[lamford]

Scoring: MP

1NT - (Pass) - 2NT - All Pass

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1NT was announced as 15-17 and 2NT was invitational. "What is the problem?" you may ask. Well, the opponents suspected that he misbid and used the UI, but he just stated that he upgraded the hand in view of the AJ10 combination, and the good five-card suit. Do you believe him? 2NT is the limit of the hand.

[Pict]

No, I don't believe him.

[RMB1]

lamford, on Mar 15 2010, 08:23 PM, said:

Do you believe him?

No. But I am not sure I have enough evidence to rule against him.

[jallerton]

Were N/S a regular partnership?

How many boards had they played together so far that day?

[Gerben42]

Incredible how useful convention cards are...
The way announcements work is that you only announce what is written on the CC so that you don't have this problem. So there are two cases.

1. In the tournament in question, hardly anyone has a convention card. In this case, no penalty.

2. A convention card is required (and this rule is not ignored by 90% of the players in the club). Now you rule against opener on the basis that he doesn't have a CC so misinformation is ruled.

I don't care about "regular partnership", NT range is something you agree beforehand. If they didn't, rule against them for not taking the game seriously, thus ruining it for the opps.

[hotShot]

This may be the wrong way to approach the problem, but I don't see any damage.
Additionally the opponents don't name how they were damaged.

If there is no damage to correct, why should I investigate?

[campboy]

No-one said anything about MI, or indeed whether there was a CC. The issue is that if South thought they were playing 12-14, he has UI that partner thought otherwise.

HotShot: the damage is that if South thought they were playing 12-14, and continued to think this, he would probably accept the invitation and go off. He is not allowed to use partner's announcement to remember his system.

[barmar]

Is there some reason to expect that South forgot their NT range? Are they playing in an area where weak NT is more common than strong NT? Does he play weak NT with most of his other partners? Do they play variable-range NT, so he might have forgotten which range is appropriate for 1st seat non-vul?

Even if none of this is true, I suspect something fishy, but I don't think a ruling can be made based on a suspicion. If he seems sincere in his explanation of upgrading, you may have to take him at his word.

[lamford]

jallerton, on Mar 15 2010, 04:23 PM, said:

Were N/S a regular partnership?

How many boards had they played together so far that day?

No, first or maybe second time together. Perhaps 8 boards, but I don't know if that included another 1NT opener, sorry. Simple CC with strong NT and red-suit transfers on both cards, plus Astro and standard carding and not much else in response to others.

Weak NT probably 70% of players, but no doubt that they had agreed strong. The announcer was the one who usually plays strong.

[blackshoe]

How many people would upgrade that hand that much?

[gnasher]

I think that we should assume that people are honest unless we have strong evidence to the contrary. I don't think that what happened on this single hand comes close to being sufficiently strong evidence.

[bluejak]

Nor do I, but there would be no harm in keeping a written record.

[gnasher]

bluejak, on Mar 16 2010, 04:06 PM, said:

Nor do I, but there would be no harm in keeping a written record.

I agree with that.

[lamford]

Gerben42, on Mar 15 2010, 05:06 PM, said:

Now you rule against opener on the basis that he doesn't have a CC so misinformation is ruled.

I think you may have missed the point. The opponents did not claim misinformation; in fact after they cashed five rounds of hearts the declarer claimed himself, having 9xx xx AJ10x Axxx in dummy.