[blml] Any redress or rub of the green

[Eric Landau]

At 01:14 PM 4/20/07, Nigel wrote:

>[Eric landau]
>You are not *required* to protect yourself here, but if you do not, you
>abrogate any claim to have been misinformed. You are perfectly
>entitled to fail to protect yourself, hoping that doing so will work to
>your advantage at the table. That's the case here: you made a tactical
>decision not to protect yourself, hoping to gain by increasing the
>chance of your opponents having a bidding misunderstanding. In return,
>you gave up any potential redress for MI by not taking action at the
>point you knew for sure that you had been given some. Nice
>try. Better luck next time.
>
>[nige1]
>
>Again adding insult to injury.

What injury?  Just because your opponents have given you misinformation 
that doesn't obligate them to have a bidding misunderstanding for your 
benefit.  Knowing that you've been given misinformation, you can get 
out of their way and hope they do, but that doesn't mean you get 
redress if they don't.

>IMO, what is written on a convention card should be taken as a pair's
>agreement -- even if both players have subsequently forgotten it or have
>agreed" something else. A player should never be penalized for relying
>on the accuracy of his opponents' convention card.

What is disclosed "in accordance with the regulations of the sponsoring 
organization" (L40B) should be taken as a pair's agreement.  The SO 
"may prescribe a convention card" (L40E1), but that doesn't make it a 
sacred text that automatically takes precedence over all other forms of 
disclosure "in accordance with the regulations" (unless, of course, the 
SO says so in its regs).  If you are aware that the opponents 
convention cards differ so that (at least) one of them contains MI 
perforce, you cannot claim damage regardless of which one was accurate 
by invoking some "right" to "rely on the accuracy" of whichever one you 
choose.  It makes no legal difference  (absent a specific reg from the 
SO) that the "disclosure 'in accordance'" came from one opponent via 
the CC and from the other via the alert procedure.  You still know that 
you have MI from one or the other.

>Also, it is ludicrous that, in order to obtain redress, you must
>"protect yourself" by asking about a bid that opponents seem to have
>forgotten to alert.

The time to restore equity that has been disturbed by an infraction is 
when you become aware of the disturbance.  Knowing you have MI, you can 
get your equity protected by calling the director.
But you cannot fail to do so, hoping to gain "through subsequent action 
taken by an opponent" (L11A), and then, when the hoped-for bidding 
misunderstanding fails to materialize, change your mind and decide you 
want your equity back now.

>Why are the victims of putative infractions expected to ask such
>kamikaze questions that may
>* wake up opponents to a misunderstanding?

If you fear that you will wake them up to a misunderstanding, you are 
perfectly free to keep your knowledge of their MI infraction to 
yourself and hope that this will induce them to have one.  But doing so 
does not entitle you to the result of such a misunderstanding if they 
don't actually have one.  You can obtain redress for the MI at the 
point it becomes known.  You cannot obtain "redress" for their not 
having a bidding misunderstanding only after it becomes known that they 
didn't have one.  That's the whole point of L11A.

Or you can call attention to the MI when you become aware of it (when 
you get the second of the two contradictory disclosures), restore 
equity at that point, and play bridge.  But you don't get the double 
shot, hoping for them to fall off a cliff then asking redress if they 
don't.

>* reassure opponents that they are on the same wavelength?

You can only "reassure [them] that they are on the same wavelength" if 
indeed they are.  In which case you are entitled to be on that 
wavelength too.  Which is what transpires when you call attention to 
the MI.  And if they're not on the same wavelength, at least one of 
them already knows it, and the other, if he doesn't, may find himself 
under UI restrictions.

>* provide unauthorised information to partner that he must lean over
>backwards to ignore?

UI to partner?  What UI?  The disambiguation may be UI to one of your 
opponents, but your partner is just as entitled to know the opponents 
methods as you are.  All you've done is point out a manifest 
contradiction in the opponents' disclosure -- that isn't even passing 
"I" to partner.

>Even under current rules where the victim merits no redress, surely the
>law-breaker deserve some sanction? In practice, too often, the director
>simply castigates the victim for not protecting himself but leaves the
>law-breaker unpenalized, encouraged by his ill-gotten gains.

Nigel seems to think that he is entitled to *something* extra if the 
opponents *don't* have the bidding misunderstanding he hopes for, 
calling the difference "ill-gotten gains" and himself a "victim" of 
their failure to bid themselves into a zero.  It is not against the law 
not to have a bidding misunderstanding, even if you've given MI that 
might cause your opponent to hope that you will.  "Ill-gotten gains" 
come from inflicting damage on your opponents, not from failing to 
inflict damage on yourself.


Eric Landau                     ehaa at starpower.net
1107 Dale Drive                 (301) 608-0347
Silver Spring MD 20910-1607