Lali

Thanks for the thread!

Blackshoe, I am in ACBL land. I posed this question to an US expert. His reply was that although you do not need to say .... my partner likes or does not like the suit which as we all know really is too much info to have to disclose .... they should tell you their partnership agreement. ie "high cards usually encourage and low cards are discouraging" or "all are discards are usually non-essential cards" or " 1st discard usually show interest in that suit". It is up to the declarer to know such things as in such and such situations, discards are varied for count or suit preference. But to say they know "nothing" is like implying that they just learned the game which is a definite falsehood in light of their points.

What do you mean?

I agree the card might mean different things depending on what the partner holds etc but to say that they know "nothing" I guess does bother me some since they must have some idea if they have played that long at that high level. In another situation, when I asked another A pair what the lead of 9 implied on the opening lead, I was told .... "Could mean anything!" Turns out that defender on lead was playing from KT9 where the 9 showed 2 higher. Isn't there some penalty we can impose against the A players who take advantage of weaker players in this kind of proven particular case where these players out-rightly lie to prevent opponents from knowing information they don't want to divulge

2 cases came up recently for me and I wondered which is the worse offense and how to handle each. Case 1: 2 novices playing for 2nd or 3rd time together .... declarer asks what discard of a lowish S means to partner. Answer: My partner wants me to lead that suit. Declarer takes a finesse through the person who "supposedly" wants the S led. The finesse loses and declarer goes -5. Director! MI! Case 2: 2 top A players with 8000+ points each .... One discards and the declarer asks what a low H discard means. He is told "standard". When asked specifically .... does that discard mean your partner likes or does like H he is told after some hemming and hawing ... "could be anything at this point." How do you handle these cases? 1 case appears to be "no real understanding" by novices but there is MI ... and the 2nd case appears to be "I'm not going to divulge what that means to me because then you could know how to play this hand better" so better to act clueless which for an A player is highly doubtful. He knows better than to pick a side when it could be used as MI against him.

Thanks! :-)) For the life of me.... couldn't find it but thought it was there.

I was kibbing in a Swiss team game. Top A players sitting N/S. On one hand, N who is declarer faces and claims hand. Opponent tells declarer that declarer didn't follow suit on the last played trick which has been turned over by all players. Declarer says, "It doesn't matter, I have all the tricks!" The opponents allowed the claim to stand but I was wondering.... when declarer claims, isn't he essentially playing to the next trick and thus establishing a revoke? Or can he just correct the trick he didn't follow to?

But does the TD have to right to ask to see cards for the sole purpose of deciding whether an op can make any call?

Actually I agree with everything said. Ops should have been given a chance roll back one bid and even if they choose not to bid, they are still protected from the MI. They should have been told to play out the hand and call the TD back if they can show damage due to the MI .... possibly if a S lead could set the contract. I don't think the TD has any right to ask to see cards and make a decision based on HIS subjective opinion. I was just so surprised to hear of this case made by a head ACBL TD. As it stood 6C was cold and the dummy was void in S with a 0256 hand, so no damage.

In a recent regional, head director was called when declarer gave mis-information about a call by her partner. The bidding went 1NT(15-17) - 3H *alert 5H and 4S - 4H - 5D - 6C swish. There were no opposition bidding. The responder called the director before the opening lead and the table was told that there was mis-information and the correct meaning of the 3H bid was minors with shortness in S. Director never looked at either players convention card. The op then talked to the director away from the table saying that if he knew the meaning of the bid, he would have preempted 3S with AK6th of S. The director asked to see the ops cards and then said "No one would ever interfere with your hand. Go back and play the hand." Comments?