[mycroft]

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Now one of the reasons I wouldn't make any of the calls you discuss is that they are neither one thing nor the other -- too far away from what they are supposed to be to have an accurate auction afterwards, but not out-and-out psyches.

Exactly. And the benefit of doing it with a preempt, rather than a constructive call, is that the side that is likely to want to have an accurate auction afterwards is the opponents. Your side, when you preempt, want to unaccurate the auction as much as possible; if it catches you this time, oh well. It's also why this kind of "minor" deviation is so tempting with a weak shapely hand, and so unappealing with a weak constructive call.

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And that is exactly why I think setting the bar between psyche and deviation at about 3 points difference is sensible -- you won't (I hope) see many actions which are borderline.

Remember a psychic call *is* a deviation. A gross deviation (as opposed to a minor one) is not a psychic unless it's deliberate; and a deliberate deviation is not a psychic unless it's gross. In other words, these are not the comparisons you're looking for.

To bring back the original topic (sorry bluejak, for threadjacking), the difference between that case and this is that it's neither psychic nor misinformation; if the regulations say "you can have this agreement, provided you don't deviate in HCP", it's a legal regulation (not going near the "is it a good or sensible regulation"), and it doesn't have to be a psychic, and people who are misinforming are not only misinforming their opponents, they're trying to misinform the RA to get to play an illegal agreement. And the reason the RA makes the regulations the way they do is that otherwise they get into these arguments about whether it's a "deviation" or a "psychic" or whether "it's okay to do it with <this call>, so why not here?" or ...

[campboy]

I don't even know which thread the original hand was anymore, but in the EBU a "deviation" is a deliberate violation of partnership agreement which is not gross enough to be a psyche.

The only reason as far as I can see why anyone needs to make this distinction is that a fielded deviation gets an adjusted score whereas a fielded psyche gets an adjusted score plus an automatic PP. It certainly does not make the difference between giving an adjusted score and not.

[blackshoe]

Might it make a difference as to whether the action, whichever it was, was in fact "fielded"?

[campboy]

Not really. Of course, it is easier to tell if a player is allowing for his partner to be 9 points short than it is to tell if he is allowing for his partner to be 3 points short, but that is true whatever you want to call them.

[mycroft]

campboy, on Jun 8 2010, 06:51 PM, said:

I don't even know which thread the original hand was anymore, but in the EBU a "deviation" is a deliberate violation of partnership agreement which is not gross enough to be a psyche.

Not a term I was used to (at least in that definition), but bluejak said a similar thing, so I'll go with that (for EBU).

blackshoe said:

Might it make a difference as to whether the action, whichever it was, was in fact "fielded"?

In both of these cases, I don't think it matters much. Almost never will the difference matter to the bidding side, just to the opponents. In general, though?