[blml] Tie me kangaroo court, sport [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Robert Geller]

Alain Gottcheiner writes:
>At 09:07 29/09/2006 +0900, Robert Geller wrote:
>>   (2) It is not authorized by the laws to warn your partner before he/she
>>is about to make an insufficient bid or bid out of turn.   Information from
>>such an "extraneous action" is thus UI.
>
>How do you address that case :
>South pulls "stop" and North says "you're not the one to bid".
>
>Of course, the fact that South was about to make an opening at level 2 or 
>higher is UI tu North, but would you really disallow North's reaction ?
Of course.   There's nothing in the rules to allow it.
It's not any different than if South was declarer and North blurted out
that South forgot to draw the last enemy trump.   

 
>South's pulling a Stop card is in itself an infraction (of the kind which 
>doesn't produce systematic penalties) and North is allowed (in fact, 
>required) by L9 to draw attention to it.
I quote the applicable part of Law 9 below: 
*****************************************************************
General Laws Governing Irregularities 
LAW 9 PROCEDURE FOLLOWING AN IRREGULARITY
A. Calling Attention to an Irregularity 
1. During the Auction Period 
Unless prohibited by Law, any player may call attention to an irregularity during the 
auction, whether or not it is his turn to call. 
******************************************************************
An irregularity occurs if South bids out of turn.  Anyone, 
including North, can properly call attention to the BOOT.
Nothing in law 9 says that North can intervene to prevent 
South from making a bid out of turn.


Please consider Law 42B2 which specifically authorizes the
dummy to intervene to attempt to prevent an irregularity,
and note the absence of any similar provision in Law 9
to authorize an attempt to prevent an irregularity by
one's partner during the auction. 

So, in the absence of specific authorization in the laws 
for an attempt to prevent an irregularity by partner,
it seems clear to me that this is not allowed.  Of course
it is allowed (by Law 9) to call attention to it after it
has occurred.

This may seem a little cruel, but it's the law.  We should
follow it.  If we don't like it we can try to get it changed.
In my opinion it's reasonable.  Bridge is 99.9% of the time
a simple game, but the essence of winning is to stay alert.  
If we start to allow more and more do-overs we remove the
essence of the game, which is paying attention to what's going on.

-Bob

-----------------------------------------------------
Robert (Bob) Geller,     Tokyo, Japan        geller at nifty.com