Newbie Question...

[FM75]

LHO opens 1♣ holding:

♠ A1053

♥ QJ2

♦ AKJ63

♣ A

 

All that is in his convention card is:

5 Major, NT 15-17, Transfer, Stayman, 2SA 2heard 2spade = 20-21 2Club =23

 

His partner had:

sayc = 1nt 15-17, 2C demand bid, stayman, transfers to major suits, neg X

 

RHO did not alert at any point. LHO ended up dummy, and I objected after my initial lead of club 10. RHO simply said it was the first time they had played together.

If it matters, I held 6 clubs to Q and partner had KJ97.

 

1) Is the bid legal?

2) If not, what is proper recourse and expected result.

[Stephen Tu]

(1) Bids are always legal (at least those that are sufficient and in turn, and not something like doubling partners bid or redoubling when there isn't a double). People are allowed to misbid, and to "psych" (deliberately make a misleading bid). Although you'll occasionally get "fixed", in the long run you tend to get good results from people making nutty bids, you wouldn't want to make it illegal to do so :).

 

(2) What isn't allowed is concealed partnership understanding/agreements. If they are playing a strong artificial 1c opener, and your RHO knows this is artificial and forcing, he has to alert this. But RHO claims this is 1st time partnership, and their CCs basically agree except for the 2M bids, if his subsequent bidding is consistent with partner opening a normal 1c opener there's no particular reason to believe they have a concealed understanding.

 

(3) Recourse. If you think the opponents have a concealed partnership agreement and failed to alert, you can call the director. In a live game you may fill out a recorder form, if people make the same sort of psych a lot with the same partner, this can be documented and it becomes an implied partnership agreement.

 

But in this case I would usually just chalk it up to LHO being a bad player and thinking 1c was forcing or something. They'll create their own disasters missing diamond slams or partner bidding too many clubs (he's rather lucky neither your nor partner's hand got swapped with his partner's), I gather they ended up in 3nt or some such, and probably you weren't damaged anyway, so I wouldn't bother calling director or anything.

[bid_em_up]

I'm confused.

 

He opened 1♣ and you lead a club anyway thinking that 1♣ was a normal bid. So you are saying that had the bid been alerted and explained as 1♣ was artificial, you would have led something else? You would have done something different in the auction?

 

Anyway, yes, the bid is legal. Unless it can be shown that the opposing pair had an agreement otherwise, the table result stands. Even if that can be demonstrated, unless you can show that you were damaged in someway by the failure to alert, no adjustment will be made (it's hard to tell without knowing the final contract and result). I do not think you will be able to show damage as it would appear that you still made the best lead for your side.

 

At worst, opponents should be warned to alert/explain their bids properly. Maybe a procedural penalty if this had occured with them before (but that does not appear to be the case).

 

Then again, I am not a director and could be totally off base.

[pooltuna]

maybe he misclikked 1♣ when he meant to call 1♦

[jjbrr]

1) Is the bid legal?

2) If not, what is proper recourse and expected result.

Whenever the opponents do something ridiculous and it works out for them, you have to realize that they also could have had a disaster by getting to a contract with clubs as trumps because one player expected the other to have longer clubs. The best thing you can do is to learn how to play correctly and to ignore things like this when they happen.

[cloa513]

FM75 didn't specify the context of the bidding- like some clubs do not permit psyches.

[neilkaz]

Assuming this was from BBO, my guess is that opener missclicked ♣ instead of ♦. There's an outside chance that opener forgot that he wasn't playing a forcing ♣ system, but that seems very remote considering opener's profile.

 

Anyhow, I wouldn't lose any sleep over this and especially if the opp's reached a normal contract and score, but I would ask opener if he missclicked or is playing precision or a forcing ♣ system (in which case he should alert 1♣).

 

Not everyone on BBO realizes to ask for an undo or maybe opener felt it unethical or maybe thought he was in a setting that he couldn't ask.

 

Note also that on BBO, the person bidding is supposed to alert and not his partner.

This is called self-alerting and his partner cannot see the alert and therefore the alert cannot provide UI or a wake up call like it sometimes does in face to face bridge.

 

Some new players may think that they are being cheated online by things like this, but my experience indicates that it is very unlikely at BBO. Now if the opps continue to seem to psych and it is in MBC you can leave and play at another table and if in a tourney call a director over to assess whether they have undisclosed agreements. Honestly I'd lay huge odds that there was no hanky-panky going on.

 

.. neilkaz ..

[TylerE]

FM75 didn't specify the context of the bidding- like some clubs do not permit psyches.

Clubs that choose to play not-Bridge are of course allowed to do whatever they wish.