Illegal system?
At a small, friendly club a new pair opened 1c. This was alerted and described as either "their strongest or their weakest bid." On further questioning it was described as either 23+ or 0+.
Is this a legal bid?
We are considering making it illegal in the club as a) it is a possible psyche bid if not 23+, and b) opponents will not have had a chance to discuss a defence to this very unusual bid.
Any thoughts?
Comments
Not only does it seem impermissible under any EBU regulations (though of course a club could choose to make their own regulations about this), but as described it seems to necessarily provide misinformation. 0+ includes 23+, so they obviously don't mean that. I would suggest that they look at the Blue Book and ensure they comply with whatever Level the club has designated, before inflicting it on any opponents.
"0+" isn't an acceptable description of a bid. Players need to explain what situations the bid would be made in, and "regardless of my hand" isn't believable for a 1!c bid. Perhaps you should tell the pair to focus on explaining what situations they wouldn't make the bid in; that'd both help with disclosure and make it easier to work out if the bid is legal or not.
I suspect, however, that when correctly described it'll turn out to be illegal, but right now we don't have enough information.
Also, bear in mind that nothing's forcing a club to use EBU rules for which bids are acceptable. If a bid is highly unusual and causing disclosure problems, that might be a good reason to locally ban it even if it's otherwise permissible. (OTOH, some clubs like to let people try out weird systems, even ones that the EBU normally bans; they have to be tested somewhere, after all. Nonetheless, you'd still need to make sure that they're disclosed properly.)
Always find it amusing when players say "their strongest bid" - since presumably they would open any 37 point hand (and quite a few with fewer HCPs) with 7NT - IIRC this caused problems when a player psyched a 2 Club opener when playing under regulations that forbade psyching a partnership's strongest bid.