# The Connection Promise: A Referential Sieve Remix

## Main Idea:

What if Alice's connecting plays always promise the connecting card in Bob's hand?

Put another way, what if the unlock promise always applied for Alice's plays?

## Basic Setup

### Good Touch Principle

Touched cards are assumed to be eventually-good until told otherwise. If a touched card could only be immediately playable or trash, it is expected to play.

### Player Names

### Clues (Alice)

Alice's clues to Bob are just as in Referential Sieve, with her giving referential play clues, referential discard clues, trash pushes, and so on.

### Clues (Bob)

Bob's color clues are direct plays, focused on the left-most newly touched card. Additionally, they give the leftmost untouched card permission to discard.

Bob's rank clues are referential discards, similar to referential sieve.

Just like in referential sieve, Bob is permitted to give fill-in play clues, fill-in discard signals (fixes), and rank direct play signals without giving Alice permission to discard cards of unknown quality.

### Connecting Playables

Call a card in Alice's hand a *connecting playable* if:
- its identity is common knowledge,
- it is not a 5, and
- the next card in its suit is not common knowledge in Alice's hand.

### Plays (Bob)

Suppose all of Alice's currently known safe actions are pending connecting playables, and her cards have not all been saved previously. Then Bob playing or discarding any card gives Alice's leftmost unsaved card permission to discard.

### Plays (Alice)

#### The Connection Promise

Alice is expected to take her safe discards and play her nonconnecting playables over playing her connecting playables, unless Bob holds a playable card (either the connection or a bluff target) in the rightmost possible position the connection could be, with touched cards taking precedence over untouched cards.

Additionally, when the promised slot is playable, Alice is expected to play her connecting playables over discarding a card or playing a nonconnecting playable.

Additionally, if Alice could connection promise a slot she is expected to do so over giving non-urgent clues.

## Replays and Hypotheticals

[link here](https://hanab.live/shared-replay-json/215utpplkfmbnlkcsgrm-ffagpixneuhkvqbdurwv-oawsciahxjdyq,03lbpa-bdsabklaaloaaeagobah-acaoaabflbattbaibsxa-bqgabxoaby1aamajlba1-b0waa3saa4aplba6anb2-lba9aboaaBb7bCbvbEbr-bGbHawkagbaJaK1aazbL-aM,0)