[blml] Interaction between L27B1 and L10C1

[Eric Landau]

On Apr 1, 2008, at 12:05 PM, Stefanie Rohan wrote:

>>> SR:
>>>
>>> Well, no. Neither player has opened 1H; really they have both
>>> responded 1H.
>>> As long as there has been no UI offered, there is no difference
>>> between the
>>> facts at the tables.
>
> EL:
>
>> So it would seem, to the casual observer.  But L27B1 has established
>> a difference, artificial though one may think it, by requiring the TD
>> to determine the admissability without penalty of a given replacement
>> call (RC) based on the "meaning" of the IB.  That forces us to
>> differentiate between an IBer who "meant" to open and one who "meant"
>> to overcall.
>
> Then, if we consider lying about one's mental state to be cheating,  
> the
> player should probably just answer "no comment". Then the director  
> can make
> a guess, and since the intent of the new Law seems to be to offer more
> penalty-free corrections, then...

Obviously, that was the intention of, at least, the revised new law,  
as it offers all of the previously available penalty-free corrections  
(in L27B1(a)) and adds others (in L27B1(b)).  But it cannot succeed  
in doing so unless the "meaning" of the IB, as defined by the IBer's  
"intent" (actually his specific misperception of the auction at the  
moment of the IB) is known and taken into account.  L27B1(b) requires  
that the meaning of a proposed replacement call "be[] fully contained  
within the possible meanings of the insufficient bid".  Stefanie's  
view would require us to interpret "the possible meanings of the  
insufficient bid" as all of the possible meanings given all of the  
possible intents.  It's really hard to construct a non-trivial  
example in which that interpretation would lead to any bids ever  
meeting that criterion. Consider just the ambiguity between a 1H  
opener or response in Stefanie's example.  As the former would show 13 
+ HCP and the latter 6-10 HCP (or thereabouts), the RC, to meet the  
test of L27B1(b), would have to have a range that was "fully  
contained" within both 13+ and 6-10 simultaneously -- no L27B1(b)  
correction allowed there!  With the IBer's intent known, it is at  
least possible that we will offer one or more additional penalty-free  
corrections beyond those available via the 1997 law or L27B1(a).   
Lack of knowledge of the IBer's intent can only preclude, never add,  
potential L27B1(b) corrections.

And even were the possibilities Stefanie allows for (opening or  
responding) not disjoint, if we don't resolve them to a single  
possibility, how can we take just those that occur to someone other  
than the bidder (presumably the TD) as "likely" or "logical" as a  
starting point?  If we don't know whether they were opening (thought  
they were bidding to P-P-) or responding (to 1C-P- or 1D-P-), how do  
we know they weren't overcalling (P-1C-, say)?  Or even free-bidding  
(1C-1D-)?  (Or even -- God help us! -- overcalling an opponent's IB  
per L27A1?!  And that's not even considering that they may not have  
been attempting to bid at all.)  That makes disjoint possibilities a  
virtual certainty.  IBs in more complex auctions could have hundreds  
of possible meanings, and if you don't base your ruling on the one  
intended by the IBer, you must account for every last one of them!   
Try doing that after, say, P-2S-P-2H (a mere one-round auction to the  
two-level, hardly all that complicated).  I'll even let you use your  
own bidding methods for the exercise, but keep in mind that at the  
table you will have to do this analysis using the IBer's methods.   
I'm confident that actually working that exercise will convince  
anyone that this isn't the approach they want to be taking at the table.

And now that I think of it, you're overwhelmingly likely, somewhere  
in all those possibilities, to find at least one that wouldn't be  
"incontrovertably not artificial", so you'll almost certainly wind up  
with no allowable L27B1(a) correction either!


Eric Landau
1107 Dale Drive
Silver Spring MD 20910
ehaa at starpower.net