What is a psychic control?

[aguahombre]

A suggestion: Drury is a psychic control if and only if 3rd hand is more likely to psych when playing Drury than when not.

Modification: Drury is a psychic control if it is used on some occasions when it wouldn't be used by players who didn't anticipate a psyche.

[Cascade]

I don't think passing a forcing bid is a psychic control. Although I can see how it could be seen as an agreement that is catering to the psyche. However the player that psyched is free to make any call, and any call includes pass. Pass is clearly inconsistent and everyone now knows that something is wrong. It is not an agreement to pass that controls the psyche it is the players judgement and free choice.

 

On the other hand, Drury is a convention that artificially keeps the bidding low on invitational hands. This convention caters to partner having opened light (in third seat). It also caters to partner having psyched. This convention and not the players' judgement is controlling the psyche if it happens that Drury is ever used in conjunction with a psyche. As such it seems to clearly meet the ACBL's definition of "psychic control" and has been disallowed.

[blackshoe]

I don't think passing a forcing bid is a psychic control. Although I can see how it could be seen as an agreement that is catering to the psyche. However the player that psyched is free to make any call, and any call includes pass. Pass is clearly inconsistent and everyone now knows that something is wrong. It is not an agreement to pass that controls the psyche it is the players judgement and free choice.

 

On the other hand, Drury is a convention that artificially keeps the bidding low on invitational hands. This convention caters to partner having opened light (in third seat). It also caters to partner having psyched. This convention and not the players' judgement is controlling the psyche if it happens that Drury is ever used in conjunction with a psyche. As such it seems to clearly meet the ACBL's definition of "psychic control" and has been disallowed.

This means, I think, that if you psych, not only can you be hanged by the opponents (if they figure out you psyched) or by the lie of the cards, you can also be hanged by the rules (if partner happens to have a Drury hand). Is this what we want the rules to do? I'm tempted to ask if it's fair, but I'm not sure if that discussion will be useful.

 

Again, it seems as if the rules say that when you have an agreement that might be used to "control" a psych, and you don't control when that agreement will be used (because partner will be bidding whatever it is), you are not permitted to psych in the first place. I don't like that. It doesn't like like what the lawmakers intended, or at least should have intended.

 

Alternatively, once partner psychs a 1M opening in 3rd seat one time, we as responder are not permitted ever again to make our agreed Drury bid. IOW, Dave Drury's attempt to deal with Eric Murray's tendency to psych has been rendered useless. I don't think much of this either.

[gnasher]

A psychic control is a prior agreement to cater for the possibility of a psych. Using a partnership method to field a psych is just fielding, but if you do so repeatedly it becomes an agreement, which makes it a psychic control.

 

For example:

- You have a normal Drury hand, you bid Drury, and partner passes. That's just a psych.

- You have a normal splinter, you bid Drury instead, and partner passes. That's a fielded psych.

- You explicitly agree that on splinter hands you will bid Drury instead, to allow partner to pass it. That's a psychic control.

- Without discussion you repeatedly use Drury on splinter hands, in case partner has psyched. That makes it an implicit agreement, and therefore a psychic control.

[Cascade]

This means, I think, that if you psych, not only can you be hanged by the opponents (if they figure out you psyched) or by the lie of the cards, you can also be hanged by the rules (if partner happens to have a Drury hand). Is this what we want the rules to do? I'm tempted to ask if it's fair, but I'm not sure if that discussion will be useful.

 

Again, it seems as if the rules say that when you have an agreement that might be used to "control" a psych, and you don't control when that agreement will be used (because partner will be bidding whatever it is), you are not permitted to psych in the first place. I don't like that. It doesn't like like what the lawmakers intended, or at least should have intended.

 

Alternatively, once partner psychs a 1M opening in 3rd seat one time, we as responder are not permitted ever again to make our agreed Drury bid. IOW, Dave Drury's attempt to deal with Eric Murray's tendency to psych has been rendered useless. I don't think much of this either.

 

That seems to be consistent with the wording in the ACBL GCC.

 

I don't like the conclusion either. Neither however do I like the attitude of players who say "its just bridge" and ignore the regulations.

[Zelandakh]

Drury can clearly be part of a psychic control. There is another thread where we are discussing Drury used in conjunction with disallowing any raise beyond 2 of Opener's major. This combination is a psychic control, since it is specifically designed to make allowance of Opener not holding the suit shown. In earlier times, such systemically designed psyches were not at all uncommon. Whether Drury on its own is a psychic control is another matter. I would argue no, providing Responder does not make any allowance for a potential psyche. If they do make such allowance then it is either a fielded psyche, a psychic control or an illegal agreement.

[barmar]

We're trying to have a reasonable discussion here. You're not helping.

 

Start with this: a psych is a gross deviation from partnership understanding. Therefore, a call made that is consistent with a partnership understanding is not a psych. In the Roth-Stone case, the understanding is that 1♥ shows either 13+ HCP and 5+ hearts, or something like your hand above. If the "conversation" proceeded via natural language rather than bidding, responder might now ask "which hand type do you have?" and opener might says "the second, weak one". That is a "psychic control", but the term is flawed, because the opening bid was not a psych. Of course, Roth-Stone players have another problem as well: their partnership understanding is illegal under the current GCC.

It seems that the meaning of the term has changed since Roth-Stone created their methods. At the time, it appears whatever the psyche was deviating from was not specific to the partnership, but just expectations in general. In a system that was otherwise natural, opening 1♥ on a 3=3=3=4 3-count seems ridiculous, even if it's in the system notes. They called that a "psyche" because it served no constructive bidding purpose.

 

The problem may be that the regulations against psychic controls were created under those circumstances. Since then, the meaning of "psyche" has evolved, but the old regulations are still in place. But they're hard to understand in the context of the new definition.

[blackshoe]

A psychic control is a prior agreement to cater for the possibility of a psych. Using a partnership method to field a psych is just fielding, but if you do so repeatedly it becomes an agreement, which makes it a psychic control.

 

For example:

- You have a normal Drury hand, you bid Drury, and partner passes. That's just a psych.

- You have a normal splinter, you bid Drury instead, and partner passes. That's a fielded psych.

- You explicitly agree that on splinter hands you will bid Drury instead, to allow partner to pass it. That's a psychic control.

- Without discussion you repeatedly use Drury on splinter hands, in case partner has psyched. That makes it an implicit agreement, and therefore a psychic control.

I like this, though I would say, in your first sentence "… a prior agreement specifically intended to cater…" Does that make sense?

 

I'm not sure, though, if it fits with the ACBL's regulation on psychic controls. It seems to me that all four of these possibilities might be ruled to violate the regulation.

[ArtK78]

Richard alluded to the fact that the original K-S system had systemic psyches (if that term is rational, given the definition of a psyche). A one level opening bid could either be normal or it could show 3-6 HCP and some length in the suit.

 

The psychic control employed by the K-S system (as explained to me by Dave Treadwell) was that a 2NT response to a one level opening bid showed 22-24 HCP. This was forcing even on a psychic opening, and, obviously, would produce a slam opposite a real opening. If responsder did not bid 2NT, opener was expected to pass any response if he had psyched.

 

Incidently, Dave told me that in the early years of his long-standing partnership with Evelyn Levitt they would psyche frequently. They had significant success with their psyches. However, they decided to give up psyching because they wound up spending a lot of their time after sessions before Appeals Committees.

[aguahombre]

We have made progress from, "If partner caters to it, it isn't a psyche." to something more practical..thanks to Andy.

[ArtK78]

If anyone is interested, the best book ever written on the subject of psychic bidding is Psychological Strategy in Contract Bridge: The Techniques of Deception and Harrassment in Bidding and Play by Fred Karpin. It is a great read. It also will give you a great deal of insight into the bridge world prior to 1960.

[gnasher]

I like this, though I would say, in your first sentence "… a prior agreement specifically intended to cater…" Does that make sense?

I think you interpreted "agreement" slightly differently from how I intended it. I meant "A prior agreement that a player will cater for ...", rather than "A prior agreement which caters for ...". However, I prefer your interpretation.

 

We should use the terminology of the laws, though, so it should be "partnership understanding" rather than "prior agreement".

 

I'm not sure about "specifically". If we form an agreement with multiple objectives, and one of these is to cater for a psych, that still feels like a psychic control.

 

Hence I think it should be "A partnership understanding intended, wholly or partially, to cater for the possibility of a psych."

 

I'm not sure, though, if it fits with the ACBL's regulation on psychic controls. It seems to me that all four of these possibilities might be ruled to violate the regulation.

I don't think the first one does: neither the agreement nor the player's action makes allowance for a psych.

[barmar]

Instead of "specifically", how about "primarily"? This distinction seems to be the underlying issue in deciding whether Drury is a psychic control. It can serve as one, but few people intend it as such.

 

But all of these can be difficult to enforce. Consider the 2NT=22-24 response in the K-S system that Art described above. Why can't the players just say that this is a purely descriptive bid? Is it the fact that it cedes captaincy to opener, and allows him to decide whether to look for slam, that makes it a psychic control?

[ArtK78]

Instead of "specifically", how about "primarily"? This distinction seems to be the underlying issue in deciding whether Drury is a psychic control. It can serve as one, but few people intend it as such.

 

But all of these can be difficult to enforce. Consider the 2NT=22-24 response in the K-S system that Art described above. Why can't the players just say that this is a purely descriptive bid? Is it the fact that it cedes captaincy to opener, and allows him to decide whether to look for slam, that makes it a psychic control?

 

Suppose opener raises the 22-24 2NT response to 3NT. Is responder allowed to pass opposite an opening bid? If so, then he knows that opener does not have the 11 HCP that were promised by the opening bid.

 

Just saying that opener decides the final contract after you show 22-24 HCP is not enough. You can't just turn off your brain. Passing 3NT says that you know that opener has psyched. And, yes, that makes it a psychic control.

[mycroft]

The one that I have sympathy with (and this is *all* I have sympathy with in those two editorials) is Meckstroth's argument, re: the 10-12 NT, that several pairs have [had - M] agreements that opener would not raise a 2M takeout unasked, no matter what their support. This allowed responder to pull to 2M, especially NV, with the kind of hand where -400 beats -420 or more, and where if doubled, they had an okay spot. And since, even after you spot the psychic, it's really hard to work out if it's 4 or 6 in the opponents' "suit", it's an incredibly effective agreement. You lose a lot on the hands where opener *should* be competing to 3, though, so your so-called "psyches" have to be relatively frequent to make up for it, of course.

 

Even better, though, if you failed to disclose this agreement - and several pairs did just that. They could have agreed 2M "to play, 0-2 or 5+M" (well, they can in the current GCC and the GCC when the infamous editorials came out; not sure if the regs at the time people played this allowed it) and Alerted and explained it; but then it would lose a lot of its effectiveness, especially with the agreement that opener would not compete (which also works better when the opponents don't expect 4-card support in their play or defence).

 

Unfortunately, that means that I get looked at askance when I open a legitimate 10-12, and I'm not allowed to open KQT8 KJT9 85 T85 1NT, even though everybody and their dog would open the same hand with ♠AKQ8 ♥KQT9 a "15-17" 1NT. Although I bet if you went asking about evidence that the deviation regulation should be ruled much more harshly than, say, a 6-12 2♥ opener (to take another "if you stretch these bounds, you can't play conventions") on KQT9xx and out, you'd find nothing except, possibly, those editorials.

[ArtK78]

The one that I have sympathy with (and this is *all* I have sympathy with in those two editorials) is Meckstroth's argument, re: the 10-12 NT, that several pairs have [had - M] agreements that opener would not raise a 2M takeout unasked, no matter what their support. This allowed responder to pull to 2M, especially NV, with the kind of hand where -400 beats -420 or more, and where if doubled, they had an okay spot. And since, even after you spot the psychic, it's really hard to work out if it's 4 or 6 in the opponents' "suit", it's an incredibly effective agreement. You lose a lot on the hands where opener *should* be competing to 3, though, so your so-called "psyches" have to be relatively frequent to make up for it, of course.

 

Even better, though, if you failed to disclose this agreement - and several pairs did just that. They could have agreed 2M "to play, 0-2 or 5+M" (well, they can in the current GCC and the GCC when the infamous editorials came out; not sure if the regs at the time people played this allowed it) and Alerted and explained it; but then it would lose a lot of its effectiveness, especially with the agreement that opener would not compete (which also works better when the opponents don't expect 4-card support in their play or defence).

 

Unfortunately, that means that I get looked at askance when I open a legitimate 10-12, and I'm not allowed to open KQT8 KJT9 85 T85 1NT, even though everybody and their dog would open the same hand with ♠AKQ8 ♥KQT9 a "15-17" 1NT. Although I bet if you went asking about evidence that the deviation regulation should be ruled much more harshly than, say, a 6-12 2♥ opener (to take another "if you stretch these bounds, you can't play conventions") on KQT9xx and out, you'd find nothing except, possibly, those editorials.

What editorials? Are you posting in the correct thread?

[mycroft]

Very late, sorry, but:

 

Yes, I think so, and two front-page editorials in the ACBL Bulletin from 20+ years ago, basically saying that we have to consider any deviation from those evil 10-12 NT players as psyches and hit them hard because they do all this other stuff as well (like "well, we can't play 9-12, so we upgrade frequently, not just KQTx KJTx Txx 9x, but 'that's a good enough 9 that it's a 10'", or "our 2-level takeouts are "to play" without explaining that they have an agreement that they can *not* be raised by opener, even in competition, even when holding KQTx support - specifically because they're frequently psychic). Oh, and you have to assume that anyone that plays 10-12 is "evil".

 

Note the section on "risk-free psychs" quoted from the ACBL tech files above, explaining exactly this argument as official policy. I will admit that the bit about "it's illegal to upgrade any 9-Work-point hand into a 10-12 NT" is somewhat off-topic.