jallerton

It sounds as though you were unlikely to bid the grand slam whatever partner opened, so you were losing a big swing on the board anyway. By the way, what does a 4♦ response to 3♠ mean in your system?

The problem here seems to be that your partner exposed all 13 cards of his hand as declarer, making the defence double dummy. If partner had not exposed his hand, it might have been harder for the defender with the doubleton diamond to envisage the diamond ruff. If I were you, I'd advise my partner to hold his cards up in future. Marginal bidding decisions should be of lesser concern.

I agree with you, Paul. I suspect that West's pass would be duplicated by some players, but not by the vast majority. West's stated reasoning makes some sense but it is also a very convenient explanation if East does indeed have a habit of opening very light. There again, I'm not too sure what counts as "amber" these days (hence my question on another recent thread).

Playing non-standard methods, what would you prefer to open? 2♥ showing hearts or spades, perhaps?

I agree that it doesn't seem right to open 3♠ on hands with "so much defence", but it's hard to see how this hand falls into this category. In practice, this sort of hand tends to take more defensive tricks if you open 3♠ than if you open 1♠, as a 3♠ opener will often persuade an opponent to play your partner for high cards outside spades. Would you also open 1♠ on ♠QJ10xxxx ♥2 ♦KJ2 ♣32?

Would you still clasify the psyche as 'amber' (rather than 'red') if an even lower percentage, say 5% or 10% agreed with the hand valuation of the psycher's partner? Where would you drawn the line between 'green' and 'amber?

That's interesting. Are you saying that 'amber' covers a narrow range and that a down the middle 'amber' situation would be case 3a below? Case 3a: South has a poor balanced 9-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 30% agree with pass, 50% of them would have raised to 2NT and 20% would have tried 3NT. I have another related question. The EBU psyche forms ask whether this type of psyche has occurred in this partnership before and, if yes, on how many occasions during the last year. If a partnerships admits to a having history of this type of psyche [a less likely situation than the partnership actually having a history of this type of psyche!] does than make you more liable to rule (say) case 3 'amber' rather than 'green'?

For the purposes of answering my question, Robin, please assume in all cases that South says that he bid what he judged his hand was worth opposite a 15-17 1NT opening, whilst North says he psyched because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The EBU Orange Book gives the following guidance on the classification of psyching: Suppose that North psyches a 15-17 1NT opening on a random 6-count and South passes. Now consider six cases: Case 1: South has an average balanced 7-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 90% agree with pass, only 10% of them would have raised to 2NT. Case 2: South has a poor balanced 8-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 60% agree with pass, 40% of them would have raised to 2NT. Case 3: South has a good balanced 8-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 40% agree with pass, 50% of them would have raised to 2NT and 10% would have tried 3NT. Case 4: South has an average balanced 9-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 20% agree with pass, 50% of them would have raised to 2NT and 30% would have gone straight to 3NT. Case 5: South has an average balanced 10-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 0% agree with pass, 30% of them would have raised to 2NT and 70% would have gone straight to 3NT. Case 6: South has an average balanced 12-count. A poll of South's peers indicates that 0% agree with pass, 0% of them would have raised to 2NT and 100% would have gone straight to 3NT. In which of these cases should the psyche be classified as "Green", which should be classified as "Amber" and which should be classified as "Red"?

A frequent vugraph commentator by the name of Geoffrey might well have advocated the line for 13 tricks because he seems to have GIB permanently turned on. The player by the name of Jeffrey who was declaring this hand received a heart lead to the J,K and A and then started with low spade to the jack, finishing with 12 tricks. This is an annoying spade suit because you know the contract can always be made if you take the right view, but there is no 100% line available. Low to the J is technically better than starting with the Q because the former still gives you an outside chance of making when the suit transpires to be 4-0 the "wrong" way. For example, if LHO is 4333 he has to follow whilst you cash side suit winners and shorten trumps, then he gets thrown in at trick 11 to lead into the divided tenace. What about starting with the ace? Low to the A has the advantage of avoiding the outside chance of a diamond ruff, but gives up on the above endplay and reduces the chance of an overtrick. So which is better? If you expect the contract to be in the same in the other room, then I agree with Han that you will maximise your expected IMPs by taking the best line for the overtrick. I would expect most opponents to get to 6♠. However, in practice there is a chance that they won't get there and here lies the complication; if you go off in 6♠ when the other table is in either game or grand slam, your team-mates may not be pleased with your line of play.

MickyB did specify "light, wide-ranging openings", but did he mean quite this light?

I prefer both a natural and forcing 2♦ (not perfect, as it's only a 4-card suit) and a natural and invitational 2NT (not perfect as partner will expect more spade honours and a little less outside) to pass. But best of all is a negative double; I probably only want to play in diamonds if partner can introduce the suit and I can cope with most likely continuations (including spade raises).

I agree. Was there a call out of turn earlier in the auction which forced you to pass throughout? We are informed that partner might have opened light. The only silver lining is that if partner likes to "collect" unusual scores, he might not have realised until now that it was possible to score 360.

You said "no conventions applying". Without discussion, I'd assume that 3♥ is inviational in hearts and 2NT is invitational in NT. 2NT should probably imply a heart fit here as once LHO has overcalled 1NT over our 1♣ opening, we're very unlikely to have a suitable hand for a natural 2NT bid based on long clubs. As partner has not opened a weak two, he probably has either a weak heart suit or a 2-suiter, both of which make a jump to 3NT less tempting. Still, 3NT may well be the right game, so I'm bidding 2NT. If partner does have a second suit, a 2NT bid will give him room to show it on the next round.

Thanks for the replies. I was also very surprised that my club might consider itself to be a "Zonal Organisation", but when I looked for a definition of this term in the Laws and elsewhere (so that I could explain to them why they were obviously wrong) I could not find one. It would be helpful if this were added to the "Definitions" section in the next edition of the Laws. I have now found the term on the WBF website which gives us an implied definition.

I'm surprised that you have received so many strong opinions in reply to this thread. In my opinion, we can't give a sensible answer to these questions until we know what sort of 'fit' hand North thought 3♥ showed. Did North think that 3♥ showed shortage in hearts? What did North consider to be a typical minimum hand to bid 3♥ here?

The EBU L&EC confirmed at their most recent meeting that this signal was legal. The case discussed was specifically that of playing middle encourage, high/low suit preference from a known suit. The problem is that the phrase 'dual meaning' is wrong, but we couldn't articulate what a better wording would be. It's not two meanings, it's using two different attributes of the cards at the same time (e.g. both odd/even and high/low). Bluejak is going to have a go at re-writing this at least to end up with wording that means what was originally intended.

Is there a definition of the term "Zonal Authority" in the context of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge? Recent minutes of my club's committee meeting include the following: Is this an imaginative legal way to achieve the Committee's objective, or is this just illegal? Please give your reasoning.

Really? If Responder had, say, ♠xxx ♥xxxxx ♦xx ♣xxx you would not expect a hesitation, would you? Then bidding 3♦ would convert -110/-130 into -200/-300. Your reasoning would have more going for it if the vulnerability were reversed.

I suspect that your guess is correct. This switch actually makes quite a lot of sense given their system. They won't miss any 5-3 spade fits (unless Responder judges to play in 3NT) as Responder can just bid 4♠ with 3-card support. I haven't been playing for as long as you, but I've come across Acol players playing a 2NT rebid after a 2/1 as all sorts of ranges: 11-13 12-13 12-14 14-15 15-16 15-17 15-18 15-19 18-19 Not all of these ranges include 15-counts. Of course, the weaker ranges are generally played by those who would open 1NT with a 15-count, but are you suggesting that "unexpectedness" for alerting purposes should be measured in terms of unexpectedness given their declared basic system?

In this thread we are discussing what the Laws should say, but if you are asking about the current Laws, I would suggest you consider Laws 74A1, 74A2, 74A3 and 74B1. Unless asking players to follow the letter and spirit of these Laws is considered to be "overly pedantic" of course!

I think it was you, Stefanie, who observed on another thread some time ago that the current 'interpretation' can cause problems for the TD when a player claims his bid was unintended. The poor TD has to judge both whether the original call actually was unintended and when the player first realised that he had made the wrong call. Furthermore, when the next player has already called over the unintended call, a UI minefield is created as this next player's call is unauthorised information to two players at the table. You both raise a good point. The optimal wording of Law 25A should perhaps depend on wording of the bidding box regulations in force. That would in turn suggest that we should have standard bidding box procedures written into the Laws. I'm sure Nigel will agree here! I think you are confusing "what most people believe the Law means once they have thought about it" with "what some people think the Law ought to say once they have thought about it". When a player pulls a batch of bidding cards out of the bidding box, it just common sense for the player to check immediately that the correct bidding cards have come out. If the player can't be bothered to check until ten seconds later because he is more interested in considering whether to have meat or fish for dinner, why on earth should the Laws (or any 'interpretations' thereof) permit the player to change his call at this late stage? If a late change is permitted, he has just wasted the other three players' time and mental energy.

The exceptions remain for definiteness: it is not expected that they could apply because there would invariably have been time for a "pause for thought" to have elapsed. It would be necessary to delete "if the offender has not previously called" and the footnote, from Law 31B. As you say, it is not expected that the exceptions could apply, so perhaps the "Except:" after subsection 1 could be replaced with "Note:" Alternatively, you could achieve much the same effect by sticking with the current law 25A, and asking the WBFLC to issue a revised interpretation saying that "without pause for thought" should be taken to mean "without pause for thought".

What is said about Law 25A situations in these training courses?

The board is not necessarily unplayable. Suppose that East is the dealer, East has a normal 1NT opening in his methods and West has a 3334 13-count. Then the auction would go 1NT-Pass-3NT-All Pass and West would become dummy. So in case West has no decision to make, it would seem reasonable to adopt option [c]; the TD can always fall back on average plus/minus if necessary. Whatever happens, I think that South should be given a procdedural penalty. Quite apart from all the potential problems it may cause, taking one's cards out of the board before either opponent has arrived is impolite.