[jahol]

Hi

I enjoy playing in Bridge Base individuals. In some of them, one of the limitations defined is "no psychic bid, please". I do not like such limitation since I think bridge is bridge and the rules should be similar for all kinds of competitions. Still, I am trying to follow it. However, sometimes.....

Today, I was given with

AK54--97--A975--K107

and the aution was (the first call mine, opponents passed):

1D--2C--2NT--3D--?

Here, I took some time and then found an interesting bid (in my opinion) - 3H! I expected that there would be a reasonable chance that the opponents would take it as seminatural and that I could get first lead in spades in potential 3NT contract. It was exaxtly what happened! My partner bid 3NT, the lead was spade J (from J10xxx) and my cards were now:

96--843--KQJ2--AJ65
AK54--97--A975--K107.

I took the trick with spade ace, played diamond to the king and club to the ten (heart switch would not have been that easy from LHO side). After taking trick with C10, I continued with three rounds of diamonds and club back to the king. The opponents were confused. Two small hearts were discarded on diamonds and H10 on the club (from LHO). Since club distribution was 4-2 and the hearts seemed not to be dangerous anymore for me, I decided to try this suit! I played H9, which was taken with HJ (LHO) and overtaken with HQ (RHO). The next card was HK (RHO), which was overtaken with HA (LHO). Belive or not, my H8 was cold!

My partner was fascinated and "so were" my opponents. And that is the reason why I have decided to present the story here. The opponents discussed the hand and their conclusion was that the reason of they loss was, to some extent, that I had been cheating (they wrote it on the chat line). Later on I was contacted with tournament director (in a polite manner) and I had to explain why I had made such strange call! I do not think that my call had anything to do with cheating neither it could be classified and a "classic" psycho. In my opinion, it was nice call, one of those, I play bridge for! If my opponent makes such a call, I am happy (at least a bit) and I am willing to congratulate him. Still, I am a bit uncertain, whether I am in coincidence with BridgeBase rules. What is your opinion?

[hrothgar]

Far too many people seem to expect that they deserve top boards simply for showing up, without any need to demonstrate skill, intelligence, or even a minimal level of competence.

The pair that you played against sounds like a classic example of this species.
The director doesn't sound much better:

I'll note in passing that many people would treat 3H as asking for a stopper rather than showing a stopper.

[Free]

It's silly to see that soo many people complain when they have a bottom because they thought you had something else than you really had... Why in God's name whould 3♥ be natural? Imo it has 2 possible explanations: it's either showing a stop (no stop ♠) or asking a stop (with stop ♠). So is this cheating? I don't know exactly, but to be really perfect, you should alert your bid and explain it

Anyway, if you play at high level competition or tournaments, nobody would EVER complain about such bid, so it says enough about both your opponents in that matter...

[Shrike]

Even if 3H shows rather than than asks, this sort of tactical bid in a constructive auction is not much of a psyche. This example illustrates the difficulty inherent in banning psyches -- it's pretty difficult to define the term.

I think I'd have won the first trick with the king, though.

[EricK]

I don't like "No psych" rules either. But I do see why some would like them, especially in events where well established partnerships are playing against pick-up pairs. But individual events are the events where I can least understand such a rule.

Psyching does present various alerting and explaining issues in regular partnerships where you are to some extent aware of your partner's psyching tendencies. But in an individual event that is unlikely to be the case.

In response to Shrike, it is fairly easy to define a psych. If the agreed meaning of your bid does not nearly match your hand, then your bid was a psych. Neither your purpose for making the bid, nor the likelihood of success, nor the type of auction have anything to do with it.

Eric

[xx1943]

jahol, on May 8 2004, 03:57 PM, said:

In my opinion, it was nice call, one of those, I play bridge for! If my opponent makes such a call, I am happy (at least a bit) and I am willing to congratulate him. Still, I am a bit uncertain, whether I am in coincidence with BridgeBase rules. What is your opinion?

200% my opinion. This is one reason why I play bridge

[paulg]

I abhor (really really dislike) "no psyche" rules and agree with many of the comments already made about this type of rule.

However, you have chosen to play the tourney with this rule and I feel the opinions to date tend to reflect people's dislike of the rule rather than a more objective assessment.

Your bid is a clear psyche, and your comments show that you intended it as such:

Quote

... be a reasonable chance that the opponents would take it as seminatural and that I could get first lead in spades in potential 3NT contract ...

This is definitely NOT cheating - however it is against the rules of the tourney and I would expect the director to assign an adjusted score and probably a penalty. [If the defenders play is reckless and gambling, then there may be the opportunity for a split score but you are not keeping yours!]

In ANY other event I would fully support your freedom to make this bid.

However personally I not so convinced it's such a great bid - it has worked but it is only cute because it has worked - it is random & next time partner will raise you to 4♥ holding ♠xx ♥QJx ♦KJTx ♣Axxx

Good luck,

Paul

[mink]

I was the director involved in this case, but not the host. I did not see any "no psyche" rule in the tourney description, and the player who called me did not refer to such a rule, so I believe it was not there.

I asked jahol about the bid only because opp had complained and I needed to hear the other side. I was completely satisfied with the answer, so I only talked with the caller after that. What I did not know that was, however, that he had called jahol a cheater in table chat - neither player told me this. I would have acted differently if I knew.

I explainded the case to the caller even after the tourney, but he was not believing that this was no cheating and nothing illegal. Looks like he took his own laws to judge what is cheating. At least, he was polite to me.

Karl

[paulg]

Karl,

Well handled - congrats.

Paul

[Free]

cardsharp, on May 9 2004, 05:25 PM, said:

~snip~
However personally I not so convinced it's such a great bid - it has worked but it is only cute because it has worked - it is random & next time partner will raise you to 4♥ holding ♠xx ♥QJx ♦KJTx ♣Axxx

Good luck,

Paul

Again, I don't know what level these tourneys are, but they seem pretty low if any player would ever raise to 4♥ with such a hand, since you still have a 3♠ bid available...

[paulg]

Free, on May 9 2004, 10:30 AM, said:

cardsharp, on May 9 2004, 05:25 PM, said:

~snip~
However personally I not so convinced it's such a great bid - it has worked but it is only cute because it has worked - it is random & next time partner will raise you to 4♥ holding ♠xx ♥QJx ♦KJTx ♣Axxx

Good luck,

Paul

Again, I don't know what level these tourneys are, but they seem pretty low if any player would ever raise to 4♥ with such a hand, since you still have a 3♠ bid available...

We are entering murky territory here ... but presumably partner has bid 3♥ because of a black suit weakness, else why try to look for 4-3 fits?

If this weakness is in spades, then we might as well try 4♥, and if in clubs then we only have a single stopper so 3NT may not be great and our Ace will hopefully protect partner in a 4♥ contract.

Although I agree that 3♠ is probably best ... I think it is more likely to be the bids of experts rather than the opposite. An expert holding both majors would probably have bid 3NT already!

Cheers

Paul

[Fluffy]

EricK, on May 9 2004, 06:40 AM, said:

I don't like "No psych" rules either. But I do see why some would like them, especially in events where well established partnerships are playing against pick-up pairs. But individual events are the events where I can least understand such a rule.

Hi Eric, I played one a tournament with that rule in real life, and it has an unsolvable problem:


Lets say you play Strtong NT (15-17) and you open with 14, is it a psych?

No, its a kind of judgement.

Now you open with 13, is it a psych?

ok, lets open with 12......


Who is the one to judge if a call is a psyche or not?, I don´t think anyone can judge the edge calls, even the best players in the world, and sadly director can hardly make an expert players poll at BBO.