Laws of bridge (1)

A committee has started the process to consider proposals for a new version of the laws to be launched in a couple of years. This is not an easy job, since there are many different ideas in many aspects of how to develop our laws. I am interested in the opinion of bridge players and it is my intention to write a series of short articles in the bulletins describing an issue and asking for your ideas. Please speak up.

Let us start with something revolutionary. You know that the laws describe in detail the penalties for many irregularities. For example after a bid out of turn there are at least six different descriptions in detail, depending on the exact situation.

What do you think about the following: we abandon the approach with penalties prescribed in detail for every specific infraction, but follow the more general approach of irregularities possibly causing unauthorized information for partner which he may not use. So after a bid out of turn left hand opponent gets the choice to accept this bid. If he does not accept, the bid is taken away, the auction continues normally, the player may make any call he wants, but partner may not use the information available from the bid out of turn.

Such an approach will diminish the number of laws, but not necessarily make the TD's job easier. Instead of automatic penalties there will be more judgement cases to be dealt with. So more situations in which disputes will arise.

What is your opinion?

Keep the automatic penalties, with different weights of the consequences for the results or no penalties and the judgement of the TD involved to prevent unjustified advantage for the infringing side?

Ton Kooijman