[manudude03]

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This occurred during a local teams-of-8 league match last night.

North-South are experienced, East-West appear to be a fairly new partnership. Both pairs playing Benji Acol.

Before the start of the set, North and East were seated a couple of minutes before South and West in which time N/E had a verbal exchange about systems which included that EW play Michaels (neither pair had convention cards). During the auction, 2H was neither alerted nor asked about initially. When East bid 4S, South asked West about the meaning of 2H at which point it was explained as a general force. No description about distribution was given. North doubled for penalties and South pulled it to 5H. When asked why he bid 5H, he explained that with his spade void and very little defence, he was afraid that 4S was making so "took insurance". After 5H doubled went down 3, South called director claiming that he was passing the double if he had been told it was Michaels.

There were some disputes over the auction itself and when the explanation of 2H was asked for. The playing director told the table to call him again at the end of the set and this being the first board of that set (of 6), the recall was some 40 minutes later. However, based on the players' versions of events, it is most likely what was written above was what actually happened. Anyway, with most of the mess hopefully cleared up, how would you rule?

[pran]

manudude03, on 2011-October-13, 16:17, said:

[...] When asked why he bid 5H, he explained that with his spade void and very little defence, he was afraid that 4S was making so "took insurance". After 5H doubled went down 3, South called director claiming that he was passing the double if he had been told it was Michaels. [...]

I have a problem seeing what difference it would have made to South being told that it was Michaels instead of general force?
If I am correct 4S makes on any lead except a diamond lead (or the Ace of spades followed by the high diamonds). So the pull to 5H seems reasonable enough as insurance, and South's post mortem remark seems like (another) insurance?

[bluejak]

I also do not see what difference the explanation makes. I have my 3♥ bid, my partner doubles, it's going off [of course you are correct, pran, but since North is leading a top diamond approximately 100% of the time, looking at dummy and playing top diamond, heart at least 98% of the time, let us assume it is going off] and I do not trust partner. Why should I trust partner on a different explanation?

Result stands. Tell E/W to get their act together.

Why no system cards?

[mrdct]

The TD needs to quiz East-West on what their actual agreement is. It seems that West either forgot they had agreed to play Michaels or did not believe that they had agreed to play Michaels. East, it seems, was quite clear in his mind that East-West had an agreement to play Michaels and even went so far as to pre-alert it to his screenmate (even though they don't appear to have been using screens). I would be asking East on what basis did he believe they had an agreement to play Michaels. I would then weigh-up the evidence and determine whether this was a misexplanation or misbid situation applying Law 21b1b "The Director is to presume Mistaken Explanation rather than Mistaken Call in the absence of evidence to the contrary". My preliminary view is that this should be treated as 'Mistaken Explanation' but that fact can only really be determined properly by the TD at the table.

Next question is, would South have done anything differently if 2♥ had been described to him as Michaels? I'm with pran and bluejak on this one and don't really think it would've made any difference to South's decision to "insure" against 4♠ being cold; noting that it is very close to making and would be gin if West's & North's round kings were swapped.

Regarding the likelihood of 4♠x actually making, the person on lead will know that 2♥ is Michaels having been prealerted and with East making a correction of the "general force" explanation prior to the opening lead so I would find it pretty extraordinary to not lead a top ♦ to have a look at dummy.