Law 23: Meaning attributable to withdrawn call out of rotation
Last one for a while (probably)...
Received wisdom is that a call out of rotation has a clearly defined meaning, whereas an insufficient bid does not (because it has no meaning in a bidding system).
The examples suggest that the meaning of a call out of rotation is found by assuming passes between the most recent call and the call out of rotation.
So if N bids 2S when it is S (dealer)'s turn to call, the meaning is clearly that of an opening 2S bid.
But if N bids 2S after E's opening 1S, is the meaning attributable a weak opening 2 or a Michaels cue bid - or possibly both?
Do we do the same as we do for IB - try to work out what the call might mean?
Just wondering...
Comments
Pray it never happens!! If it does I think you might need to take offender from the table and ask what they were thinking and go from there. If they don't know they will not be able to tell you what their considered comparable call is ,will they?
We can only do our best and it is unlikely that anyone making this error will have any understanding of the corner they have squeezed you in. That is my opinion and will hide behind my parapet.
My understanding of "attributable" is "a meaning that could plausibly be assigned to the call in the context of the auction" – in some cases there may be multiple, contradictory, attributable meanings. The point is that if you make a call that is comparable to one of those meanings, it clarifies which of those meanings you meant, thus the other meanings have no further impact on the auction (and if your call was a subset or close to it, the intended meaning has no further impact either, as the comparable call gave the same information).
One way to think about it is "the point of the comparable calls rule is to prevent partner gaining information from the withdrawn call – and if the withdrawn call is ambiguous in context, that just makes it provide less information, so it is easier to be comparable with it".