Information like Pulling Teeth

[pigpenz]

Had this auction come up in an ACBL imp game last night

1NT 2♣* 2♥** 3♥

*single suited hand

**transfer to spades

 

Now no alert on the 3♥ call

upon asking was told

1. its sty, i guess stayman

2.after asking what sty is? I was told its a relay

3. Then asked if it was forcing? I was then told yes.

 

auction then went:

pass pass 3♠ pass

4♠ pass pass pass

 

the 3♥'s bidders hand was:

[hv=s=s98hq2dj1093caq1032]133|100|[/hv]

 

his partner has ak10xxx♥ and passed.

At first i thought maybe someting was going on and called the TD at the end of the hand. Told TD was had been answered and TD said it was ok the person had 10HCP well they had 9 :) I said well the opp freely bid on qx♥.

 

Would you as TD have said anything?

The more I relfect on it the opp made a good bid, if his partner didnt have hearts he was prepared for both clubs or diamonds :ph34r:

 

the only thing i regreat is how hard it is to get people to tell you what their agreements are!

[candybar]

Do you have any reason to think this pair actually HAD an agreement?

 

I find, especially online, most people do not have agreements about these kinds of obscure auctions.

 

When they are asked, many try to answer, somewhat truthfully relative to what they meant the bid to mean, when the CORRECT answer is "No Agreement".

 

It is just as unethical to explain, thereby implying an agreement with your partner that you do not have, as it is to lie about the meaning. If you do not have an agreement, explicit or implicit, and there is no reason to suspect that your partner will understand anything specific about your bid, you are required to tell the truth about that!

 

I occasionally say No Agreement when that is the truth, and I usually get hassled by opponents demanding to know what I meant by the bid. When I say "I don't have to tell you my hand, only our agreements, and in this case, we have no agreement", I get hassled even more, sometimes by a TD who is called in, and I have even been threatened with reporting to abuse because I refused to explain further.

 

You must tell the truth, even if the truth is no agreement. The person who explained his/her 3♥ call probably should not have told you anything more than "We have never discussed this auction and we have no agreement."

[barmar]

It sounds to me like the 3♥ bidder simply didn't know how to describe the bid, maybe because of language issues. It looks to me like "pass or correct" (often abbreviated "p/c") is the way we describe it in English. But I've seen "relay" used by a number of foreigners as a catch-all description of many types of asking bids.