The Loop

[CSGibson]

This is incredibly easy. Here is how it would go: Defense against strong NT is thus, weak NT is thus, here is how we define it. Now, your turn to bid. OK, you bid 1N (to his partner) what is the range?

 

If they cannot answer that question I'm going to get a good board out of it either through their own stupid contract, or through the fact that the director is ruling in my favor if any bad bidding situations hit me.

[gombo121]

Who submits their CC's first? They with their methods, or you with all possible defenses?

I believe you are not allowed to write in any additional defense for natural methods, are you? Only for HUM and brown stickers and this is not the case.

[gombo121]

... or through the fact that the director is ruling in my favor if any bad bidding situations hit me.

We are all (or almost all) TDs here and we all would generally like to rule in your favor. The point is, on what ground?

 

You can't apply failure of full disclosure because full disclosure is in place. It's agreements that are deficient, what we have to ban such an agreement?

[Zelandakh]

Gombo, my example was showing how you can formulate such an agreement and still (probably) fall within the regulations. The important point is that there is a default agreement for the opening bid should all of the conditionals beforehand fail. if you like, think of it as a set of nested if-then statements with an else statement at the end. And yes, the regulations do make it clear imho that the opening side have to "declare" first. Of course I see nothing stopping them from having a set of conditions that is 20 pages long for the meaning of a 1NT opening, such that you can pretty much always get the "best" possible defence played against it by your pair's judgement.

[helene_t]

Why not? It is a complete description of methods given receipt of a complete set of opps' methods and never results in a loop.

Yes of course, you are right. It might be ok, maybe depending on whether the secretary bird is directing.

[mjj29]

Sorry, we are not in the mood. Why don't you and your partner now discuss and decide what kind of defence you play against our agreements instead? I see you have not discussed this case either. And then we will act accordingly to your choice.

If you don't discuss an agreement for the bid and then open it, if your partner gets it right there is no way you're going to convince me that you don't have an implicit concealed agreement and rule against you under L40

[Fluffy]

Personally I have always believed that the Loop is an imaginary problem. If I agree to defend weak pre-empts with penalty doubles and strong pre-empts with takeout doubles that is my defence. They can play what they like. If they say "How do you defend to our pre-empts?" I just tell the that.

The problem comes from deviations and psyches, if I recall correctly, the problem arised because Brad psyched 1NT opening thinking that no penalty double was avaible, when they lied and told him there was not. Someone said that Brad had claimed in the past that he would keep psyching 1NT in thrid position as long as opponents didn't play penalty doubles, this is the loop.

 

Your decision to psyche or not (or deviate your range/shape into) should not be based on what defence opponents have against your bid. But that is something impossible to take care off.

[campboy]

Maybe you can't, but in that case there is a large inconsistency:

 

If you happen to know the pair's defenses before you play them, you can set your NT range accordingly. Or perhaps the event you are playing in requires all convention cards to be submitted beforehand. Therefore you are able to learn each pair's defenses and use the NT range that you find most suitable against each of them.

 

But if you learn the defense only when you sit down at the table you aren't able to change your opening 1NT range?

You are allowed to base your bids on anything which is AI, so in particular anything you found out before either of you took your cards out of the board. So you can just look at the CC at the start of the round. If CCs are required but they haven't filled it in properly I think you have a right to ask.

[blackshoe]

The problem comes from deviations and psyches, if I recall correctly, the problem arised because Brad psyched 1NT opening thinking that no penalty double was avaible, when they lied and told him there was not. Someone said that Brad had claimed in the past that he would keep psyching 1NT in thrid position as long as opponents didn't play penalty doubles, this is the loop.

 

Your decision to psyche or not (or deviate your range/shape into) should not be based on what defence opponents have against your bid. But that is something impossible to take care off.

"Someone said" is not credible evidence. But i don't think it matters. Psyches are outside the loop in any case. And if his opponents lied to him, then they get the hammer.

 

I do not see why a decision to deviate from agreements, whether to a lesser degree than a psych or not, should not be based on what defense the opponents have agreed. Why not?

[jeffford76]

I do not see why a decision to deviate from agreements, whether to a lesser degree than a psych or not, should not be based on what defense the opponents have agreed. Why not?

 

Because the actual hands you will make calls with differ from those you told the opponents you would have.

[mjj29]

Because the actual hands you will make calls with differ from those you told the opponents you would have.

Yes... that's the definition of a psyche...

[blackshoe]

I do not see why a decision to deviate from agreements, whether to a lesser degree than a psych or not, should not be based on what defense the opponents have agreed. Why not?

 

Because the actual hands you will make calls with differ from those you told the opponents you would have.

 

Yes... that's the definition of a psyche...

Precisely. The suggestion is tantamount to banning psychs in this position, and that's just wrong. :ph34r:

[Fluffy]

Yes... that's the definition of a psyche...

 

unless it is so common that constitutes a partnership understanding

[iviehoff]

(playing devil's advocate)

Why do you think it fails to define our methods? It's our complete agreement, we have nothing else. There is no requirement for our agreements to be good, or complete, or anything like that. There only requirement is full disclosure - we disclosed agreemnets completely, now take any conclusion you can. If you can't - too bad, nothing can be done about that.

 

You may think it is impasse equivalent to "no agreements-no agreements" and both sides are equally disadvantaged - think again! As opener I still can open 1NT and thoguh partner would not know my range we are unlikely to get to some completely ridiculuos contract. On the other hand, penalty double and conventional double are very different and opponents are bound to get lost if they venture into the bidding.

And indeed people do commonly play agreements that are not completely defined. But they will get done on a MI rap when the partners seem to understand each other, but give information to the ops that does not give the ops the same ability to understand it.

 

And in the case of someone playing a 1N opening defined by a rule that fails to compute in the circumstances arising, I will, at least in England, probably be further able to find that they are playing an non-permitted agreement. I don't think "I'm not sure in these circumstances" is a permitted range for a 1N opening. This problem will be rapidly revealed by the inability of the opener's partner to announce the range.

[barmar]

unless it is so common that constitutes a partnership understanding

Then it's MI, since you failed to disclose it.

[jeffford76]

Yes... that's the definition of a psyche...

 

If it's an expected action, then no, it's not the definition of a psyche.

[mjj29]

If it's an expected action, then no, it's not the definition of a psyche.

 

This is what I was replying to:

 

Because the actual hands you will make calls with differ from those you told the opponents you would have.

 

Perhaps you meant "because you've incorrectly disclosed your actual agreement to your opponents", which is a different thing entirely. We were talking about departing from your agreements which (assuming you're disclosing your agreements) must mean that your actual hand differs.

[jeffford76]

Perhaps you meant "because you've incorrectly disclosed your actual agreement to your opponents", which is a different thing entirely. We were talking about departing from your agreements which (assuming you're disclosing your agreements) must mean that your actual hand differs.

 

The problem is that what we call psyches are really mixed strategies. To pick something arbitrary, say that your 1NT bid in 3rd seat is 99.9% of the time a balanced 15-17, and 0.1% of the time a hand with many fewer points when opponents play penalty doubles (so that a reasonable answer to the question do you ever psyche is "yes, but rarely".) Suppose that when they're not playing penalty doubles, it's 96% of the time a balanced 15-17 and 4% of the time a hand with many fewer points. So your answer changes to "yes, reasonably often".

 

I don't think you're allowed to tell the opponent's the first thing but actually play the second, and I think that's what people who frequently "psyche" when there is no penalty double available to the opponents are effectively doing.

 

In an ideal world you would have to choose your strategy *not knowing what their double would mean*, and then their strategy would be allowed to depend on what they were told.

[blackshoe]

It's kind of hard to know how often you might psych in a particular circumstance until that circumstance has come up a few times and you are actively tracking your psych frequency. Or rather, more to the point, your partner is actively tracking it.

[barmar]

if you know your partner's general style, you may be able to predict what will happen in a particular situation, by extrapolating from other situations.

 

Although 3rd seat 1NT's are frequent enough that a regular partner would probably have a reasonable idea of your actual behavior under various opposing circumstances.

[gombo121]

If you don't discuss an agreement for the bid and then open it, if your partner gets it right there is no way you're going to convince me that you don't have an implicit concealed agreement and rule against you under L40

 

Fair enough. But there is a good chance that my partner would not need to get anything right - he may have too weak hand and pass in any case or strong enough to bid game in any case.

And then there is chance that it would be your pair that would need to guess right meaning of your double - and then the same argument about L40 would apply to you.

[gombo121]

Gombo, my example was showing how you can formulate such an agreement and still (probably) fall within the regulations. The important point is that there is a default agreement for the opening bid should all of the conditionals beforehand fail. if you like, think of it as a set of nested if-then statements with an else statement at the end. And yes, the regulations do make it clear imho that the opening side have to "declare" first.

 

Yes, your suggestion would eliminate the loop nicely, but you misunderstood my purpose. I'm not interested in playing conditional agreements and to amend them to fit regulation. I want to understand the regulations better. Can you please expand on why do you think that regulations make it clear that the opening side have to "declare" first? - which regulations are you referreing?

[mjj29]

Yes, your suggestion would eliminate the loop nicely, but you misunderstood my purpose. I'm not interested in playing conditional agreements and to amend them to fit regulation. I want to understand the regulations better. Can you please expand on why do you think that regulations make it clear that the opening side have to "declare" first? - which regulations are you referreing?

I don't think there's a regulation _per se_, it's just self evident that the meaning of any bid must depend on all previous bids. Hence, my defense must depend on your system, but the converse is not true, thus there is only one way to resolve this.

 

Alternatively, it should also be obvious that if you open, now you must be able to disclose the agreed meaning of the call immediately, thus it can't depend on anything later in the auction. The EBU regulations allow you to change your basic system before each round (if you like, depending on who and what you are playing against), but they do require you to _have_ a basic system for each round.

[Zelandakh]

Regulations depend on where you are but it follows as a natural consequence of 40A1b. Both sides make their partnership understandings available to their opponents. Your opponents have the agreement that double of a weak NT is penalty and that double of a strong NT is not. You have the agreement that 1NT is strong if their double is penalty, weak otherwise. There is no problem here. Your 1NT opening is simply undefined and shows "any 13 cards". Of course, if you have a better idea of what your partner's undefined 1NT opening might mean (notice that 12-14 or 15-17 is functionally identical to 12-17) then you have given MI. More than this, such a 1NT opening is illegal under most jurisdictions (regulations). So you need to have a default meaning for your 1NT should the conditions not be met for your 1NT opening to be legal. And then there is no loop. This is precisely what David told you back in post #11 but for some reason you seem not to want to accept it.

[Fluffy]

I don't agree Zel, you could then write down that you play weak NT unless opponents play penalty doubles to weak NT, in that case play strong NT. This is making your bidding agrements after opponents decide their defence.

 

Getting a more extreme, you could agree to play multi-2D only when the opponents have no agreement against the opening (under some regulations that don't let opponents agree defences after bidding period started), or something similar.