A few years ago in the Open Swiss, I played against Wolff and Morse.
I held some kind of medium hand with 2-2 in the black suits. Partner
opened 1S, Morse on my right doubled, and I bid 1N. Partner alerted
and explained it as a transfer to clubs, which was our agreement - I
had forgotten. He bid 2C, and I corrected to 2S. After Morse led, as
I was putting down the dummy, I said something like "I misbid,
sorry." Wolff called the director and when the director arrived, said
something like "This is bad for bridge" in an exasperated tone. I was
"this" close to asking for a zero tolerance penalty against an eight-
time Bermuda Bowl winner.
Sheesh, the Laws protect you if you are misled by misinformation, or
if the opponents wake up to their misbids through unauthorized
sources. On a bad day, my partner will have a club stack and not stop
bidding until we go for a number. THAT is our punishment, not a
penalty just for being there.
In contrast, a few years earlier, playing ironically with the same
partner against Kerry Smith and Jeff Schuett, he opened 2NT, weak with
the minors. I bid 3C, to play. He bid 3D. Everybody smiled. No
director call, nothing about being "bad for bridge."
(Yes, obviously I bid 3N, since partner's response to my shutout bid
could only be explained by his having forgotten our methods, and
having opened 2N with a strong balanced hand. I think he made ten
tricks.)
On May 1, 8:58=A0am, John Blubaugh <jbluba...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Apr 30, 8:31=A0pm, David Babcock <d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > > and CD
> > > (Convention Disruption) have no basis in Law (AFAIK)
>
> > and we learned last September that this won't change for the next ten
> > years, so we all will continue to have random results at the table
> > because of opponents who play methods they cannot remember or even
> > understand, partly because they have never suffered any adverse
> > consequence except the bad result when it happens. =A0I won't go so
far
> > as to applaud dealing with this outside the Laws, but I can certainly
> > understand some of the appeal (so to speak) that Wolff may have in
> > some quarters.
>
> > David
>
> I had many of those "Convention Disruptiion" discussions with Wolff. I
> said that I thought it was a disconnect with the new and developing
> players who would feel really badly for being punished when learing
> something new. Wolff responded, "Who cares about them? I only care
> about top level bridge." Unfortunately for Uncle Big Bad, the laws
> don't make any distinction between new and developing players and "top
> level" players. Kaplan always said that he refused to punish people
> when they forget something when they would not be punished if they
> intentially psyched the bid.
>
> Kaplan always told me that he could find something in the laws to make
> just about any ruling that he wanted to make. Wolff didn't want to
> bother with looking or paying any attention to any rules. I believe
> people live their lives about the same way as they play bridge. :-)
>
> JB
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