[blml] Law 27 revisitedd

[David Burn]

[GE]

I question whether it is right to say that the infraction has provided any
such assistance. I do not see the mere creation of circumstances
(application of law) in which something can happen as providing positive
help to the player to reach the contract in which he landed.

[WS]

Thank you Grattan. It's not even close. To try to screw around the laws to
make it less than a "rub of the green" changes the entire game of bridge.. 
I hope we all survive this convoluted thinking and rationalization before
our game goes down the drain. To posit that having to guess, and being lucky
in your guess is not part of the game of bridge is to make it less than the
wonderful game that it is. 

[DALB]

One way of looking at this may be to say that if a pair reach an awful
contract because one of them has to guess what to bid, their opponents have
not been damaged. Surely the opponents will get a bad result when the
contract makes - but occasionally, one gets a bad result at bridge when
one's opponents reach an awful contract in an entirely legal auction. The
"proximate cause" of the damage was not that the opponents guessed to bid an
awful contract (which happened because of the infraction) but that the
contract made (which did not happen because of the infraction, but because
of malign Fate).

The same may apply to cases where a pair reach a good contract because one
of them has to guess what to bid - left to their own devices, they would
have reached a worse contract. The argument is more tenuous here, but the
principle is this: you are not damaged because your opponents are forced to
guess what to do (which happens because of the infraction) but when they
guess correctly (which does not happen because of the infraction, but
because of malign Fate). One could even describe this as the "Rueful Rabbit
Principle" - an opponent does something not because he meant to but because
he was choking on an almond biscuit at the time, but what he did turned out
to be a stroke of genius. Should he keep his result? Of course he should.

This seems to coincide with Eric's view that damage should be measured
against expectation and not against the actual result (unsurprisingly,
perhaps, because it may have been I who suggested the view to him in the
first place). It may also coincide with Ton Kooijman's and Edgar Kaplan's
views on the Battle of Waterloo. What it does not coincide with,
unfortunately, is the wording of the Laws. I would urge that this be
remedied as much as, and as soon as, practicable.

David Burn
London, England