"No Grand Slam" agreement

[bd71]

My most regular partner and I are intermediate players and rarely play against expert competition. We have judged that, particularly at matchpoints, we will hardly ever need to bid a grand slam to score well against this competition (this might even hold true if playing in an expert field). So we have an agreement that unless it's a "sure thing" (i.e. we can count 13 tricks with virtual certainty), we will simply not try to bid grand slams.

 

Two questions:

 

1. Is this agreement something that needs to be shared with our opponents? (Seems like the answer should be "yes" since it can impact our bidding and thus may impact their inferences from our bidding.)

 

2. How and when should this be disclosed? (Our best guess is that any time we bid a small slam, we should mention this after the bidding but before the lead...but we're not sure here.)

[bluejak]

Methods of disclosure [as against the absolute requirement to disclose] are dealt with by the regulations of the jurisdiction. We do always ask that people give their jurisdiction with opening posts, preferably in 'Description [Optional]' and your questions would be answered differently in different jurisdictions. So, where are you?

[bd71]

So, where are you?

USA/ACBL

[barmar]

I'm not sure how one would disclose this. It seems more like a matter of judgement and style, not a strict partnership agreement. It's like disclosing whether you're an aggressive or conservative bidder, or the details of your hand evaluation methods.

[mjj29]

It sounds like 'common bridge logic' to me. I've always been told you shouldn't bid a grand unless you can count 14 tricks. Certainly at pairs when you aren't in an entirely top-class field you shouldn't unless there's absolutely no way it can fail.

[bluejak]

Style is disclosable. I would write it on the CC and forget about it. It is not part of the ACBL post-alerting procedure so no need to mention it then.

[mjj29]

Style is disclosable. I would write it on the CC and forget about it. It is not part of the ACBL post-alerting procedure so no need to mention it then.

Which raises an interesting point. Are you allowed to look at the convention card of the opponents at the other table? If my direct opponents have an agreement never to bid grands, I basically don't care. It won't affect my bidding. However, if the people whose scores I'm being compared against don't bid grands, that's actuallly very important, it will certainly affect my decision whether to bid thin grands.

[blackshoe]

I don't think the laws address that question directly. I do think that the current opinion amongst good directors is that players are not entitled to know their opponents' teammates' style - even though, as you say, it could affect your strategy.

[bluejak]

Law 40A1B says that players must make their agreements clear to opponents before play commences. But the definitions say that opponents are the other pair at the table, so I fear the TDs' view is correct.

[kenrexford]

This kind of reminds me of a question I had years ago. You are apparently supposed to inform the opponents as to systemic tendencies of your partnership that you know of but that may be unexpected to the opponents.

 

So, when does the warning "our bids tend to be idiotic and wrong" go from a necessary disclosure to common bridge knowledge?