Hi

There's also a question of how the 2D bid is explained.    "5+ hearts OR 5+ diamonds" ?

(Personally I think a lot of the time this will be an unethical sequence, responder has long diamonds and has forgotten that they play transfers.)

I do the same with some partners with 1NT - 2C - 2any - 3C  which is a hand with long clubs, 3C is to play.   It may contain a 4-card Major but it doesn't promise one.

a) should the 2C bid be alerted ?   or is it just bridge ?

b) if asked, should I say "asking for a 4-card Major; could just be weak with long clubs."

- Giles

Hi Matt

I am no expert, but am trying to hone my Director skills in anticipation of an exam later this year. So, here’s how I’d view your situation, fully acknowledging that that view may change as I learn more … or others jump in and correct me. These are my thoughts, and mine alone. Just my tuppence

1. During the auction you are absolutely able to ask the meaning of any bid when it’s your turn to call (Law 20F1). The same applies during the clarification period after the bidding stops but before the opening lead card is ‘faced’ (Law 20F1). As a defender you’re even able to ask during the play (Law 20F2). Not only that but your opponents have a duty to make their partnership understandings available to you – fully and thoroughly. It should not be a cat-and-mouse process where you need to ask the right questions to get the information, your opponents are obliged to ensure that you are readily able to understand their system and their bids.
2. The precise meaning of a particular call will depend on the partnership understanding. That understanding can be explicit, written down in detail, or implicit through experience and understanding (Law 40A).
3. It is legal for someone to bid in a manner that is different to their system agreement, providing that their partner has no more reason than their opponents to be aware of that deviation from their agreement (Law 40C1). In such a situation no player is obliged to disclose to the opponents that they have deviated from their announced system agreement (Law 40C2).
4. You should have called the Director as soon as you became aware of the irregularity (Law 9B1), even if that was after the hand had been played out.

Could you have sought further information?

Yes … but in the circumstances described I am not sure it’d have helped you much.

Should your opponent’s have provided further detail?

From your description it seems that your opponents had slightly different understandings of the precise details of their agreement. Quite likely such things were not explicitly and thoroughly discussed.

Does a 2D! transfer response to a 1NT opener absolutely require a 5+ card holding in hearts?

If their system agreement was that 2D! showed 5+ hearts then that bid requires the holding of 5+ hearts … subject to the discussion below.

I just checked the system card I have with my main partner and it says simply that 2D! in that situation is a “Transfer to hearts”. I suppose such a transfer implies a 5+ card heart holding, but it probably does not preclude just the sort of bidding sequence you experienced. An expert player might well use just such a sequence to bamboozle the opponents (and their partner) and try to prevent the opponents from finding a heart fit.

All the same it’s entirely reasonable to anticipate that 2D! bid as showing or suggesting a holding of 5+ hearts. I suspect you’d have been told as much if you enquired further during the auction. Such a transfer, though, would not necessarily exclude a 2-suiter and so the sequence you describe seems entirely do-able … except for the problematic absence of hearts.

Do players sometimes deliberately misrepresent their hand?

Absolutely. There was a nasty hand in our recent interclub competition where a suit overcall, based on a 1HCP holding, derailed the finding of a slam. Two pairs made that overcall and I will wager their system card did not say anything along the lines of “May be as low as zero HCP”. I held that hand and was not skilled enough to make that call, so our opponents found the slam.

Similarly, there are players who will quite quickly discern where their weakness is and distract their opponents via a deliberately misleading bid.

On the other hand, some partnerships have some very liberal meanings of their bids, especially overcalls. Their liberal nature, however, is usually written into their system agreement (may be very weak) or explained at the table.

Is it legal to bid in a way that misrepresents your hand?

It is entirely legal to do this … providing your partner is just as ‘in the dark’ about the bid as your opponents are. You cannot have a secret agreement that is not ‘available’ to your opponents.

Such “psychic bids” can disrupt both sides in a bidding competition, but when used skilfully they can also provide advantage to the psychic bidder’s partnership. Clubs and tournaments often have rules about how often people can ‘psych’ and that require such bids to be registered. The main reason for this is to make sure the psychic bids are not actually a secret element of the partnership agreement.

Were your opponents’ psyching you?

That does not seem likely. It seems more likely that your two opponents had a slightly different understanding of the details of their agreement. It’s also possible that at least one of them had a misunderstanding of how to show minor suits in response to a NT opening bid.

Did your opponents do anything wrong?

If I were in your situation I’d have anticipated that sequence to be showing 5+ hearts and 4+ diamonds and, like you, I’d have been very reticent to explore my long heart holding much further. Better players, I suspect, may well have explored their heart holding despite that transfer bid … because their greater experience would have previously exposed them to just that sort of bid.

It seems, from your explanation, that your opponents provided you with appropriate information to the best of their knowledge. It also appears that your partners had an incomplete, even different, understanding of the details of their system agreement. That is not terribly unusual at club sessions where partnerships often have not had the opportunity (or inclination, or skill) to develop the details of their system.

If you had been correctly and thoroughly advised concerning that bidding sequence, it’s not likely you’d have been any the wiser. The 2D! bidder appears to have had a different understanding of the meaning of that bid to their partner.

Did you do anything wrong?

You could have asked more of your opponents, but it doesn’t seem likely that that’d have helped much. Had you explicitly asked more about the transfer you’d have probably been advised that it shows or implies 5+ hearts held.

Perhaps a more expert player would have had the experience and confidence to bid their heart holding despite that transfer, perhaps not.

In such a situation, once you’ve noticed the irregularity, the proper thing to do is to call the Director (Law 9B1). It’s then up to the Director to determine whether anything has occurred that requires rectification (Law 10). It’s important to not try and fix an issue yourself at the table, but to call the Director. Law 11 says that you can forfeit the right to rectification if you (the non-offenders) take action other than calling the Director. The Director is often able to rectify things, when the non-offending pair is disadvantaged by the offences, some time afterwards … so it’s always appropriate to call the Director when you notice an irregularity.

All the same I am not confident that the Director would have rectified any aspect of what you described.

Can this be fixed?

I’m afraid there appears to be nothing here to be fixed. Your opponents do not seem to have acted inappropriately, within the constraints of an imperfectly understood partnership agreement being played out on a club night session. 

As I see it the main remedy here is more experience, for all parties. You will experience more such happenings, both erroneous and deliberate, and will become more confident in handling them.

Cheers
Dougal