3rd Seat Weak Opening

[Cthulhu D]

That's not what the rules say.

 

If you've agreed the thing, it becomes part of your system that you have to disclose to partner -- you're not allowed to have secrets about your agreements. But there are some things you're not allowed to have in your agreed system in the first place.

 

You're allowed to psych because it should be just as much a surprise to partner as opponents. If you do it often enough that partner isn't surprised (and might even cater to it in his bidding) then it becomes an implicit agreement, which must be disclosed and must conform to system regulations.

 

And this is precisely the bit I am saying is terrible. If I think it's tactically optimal to open very light third in I'm allowed to do it, but only if I don't share this view with my partner, not all the time and the threshold isn't defined (No more than once a month? Once a session? Once a year? Once every 10 hands?).

 

Yeah, this is super bad. Either it should be allowed, or it should be banned. A reasonable criteria here is that a ban/rule should be:

 

A) Enforcable - you can reliably detect the breach of the rules

B) Discrete - you can clearly define the breach of the rules.

C) Warranted - it's necessary for the health of the game to have the rule.

 

These 'It's banned, but you can do it sometimes, as long as you don't do it to often' fail the 'Discrete' and 'Enforceable' tests. If you want to ban opening light in third seat by partnership agreement because it's bad for the game (fine), there needs to be an enforceable and discrete standard about light openings in third seat.