[blml] Ignorantia juris non excusat

[Brian]

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On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:43:20 -0500
"Jerry Fusselman" <jfusselman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/21/07, Brian <brian at meadows.pair.com> wrote:
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> > On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:33:43 -0500
> > "Jerry Fusselman" <jfusselman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Law 75B is clear and supercedes any dictionary
> > > definition of agreement.
> > >
> >
> > Does it supersede the dictionary definitions of "may" and "will"?
> >
> >
> > Brian.
> >
> 
> No.
> 
> Perhaps you missed my point.  Wayne said, "One player regularly doing
> something does not a partnership agreement make.  You seem to have a
> misunderstanding of the meaning of agreement."  I read that as
> emphasizing the dictionary definition of agreement over the bridge
> laws meaning implied by Law 75B.
> 
> I was also hoping to get some confirmation that it is the director who
> decides what the partnership agreements are for purposes of
> administering the bridge laws.
> 

And this was really my (very poorly made) point, Jerry. The same one as
I've been banging on about in my last few postings. I think that it's
DEEPLY unsatisfactory that the TD determines what the partnership
agreements are according to his own criteria. I want the *players* to
be given some hard and fast guidelines as to when one of these implicit
agreements will magically appear out of thin air. 

Your example (which I've snipped for brevity) of 100 out of 100 1NT
openers with 5M332 obviously crosses any reasonable guidelines, and by
a very long way too. Here I'm on your side rather than Wayne's, if my
partner is going to do this on a regular basis then it's
indistinguishable from an agreement, and my choices are to stop my
partner from doing it, adopt the method as part of our system, or find
a new partner. If I do none of the foregoing, then I might even be
inviting problems from the requirement (in the EBU, at least) that both
partners play the same system. 

What I do find ridiculous, though, is that a very few occurrences can
empower a TD to invent a partnership agreement where none exists. I
really can't accept that my partner and I have an agreement to open 1S
as 11-15 with 5+S or occasionally any random 0-10 in 3rd NV. And I also
don't think it should be down to the individual TD, or even group of
TDs, to decide what the *criteria* should be for an implicit agreement.
Of course the TDs are the people who have to make the judgement as to
whether the criteria have been met, but that's an entirely different
matter. 

Brian. 
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