Unauthorised Information
Opener N bids 1NT 15/17 E X S Pass W Pass
South passed and then said "oops I should'nt have done that". North then bids XX and E calls the director to object to the re-double claiming unauthorised information.
The director took N aside and was told that she (being north) would have re-doubled anyway and the TD allowed the re-double to stand. The play continued.
East passed and South bid 1H. West passed and the final result entered the bridgemate was one heart re-doubled. The TD was then called and allowed the result to stand. East contested the result. The TD discussed the board with two other TDs.
The session TD said that he allowed the re-double simply because he felt north gave an honest answer. Two TD voted against allowing the re-double and suggested the TD record the contract at 1H.
Would anyone like to comment?
johnathan
Comments
This description seems at the least incomplete and probably erroneous. What you say the auction was:
1NT - X - P - P
XX - P - 1H -P
and that the final contract was 1Hxx.
Was there really an insufficient bid that was accepted? And who doubled and redoubled 1H?
To the original decision, I think the TD would need to ask North a bit more about their system and why she has to redouble, despite the unauthorised information.
Thanks Gordon, good to know I'm not the only one slightly confused. Assuming 1NT was doubled, the feeling that North gave an honest answer isn't sufficient, the answer can be entirely honest and there can still be logical alternatives. As Gordon says, the TD should ask North a bit more about their system, it's entirely plausible that redouble is the systemic bid with their hand.
Many pairs play pass after 1NT, (X) as forcing, in which case XX is normally the default response (with other bids either not existing or showing something specific that rarely comes up). Presumably that wasn't the case here due to lack of alert (and due to the NT range – the agreement's more common when playing a weak NT), but I'm interested in what the logical alternatives would be in that situation. My guess is that (with pass forcing) the UI wouldn't suggest a logical alternative over XX for opener's next call (making a more specific call would probably help partner dig themself out of the hole they'd gotten themself into), but it might well influence opener's call on the subsequent round (e.g. because many of responder's calls next round would be artificial, but responder might not have any of those hand types, so the UI increases the chance that the hand type shown isn't genuine and as such opener must bid as though it is).
More generally, I think that in cases like this, it's quite important to figure out what the actual bidding sequence was! From the description, it feels vaguely possible that 1H was passed out undoubled, but entered as redoubled in the scoring software – I can imagine players getting confused to that extent – and if that's the case then it could have quite the impact on the result (and we might need to rule on the basis of "extremely serious error" If E/W accepted the insufficient bid and failed to double it).