[blml] SF NABC #13

[Adam Beneschan]

Richard Hills wrote:
 
> Adam Beneschan:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >The committee here decided that it wasn't clear what the hesitation
> >suggested, so they refused to adjust.  My feeling is that the
> >committee shouldn't have had to figure out what the hesitation
> >suggested; the call chosen by the hesitator's partner was abnormal
> >enough (assuming no extraneous information) that the committee
> >should have just presumed it was based on UI,
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Richard Hills:
> 
> In my opinion this philosophy is an aggravated sub-case of "If it
> hesitates, shoot it", the dreaded Rule of Coincidence.

Yeah, I was aware of the similarities of my idea to both the "If it
hesitates, shoot it" philosophy and the RoC.  I'm not a fan of either
or those.

Normally, though, when we deal with hesitation cases where the
hestiation may not suggest a particular action, we're not dealing with
an action taken by the hesitator's partner that seems bizarre.  And
normally, when we talk about Rule of Coincidence cases, we're talking
about a case where one partner takes some strange action, and the
other partner takes some other strange action in the opposite
direction, and it happens to work out, *BUT* there is no overt
hesitation or UI.   

This case seems, to me, to be the intersection of those two: a case of
"Rule of if it hesitates and there's a Coincidence, then shoot it".
If there had been no hesitation, this auction would certainly look a
lot like a typical RoC case.  My thinking here was that in a case like
this, since there *was* overt UI, there's just too much coincidence
for there to be a real coincidence.  I think one could make a case
that while we shouldn't "shoot" all hesitations just because they
occur, and that we shouldn't "shoot" all coincidences just because
they happen, the combination of these two is different---the two put
together provide sufficient evidence that there was an infraction.

                                -- Adam