Laws of Bridge (1A)

It was interesting to see Ton Kooijman's ideas in Wednesday's Bulletin. When on holiday with Bill ('Kojak') Schoder, WBF Chief TD, in May, we did talk about a thought of deleting the word 'penalty' from the mainstream laws and restricting its use to Laws 90 and 91.

In that way we would arrive in a position where an infraction would lead to consequential sanctions or adjustments described in the relevant Law. These would be independent of procedural penalties applied by the Director in his discretion.

Examining the statement of such a proposition in Law showed that there are difficulties - but our task is to overcome difficulties in implementing whatever we believe to be the optimum effects of the laws. I did draft a definition of 'penalty'
in these terms:

"Penalties are of three kinds:

• Disciplinary - those applied for the maintenance of
  Courtesy and good order.
• Procedural - penalties, additional to any consequential penalty, awarded in the Director's discretion following procedural irregularities.
• Consequential - a reparative award set out in the respective Law as the consequence of the particular
  infraction.

It seems that three of us, Ton, Kojak, and myself, have set our eyes upon the same star, although it may be one at the outer limits of time.

Grattan Endicott

Laws of Bridge (2A)

Reading Ton's second piece on the laws I am encouraged to think that we might get back somewhere close to the European practice under the 1975 laws. At that time our object when adjusting scores in Europe was to produce an outcome for the table that represented in a single score the fairest equity for the two sides that we could judge. The rather crude weighting of scores then operating has since been refined. It has been my constant opinion this approach to score adjustment should be the objective and I hold in scorn the taradiddle about 'at all probable' and 'most likely'; it was due to the strong disenchantment of the 1984 EBL Laws Committee with the extreme adjustments to which Law 12C2 would incline, that Zone 1 fought for the relief now embodied in Law 12C3. As for split scores, there are occasions for them - such occasions as we met in the second appeal at these Championships - but I believe they require to be justified by the facts of the bridge and should not be the norm. Lastly, one of my senior colleagues here in Salso thinks that we should dispense with the word 'equity' in the laws and replace it with some such term as 'fair judgment'.

Grattan Endicott