Deviation or Psyche?
N opens 1S on Qxxxx, xxxxx, Ax, x.
This appears to be a 'gross mis-statement of honour strength'.
N states he has only 7 losers!!
The White Book makes no reference to Losing Trick Count.
So should this be considered a Psyche or a Deviation?
It wasn't fielded.
Comments
If North thinks this is a normal 1 level opening then I believe he or she is wrong. Highly questionable if it is only 7 losers anyway. Qxxxx where you have not found a fit is perhaps more than two losers. It'll become only two if partner supports the suit and LTC works much better when a fit has become established. Anyway the 1S is far enough away from "normal" I would call it a psyche. A rough and ready rule of thumb used to suggest a deviation was up to 20% from the expected. If one assumed a normal opening might have as few as 10 points this is double that.
Qxx last time I checked was usually counted as 2.5 losers. The Blue Book doesn't use Losing trick count specifically, there's a minimum HCP count of 8 or 9 and rule of 18, I think (this is 16), neither of which are met by this hand. So you can't have the agreement to open it. Whatever the merits of doing so, I can see the attraction, maybe just because I feel at home playing terrible contracts.
A psychic bid is defined as "a deliberate and gross misstatement of strength" and if you think that's a light opening bid then it feels more like a deviation. To be a psyche you should be trying to psyche, I think. But the agreement itself is problematic.
If North thinks this is a perfectly reasonable opening bid, then North would surely open 1S if he held the same hand again and we are very quickly starting to get evidence of a non-permitted agreement and the distinction between psyche and deviation becomes irrelevant.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
I would agree with Barrie - NS cannot have an agreement to open this hand at the one level. (Opening 2 spades would have been fine - this is a permitted weak two - also 2D Ekren or Lucas.)
I would regard it as a psychic call. No problem with that - once - as long as it isn't fielded (i.e. South making allowances for the call to be as weak as it is.) since you cannot ban natural psychic calls.
Depending on whether or not the player's partner agrees with their assessment, I think it might well be an illegal agreement.
Vulnerability, Position, form of Bridge ?
It seems to be a common misunderstanding among players to evaluate a hand that is good in one context as being good in all contexts.
The classic example (which comes up a lot on this forum) is a hand with extreme shape that will be very strong if it gets to declare in one of its suits, but is lacking in honour strength. The problem is that it won't be nearly as good if it has to defend (if it has few Aces, it might not even be able to stop the opponents making slam!) So we tell players to be very careful about disclosure with this sort of hand if, e.g., they want to open it with a strong-artifical-forcing 2C – the opponents need to be aware that it might not have defence.
This seems to be another example of the same basic phenomenon – the hand in the OP is pretty good if it fits with a major suit in partner's hand, and very bad otherwise. I would happily raise partner's 1H or 1S opening to game with it, and expect to make as long as we weren't missing 4 top tricks. But it's too weak to open, because if it doesn't get the fit it wants, it is probably unable to make anything: and agreeing to open a hand that could be that weak at the 1 level is against the rules in most bridge organisations, including the EBU.
In this case, I suspect the player who opened the hand thought that this was systemically an opening bid. If their partner thinks so too, it's an illegal agreement. It is possible that the partnership does not agree on whether or not this sort of hand should be opened (and might not realise that they don't agree), and if there isn't an agreement there can't be an illegal agreement (although you would expect one to form after a few examples of this sort of opening). A bid can't be a psyche unless the player who makes it believes that it is significantly different from the partnership agreement.
(An interesting side note: my primary partnership has a 2-level opening that shows a weak hand with both majors, which is of course legal with this sort of hand. I probably wouldn't use it on this hand except in third seat: I can't open it at the 1 level because it might (based on partner's hand) be too weak for a normal opening, but I can't open it at the 2 level because it might (based on partner's hand) be too strong for a weak opening. And that's despite the fact that the ranges of the two openings are consecutive without a gap between them! The problem is basically just that this hand can't be evaluated correctly without additional information, so I would have to pass until I had more of an idea about whether the hand was good or bad. In third seat, I would have enough information to know that I'm probably not making game, so I could describe it accurately using the weak opening.)
Thanks for the comments.
I think we can all agree that it was not a bid to be recommended!
To answer Jeffrey; all green, 2nd in hand(sic!), match point pairs (Level 4).
South had a good hand, launched into B'wood, and became dummy in 6SX.
The contract makes on a finesse of KS.
It was only looking at the hand-records after the event that S (and E) discovered what N had done.
I like ais523's argument that it can't be a psyche.
I don't think it's primary intention was to disrupt the opposition.
I will record as a Deviation and remind N of the Rrule of 18 (7A3 in the Blue Book.)
Indeed. I remember on one occasion asking a player whose partner made such an opening and he said to his partner: "That was a terrible opening. Don't ever do that again!".
Fair enough, but might closer to the threshold be: "I wouldn't open 1S myself, but I'm not surprised my partner did."?
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
The question of course is: did the player tell off their partner before or after you arrived at the table? If the latter it could easily have been quick thinking to avoid an adjustment. There is sometimes a bit of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink,say no more" in admonitions.