[blml] De Whale

[Matthias Berghaus]

Herman De Wael schrieb:
> Brian Meadows wrote:
>   
>> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:26:36 -0400, Eric Landau wrote:
>>
>>     
>>>> Quoting Herman
>>>>
>>>> Oh, and, have you really ever given as a reply to an opponent who asks
>>>> what your partner's bid means "I have honestly no idea" (not while
>>>> meaning "other than the obvious ones that you also have")?
>>>>
>>>> I have, but I've also added "most likely it will be ..."
>>>>         
>>> So Herman, in the absense of any agreement, facing a partner who is 
>>> presumably aware of the fact that they have no agreement, gratuitously 
>>> tells partner how he will take the bid, and, therefore, how to 
>>> interpret his subsequent responses.  That sounds like deliberate and 
>>> egregious generation of UI.  It is *precisely* the practice of adding 
>>> "most likely it will be..." (or, equivalently, "I'm going to take it 
>>> as...") that the ACBL has gone to great lengths (rightfully, IMO, and 
>>> for the most part successfully) to stamp out.
>>>
>>>       
>> It's not just the ACBL, Eric. From the 2006 EBU Orange Book...
>>
>> <paste>
>> 3.B.3.     A player should explain only the partnership
>> agreement. If the player does not know the meaning of partner’s
>> call, or there is no agreement, there must be no statement of how
>> the player intends to interpret it.
>> </paste>
>>     
>
> And this is not what I was saying.
> I don't say he should explain how he's going to interpret it.
> I say he should explain what he thinks it is.
>   

Herman, would you please be so kind to explain to me where the 
difference (in practice, not in sophistry) is between "It is X" and "I 
am going to treat it as X"?  The effect on the auction in progress is 
exactly the same, is it not? Partner knows how you treat his last bid, 
so he knows how to treat your next bid. There is a German expression for 
your kind of argument which does not translate very well into English, 
but your German is very good, so you might know it, and I will try to 
explain it in English, too. It is "Augenwischerei", literally "to wipe 
your eyes (with your hands or a piece of cloth or whatever)", the 
idiomatic meaning being that you try to clear your view by ingenious 
arguments, thereby in fact obscuring it because you do not like what you 
see in the first place.

> Besides, this rule is just plain silly.
>   
> Suppose I happen to know that there is something on my CC, yet I can't 
> remember what. By this rule I should be obliged to say "I don't 
> remember", have my partner get UI, have the opponents get MI?
>   

No, you should tell oppos to look on the CC, leaving partner in the dark 
whether you remember correctly or not, giving no MI whatsoever (which 
you would not have done by saying "I don`t remember" either, by the way. 
Since you give no information, what MI can there be?). Which you know 
perfectly well.

> I'd rather choose (even by random), say "it's that", and if I remember 
> correctly I have given no UI, no MI, and I haven't even shown to have 
> broken the rule written above. Are you going to get a mind-reader in 
> to determine that I willfully broke this regulation? And if you do 
> find out, what are you going to rule? Insist on me getting it wrong? 
> Write down a bottom anyway?
>   

Why should I? If it is on the CC then it is your agreement. So you gave 
no UI, no MI. But if you guessed wrong you gave MI and loads of UI, 
making either a disaster or an unfavourable ruling practically certain. 
Where is the sense in that?

> And then again: suppose I am only 95% certain. Should I refrain from 
> saying what I think?
>   

Yes. Just tell them to look on the CC. Where is the problem with that?

> Come on, this rule is badly thought out, unworkable in practice, never 
> followed, and applicable to one country only (well, two). 

Herman, the speeding rules on our streets are badly thought out, 
unworkable in practice, never followed, and most of it is applicable 
only for my country (which is a very good thing for a lot of other 
countries). What do you think will happen when I am caught speeding? 
Even if I am prepared to pay the fine, does that make my behaviour right?

The main problem with the Bridge rules is that the fallible part (i.e. 
the players) is intractable, unwilling to follow them, often bad at 
thinking, and that is applicable just about everywhere. Oh, most of them 
don`t do it on purpose, they just can`t be bothered to learn the rules, 
let alone follow them. It seems to me that most (if not all) problems 
you see with certain laws is not so much in the law itself but in what 
the people do with it. Sorry, I don`t think one of us can change that. 
If you want to make rules that 95% of the players can apply, just tell 
them to generate UI any chance they get, hesitate with random holdings, 
talk about hands in a loud voice, ask questions when it is not their 
turn and do a couple of other things that every TD sees constantly. That 
should make a lot of people happy. Every serious player will quit, of 
course, and so would you and I.

> And you are 
> going to use that to counter my argumentation? Sorry, i'm not convinced.
>
>
>   
I gathered as much. Herman, does the fact that you are alone on this 
tell you anything? Could it be that the majority is right? Being in the 
majority is no guarantee for being right, true, but until now the only 
arguments for your approach were that "our" approach can lead to 
problems (no one denied that, but so can your approach, and rather more 
of them in my opinion) and (I hope to quote you right, but this is from 
memory, the original mal is gone) you "choose to believe that the 
wording of the existing laws allow it", while the rest of this list ( as 
far as they participated in this thread) could point to the existing 
laws as a basis why this is not the case. Whether you, me, my neighbour 
or George W. Bush consider any one rule silly or not does not take 
anything away from the fact that it is the rule, regardless what anyone 
thinks about it, and will remain so until it is changed.
There are problems in the application of the current rules, and there 
may even be parts of your approach that can help us there, that has to 
be considered at length and quite impartially (as far as such a process 
is possible with human beings), but my firm opinion is that a) your 
approach is in conflict with the current rules at least some of the time 
and b) the procedures as you envision them do not work on a fairly big 
percentage of everyday situations. I think that you jeopardize your 
chances of being heard and making a contribution to the betterment of 
our rules by being, shall we say, inflexible. Which is, in itself, not 
good, because everybody should be heard.