[blml] Situation normal, all...

[David Burn]

[DALB]

But suppose that North has a rather less clear-cut decision to make - say he
has xx KJ10xx Axxx Ax and responds 1H to 1H. With North permitted  
to bid a natural and game-forcing 2H, a call that would not normally form
part of his bidding methods unless he is the ghost of Alvin Roth, his
partnership reaches a slam on minimum values. Now the Director must:

ask them how they would have bid the hand if North had realised that his
partner had opened; and

decide whether or not to believe the answer.

This is not good, nor is it "bridge-like".

[EL]

What, one wonders, makes it less "good", or less "'bridge-like'", than any
other routine potential L12 adjustment for which the director must make a
judgment as to what would have happened "had the infraction not occurred"?

[DALB]

Even were I to answer "nothing" to this question, it would not imply that I
consider it other than abominable for:

directors and appeals committees to have to spend their time listening to
players who have broken the rules saying "we would have got the same result
anyway";

players who break the rules to be in a position where they either gain or do
not lose.

That is, I consider what Eric calls "routine L12 adjustments" to be almost
as bad and as un-bridge-like as it is possible to be. They are without
precedent in any kind of game or sport; to my way of thinking, they are
repugnant to the nature of a game or sport.

But I am aware that this is a minority opinion, and I am aware that the
Lawmakers have long since taken the staggeringly foolish view that (in
effect) players who break the rules by accident should be in a position
where they do not lose thereby. There are measures to ensure as far as
possible that they do not gain (L12 and L27D, for example), and those
measures might very well be successful in environments populated entirely by
(a) scrupulously ethical players and (b) wholly competent umpires. Vast
quantities of table salt having recently been discovered on Mars, perhaps
such bridge-playing environments will soon be discovered there also, but one
thing is certain: they do not exist on Earth.

Even though "routine L12 adjustments" are not good and are not
"bridge-like", the kind of adjustments that are supposed to be made under
L27 are less good and less "bridge-like" simply because they allow an
offending side a freedom of action that would not be available to them but
for their infraction; moreover, it is a freedom of action from which they
may very well profit. This does not happen in the case of any other kind of
infraction at bridge, nor any kind of infraction at all at any other game.

David Burn
London, England