BBO Discussion Forums: An unusual auction (ACBL) - BBO Discussion Forums

The question is whether it's an illegal agreement (in the ACBL).

In response to a weak two bid with no more than a 7 point range and which shows at least five cards in the suit any conventional meaning is allowed (#7 under "responses and rebids" on the GCC) so the only way this would be disallowed is if the primary purpose of the 2NT bid is to destroy the opponents' methods. If I understand the agreement (either weak or constructive) it's a two way bid, so it fails the primary purpose test (emphasis mine).

I suppose one could argue that the weak part of the agreement is primarily destructive, but I think it's a stretch to apply the regulation to only part of the agreement.

blackshoe, on 2013-September-27, 08:48, said:

Ed's got it, IMO.

#1 of "Disallowed" is about the primary purpose of the convention itself ---not about how it might be used.
#2 of "Disallowed" only applies to SUIT responses below 2NT.

It is almost as if the ACBL knew what it was doing, and was thinking of the 2NT response to a proper-range weak two being an age-old acceptable tactic when they wrote the GCC.

RMB1, on 2013-September-27, 07:35, said:

Well, that gets us back to the question: can an asking bid be a psyche? Some say that it doesn't show any specific hand types -- the opponents are wrong to assume that it implies only the types of hands they would use it with. Others think that they can reasonably assume the types of hands that most players would use it with (e.g. Ogust => good hand, various expectations about Stayman) and you need to disclose deviations.

Unfortunately, the Laws are silent about this, and most regulations don't do much to clarify it, either.

blackshoe, on 2013-September-27, 08:48, said:

This is how I read the regulation. Then I had a senior director tell me the agreement wasn't legal. So I wrote to rulings and Rick Beye concurred that it wasn't legal. Near as I can tell it is legal by a plain text reading, but many directors are going to rule it illegal anyway. Does that mean that in practice it's legal or illegal? Seems to depend on who you ask.

And definitely not helped by the confusion about the difference between psyching and agreeing to play a convention different than standard.

One final thing - in the ACBL the alert rules say that any forcing 2NT response to a weak-2 isn't alertable. So it's somewhat difficult to correctly inform your opponents and follow the alert rules, although when I played this I alerted anyway.

barmar, on 2013-September-27, 09:23, said:

And similarly for relay bids and transfers. If you by agreement can relay/transfer and pass the response without length in the suit in an attempt to play undoubled, how should this be disclosed?

jeffford76, on 2013-September-27, 10:31, said:

GIGO comes to mind. When a plain text reading seems to answer a question one way, and a reference authority answers differently, I wonder how the question and its context were presented.

blackshoe, on 2013-September-27, 07:17, said:

It's not the whole point.
On a related topic, we alert the auction 2H dbl 2S as natural non-forcing, may be psyche with heart support (because we've psyched it so often it's become a partnership agreement). Opener still treats it as natural i.e. raises with spade support,
Even being explicit about the hand type, it's still hard to defend against. We recently had one set of opponents end up in a very silly contract because one of them assumed it was a psyche, the other assumed they treated it as natural (they didn't know whether double was take-out or penalties).

aguahombre, on 2013-September-27, 14:12, said:

The full text of the email I sent was posted earlier in the thread.

aguahombre, on 2013-September-27, 09:20, said:

Let's not get carried away.

jeffford76, on 2013-September-27, 10:31, said:

If it's accurately described on your card, and you explain it adequately if asked, then you have complied with the law and the regulations unless the bid is considered "highly unusual and unexpected", in which case it requires an alert. Since nobody seems to really know what "highly unusual and unexpected" means, I'd ask the DIC of every event I enter if this bid fits the criterion. And having, over the course of time, collected several different answers to the question, I would compile them and send them to my District Representative, with the question "wtf?" and the assertion that the ACBL needs to ensure consistency. It might also be interesting to say to one of the DICs "you're the fourth DIC I've asked this question, and so far I've received three different answers. Why can't the ACBL get its act together on this?" Or, even better "You know, I asked you this same question last year, and you gave a different answer. What's up with that?"

Note: both the above conversations with the DIC are hypothetical. Neither would surprise me.

If you think the word "destructive" has any referent in discussions of ACBL legality, *please* replace it with the legal terminology, at least in your mind, that is shortcutted "destructive" before making the argument. That makes the "destructive vs constructive vs obstructive" arguments go away in most cases, and makes several arguments seem, as they should, incorrect.

There's a great difference between "this is hard to bid against, because it takes away a lot of room - maybe more room than is safe" and "this causes the opponents to not be able to play their system, and that's its intent" - as the classic "can't pass 1♣ Precision, if no other call makes sense, we overcall 1♠".

mycroft, on 2013-September-27, 16:55, said:

Retransmit in plain English, please.

"highly unusual and unexpected" and "destructive" versus "obstructive" are like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography versus erotica: You can't define them precisely, but you know them when you see them.

barmar, on 2013-September-30, 10:47, said:

For highly unusual and unexpected, we might know them when we see them. Unfortunately, inexperienced players do not ---making it impractical for them to alert such things as negative freebids, certain doubles they play as penalty, etc. They have no idea their methods are unusual.

The phrase is "primarily designed to destroy the opponents' methods", not "destructive". We're allowed to use the shorter term provided the arguments don't come into whether a call is destructive or not, on any other definition than what the GCC says. I have seen arguments on the "destructive - obstructive - constructive" axis in *this discussion*, among others, which are irrelevant, because that's not the axis we're working with (or at least not the points on the axis we're working with). So, this looks like the sort of discussion we can't afford to shortcut the phrase on.

mycroft, on 2013-September-30, 15:26, said:

That's the point I was making when I wrote earlier "Normal preempts are not primarily destructive".

mycroft, on 2013-September-20, 11:04, said:

You are wrong. That may well be how you play it but in some parts of the world, Stayman promises considerably more. In some places there are also additional responses beyong 2♠ as Standard.

Vampyr, on 2013-September-23, 19:39, said:

The opponents are entitled to what the bid means. That means on which hands the bid is systemically made. Withinn the ACBL, you should theoretically provide a full decsription on the first question, although I suspect most TDs would be lenient towards a pair that simply described what was asked and stated that they could provide the list of hand types on request.

Trinidad, on 2013-September-25, 00:50, said:

True, but it is against the rules to obtain the information that allows you to profitably violate the agreement by committing an irregularity. Here, East's lack of disclosure was the origin of the problem and they should not profit from that.

Cyberyeti, on 2013-September-25, 05:35, said:

If full disclosure was given to the first question then the additional ones would not be necessary. That is in addition to the potential CPU issue that Andy raised.

barmar, on 2013-September-27, 09:23, said:

It is difficult to think of any asking bid that does not show anything at all, since there is almost always another call that could have been made and not doing so will generally deny that hand. Similarly, if you systemically make an Asking Bid on a certain range of hands and then do so on a vastly different hand type then you are psyching. In some cases, the definition of the Asking Bid is so broad that a gross deviation is not possible but that is certainly not true of all.

The other point that I have made in the past is that even natural bids can be a form of Asking Bid when you get down to it. If we agree that partner will always raise a 1♠ opening with 4+ card support then opening 1♠ acts as an ask for that feature. But noone would describe the opening as "Asks partner if they have 4 spades." That is because it is clear what a natural 1♠ opening shows. Where it is also clear what an Asking Bid shows, and it usually is in the case of Stayman whatever the form, then full disclosure dictates that you tell the opponents those hand types. The same for Ogust/Feature, asks in a relay system or any other bid. It is true that not all will show anything specific enough to pin down; you might have to answer with "anything except..." for example. But whenever a bid has a systemic meaning, and practically all Asking Bids do, a gross deviation from that is a psyche.

Anyway, back to the OP and its follow-ups, I am somewhat confused by something. It was stated that North is an experienced player that plays often against a Mini NT. And yet it also seems as though North did not know what Non-Forcing Stayman meant. These 2 representations seem to be at odds with each other. Yes, it is not impossible that someone can gather great experience of a method without ever learning the convention name(s) but it is not particularly likely. To me, that is very much the crux here. But assuming that North really did not understand, it is the poor disclosure that caused the information leak and adjusting the score looks indicated.

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-10, 11:34, said:

I think the confusion was because the bid was alerted even though it isn't supposed to be, so there was an assumption that there was something particularly unusual about it and different than normal Stayman. Not being forcing at all would definitely fall into that category.

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-10, 11:34, said:

Your faith that opps will never ask unnecessary questions is charming. Insane, but charming.

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If that's a real principle, "2♣ shows all hands that would not pass or transfer or raise directly" is a sufficient answer for most pairs playing Stayman.