Opening the bidding first with almost 0 points allowed?

[zimiaris]

I was playing in one of the daily tournaments at my club the other day and one of my opponents opened the bidding as dealer with 1♣. After the hand was played I discovered that he had only 3 points. Is this allowed? There were no CC and neither were we alerted in any way that this could be an unusual opening. Take into account that were I play at everybody plays 1♣ opening as a hand with 12-13 points minimum and that because of this bid I was afraid to buy a grand slam that we had and so we scored badly.

And a follow up question, is there anyway someone can protect himself from such practices?

[manudude03]

You will need to establish what their agreements are, but there is nothing legally wrong with psyching.

[sanst]

It's partly dependent on the jurisdiction. Psychs are allowed, but quite often not if these are protected because they're forcing. if it isn't a psych, the local regulating authority usually doesn't allow this.

Against psychs you can't protect yourself. If not a psychic bid, call the TD, who will probably award an AS.

[weejonnie]

Normally you can ask the Director to record the psych - just in case the person who makes the call has a history of doing so - and therefore his spartner might be well aware of the tendency to psych and not tell you about the implicit agreement between them. Recording psychs is in no way an accusation of cheating.

 

Natural psychs themselves are explicitly allowed in the laws 40C1 but regulating authorities "may restrict the use of psychic artificial calls" 40b2av - thus for many years the EBU did not allow the psyching of a multi-2D call or 'the partnerships strongest bid'. Nowadays anything goes in the EBU.

 

In general look at law 40 for a full rundown of partnership agreements and allowancs for deviating from them. It is the longest law in the new rules.

[nige1]

Your opponent elected to psych on the board where you can make a grand-slam. An unfortunate coincidence. Perhaps not so remarkable, as similar coincidences are quite frequent. You should call the director to record the psych and hope that he pro-actively investigates possible UI (e.g. a post-mortem at an adjacent table). IMO that kind of explanation is the overwhelming balance of probability --- enough to rule against other kinds of putative infraction. For some reason, In this kind of context, the director needs more evidence.

[steve2005]

deleted wrong info

[barmar]

Should send abuse report to bbo. Find the hand and view, click on Export deal, click on send abuse report, you can enter comments like a mail message.

He said it happened at a club, not on BBO.

[barmar]

Does that player have a habit of bidding like this? Did his partner do anything that suggests he knew his partner could have been bidding with nothing?

 

Since you had a possible grand slam, his partner probably also had nothing, so he wouldn't have bid regardless of what he thought his partner had. So there's probably no way to know from this hand whether his partner took advantage of an expectation of bidding like this.

[steve2005]

He said it happened at a club, not on BBO.

oh missed that.

[sfi]

One thing to do is to spend more time on thinking about and discussing bidding after the opponents open. We don't have the hands, but it seems very much like someone will have underbid their hand along the way, trusting the opponents more than their partner.

 

In many cases, psyches work because the opponents let them work rather than because they cause actual problems for the other side.

[barmar]

One thing to do is to spend more time on thinking about and discussing bidding after the opponents open. We don't have the hands, but it seems very much like someone will have underbid their hand along the way, trusting the opponents more than their partner.

 

In many cases, psyches work because the opponents let them work rather than because they cause actual problems for the other side.

Exactly. If you have enough for a grand slam, one (or both) of you have enough to make a takeout double and then bid his suit, which shows a very strong hand. And his partner should have had enough to cue bid over the takeout double. When they both bid like this, they should realize that they have really strong combined hands.

 

Believe your partner's bidding, not the opponent's.