The director call of my dreams
Last night I was dreaming about directing a bridge tournament, and a situation occurred that I didn't know how to resolve.
In the bidding, one pair had apparently bid and alerted 2!h to mean "hearts or balanced" (the legality of the bid wasn't in question in the dream: presumably either it guaranteed a strong hand or it wasn't the opening bid). The opponents bid strongly in response, pre-empting the side that bid 2!h, and leaving the side that bid 2!h on defence.
It turned out that the pair in question, who had many ambiguous bids like the 2!h bid above, had agreed a complex system of carding to disambiguate which of the possible hands they had if they ended up on defence (something along the lines of "if we bid 2!h to mean hearts-or-balanced, following high in clubs means hearts, following low in clubs means balanced", with lots of other rules for other ambiguous bids). The declarer didn't know about this signalling method, played the 2!h bidder for a hand that they couldn't have had (unless they'd falsecarded), and went down in a makeable contract.
The declaring side was upset, because they felt that the defending side hadn't done a good job of letting them know about the unusual lead/signals agreements. The defending side pointed out that carding is never alertable, and they'd made an effort to explain that something weird was going on on their convention card but there wasn't nearly enough room because they'd basically have had to explain their entire bidding system on a fairly small area in the convention card. So do we rule misinformation, or don't we?
For what it's worth, I don't think this is likely to be a problem with any practical significance: bidding systems like the one in the dream are unusual, and the corresponding carding system is insane (both in terms of trying to memorise the whole thing, and in terms of providing only dubious benefits in the play). So this is pretty much a theoretical question only. Nonetheless, it rather got me thinking.
(I suspect the correct solution is something along the lines of a pre-announcement when arriving at the table, "our carding is unusual and depends heavily on the details of the bidding – please ask if you need to know what a signal would mean in any given situation". I've actually used an announcement like this in the past, when playing with a partner who didn't know "standard" leads and thus we'd agreed a nonstandard leading system – in practice, only one declarer asked, with most happy to remain ignorant.)
Comments
AFAICS this is similar to playing 3rd/ 5ths or any other non-standard lead system (strong tens/ Journalist etc). Playing at a table you are supposed to have a system card available with a nice shaded area to warn opponents that your leads aren't standard. Playing online, I agree that the introductory chat should include reference to the fact that "We play a very unusual signal/ discard system. Please ask" - or even (On BBO) have a chat set up to send to opponents when the key signal is used. e.g. "A high card shows a balanced hand, a low card confirms a natural heart bid". Once players get used to providing this information (they've had a year to do so and we still get pairs not explaining calls sufficiently accurately (GG)). Law 40B goes to great lengths to state "call or play" and (Special) Partnership Understandings are not limited to Calls.
I would suggest that Law 40B5.(b) would apply if the explanation on the system card is incomplete and there is no evidence that the incompleteness is drawnto the attention of the NOS.
""The Director adjusts the score if information not given in an explanation is crucial for an opponent's choice of action and the opponent is thereby damaged".
So if the precise meaning of the discard is not on the system card i.e. information is not provided then the TD can adjust. Playing on BBO we can see table chat to find out whether in our opinion the signal has been correctly explained.
Hmm, I think I like this reasoning: an incomplete explanation on the system card may be inevitable, but in that case, it's vitally important that the opponents are made aware that it's incomplete (so that they can ask for more details in situations where it's relevant).
I guess there's some doubt about whether the "nonstandard leads box" on the system card is for "we aren't using a standard second-from-bad/fourth-from-good leading system" or for "our lead system is completely unlike anything you've ever seen before", but that's something that can be cleared up on the front of the system card if necessary.
For what its worth, actual disclosure standards online seem to be much worse than we'd expect; it's probably an average of 1-2 times per session that I have to click on an opening 1NT bid due to the range not being announced (my partner and I both have the policy of asking about missed required announcements automatically). Failing to explain the leading system is much more common!
(Note that there has to be some allowance for people unfamiliar with EBU rules, I think; 3rd-and-5th is pretty common in the USA, and sometimes we have American pairs as fill-ins to make up a whole number of tables in our EBU club games. Probably some of them have missed pre-alerting their leading system because they didn't realise it was required.)
This sounds like a signal rather than a lead.
Playing F2F, in the signals and discards section the card say something like "UNUSUAL CARDING PLEASE ASK". In the space for notes, you then add something like: after a multi-way bid we play unusual signals, otherwise HELD (or whatever)
In my most regular partnership, our honour leads (and in some cases our length leads, and very rarely our carding) do depend on the auction (although not as a way to disambiguate multi-way bids) - so in principle this isn't just a dream.
It's sufficiently explainable that we fit the general idea into the leads/signals space on the card
Online, if I'm giving a sentence at the start of a set explaining our carding (I don't play pairs online), I say something like "Honour leads depend on the auction". When I make a non-standard honour lead, I message both opponents telling them what it means. If they ask about length leads (which also vary depending on the final contract, although typically not on how we got there) I say something like "3rd and long ON THIS BOARD"
So while you are right that carding isn't alertable, you have to tell your opponents your methods.