Re: Lost

On Sun, Jan 21, 2018, Robert Frick wrote:
>
> On Sun, 21 Jan 2018, Steve Willner wrote:
>
> > On 2018-01-21 4:35 PM, Robert Frick wrote:
> >> But West was supposed to hesitate for ten seconds, and that's what
> >> she did. So how is that EI?
> >
> > That's up to the Director to determine.  The critical question For L16B
> > is whether East, though West's actions, knows something extraneous about
> > West's hand or not.
>
> Extraneous: Not part of the lawful procedures of
> the game.
>
> West was supposed to hesitate for 10 seconds. She did. How are you going to interpret that as extraneous?
>
> .A player may use information in the auction or
> play if ...
> (c) it is ... arising from the legal
> procedures authorized in these laws and in
> regulations ...
>


Concerning ACBL regulation and practice over skip bids:  Seems to me
that some important issues in this thread have been ignored.

When a 10-second pause is authorized by explicit regulation, and a
0-second pause is almost universally risk-free in practice by ACBL
directors, then it seems that all pauses from 0 seconds to 10 seconds
or so are de facto legal procedures in the ACBL, and therefore cannot
cause any EI.  Any delay from 0 seconds to about 10 seconds is deemed
EI-free in practice.

Players can freely take 0 seconds when they already know what they
want to do, because "everyone" does it and there is no penalty.  Why
even call the director?  The beauty of the system is that a player can
still take 10 seconds when he does have a problem, because that case
is explicitly authorized by law.  Any length of delay from zero to ten
is there de facto EI-free.  Ugly result.

But it is even worse than that, in my view.  If you really take 10
seconds, many opps will say that you took longer than 10 seconds, or
even "much longer", so a policy of an automatic 10-second delay is
risky.  I speak from unfortunate experience.  Better to keep your
delays from zero to six seconds.  A range of 0-7 seconds, freely
allowing the higher end when you need it, is probably safer than a
range of 9-10 seconds in all cases, supposing one could manage such a
tight range.

Have I summarized the ACBL way correctly?  Would anyone like to
support the ACBL on this?

Jerry Fusselman
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