What to do when a bid is wrongly described?

[el mister]

If pard has a memory lapse and mis-alerts your bid - either wrongly alerting a natural bid, or mis-describing it say, what should you do?

 

Do you correct it then and there, because it might affect the subsequent bidding? Or do you wait until the bidding is concluded and then make a clarification? Or something else - What's best practice?

[Mbodell]

You don't correct it right then. You continue to alert/non-alert your partners bids as if they hadn't messed up the auction (and similarly, if asked to explain your partner's bid you explain what has been shown in the non-messed up auction. I.e., if you bid ♦ which is natural but your partner alerts it as a transfer and then bids ♥ and your opponent asks about your partner's ♥ bid you have to explain what it means in the context of a natural ♦ auction. You don't say you had a natural ♦ bid, but you might say something like "he shows a ♥ suit" assuming that's what the bid would have meant).

 

If a situation comes up where you have a few reasonable choices of what to bid, and it seems like one of them would work out better given what you know about partner's state of mind (he's confused, he thinks you have some suit you don't, he doesn't have a suit he's "shown" etc.) you MUST NOT make the one that would turn out the best, and actually have to choose from the reasonable choices that would turn out worst (I.e., you can't just blast game if you had a choice to blast game or continue exploring and continuing to explore might be a disaster because partner might blast wrong game or pass or something due to confusion).

 

If your side ends up declaring, then before the opening lead you should call the director to the table and once there explain that there was misinformation/misalert/etc. and let the director take it from there. At a minimum this means the opponents learn about the misinformation before they play their defense.

 

If your side ends up defending, then you wait until the end of the play, and then you should call the direct to the table and once there explain that there was misinformation. And the same prohibition applies to your defense if you have reasonable choices in the play you MUST NOT make the choice that would probably work out best due to partner's misunderstanding or misinformation. (I.e., partner explained your bid as showing ♦ when really it showed ♥ and then partner on opening lead led a ♦. You aren't allowed to know that partner thinks this is your suit but have to think as if partner knew this wasn't your suit which may make switching to a ♥ forbidden compared to returning a ♦ to partner - it will depend on the rest of the hand though).

[peachy]

The best practice is to obey the laws. If the players do not know the laws, it can get tricky. Just follow your conscience and do not take advantage of the unauthorised information you have.

 

During the auction, one must not correct partner's misexplanations or mis-alerts, and one must continue bidding as if partner had remembered system. If at some time, the misalerter/misexplainer becomes aware of his own mistake, whether by surprised looks or behavior across the table or by any other route, he must call TD.

 

"During the auction" is never the right time to correct misinformation. If declaring side, correct before opening lead is faced (preferably with TD at the table). If defending, do nothing until play of this hand is finished and then call TD. However, just like during bidding, you are not allowed to base your defense either on the knowledge that partner misexplained or misalerted.

[el mister]

Thanks for the detailed replies - sounds straightforward enough, though I can see how it gets more complicated when you have to weigh your actions in light of mis-descriptions etc.

[barmar]

Thanks for the detailed replies - sounds straightforward enough, though I can see how it gets more complicated when you have to weigh your actions in light of mis-descriptions etc.

It gets even trickier when you're the one who forgot, and then partner's explanation wakes you up. You have to continue bidding according to what you originally thought the agreement was, but if asked for explanations of his bids you have to go by your actual agreements.