call and play for Ave-. Law 25A has nothing to do with it, since you consciously bid 4♥. 4♥ was your intended call.

Law 25A is not about correcting intended calls. It is about calls that one never intended to make. Law 25A is not for the system mistakes or regrets in hand evaluation, like the old Law 25B2(b)(2). It is for when one never intended to bid 4♥, but somehow the 4♥ card is lying on the table. And it doesn't matter whether the 4♥ card landed on the table because of a coffee stain or because "a voice made me pull the 4♥ card". In both cases one never intended to call 4♥ and law 25A applies.

And that is very different from deciding to splinter and then regretting it (old Law 25B2(b)(2)).

Rik

[PeterAlan]

Vampyr, on 2015-April-20, 21:30, said:

PeterAlan, on 2015-April-20, 09:02, said:

I think that the interpretation of the Law has to be based on what it says now, not on a part of a previous version that was repealed 8 years ago and that many current TDs are unaware of.

Not really. The point is that a provision had been made for calls based on mental lapses, and that provision had been removed. If the intention had been that changes of calls based on momentary mental lapses, inattention etc were to be permitted entirely (instead of being permitted but scoring a maximum of 30%) the relevant law would have been changed, not deleted in its entirety.

All experienced TDs know of the former 25B2(b)(2) but it wouldn't really matter if they didn't.

No. We have

• the 2007 Law 25A (which is identical to the corresponding 1997 Law in its relevant part, namely its first sentence)
  
• up-to-date guidance from our regulatory authority on the application and interpretation of Law25A.

We don't need to bring anything else to the table - and shouldn't do so, because that leads to inconsistency of ruling from one TD to another. If there's anything from the history of the development of Law 25 that we need to take into account, we should rely on it being reflected in the current guidance, and should not be bringing further personal interpretation (prejudice?) into the picture.

If I may mix my metaphors, you seem to me to be heaping Pelion on Ossa in your attempts to justify what I think is ultimately an unsupportable position, and it's time to take Occam's razor to it all.

[RSliwinski]

PeterAlan, on 2015-April-21, 02:49, said:

No. We have

• the 2007 Law 25A (which is identical to the corresponding 1997 Law in its relevant part, namely its first sentence)
  
• up-to-date guidance from our regulatory authority on the application and interpretation of Law25A.

We don't need to bring anything else to the table - and shouldn't do so, because that leads to inconsistency of ruling from one TD to another. If there's anything from the history of the development of Law 25 that we need to take into account, we should rely on it being reflected in the current guidance, and should not be bringing further personal interpretation (prejudice?) into the picture.

If I may mix my metaphors, you seem to me to be heaping Pelion on Ossa in your attempts to justify what I think is ultimately an unsupportable position, and it's time to take Occam's razor to it all.

There have been quotes of the WBF Law Committee Meeting from 2000 but I am surprised that nobody has quoted a more recent item 10 of the WBF Laws Committee meeting in Koningshof on 20th October 2011. Here it is:
10. The committee discussed what is understood by a “mechanical error’ in using a bidding box. The term applies to the case where the player intends to call ’x’ and thinks ‘x’ but his fingers inadvertently pull out ‘y’ from the bidding box. As an example: North East South West 1H P 2C P P where 2C shows Hearts support and is invitational. This Pass by North was most probably intentional (i.e. not mechanical) and so can not be changed.

[lamford]

intentional [ ɪnˈtɛnʃ(ə)n(ə)l ] ADJECTIVE
done on purpose; deliberate.

That is all we need, and we toss into the bin all these bizarre interpretations by one or two people on here, and also the poorly-worded attempt at clarification by the WBFLC. If a call is not intentional, we can change it. However, there is a difference in interpretation of what is intentional.

If someone reaches for a 1NT bid and pulls out a 1NT bid, that is done on purpose and deliberate, and therefore intentional. It does not matter one iota which call he originally intended to make. The action of selecting the card and removing the card at least slightly from the box is the making of the bid. If that card was selected intentionally, it cannot be changed.

Trinidad, in one post, suggested that a bid could be changed if it was not the call one wanted to make, but "a voice made me pull the 4H card". No doubt he would have found the Yorkshire Ripper not guilty because voices told him to kill women in the late 1970s.

[helene_t]

It seems to be about the sematics of the word "intention".

What would a Freudian say about it if my ego wanted to bid 4♥ but my superego wanted to supress the impulse but failed to do so due to some unfortunate fluctuations in the levels of the involved neurotransmitters?

[Trinidad]

The semantics of the word "intention" have little to do with it.

Law 25A says an unintended call can be corrected and replaced by the intended call.

Lamford says the exact opposite using the same words that are used in law 25A: an unintended call can not be corrected and replaced by an intended call.

lamford, on 2015-April-19, 04:59, said:

Even though I think that South did not intend [] opening 1NT, we still do not allow a change. I believe he intended Pass []. However, I do not agree that he is allowed a correction.

Now if Lamford wants to run his games ignoring law 25A then that is fine with me. But then he shouldn't claim that he follows law 25A when he so literally ("word for word", nothing about semantics) does the opposite.

Rik

[axman]

PeterAlan, on 2015-April-21, 02:49, said:

No. We have

• the 2007 Law 25A (which is identical to the corresponding 1997 Law in its relevant part, namely its first sentence)
  
• up-to-date guidance from our regulatory authority on the application and interpretation of Law25A.

We don't need to bring anything else to the table - and shouldn't do so, because that leads to inconsistency of ruling from one TD to another. If there's anything from the history of the development of Law 25 that we need to take into account, we should rely on it being reflected in the current guidance, and should not be bringing further personal interpretation (prejudice?) into the picture.

If I may mix my metaphors, you seem to me to be heaping Pelion on Ossa in your attempts to justify what I think is ultimately an unsupportable position, and it's time to take Occam's razor to it all.

What the WBF has done with 25A was to muddle in the wrong way.

They specify that the condition for correcting a call is that it was unintended. What they should have specified is advice to the player who did not believe it was unintended that he shouldn't (as a matter of propriety) even entertain Changing it; and instead focus upon an outwardly discernable way of measuring that a call was unintendted such as by the alacrity with which it was Corrected- as distinguished from Changed.

[PeterAlan]

axman, on 2015-April-21, 07:39, said:

What the WBF has done with 25A was to muddle in the wrong way.

They specify that the condition for correcting a call is that it was unintended. What they should have specified is advice to the player who did not believe it was unintended that he shouldn't (as a matter of propriety) even entertain Changing it; and instead focus upon an outwardly discernable way of measuring that a call was unintendted such as by the alacrity with which it was Corrected- as distinguished from Changed.

What you're saying is that the Law / the guidance should be changed. Fine. But until it is we have to work with what we've got.

[gwnn]

If I am walking around with my phone in one hand and an empty bottle of Coke in another and throw the phone in the garbage bin and attempt to check my emails on the Coke bottle, which part of this was intentional and which part of this was not? People do all sorts of strange unintentional stuff with their hands.

[gwnn]

My example is distinctly different to me just dropping my phone, that would be a "mechanical error" of my fingers. Essentially a lot of people think that these unintentional strange mistakes caused by the brain (not the fingers or the stickiness of the bidding box) never happen. They should see what I'm capable of.

[barmar]

PeterAlan, on 2015-April-21, 02:49, said:

We don't need to bring anything else to the table - and shouldn't do so, because that leads to inconsistency of ruling from one TD to another.

Taking the history of the Laws into account is like reading the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution. It provides background information to help you interpret the document, since English is not always as precise as we would like it to be. This discussion is a perfect example -- there are a number of ways to understand what "intended call" means.

[lamford]

Trinidad, on 2015-April-21, 07:36, said:

Lamford says the exact opposite using the same words that are used in law 25A: an unintended call can not be corrected and replaced by an intended call.

Rubbish. What you overlook is that more than one call can be the "intended" call, depending on the time you perform the brain scan on the bidder. SB looked at his hand and decided that it was wrong to open 1NT; he intended to Pass. He moved his card towards the bidding box; for whatever reason, we care not, his brain then gave a message to his hand to select 1NT. At that precise moment in time, 1NT was his intended call. He intended to select the 1NT card from the box. The 1NT card was selected. If another card had been selected, he would have been allowed to change it under Law 25A.

We have to define an "intended" call. The EBU have done that by asking "what did you intend to call when you reached for the bidding box". If SB answered "Pass", then I would ask some supplementary questions. "Are you aware the Pass card is green and in the front of the box". The WBFLC have attempted to define "unintended", but in such a vague way as to be worthless, and contradicted by a later minute.

[helene_t]

gwnn, on 2015-April-21, 07:56, said:

If I am walking around with my phone in one hand and an empty bottle of Coke in another and throw the phone in the garbage bin and attempt to check my emails on the Coke bottle, which part of this was intentional and which part of this was not? People do all sorts of strange unintentional stuff with their hands.

Yeah I know the feeling.

I am not sure if I would say that you "intended" to use the phone for checking your email, though. It depends how you define the word "intend". So I wasn't joking about this Freudian stuff.

Most of the things we think we do after deliberation we actually do by reflex and then construct the deliberation afterwards, fooling ourselves.

Personally I wouldn't go into the philosophical or neurophysiological disputes about this so I would just say that if it is not a mechanical error then I don't buy it.

OTOH we do allow declarer to correct a slip of the tongue when designating a card in the dummy. So I suppose this is similar, and we ought to be consistent and allow most substitutions if done immediately and if the call made was strange enough that it seems unlikely to have been "intended", whatever that means.

[gwnn]

Of course, actually checking email on the phone is for many of us quite involuntary and/or a disease. And lots of other stuff we do in our day-to-day lives are like that. However, staying in the realm of phone usage, making a mistake such as calling your ex when she told you not to call is to me clearly distinguishable from confusing your two hands, which is also clearly distinguishable from calling your grandma because your finger slipped and you wanted to call your grandpa. In bridge, the equivalents would be: bidding 1NT because you miscounted your points, bidding 1NT because your hand simply took out the 1NT card instead of a pass, and bidding 1NT because it got stuck to the 1♠ card. Now, am I saying that I would believe every single 'offender'? Not remotely. But all three of these are possible 'misbids,' even though in practice it might be difficult to establish which it was and to ask a player not to be self-serving.

[Trinidad]

lamford, on 2015-April-21, 09:05, said:

Rubbish. What you overlook is that more than one call can be the "intended" call, depending on the time you perform the brain scan on the bidder. SB looked at his hand and decided that it was wrong to open 1NT; he intended to Pass. He moved his card towards the bidding box; for whatever reason, we care not, his brain then gave a message to his hand to select 1NT. At that precise moment in time, 1NT was his intended call. He intended to select the 1NT card from the box. The 1NT card was selected. If another card had been selected, he would have been allowed to change it under Law 25A.

Rubbish. At that point in time the 1NT card may or may not have been the intended card to pull, but 1NT has never been the intended call.

I am thinking of that children's joke:

"Do you know the difference between a kilogram of sugar and a crocodile?"
- "No."
"Then I shouldn't send you to the grocery store for a kilogram of sugar."

If you don't know the difference between a card and a call then I shouldn't send you to the bridge club.

Rik

[lamford]

Trinidad, on 2015-April-21, 09:39, said:

If you don't know the difference between a card and a call then I shouldn't send you to the bridge club.

Both the EBU and ACBL interchange "card" and "call" in their explanations of bidding boxes, so the distinction you are trying to make is about as hopeless as the rest of your argument. However, it is interesting to compare the regulations in the three relevant jurisdictions, which might explain the more lenient application of 25A in Holland:

[EBU] Starting with the dealer; players place their calls on the table in front of them, from the left and neatly overlapping. This is so that all calls are visible and faced towards partner. Players should refrain from touching any cards in the box until they have determined their call. A call is considered to have been made when it has been removed from the bidding box with apparent intent (but the director may apply Law 25). Note that some left-handed bidding boxes are available, where the calls are placed in a row from right to left.

[ACBL] A call is considered made when a bidding card is removed from the bidding box and held touching or nearly touching the table or maintained in such a position to indicate that the call has been made. We should use unauthorized information where reasonably appropriate (where we can rule that a bid has not been made). For close cases simply judge that the card had not left the confines of the box; therefore, a call has not been made.

The onus is on the player to convince the director that a mechanical irregularity has occured. Calls from different pockets should rarely, if at all, (except by VixTD), be judged as inadvertent. One understandable exception is placing the double card out followed shortly with a bid card that skips the bidding. This appears clear that the double card was placed inadvertently on the table.

[Holland] Deleted.

This post has been edited by blackshoe: 2015-April-23, 19:37
Reason for edit: Per poster's request, I deleted part of this post and have re-approved it.

[blackshoe]

lamford, on 2015-April-20, 07:33, said:

On EBU County Director courses, it was recommended that a TD should establish, at the moment a player reached for a bidding card, which card he "intended" to select. Essentially, the fingerfehler can be changed (although it cannot be in chess), and the slip of the tongue with spoken bids (or, I suppose, a lapsus calami with written bids) can also be changed. This is already a generous concession to the bidder, not available to him in the play. If we adopt the approach of Trinidad (or his henchman PeterAlan) we are going too far.

I don't understand this as an answer to my simple (or so it seems to me) "what part of 25A is not satisfied?"

[helene_t]

Paul I think Google translate messed up the Dutch regs for you

[lamford]

blackshoe, on 2015-April-21, 10:16, said:

I don't understand this as an answer to my simple (or so it seems to me) "what part of 25A is not satisfied?"

I think that the 1NT call is "unintended" using a general definition, but not "unintended" using the definition that should be used for applying Law 25A.

A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to - George Soros

[blackshoe]

lamford, on 2015-April-21, 10:37, said:

I think that the 1NT call is "unintended" using a general definition, but not "unintended" using the definition that should be used for applying Law 25A.

A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to - George Soros

Can you specify these two different definitions, please?