[blml] club director torment

[Robert Frick]

To make a long story short, following an insufficient bid of 1C, I thought  
LHO's two choices were "accept or not accept the insufficient bid". She  
waited until after the insufficient bidder had decided on a  
rectification-free 2C replacement, then tried to exercise her right to  
accept the insufficient bid or the 2C replacement.

The general question is: How much information is LHO entitled to before  
making a decision?

The laws, at least to me, seem clearly on my side, with a few niggling  
details to clear up. I do not feel an obligation to voluntarily tell her  
all of the Law 27, but if she had asked, I would have. It is obviously AI.  
I am obviously being an illegal memory aid, but no one pays strict  
attention to that law. I would have let her look at the opp's convention  
card or ask what bids mean, even though I don't think it was her turn to  
bid. That's another not-quite-right rule.

That leaves things like whether she can wait to find out what the  
replacement call will be, or if she can find out my decisions about  
replacement calls that do not bar partner.

Fortunately, our club has a copy of "Duplicate Decisions", which is  
published by the ACBL and often incorporates opinions (or whatever they  
are) of the ACBL LC. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear that I first rule  
on whether the IB and the potential replacement call (old rules) are  
conventional, then she makes her decision.

(And don't get me started about the rule that I am supposed to first ask  
if her insufficient bid was inadvertant. Isn't that just an invitation to  
lie? I did. She said it was inadvertant, the opps said it wasn't, creating  
a squabble. I felt I had to rule for inadvertency, even though I didn't  
actually trust her. Then she tried to correct to 2NT instead of 1C. I  
decided I didn't have to accept that. Then the opps said, at the table,  
that she was not telling the truth, THANK YOU ACBL!)

Time for a third opinion, this time from the ACBL's Club Directors  
Handbook. Yep, I get a third opinion -- explain all of the laws before she  
makes her choice.

Fortunately, there is an ACBL tournament director playing at the game, so  
I can get a fourth opinion. As coincidence would have it, she was LHO.

Fortunately, I can ask rulings at acbl.org. Unfotunately, it is my experience  
that they do not like questions like this. Also, how many questions can I  
ask before I am officially on their pest list?

Fortunately, I can ask at IBLF. They like questions like this.  
Unfortunately, I worry that they portray opinion as fact, but maybe I will  
go there.

I don't know if I can ask at BLML. This was probably discussed X  
months/years ago and there was no consensus. Or maybe this will start a  
discussion, and what is the chance of consensus?

Hmm, I can read through 8 years worth of minutes of meetings of Law  
Commissions/Committees. Sorry to say this, but I have not seen a WBFLC  
opinion (or whatever) that I liked.

Maybe I shouldn't be spending all of today running my  
obsessive-compulsive-perfectionistic programs and trying to figure out if  
there even is a right ruling or how I would find that out. Maybe I should  
just take for granted that if I make a ruling, a higher up will probably  
judge it "wrong" and there is nothing I can do in advance to avoid that.  
Maybe no one really expects club directors to do anything more than apply  
their own interpretation of the laws.

Or, as you all know, the laws are pretty good, but they aren't great, and  
there is no good way of handling the ambiguities.

Bob