Law 21b
W opens 1NT, N overcalls 2C, E bids 2H, S then alerts the 2C bid.
The 2C bid is correctly described as both majors.
E elects to change his bid to 2S. E had in fact missed (or was otherwise ignoring) the 2C call and had intended his bid to be a transfer.
Can E do this? Since he is still intent on bidding a suit shown by N, surely his call cannot have been influenced by the misinformation (late alert).
Comments
He can do whatever he likes and South should have been more prompt with his alert. He can even pass and it's still authorised information to his partner that he has spades.
Maybe more interesting is if he doubles to ask his partner whether he has hearts covered and also suggesting that the opponents aren't going to fare well in clubs.
This question (it's a real situation) was prompted by a comment Gordon made today on another thread:
Is this not the case here?
I agree about the information about withdrawn bids being AI to non-offenders, but in this case his partner would not have known know his 2H had meant spades.
East has been damaged by two parties:
Due to the non-alert he is misinformed so a surely able to take his bid back.
Meanwhile W will be very confused. Lot's of majors int his pack, or some strange unusual-over-unusual going on. Seems just to me.
Be interesting to know what happens if S then asks W what he understands by East's bid(s). "No idea" would not be an unreasonable response, alongside mentioning something like transfers over a pass and maybe Leb otherwise, and something about bidding opponents implied suit (or both suits in this case).
The OP said that E had missed or was otherwise ignoring the 2 !c call.
I think we need more information. If E missed the 2 !c overcall, then he has bid 2 !h on the basis of his own misunderstanding of the auction, and cannot be entitled to change his call on the basis of being misinformed as to the meaning of a bid that he did not even realise had been made. In other words there is no logical connection between the non-alert and E's choice of call.
If E saw the call and bid 2 !h , we need to know what E/W's agreements are after intervention. E presumably thought he was playing transfers over natural intervention (not a common method). We need to know E/W's agreements over both natural and artificial intervention. Once the meaning of 2 !c came to light, E seems to have thought that he could still show a suit shown by his RHO (after all the spades may be 2-4-6-1 or 2-4-7-0 round the table, so it is not daft to be able to suggest playing in one of RHO's suits, but not everybody plays that way, by any means), but that he should now do it by bidding the suit rather than transferring into it. In order to allow the change of call we need to know that E/W's way to show spades over a natural 2 !c is to transfer, AND that they can show spades over a "majors" 2 !c , but by bidding the suit rather than transferring. This seems "quite a parlay", as our American friends would say.
My gut feeling is that E was confused over his methods and should not be allowed to change his call in this case either.
E did bid 2H on the basis of his own misunderstanding of the auction. EW's methods are no transfers after intervening bid.
Mine too.
It's reasonable that East could interpret the correct bid over 2!c natural as different from the correct bid over 2!c showing majors. So East gets to change their bid.
On the other hand, the withdrawn 2!h is AI to West, and thus West should logically play East for hearts. If West doesn't, that would seem to be a case of fielding a misbid.
Or to put it another way: my guess is that 2!h…2!s is a legal call over the opponent's 2!c…Alert, but with East's particular hand (and system), it's a misbid. Misbidding is, after all, not illegal. We thus treat it the same way as any other misbid, even though it was made using two calls rather than one as a result of an opponent's irregularity.
Interestingly, if the alert took place in time, then East would not have missed the overcall?
This is starting to get philosophical! I think the general rule is that it is not what East has done with the incorrect information (that he missed or didn't care about the call), but what he would have done with the correct information. There seems to be no UI (depending on whether his partner had time to alert the call before the 2 !c call was alerted) but there may have been. This does raise issues - if East is changing his call because his partner has not alerted then he is not changing his call because of the MI and should therefore not be allowed to do so.
West has the information that East bid 2 !h over a natural 2 !c call but when the call is alerted changed it to 2 !s . I think that might suggest to him that something has happened and that the original call was intended to be a transfer. (Opponents of course only know the 1N - 2 !c - 2 !s aspect of the auction)
Fielding a misbid is not an infraction these days and (at level 4) the response to 1NT - 2 !c is not restricted as to meaning.
I don't see this at all, in the light of Jeremy's clarification of the facts.
Law 21A: No rectification or redress is due to a player who acts on the basis of his own misunderstanding.
Law 21B1 (in part):... a player may change a call... when the Director judges that the decision to make the call could well have been influenced by misinformation given to the player by an opponent.
E has made a bidding error (by misunderstanding the auction, although it would make no difference if he had the auction correct but had forgotten his methods), and I see absolutely no connection (in either scenario) with the failure to alert. The decision to bid 2 !h could not have been influenced by the misinformation.
I don't think it's relevant that E/W may play differently over 2 !c natural and 2 !c majors. Jeremy has confirmed that transfers were not in use, so 2 !h over a natural 2 !c was natural. If 2 !h over 2 !c majors was natural, then they don't play differently over the two possible meanings of 2 !c ; if it wouldn't have been natural, then presumably 2 !s over 2 !c majors wouldn't be natural either.
2!h when it's a suit your opponents have shown has a rather different meaning from 2!h when your opponents have shown a different suit, even if both meanings are natural. (If you're going to be bidding naturally in your opponent's suit, you need the suit to be pretty good in its own right.)
I accept that in the sense that if E had bid 2 !h to show hearts over a 2 !c that he thought was natural, and now wished to pass over 2 !c showing majors, because his suit wasn't good enough to show in the teeth of a known bad break, it would be clear that the misinformation could well have influenced the decision to bid 2 !h .
But that isn't the case here. He bid 2 !h , thinking it showed spades, which was nothing to do with any misinformation he might have had.
Yes he did - as evidenced by the fact that he changed his bid to 2S when allowed to do so, knowing at that point what the 2C bid meant.
Also, as I mentioned before, he may well have missed the 2C bid, but had this been correctly alerted, he would not have done. Should that be taken into account? I think it should.
There is no requirement in the law to ensure everyone has seen your bid, but there is a requirement to ensure that alerts are seen. If an alert is seen, then you know that a bid has been made and you can then bid accordingly.
So, not alerting is an infraction.
The non-offending side were impacted by this and should be corrected.
I'm afraid I'm not convinced.