[blml] Misbids, infractions, and Wolffs, oh my...

[Grattan Endicott]

Grattan Endicott
grandeval at vejez.fsnet .co.uk
[also gesta at tiscali.co.uk]
*************************
"Progress is not an accident but
 a necessity."
                      {Herbert Spencer}
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Gampas at aol.com>
To: <blml at amsterdamned.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 2:42 AM
Subject: Re: [blml] Misbids, infractions, and Wolffs, oh my...


>> the position  of the AC
>> seems to be that misbids related to conventions are  always
>> infractions ......   Hans van Staveren wants to mobilize Dutch
.>> TDs to action against the AC  and mentioned (in a talk with
>> Grattan Endicott at the open Europeans  in  Antalya) the
>> possibility of TD strike (!).
>
> I believe that the laws should be followed by any AC, regardless
> of its opinion on their correctness.
>
<
+=+It was not only Hans who came to talk to me. I heard
something of one particular case from both sides of the debate.
Although it was evident the matter was causing feelings to
become aroused, I did not fully grasp the background position
as it is suggested to be in this correspondence.
     If the national AC is not prepared to listen to Ton Kooijman
on the subject I do not see why it should listen to me. But what
I read is bizarre. Case by case, one at a time, ACs can decide
lawfully that there is a misexplanation rather than a misbid. The
facts must be assessed since the laws do not provide for a blanket
ruling that every case of a hand failing to comply with the disclosed
meaning of a bid can be automatically ruled a misexplanation when
 that bid is conventional. There is no authority in the laws for that,
and if that were the basis of a ruling sufficiently affecting a win/lose
situation to incur referral externally to a Committee of Arbitration
for Sport (CAS) it would seem wholly unlikely that the AC ruling
could stand. At the least one would expect the ruling to be referred
back to the AC for reconsideration of the facts in relation to a
correct understanding of the laws of the game.
        Since the Dutch, in my experience, are meticulous observers
of the ethics I can hope that the basis of the ruling is in truth other
than as has been asserted in this thread.
                                                           ~ Grattan ~   +=+