[blml] Insufficient rebid

[Sven Pran]

> On Behalf Of Eric Landau
.................
> What the ACBL has actually said is that a pair is not allowed to have
> *any agreement whatsoever*, (presumably whether "changed" or not)
> regarding methods after the acceptance of an insufficient bid.  As I
> have often noted, this is a logical absurdity, *at best* tantamount to
> making it illegal to condone an insufficient bid.

In an auction where the agreement on a particular bid depends only upon the
number of steps from the last previous bid (e.g. Blackwood, some Vienna
conventions and Strong club precision agreements) what is the ACBL attitude
when there is an intervening insufficient bid?

Take the following situation from advanced precision:
1C - pass - 1S - pass
2S - 2C - ? 

The convention (as I believe I remember from long time ago) is that one step
(i.e. 2NT) now means "five or more small spades", two steps (i.e. 3C) "five
spades headed by a single top honor", three steps "five spades headed by two
top honors", four steps "six spades headed by a single top honor" and five
steps "six spades headed by two top honors". 

One step over the IB of 2C is obviously Pass, two steps is double, three
steps is 2D and so on.

A similar situation exists over for instance Blackwood and various
Blackwood-like conventions.

Does ACBL allow the responder to accept an insufficient bid and answer his
partner's bid according to the scale as "calculated" from the IB which now
is the last previous legal bid? Or does ACBL require NOS, if they want to
continue using their system, to reject the insufficient bid and allow OS to
replace the IB with a completely destructive (for NOS only!) preemptive bid?


The ACBL regulation quoted above (if the quotation is correct) just doesn't
make sense, at least not to me.

Regards Sven