unauthorized information

[Shugart23]

I am thinking I need to write an article on 'unauthorized information' for my local club's newspaper. There seems to be significant misunderstanding by players who ought to know better (at best) or they are taking advantage of UI (at worst).

 

SO here is my question: If you make a bid and your partner alerts your bid, is the word "Alert"

unauthorized informaton that you have just received?

 

I think the answer is irrefutably yes... Here is an example to make my case:

 

RHO opens 1NT and you overcall naturally 2C having 2-1-3-7 distribution whereupon partner says "Alert". LHO passes, partner bids 2D, RHO passes and now it is your turn to bid. I think you have to pass and cannot correct to 3C no matter what the partner was thinking when he said "Alert"

 

Am I right ?

 

Is there a simple example of UI being passed by the "failure to alert" by partner that can be construed ?

[blackshoe]

Are you right? No. B-)

 

An unexpected alert or failure to alert is extraneous and may convey UI. It is not UI in and off itself. If the alert or failure to alert is expected, it conveys no UI.

 

If partner unexpectedly alerts your natural 2♣ of 1NT, this conveys that he thinks the meaning is conventional rather than natural, or that he thinks the natural meaning requires an alert. This is UI to you. You may not choose from amongst logical alternatives one which demonstrably could have been suggested by this UI. If you don't have a logical alternative to bidding 3♣, you can bid it. That said, in this case pass is probably a LA.

 

If in this same sequence ((1NT)-2♣) your 2♣ was by intention artificial, and partner did not alert, now the UI suggests that partner thinks 2♣ is natural. If, say, you intended to show a single suited hand, the same criterion as above applies. You can't choose, etc., but if you have no LA, you can do what you like.

[Shugart23]

Are you right? No. B-)

 

An unexpected alert or failure to alert is extraneous and may convey UI. It is not UI in and off itself. If the alert or failure to alert is expected, it conveys no UI.

 

If partner unexpectedly alerts your natural 2♣ of 1NT, this conveys that he thinks the meaning is conventional rather than natural, or that he thinks the natural meaning requires an alert. This is UI to you. You may not choose from amongst logical alternatives one which demonstrably could have been suggested by this UI. If you don't have a logical alternative to bidding 3♣, you can bid it. That said, in this case pass is probably a LA.

 

If in this same sequence ((1NT)-2♣) your 2♣ was by intention artificial, and partner did not alert, now the UI suggests that partner thinks 2♣ is natural. If, say, you intended to show a single suited hand, the same criterion as above applies. You can't choose, etc., but if you have no LA, you can do what you like.

 

Thanks..AS I understand it, the alert is solely for the benefit of the opponents . Maybe the word "alert" is not in and of itself UI, but maybe the way to think about it is you have to pretend you are in the "Cone of Silence" and act as if partner did not say the word "alert" on your rebid Would you agree with that ?

 

.. SO I think in my example, Pass is the obligated bid.....What I see at the bridge table, all too often is the correction. The partner's 'alert' is not supposed to wake you up

[broze]

That said, in this case pass is probably a LA.

 

I'm confused on this. I would never have passed 2♦ without the "Alert" so why should I now? That would be taking use of the UI wouldn't it?

[Shugart23]

I'm confused on this. I would never have passed 2♦ without the "Alert" so why should I now? That would be taking use of the UI wouldn't it?

 

I think you have to assume that your partner has no tolerance for clubs and has atleast 5 Diamonds. With an 8 card Diamond fit, you can't go escape back to Clubs

[TylerE]

I think you have to assume that your partner has no tolerance for clubs and has atleast 5 Diamonds. With an 8 card Diamond fit, you can't go escape back to Clubs

 

No! Basically, you have to ignore partners alerts and explanations, and bid exactly as if partner had alerted and explained (or not) correctly. The only exception is if partner makes a bid that is either system undefined, or defined but shows a hand partner cannot possbily have (e.g. a response that shows 3 keycards when you hold 3 keycards yourself).

[ggwhiz]

I think you have to assume that your partner has no tolerance for clubs and has atleast 5 Diamonds. With an 8 card Diamond fit, you can't go escape back to Clubs

 

Exactly. Passing 2♦ is a logical alternative here but you might include the hand with 1 or zero diamonds and good clubs where 3♣ is the only logical bid. I've seen a few less experienced players roll over and die, ie. passing over partners hesitation because some "expert" told them they must always do so.

[Shugart23]

No! Basically, you have to ignore partners alerts and explanations, and bid exactly as if partner had alerted and explained (or not) correctly. The only exception is if partner makes a bid that is either system undefined, or defined but shows a hand partner cannot possbily have (e.g. a response that shows 3 keycards when you hold 3 keycards yourself).

In the example I have given, you have made a 2C overcall with 3 Diamonds, 7 clubs and Partner has alerted. He has bid 2D with no explanations asked for. Now it is your turn to bid....Obviously, partner doesnt have a real Diamond suit because he alerted your bid....In the absence of his alert, I think you would have have to assume his bid is natural. The fact that he alerted told you it is not natural, but you can't use that info....I think you have to pass

[TylerE]

Obviously, partner doesnt have a real Diamond suit because he alerted your bid....In the absence of his alert, I think you would have have to assume his bid is natural. The fact that he alerted told you it is not natural, but you can't use that info....I think you have to pass

 

No, I don't think you have to pass. You DO have to treat it as however you would treat it without the alert, e.g. a natural diamond bid or whatever your partnership defines (1NT) - 2♣ - (p) - 2♦ as. The difference is subtle, but important.

[Shugart23]

Exactly. Passing 2♦ is a logical alternative here but you might include the hand with 1 or zero diamonds and good clubs where 3♣ is the only logical bid. I've seen a few less experienced players roll over and die, ie. passing over partners hesitation because some "expert" told them they must always do so.

 

Right....I'm just seeing all to often people being woken up by partner's alert and then acting upon it....Beginners I have tolerance for, but am a bit frustrated by people who ought know better.

[Shugart23]

No, I don't think you have to pass. You DO have to treat it as however you would treat it without the alert, e.g. a natural diamond bid or whatever your partnership defines (1NT) - 2♣ - (p) - 2♦ as. The difference is subtle, but important.

 

sure, you are right...maybe your clubs are headed by AKQ....(but if you bail out at 3C I might call the director on you when I see KJxxxxx)

[TylerE]

Plenty of other options as well...like raising diamonds.

[Shugart23]

Plenty of other options as well...like raising diamonds.

lol sure

[TylerE]

I'm not sure if you're actually uninformed or just trolling at this point.

[broze]

You DO have to treat it as however you would treat it without the alert, e.g. a natural diamond bid or whatever your partnership defines (1NT) - 2♣ - (p) - 2♦ as. The difference is subtle, but important.

 

But you can't be woken up to an agreement surely. So you can't go back to what your partnership defines (1NT) - 2♣ - (p) - 2♦ as. Don't you have to just keep treating the sequence as natural until it becomes impossible?

[Fluffy]

I think you don't understand broze, if your partnership has decided to use 2♦ as a forcing relay after a natural 2♣ overcall, then that's what you have to alert and to respond. Treating it as natural makes no sense since neither scenario (partner alerting or partner not alerting) would make 2♦ natural.

 

Raising diamonds with 2137 is a very normal bid, and it will perhaps be the only LA not suggested by UI so the one you should make.

[blackshoe]

Thanks..AS I understand it, the alert is solely for the benefit of the opponents . Maybe the word "alert" is not in and of itself UI, but maybe the way to think about it is you have to pretend you are in the "Cone of Silence" and act as if partner did not say the word "alert" on your rebid Would you agree with that ?

 

.. SO I think in my example, Pass is the obligated bid.....What I see at the bridge table, all too often is the correction. The partner's 'alert' is not supposed to wake you up

There are a couple of issues here. One is that you are required to inform your opponents, by whatever means the RA specifies, of your partnership understandings. A second is that you must not choose from amongst LAs one which could demonstrably be suggested over another by the UI. In the first case, if in your agreed methods 2♣ is artificial and so is 2♦, you must "use the UI" to inform yourself to alert the 2♦ bid and give the correct explanation of your agreement to the opponents. They are not, BTW, entitled to know you've misbid. In the second case, you have to know what the UI suggests in order to deliberately not do whatever that is. IOW "you're not allowed to use UI" is incomplete. In fact "you're not allowed to choose a call or play suggested by UI" and "you are required to use UI in order to ensure you properly explain your agreements to your opponents, and in determining what the LAs are and which are suggested by the UI".

 

I'm confused on this. I would never have passed 2♦ without the "Alert" so why should I now? That would be taking use of the UI wouldn't it?

I did say "may" - I haven't looked at it closely.

 

In your assumed methods, is 2♦ forcing? If not, I think pass is a LA.

 

I think you have to assume that your partner has no tolerance for clubs and has atleast 5 Diamonds. With an 8 card Diamond fit, you can't go escape back to Clubs

Yes, this is what I was thinking.

 

No! Basically, you have to ignore partners alerts and explanations, and bid exactly as if partner had alerted and explained (or not) correctly. The only exception is if partner makes a bid that is either system undefined, or defined but shows a hand partner cannot possbily have (e.g. a response that shows 3 keycards when you hold 3 keycards yourself).

You can't ignore UI. See above.

 

Exactly. Passing 2♦ is a logical alternative here but you might include the hand with 1 or zero diamonds and good clubs where 3♣ is the only logical bid. I've seen a few less experienced players roll over and die, ie. passing over partners hesitation because some "expert" told them they must always do so.

Yes, that's a big problem. Also, I agree about the hand with 0 or 1 diamond.

 

This whole thing is difficult to get across to beginners, including and perhaps especially perpetual beginners. That's why you often hear that Law 16 (about LAs) is a director's law (it tells him how to arrive at a ruling) and Law 73C ("you must make every effort to avoid taking advantage of UI") is a players' law (it tells them how to deal with UI). What I generally tell people is something like "Look, the alert tells you the wheels have come off, and now you want to bid 3♣ because of the alert. If you do so, you're taking advantage of UI, unless almost everyone you know would bid 3♣ in this situation (without the UI). You must not take advantage of UI."

[barmar]

I think you don't understand broze, if your partnership has decided to use 2♦ as a forcing relay after a natural 2♣ overcall, then that's what you have to alert and to respond.

But if your partnership doesn't have a natural 2♣ overcall in the first place (i.e. the player who bid 2♣ naturally forgot their agreement), you wouldn't have an agreement about what bids mean after it.

 

The alert tells you that partner has taken the bid as artificial, not natural. You're not allowed to use that knowledge when interpreting his bids, you have to interpret them according to the understandings you thought you had prior to being woken up by the alert.

 

This is actually a very tricky situation, because the language in the Laws is not very clear about what you're supposed to do after you misbid. This has caused some long debates in the IBLF. The Laws say that Logical Alternatives are based on what players of comparable ability would consider if they were playing the same system as you, they don't say anything about the system you mistakenly thought you were playing at the time of your misbid. But there's another Law that says you must avoid taking any advantage from UI from partner. I think most of us understand what the Laws were intended to say about this situation (which is pretty much what has been explained by other responses), but there's one regular poster in the IBLF who believes that until the Laws are rewritten to address this situation explicitly, we should go by the letter of the law regarding determining LAs.

[Cyberyeti]

But if your partnership doesn't have a natural 2♣ overcall in the first place (i.e. the player who bid 2♣ naturally forgot their agreement), you wouldn't have an agreement about what bids mean after it.

 

The alert tells you that partner has taken the bid as artificial, not natural. You're not allowed to use that knowledge when interpreting his bids, you have to interpret them according to the understandings you thought you had prior to being woken up by the alert.

 

This is actually a very tricky situation, because the language in the Laws is not very clear about what you're supposed to do after you misbid. This has caused some long debates in the IBLF. The Laws say that Logical Alternatives are based on what players of comparable ability would consider if they were playing the same system as you, they don't say anything about the system you mistakenly thought you were playing at the time of your misbid. But there's another Law that says you must avoid taking any advantage from UI from partner. I think most of us understand what the Laws were intended to say about this situation (which is pretty much what has been explained by other responses), but there's one regular poster in the IBLF who believes that until the Laws are rewritten to address this situation explicitly, we should go by the letter of the law regarding determining LAs.

 

Also you alert/explain partner's bids according to what you think your system on the card is not the system you're assuming when making the bid (it might be that your 2♣ is correct and partner is wrong, or your 2♣ showed something conventional and you're wrong).

 

It gets particularly complicated when you play with several partners where 2♣ is natural and this one where it isn't, and where you have different arrangements with each of your other partners. Nominating what system you thought you were playing is then very awkward.

[Shugart23]

so last night RHO opens 1NT and I overcall 2H....LHO doubles meaning stolen bid, transfer to Spades, but RHO doesn't realize this. The bid comes around to him and he thinks for a bit , probably trying to decide if the double is penalty, and finally bids 3D..LHO bids 3S and RHO realizing that he made a mistake, bid 4S.....

 

I don't think there was any UI here.....Perhaps LHO should have considered 3D as a super-accept and bid 4S directly, but I don't know.....I didn't feel there was damage

[blackshoe]

so last night RHO opens 1NT and I overcall 2H....LHO doubles meaning stolen bid, transfer to Spades, but RHO doesn't realize this. The bid comes around to him and he thinks for a bit , probably trying to decide if the double is penalty, and finally bids 3D..LHO bids 3S and RHO realizing that he made a mistake, bid 4S.....

 

I don't think there was any UI here.....Perhaps LHO should have considered 3D as a super-accept and bid 4S directly, but I don't know.....I didn't feel there was damage

Certainly there's UI in this situation. Perhaps you mean that you don't think anyone took advantage of UI, but that's a different issue.

 

If there was no damage then there's no score adjustment, but if anyone "took advantage" of UI in getting to game, there was damage.

[Shugart23]

Thanks Blackshoe; you are wealth of information. Let me ask you this....If the partnership agreement was that 3D was a super accept (even though the 3D bidder made a mistake), and then the 3S bid is a decline of the invite then perhaps the 4S bidder was obligated to pass vs realizing his mistake and bidding game ? So perhaps I was damaged ? What would you say ?

[blackshoe]

I would say I need to know the outcome of the play. B-)

 

If you were damaged, for example if 4♠ makes, then I would adjust the score, probably to 3♠+1.

[Zelandakh]

If the partnership agreement was that 3D was a super accept

There is another possibility here too. After a super-accept, many pairs play that 3♥ is a re-transfer to spades (ie puppet to 3♠). Then a direct 3♠ either does not exist, is invitational, or is a slam try according to agreement. The TD needs to establish what agreements are in place in cases such as this to work out what LAs might exist.

[Shugart23]

I was thinking about this example over the weekend and actually ended up confusing myself....Where exactly was the UI ? There was no discussion/explanation of any of the bids...the 3D bidder realized he made a mistake in his bid (when partner went to 3S) but it wasn't because of anything anyone said...When he went to 4S, he took a chance that partner had a complete bust and was trying to pass out at 2S...Yes, partners 3S woke him up, and all at the table figured it out right away.....but what was unauthorized ? Thanks if someone can try and explain.