Fabian and I tried our luck in an EBU tournament last week. We had a fair amount of Polish Club auctions and interesting decisions. I hope you like it.
PS sorry again about Board 7. 🙁
Fabian and I tried our luck in an EBU tournament last week. We had a fair amount of Polish Club auctions and interesting decisions. I hope you like it.
PS sorry again about Board 7. 🙁
Comments
5 responses to “Video: gwnn and Hupenmann try an EBU tournament”
Can someone in authority comment on basing a call on partner’s tempo.
You don’t need an authority such as a TD to figure this out. Here is the law itself:
16B:
B. Extraneous Information from Partner
1. Any extraneous information from partner that might suggest a call or play is unauthorized.
This includes remarks, questions, replies to questions, unexpected alerts or failures to alert,
unmistakable hesitation, unwonted speed, special emphasis, tone, gesture, movement or
mannerism.
(a) A player may not choose a call or play that is demonstrably suggested over another by
unauthorized information if the other call or play is a logical alternative.
(b) A logical alternative is an action that a significant proportion of the class of players in
question, using the methods of the partnership, would seriously consider, and some
might select.
The common wisdom is that you need to “ignore” partner’s tempo. But that is not correct. You need to do the following:
1) notice partner’s tempo and figure out what it means.
2) think of which of your actions can be helped by that meaning.
3) choose another action.
On Board 9, I had a pretty good hand for diamonds, so my logical alternatives were pass and 4D (maybe 3NT, but whatever). But given that my partner’s 3D call was very slow, I had reason to believe that his hand was stronger than an average 3D call, so me raising to 4D would be suggested by his slow action. So, I chose to pass to avoid the call suggested by the pass.
Is it clear?
My quote was: “he took some time to bid 3D. I have to take that into account. (…) no, you’re not supposed to ignore it. you’re supposed to take it into account and try to think what it suggests, and then do the opposite.”
I also commented on my in-tempo pass on Board 9, which means that I passed 0 unauthorised information to my partner. This meant that he could do whatever he wanted, and he chose to re-evaluate his hand into a 5D call.
I also mentioned tempo on Board 11, where my partner took a while before the 5S call. However, it had no impact on my decision – I was going to pass 5S no matter what my partner’s tempo suggests.
TL; DR: you have to figure out what your partner’s tempo suggests; then choose only such a call that is demonstrably NOT more likely to work due to it.
Unauthorized and director should be called as they can rollback the bidding. I had a director do this and the opp who did never came back to our club game!
Again, if you watch the video, I am not talking about taking advantage of partner’s hesitation; I am talking about the exact opposite.
1) notice the hesitation
2) figure out what it suggests and which of your actions would take advantage of it
3) do not do any of the actions from the list in 2.
For example:
1S-(2H)-2S-(3H)
slow pass -p-?
If partner took a while before passing 3H, it usually means they were thinking of bidding 3S but decided against that. As 3rd hand, unless there is absolutely no doubt in your mind that 3S is the 100% clear bid, you have to pass so as to carefully avoid taking advantage of partner’s hesitation.
“I am ignoring partner’s tempo” is not carefully avoiding taking advantage of it. It is often just an excuse.
The same exact principle applies in defence, where you get some idea about partner’s holdings due to tempo issues. If there is an alternative defence that is based on some other holding than what you now know partner has, you have to take this alternative defence. Etc.
Just to be crystal clear, what I meant is you have to not just ignore partner’s hesitations, but to “do the opposite”. Look through your options and choose that one that is least likely to succeed given the extraneous information you received.
For further information, look through this blog post by Andrew Gumperz, with some examples as well:
https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/tempo-and-bridge-ethics/
A key quote is:
There is an irony about the process I have suggested. In step 2, I ask you to consider what your partner’s UI means. That is, I am asking you to intentionally read your partner’s BIT rather than ignore it! This seems odd to many, but it is an important part of actively refusing to exploit UI.
It seems quite counterintuitive, I agree, but it is what Law 16B actually requires of us. My preferred interpretation is “figure out what it means and pretend you heard the opposite.”
I might make a video about this if I find a good way to breach the subject; it is a little dry, but it is also something that many bridge players get wrong.