The first three calls last Monday ...
I was playing TD at our club last Monday. We were playing our Teams-of-four league matches for March and I was called three times in the first 35 minutes. On each occasion, I castigated both pairs for playing without a convention card. Not even a word in the appropriate space on their EBU21 scorecard. However, one of my complainants presented me with this problem …
At Love all - West's hand was ...
S AK
H QJ65
D KQ64
C J82
His partner was dealer and passed.
The bidding proceeded 1NT by South (announced as 12 to 14);
Pass by West (yes, the hand above);
2S by North, announced (by South) as 11 points;
3H by East;
Passed out.
11 tricks were made and I was called.
West complained that his arithmetic showed 12/13 for South and 11 for North adding to 23/24 points, plus his own 16 making 39/40 thus his Partner must have come in on a 0/1 count which is why he passed.
The situation, of course, was that North thought that by bidding 2S, he was transferring to Clubs.
I deferred my decision for a while to give myself time to think.
The announcement "11 points" was doubly wrong in that (a) it should have been an alert and (b) it was not a partnership agreement [or was it?]. Further questioning of South brought forth the assertion that "everybody knows 2S shows 11 points". Further questioning of North repeated the "I was transferring to Clubs" plea.
Discussing this with other (qualified) TDs during the coffee break, I defended West's decision not to double even though holding a 16 count - there was no obvious source of tricks to lend confidence to a penalty(-oriented) double of 1NT. But we eventually decided that West could have trusted his partner to have something for a three-level intervention by a passed hand (maybe a 4-card Spade suit had prevented him opening a weak 2H?) and raised to 4H (got to be in it - it is Teams pard).
So we let the +200 score stand.
I hope to learn from this column just what we should have done.
Next week, we start announcing, at the opening of an evening's bridge, that everyone must have a completed convention card.
Comments
Trust partner.
Raise to 4H automatic so I don't see why W should be protected from their own appalling bidding
From West's point of view, somebody has almost certainly psyched.
By passing out 3!h, West is basically indicating that they think it's more likely their partner who doesn't have their bid, than an opponent. This is a bad idea no matter what; if it's the opponents that psyched, you'll be missing a game, if it's your partner that's psyched, you're fielding.
However, a director's job isn't to evaluate whether a player's play is terrible, except in determining if one side should be denied redress. I can sympathise with any Director who thinks that West's play here is so bad that they should be stuck with their score (Law 12C1e), but even so, you need to consider a potential adjustment for N/S (and I'm reluctant to apply Law 12C1e(i) unless a player was intentionally taking risks in the hope they'd be adjusted away by the Director). The EBU's standard for denying redress under 12C1e, when a double shot is not present (and I don't think one's present here), is a "blatantly ridiculous call or play". West's second pass doesn't rise to the standard of being blatantly ridiculous, IMO (it's definitely a bad decision, but not so bad that you question whether West is taking the game seriously). Based on what's been established about West's system, the first one doesn't seem to rise to that level either. So I'd be inclined to allow E/W to benefit from any adjustment (and in any case, it has to be made for N/S).
It's clear that if N/S gave misinformation, that E/W's bidding was hurt by it (regardless on your opinion of West's bidding judgement, it's clear that S's illegal announcement caused W to misinterpret E's call). I'd give South a warning for announcing a non-announceable bid, regardless of anything else (this doesn't, of course, rise to to the level of a PP unless South does it repeatedly after being told to stop or really should have known better).
Did N/S give misinformation? I'd argue that S's illegal announcement is misinformation, in addition to the bid not being announceable regardless of meaning. "11 points" and "long minor" are both common conventions for 2!s over a partner's 1NT (with a transfer to clubs, specifically, also being a fairly common option), and although it's possible to combine the bids, not all partnerships do. Besides, I have a suspicion that the actual agreement was "no agreement"; most likely North and South were both confident what the bid meant in their partnership, but had different ideas of what it actually meant; and anyway, the default (Law 21B1(b)) is that an explanation given at the table is wrong there's evidence that it's correct (which there doesn't seem to be in this case). So trusting an explanation of "11 points" as being the agreed meaning of the bid (with no alternative options) is an entirely reasonable thing to do. As such, we have misinformation, we have damage (whatever West's bid would have been with a correct explanation, it surely wouldn't have been Pass, even despite the fact that West would bid with incorrect information), so we need to adjust the score. It might be hard to find peers of West to work out what to adjust the score to via polling, but given that East strongly suggested a suit and West has a lot of strength there, logically 4!h is the only place likely to have been reached (unless North sacrificed, but North can't sacrifice here due to being constrained by UI). Sometimes changing the level of a contract means that players play differently, changing the number of tricks scored, but I wouldn't expect that to happen in this specific situation, so I'd rule 4!h+1by East for both sides.
(Also, who called the Director? North should be making the call the instant that the play ends, due to South having ended up on defence after misexplaining one of North's bids, although I can appreciate that North might not bother with a Director call if West had already called!)
We should start by deciding what we think is the correct information regarding NS's agreement about 2S here (which may well be some variant of "no agreement", and then consider what would have happened if West had been given that information. The question of West's original Pass is irrelevant to this.
I don't think "someone has obviously psyched", since a misbid or misexplanation can also produce the same effect. Maybe South fielded the misbid in not doubling.(Not that there is any penalty ipso facto these days.)
It looks to be a case of 2 !s being no agreement - we have no evidence that it isn't and a lot of evidence that it is. Under EBU rules this has to be alerted. Failure to do so is misinformation (Law 21B), so we have to decide what West would have done under the auction:
Pass : 1NT (12-14) : Pass : 2 !s ('No Agreement')
3 !h : Pass : ?
(We would also have to decide whether EAST would bid 3 !h given the same (non) agreement) and, if he passes, whether South would raise the '11 points'. It is quite possible that one of the results may be 3NTXX - 7)
Well, we should remember that our opinion of the play is strictly irrelevant most of the time. Yes, I would have raised in case partner had a useful one count. Partner has passed and then backed in though, I'm not even sure that passing is as silly as it looks, that is a passed hand opposite, although it's hard to imagine what partner has.
We should warn South for the announcement, it's still misinformation though, unless that is the actual partnership agreement and North has made the wrong bid. As Gordon and Weejonnie say, it sounds like no agreement. And what we consider is what would happen with the correct information. So we may well adjust to 4H.
Although not discussed, one wonders why East (being a passed hand) has bid 3 !h over 1N - P - 2 !s (11 points). That suggests that West has paused for quite a while over the 1NT call before passing - quite likely with his hand. (Obviously East might hold a hand with 7 hearts which he can't open at the three level by agreement e.g. with a 4-card spade suit)
If West is not told that North has 11 points he will bid 4H. We should adjust on that basis.
Agreed. Concentrate on "would he have got it right with the correct information?" rather than "should he have got it right with the actual information?" unless Law 12C1(e) is engaged. Whilst I think that W's stated rationale for passing was naive - it is surely much more likely that opponents have got something wrong than that partner really has come into a live auction on a 1-count - some players do think like that.
I, too, would worry that E may be subminimum based on some "tell" from W, but we are not told that this was actually so. If W has a philosophy of keeping doubles up to strength, he may have been able to pass smoothly. Or, as I believe I mentioned in another thread recently, he may be the sort of player who makes close decisions quickly, saving his tanks for weird decisions.