[blml] Encrypted signals (was: nearest card)

[Konrad Ciborowski]

>This is the answer of somebody who prefers shouting above thinking.
>The reason was not the complexity, though it would have been a good enough 
>reason.
>The reason was that declarer can't figure out what the meaning of the 
>signal is.

If course he can. If during the course of play he finds out that West has
exactly 3 hearts then he knows that his club deuce was a encouraging
card, but if he discovers that West started with 4 hearts than the c2 was a 
discouraging signal.
Yes, he doesn't know that *immediately* but in exactly the same
fashion he doesn't know immediately if somebody who opened the multi 2D has
hearts or spades.

> Meaning understood as bearing useful information.

TREATMENT A: if my partner has an odd number of
hearts then he discards upside down, otherwise standard
TREATMENT B: if my partner has less than 6 spades then
he has at least 6 hearts, an unspecified number of
hearts otherwise

Can you, as someone who supposedly takes pride in preferring
thinking over shouting, explain to me that intrinsic difference
between these two that makes you allow B but ban A?


>Let me give another example: both defenders are autistic and able to 
>multiply many huge numbers.
>So they give the cards shown in dummy a big number and multiply and 
>depending
>on the outcome, last two digits between 1-50 or 51 - 00 or whatever,
>the card they play is dis- or en-couraging. It is all on their convention 
>cards.


>Acceptable in your world,

Since when? Your example with multiplying big numbers is flawed because the
key that allows players to find out the meaning of the signal
(the last two digits of the multiplication) is something unrelated to 
bridge.
You cannot expect a player to be able to multiply huge numbers or
know the 126th digit of pi. But as for "if West has an even number of hearts
then his c2 is discouraging" it's all about bridge and requires literally no
non-bridge related skill. I would say that is even simpler than

"my partner has a hand with at least 6 HCP and no more than
9 HCP with at most 3 cards in spades, at most two cards in hearts,
and an unspecified distribution in the minors. My partner's bid
announces that he prefers the final contract to be played in one
of the minor suits or notrump or possibly hearts if I have
at least six of them".


The latter, in case you haven't noticed, is a description of
the 1NT response to the 1H opening in Acol. The latter
gives opponents a lot less information then the Treatment A
described above. Defending the 1NT contract after
the

1H - 1NT (not to mention the 1S - 1NT auction)
pass

start is a daunting task because declarer can have

Kxx
xx
QJxx
Kxxx

or

xxx
---
AQxxxxx
xxx

or

xxx
---
AQJ
xxxxxxx

So both defenders are practically left blind. If you are not banning the
1NT response to 1H/S in Acol (which is, for all intents and purposes,
an artificial negative) then why did you ban encrypted signals that
give opponents more information than this artificial 1NT response to 1H/S?


Konrad Ciborowski
Kraków, Poland 


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