mrdct

There is no qualifier in OB 6 A B (or elsewhere in the OB that I can see) that a psychic control needs to be undisclosed in order to be illegal. Law 40B2a gives Regulating Authorities unrestricted power "to allow, disallow, or allow conditionally, any special partnership understanding". In this case North-South have employed a "special partnership understanding" which is prohibited in the EBU so A+/A- it is.

I would suggest that north-south, even as a pick-up partnership, have an implicit agreement that if you open a weak two and the opponents freely bid to 3NT and you double it, you are revealing an earlier psyche and this becomes a psychic control prohibited in the EBU. As North-South have employed an illegal method and East-West obtained an inferior results as a consequence, I would award an average plus to East-West and average minus to North-South (ref: OB 10 A 10). I would also report the hand to the recorder as a fielded psyche of the Red variety.

The word "solely" is pretty important in Law 20G1 as I'm struggling to think of a situation where partner being better informed about the auction won't be for my benefit also, as even if I think I know the meaning of my opponents' auction you never can be 100% sure and "solely" is a pretty black and white concept. As an aside, what sort of penalties ought to be imposed for a breach of Law 20G1? The subheading is "Incorrect Procedure" and the prohibition is referred to as "it is improper", so I'm guessing it would wind up in the basket of "establishes correct procedure without suggesting that violation be penalised" so nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a "please don't do it again". I like pran's approach of invoking Law 9A1 when an opponent has given an inadequate explanation of a bid queried by partner, but you would certainly come across as an SB-type if you followed it through with a TD call each time it happened. It would be nice if immediately after an inadequate explanation and before partner bids, you say "I don't think that explanation was detailed enough" (which is legal as all you are doing is drawing attention to an irregularity) after which the opponents would hopefully rectify the situation with a better explanation and things move-on without a TD call.

That seems to be the approach espoused in the EBU Orange Book, but Law 40B6a says (paraphasing) that if an opponent makes an enquiry about a bid you are required (as a "shall" requirement) to disclose all special information conveyed through partnership agreement or experience. The Laws don't make any distinction about the form of enquiry, and nor do they say that you only need to give up this "special information" if the opponents ask the right questions, so Law 40B6a comes into play even if the enquiry was binary. It's important to note, however, that Law 40B6a only applies to "special partnership understandings" which are limited to those sorts of things which wouldn't be generally understood or anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament. I'm still dying to see the hand and auction so we can actually have a look at whether or not East's line of questioning was reasonable and whether not South's answers were adequate under the Laws.

I make no such assumption. There are plenty people who play different variants of Michaels; specifically in relation to strength. I'm sure that if we took a poll here there would most definately be a divergence of opinion on which hands are suitable for a Michaels Cue Bid. By not immediately disclosing what strength agreements relate to the bid, the partner of the Michaels bidder is forcing the opponents to ask follow-up questions to ascertain strength which creates potential UI problems for the non-offenders.

A tactic quite often used to ruffle inexperienced opponents is to simply use convention names as the explanation (my pet hate is people describing 2X over a 1NT as Cappeletti) and gain an edge against opponents who are too shy or too embarrassed to ask what the bid actually means for fear of appearing ignorant. If the explanation was simply, "that's a Lucas 2" then that would be completely inadequate disclosure in my opinion. It would be interesting to see the actual hand you are talking about (I wish it would become a forum rule that hands must be posted with problems) but it may well be that the defence were damaged by the inadequate explanation. When playing with a beginner, my usual work-around for Law 20G1 when an opponent has merely named a convention as their explanation, is to make a comment along the lines that naming a convention isn't an explanation and a description of what the bid means is what has been requested. If I was then accused of asking questions solely for partner's benefit (which hasn't ever happended to me) I would say that I didn't acutally ask a question; I merely pointed out that my opponent had failed to provide an explanation when asked for one. In a somewhat analogous situation, I was having a chat to one of Australia's leading players on the weekend about the situation where you know your opponents' system back to front (perhaps you were the author of it) and your partner has never played against it before. An auction takes places where there is a very important negative inference that is quite specific to this system which was not mentioned in the explanation of the auction. The auction isn't over yet, but it looks like partner will be on lead and really needs to know what's going on. I'm told that this very situation arose in a Bermuda Bowl many years ago in an Italy vs USA match where one of the Americans had been intricatly involved in his team's development of counter-measures to the Italian methods, but his partner was less familiar with many of the finer nuances. In that case, the American with the detailed knowledge of the Italian system asked a few probing question to eventually tease-out the full explanation of the auction such that everyone was now on the same page. I'm not aware of any appeals cases involving Law 20G1, so I'm not sure how the concept of "solely for partner's benefit" gets practically applied but I imagine the intent was directed at people making lead-directing question and the like rather than people people picking up their opponents on lazy or inadequate disclosure. If someone ever did try to get a ruling on a Law 20G1 situation, I think they would have a hard time arguing that getting the opponents to fully explain their bids was not for the benefit of both defenders.

Whether a question about a bid or auction is general, specific or binary it is still caught by Law 40B6a as it is an "opponent's enquiry". The moment the opponents have enquired about the meaning of a bid, full disclosure takes over. As Trinidad has said, Laws trump regulations so I think the guidance in Orange Book 3 B 9 where it says "If the questioner asks a more specific question then a TD or Appeals Committee is unlikely to consider it misinformation if he gets a correct but incomplete answer to his question" is in conflict with the Laws and is therefore invalid. Whether the query is a yes/no question or a broader "what does that bid mean?" the requirement to "disclose all special information conveyed to him through partnership agreement or partnership experience" cannot be varied by regulation. In this case, South should have fully explained what North's bid meant (including all negative inferences from things that it denied and alternative bids that North had available other than matters "generally known to bridge players") in response to East's first question.

Cheating.

I don't necessarily agree with that. If a player is asked a yes/no question about a bid, particularly if it's the first question asked about the bid, some effort ought to be made to provide an answer that actual conveys the meaning of the bid, e.g: East: "Does that show four spades?" South: "No, it actually denies a four card major" However, in the Orange Book 3 B 9 there is some guidance on this 'if an opponent merely says “Weak or strong?” it is not unreasonable for a player to answer “Weak”, since this is true (and since more complete answers have been known to elicit comments such as “I did not ask that.”)'. The EBU guidance doesn't actually say that you should or shouldn't give more comprehensive answers to binary choice questions. It seem common sense to me that one would actually make some effort towards explaining the meaning of a bid rather than giving a yes/no response which will inevitably lead to further questions; but under EBU rules it is "not unreasonable" to do the latter. After the second yes/no question, East obviously hadn't got the bottom of what North's bid meant as all he's been told is that it doesn't show 4♠ and can't have 4♠ so he wants to ask a further question or two to get a better grasp on what sort of hands North can and can't have.

On the updated facts that by partnership agreement this sort of hand is not a 2♣ opening and the conclusion reached by the TD that they play their 2♣ opening as an Acol 2♣, this doesn't look like an MI situation to me. What we seem to be looking at is a deviation from system on the part of South so the thing to work out is whether or not NS have a CPU to open these sorts of hands. Assuming the TD can't establish the CPU, I think all the TD is advise NS to make sure they have their agreement sorted out and to properly disclose to their oppopents if they do decide that this sort of hand is acceptable to open 2♣.

I would suggest that a 10hcp hand passing a strong 1NT opening is well beyond "fielding". To do that you either have a wire or mixed-up an ace with a pip. To quote Samuel L Jackson, "It ain't the same f***ing ball park. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same f***ing sport".

If it's not a psych, it won't even be "green" as the question of fielding won't be assessed. Perhaps these should be called "transperant".

Alternatively, perhaps East has identified a potential system inconsistency if North has ♦ and ♠ and just wants to double-check that this particular hand-type can be ruled out. My main point is that it's very hard to opine on a Laws and Rulings situation when there is no hand, no auction, no system information and an incomplete transcript of what was said at the table.

Why would an opponent assume an Acol 2♣ opening (which is not game forcing) when the non-strong balanced option has been described as 'game forcing'? Moreover, the EBU has promulgated a fairly clear definition of what 'strong' is for a two-level opening and having 9 clear-cut tricks, at least opening values and conforming to the 'extended rule of 25' clearly qualifies as 'strong'. As I said before, I don't think the explanation of 'game forcing or 23+ balanced' is ideal disclosure but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say it's a misexplanation.

Maybe South here could take a leaf out of the book of South in another currently active thread and say to West, "what part of 'game forcing' don't you understand?".

As I touched-on earlier, take a scenario of North-South playing a short club system with transfers the auction starts 1♣:(pass):1♠! The following conversation ensues: East: "Does that show four spades?" South: "No" East: "Can she have four spades?" South: "No" East now picks up the North-South convention card sees "no M unless with a ♦ suit and GF" and is a little bit confused so asks a further question: East: "Can she have four spades and four diamonds?" South: "Oh sorry, if she has a game forcing hand with a diamond suit and a four card major she would still bid 1♠ initially and then if she bids that major over what I do next it would show that sort of hand"

According to my abacus, 8 + 3 = 11 - so clearly this hand satisfies the 'Extended Rule of 25'. He is also quite OK on the clear-cut tricks rule. I don't see anything misleading about the explanation of "game force or balanced 23+" which seem to be exactly what he's holding. It's useful to also look at '11 G 3' which states, "Two of a suit openings may be played as any one of the following: (a) Strong: Any combination of meanings provided that it promises a minimum strength of ‘Extended Rule of 25’ (see 10 B 4) ..." As far as I can see, the concept of a "game forcing" opening bid isn't defined in the Orange Book, but "Strong" is the only category under which a 2♣ opening of this nature would be permitted in a Level 2, 3 or 4 event so I'm at a loss to think how West could've been in any doubt as to the sort of hand-types South could hold. As the TD, I would advise the table that the 2♣ opening conforms to the Orange Book requirements and is therefore legal and the explanation of it as "game forcing or balanced 23+" is sufficient, although as a matter of best practice North-South would do better to include a broad description of the 'Extended Rule of 25' in their explantion; particularly against inexperienced opponents. As a moot point, I would suggest to West that at these colours an immediate action over 2♣ is indicated irrespective of its meaning so even if there was some deficiency in the explanation of 2♣ any damage is self-inflicted.

How, pray tell, are we to assess the reasonableness of East's third question without seeing the hand and the auction?

How can you imply that the details of the hand are not relevant? Surely, for a TD to work out what sort of penalty to assess on South he needs to know what (if any) ambiguous or misleading explanation he gave about the bid in question to prompt East's seemingly unusual line of questioning.

I fail to see how anyone can reach that conclusion without seeing the hand, the auction, North-South's system, the pre-alerts, the alerts, the questions, the explantions, east's hand, prior knowledge of system deviation by North-South, state of the match, the clarity of previous explanations, previous boards where similar auctions came up, etc. My working theory is that after trying to get his head around North-South's methods, East couldn't immediately think of how North would handle a hand with ♦ and ♠ and wanted to double-check that such a layout was not a possibility. It's also the "Laws and Rulings" sub-forum for posters to "seek answers and advice on Laws related issues". Discussion should, therefore, be focussed on the application of the Laws of Bridge and applicable regulatory pronouncements. There are plenty of other place on the broader BBO forum and elsewhere for gossip, ineuendo, rumours, etc. My view on this case is that the information in the OP is completely inadequate to form any opinion as to how it ought to be handled under the rules of the game. I wouldn't call this one "academic fraud" but I would suggest that it is well below the standard we should expect from one of the forum moderators.

The problem is that the OP could be read as East asking stupid questions and getting a harmless sarcastic remark in reply to which he had a serious over-reaction; whereas the emerging facts paint quite a different picture as to what actually happened. When we are talking about a real-life case where the identities of the individuals are widely known and/or easily discoverable, it's quite important that "facts" be presented in an unbiased and complete manner. The hand, the auction, the system, the alerts, the earlier questions and the earlier explanations are all required to properly discuss how a TD ought to handle this sort of situation. I'm still keen to see the actual hand and the auction.

Posters also need to bear in mind that even when they try to de-identify the individuals involved in a case, bridge is a very small world and it's relatively easy to work out who the subjects are.

I agree. The OP should be reported to the moderators. On the balance of probabilities, this looks to me like a clear breach of Law 74A2 on the part of South, so I'd have a look at invoking Law 91A and suspending him for the remainder of session; particularly if it's possible to reorganise the movement.

I could not agree more and East is most definately the player worthy of the most serious sanction; however one should also not make smart-arse comments when in all likelihood it's one's own fault for not properly explaining what the questioned bid meant in the first instance. It is clear that there were aspects of South's explanation and subsequent "nos" that East did not fully understand so South needs to work out how he can explain himself better.

There isn't enough information. What was the auction? What were the pre-alerts? What were the table alerts and/or announcements? What was the initial explanation given by South of the bid in question? On the face of it, East's second question is entirely reasonable as there are many bids which don't show 4 spades but also don't deny 4♠. The third question may well be reasonable also as I have certainly come across the situation where people play 1♣:1♠ as no major unless it's a M-♦ 4-5 GF hand and I've seen players omit that fairly unlikely scenario from their initial explanation and only mention it if responder later a bid a new M.