[blml] San Diego Lightfoot Sue [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Guthrie]

[Ricahrd Hills: Spingold Teams, San Diego 1994]
Dlr: North Vul: None
\         JT93
   \       AQJ98
     \     98
       \   62
---     \              AQ4
KT3       \            752
QT765       \          32
T9753         \        AKQJ8
           K87652\
           64      \
           AKJ4      \
           4           \
WEST      NORTH     EAST      SOUTH
---       Pass      1NT       2C(1)
2D(2)     Pass      2H        2S
3C        4S        5C        Pass
Pass      Dble      Pass      Pass
Pass
(1) Alerted on both sides of the screen
as a one-suited hand
(2) Alerted by *East* as a transfer to
hearts

Result: North led the HA.  Five clubs went down one trick, +100 to 
North-South.

Facts: 2D was alerted on the North and East side of the screen as a 
Jacoby Transfer to hearts.

Director's Ruling: North asked for a score adjustment based on the
misinformation given during the auction. The director (Cukoff) awarded 
North-South +300 (down two) for misinformation from diverging 
explanations. East-West appealed claiming there was a mistaken bid not 
a misexplanation. Committee Decision: East-West produced system notes 
(typeset) clearly showing that their *agreement* was that 2D was a
Jacoby Transfer bid. Thus, what occurred was a misbid rather than a
misexplanation. The director, who did not see the system notes, made 
the correct ruling based on the assumption of a misexplanation.

After the 2H bid, West told South, his screenmate, that there may have 
been a misunderstanding. The Committee felt that, based on the 
information North had, the lead of the HA was strongly indicated.

If 2D was clearly a transfer, according to the system notes, then West
misbid and there's no infraction.  The fact that West forgot the
system during the auction (and made incorrect statements to South
about the system) was irrelevant, in the face of the hard evidence of
the system notes.


The Committee unanimously restored the original table result, +100 for 
North-South. The Committee voted to impose a procedural penalty 
against East-West to restore equity for a conventional mix-up 
resulting directly in damage to the innocent side. The Committee voted 
three to two to impose a five IMP procedural penalty, Weinstein and 
Ross dissented (they were in favour of a three IMP penalty).

The laws are clear that when the offenders can *prove* they misbid, 
rather than misexplained, no adjustment is given. Thus, restoring the 
original result was mandated by the laws.

The laws and other Committee guidelines are less clear about the 
imposition of procedural penalties. The Committee discussed this issue 
at length. The majority felt that the principle of "restoration of 
equity" was of primary importance. (A National Co-Chairman of the NABC 
Appeals Committee provided, at the request of the Committee, a 
directive from the ACBL Board of Directors that the Committee's 
primary responsibility was to *restore equity*.) They felt that the 
"rub of the green" concept was invalid because the East-West mix-up 
*directly caused North-South to lose a trick*. They also felt the 
fluke of the screen alignment should not damage the innocent side.

Some members felt North-South were disadvantaged because only South 
was told of a "possible misunderstanding". Others argued that since 
West was under no (legal) obligation to say *anything*, he should not 
be penalized for helping only one opponent. The rebuttal was that this 
was contrary to the concept of "active ethics".

The minority (who will comment separately) agreed that a procedural 
penalty was in order, but wanted to impose the "standard" three IMP 
penalty for a damaging conventional mix-up. They felt a larger penalty 
would subvert the laws as written.

Additional comments from the Committee chairman, Bart Bramley:
I have always disliked the legal distinction between a misbid and a 
misexplanation. The result in either case is a "partnership bidding 
error", regardless of which partner is "right". The effect on the 
innocent side is identical; they usually don't care who is "right".

I understand the law is necessary to protect certain occurrences at 
the table, including intentional misbids (psyches) and mechanical
errors (e.g., pulling the wrong bid from the bidding box). I don't 
understand why conventional mix-ups should fall under the umbrella of
protection afforded by this part of the law.

Damage is often severe when, as in this case, one partner thinks 
"natural" and the other "artificial". (A disproportionate number of 
these mix-ups seem to happen after an opening bid of 1NT.) Frequently, 
a normal bridge result becomes impossible to obtain. This is not how 
we were intended to play. I believe the offending side deserves the 
worst of it when such accidents occur.

The screen alignment was relevant in this case. More often, the screen 
protects the players, but here it damaged them. Just as we sometimes 
ask: "What would have happened with screens?", here we could ask: 
"What would have happened *without* screens?" The answer is obvious. 
North would have been told about the misunderstanding before he
led. (Of course, East-West might have a hard time justifying their 
auction after unauthorized information from the Alert. But that's a
different problem.)

Perhaps we can devise a simple mechanical solution to allow a player 
to interrogate each opponent independently behind screens. This would
be useful in long constructive sequences involving relays or fancy 
versions of Blackwood. The fact that your opponents (or your partner)
know that you are asking questions would not generally help any of 
them, but the answers could definitely help you. You could interrogate 
in this way anytime you suspected a mix-up.

Dissenting opinion by Hugh Ross:
West forgot a convention (which is legal). His partner bid impeccably 
subsequent to the misbid. West Alerted South that there was a possible
misunderstanding before South bid 2S (unnecessarily in my opinion). 
West did not say anything to North prior to the opening lead, since 
the law specifically states that he does not have to. I do not believe 
any offense was committed by West. The Committee attempted to find out 
if a misbid is an offense but got no help on this point from anyone.

Misbids have the identical effect as uncontrolled psyches. Why should 
a deliberate misbid carry no penalty, whereas an inadvertent should be
penalized? The game itself provides penalties in the long run for 
psyching or misbidding; why should the police be adding additional 
penalties?

Although the Committee believed an offense was committed, they made no 
effort to determine its effect on the subsequent auction. A good case 
can be made that the misbid allowed South an easier entry into the 
auction than he would have had if West had bid correctly. No attempt 
was made to find out what West would have bid if he had remembered his 
conventions. In this sense, North-South were not necessarily damaged 
to the extent of five IMPs.

Sensing the mood of the majority of the Committee, and not knowing for 
sure whether an offense had been committed or not, I voted for a three 
IMP penalty as the best I could expect to get. I believe no penalty 
was justified. Miscarriages of justice like this ruling will continue 
to occur until Committees get proper guidelines on how to deal with 
common situations like this.

Minority response by Howard Weinstein: As opposed to Hugh Ross' 
minority report, I agree in principle with the Committee's decision. 
As much as I dislike the legal differentiation between a misbid and a 
misexplanation (Bart and I are in almost complete agreement on this 
point), assessing a procedural penalty to match the likely IMP 
difference caused by the misbid is too heavy handed a method to 
produce equity.

Though the Committee decision had no bearing on the match result, 
there has been considerable "feedback" on the Committee decision. 
Several questions on policy posed by the Committee received differing 
responses from various authorities after the Committee was held.  The
fact we had these questions on policy and differing responses needs to 
be discussed.

As long as the laws apparently cannot be written to provide equity 
when an unintentional misbid is made (i.e. forgetting or not knowing 
what conventions/treatments you're playing), should we try to provide 
equity through other means such as procedural penalties? This should 
be a stated goal or non-goal given to all Committees. The Committee 
should not have to try to determine policy, only to produce the 
quitable ruling under the current policy. In order to provide
consistent rulings there must be a published reference of guidelines 
covering both the objectives and ranges of remedies in situations
where the laws do not explicitly express such remedies. The Laws 
Commission, Co-Chairmen of NABC Appeals, and the top directors must 
agree on whether equity is our ultimate objective and when the laws 
fail to provide equity, specify the Committee's range of legal options.

Another question that might be addressed is whether active ethics does 
now (or should) provide that a player correct a conventional mix-
up or differing explanation to the opponents after the auction is 
complete, regardless of who screwed up.

One other area also relating to this Committee is the apparent legal 
distinction between being able to assess a procedural penalty against 
a partnership for not knowing their agreements, and not being able to 
assess a procedural penalty if a player just forgets a convention. 
This legal distinction seems specious at best.

The Committee spent the majority of its time trying to determine 
"policy" from knowledgeable sources and a smaller part of its time on 
the actual bridge situation. The answers given in Committee to our 
questions on current policy were apparently very nebulous. The 
ommittee shouldn't be in this position.

Chairperson - Bart Bramley Members - Bob Lipsitz, Howard Weinstein, 
Hugh Ross, George Steiner

[Richard Hills]
Even under the 1987 Lawbook which applied for this 1994 appeal, the 
Law 75 footnote stated that for a misbid "there is no infraction of law".

So the question begging that the committee majority and its chairman 
got tangled up in was referring to "offenders" and "offending side".

If a side has not infracted law, they ipso facto cannot be an 
"offending side", but must instead be a "non-offending side". So 
therefore they are not subject to Law 90, which only permits a 
procedural penalty to be applied for an "offence".


[Nige1]
I understand that most BLMLers feel that this sort of ruling is 
contrary to the law but I've a lot of sympathy for a brave Committee 
who try to uphold "Equity" (stubbornly sticking to the dictionary 
meaning of the word -- roughly "justice" "fairness").

[A] Whenever I've served on a committee, I've always had the director 
confirm that our decision was in accord with the law. This committee 
tried hard to do that. If their decision was  illegal it was certainly 
not their fault.

[B] It is amazing how often pairs adopt exotic conventions with hazy 
meanings that they are prone to forget. They trot out what is, in 
effect a "random overcall", when not vulnerable, especially against 
vulnerable opponents. I feel that Scandinavia have got it right, if as 
Sven (I think) said: when "Guess them" and similar conventions are 
abused in this way, they rule misinformation rather than misbid.

[C] A reputation for such efforts can benefit the secretary bird in 
several ways.

(C1) Some jurisdictions stupidly expect a pair to protect themselves, 
by asking about seemingly absurd bids that are not alerted. When the 
bid was, in fact, systemically natural, the partner of the asker then 
  has to lean over backwards not to take advantage of resulting 
unauthorised information. Typically, this results in severe damage to 
his own side.

(C2) When you suspect a misexplanation, you have to pull in your horns 
because daft jurisdictions will deny you redress if your normally 
exuberant and aggressive style of bidding is considered to be "wild 
and gambling." It it turns out that opponents have committed no 
offence, then you suffer damage by losing the game or slam that your 
normal methods would reach.

[D] The current law rewards those who can convincingly claim misbid 
rather than misexplanation. Often the misbid/misexplanation arises 
because of a recent proposal to change to the system -- so it is easy 
to produce authentic "system-notes" to substantiate the old or new 
meaning, as appropriate.

[E] Hence, IMO, in such a case, the CONVENTION CARD should be 
photocopied immediately and used as the *primary* source of 
information about a current agreement -- especially for a bizarre 
agreement that may require a special defence.

IMO, this illustrates the unfortunate legal trend -- not only to 
over-reward law-breaking (e.g. with L12C3 fudges) -- but also to 
encourage "economy with the truth".