[billw55]

Club pairs game, first time with new partner and a rushed system check. Last round, red on white, I am dealer looking at:

♠AK
♥AKQ4
♦KQT5
♣K83

(summary of auction follows description)

So I open 2♣. LHO passes and now the fun starts. Partner bids 1NT (insufficient). I notice only that the strain is NT, parse it as 2NT which shows spades, and alert it. RHO, fully aware of what is going on, bids 2♥ smoothly. After some thought I decide to raise partner, so I lay out the 2♠ card. While LHO is thinking over this unusual auction, I finally notice what is happening. Unlike my stoic RHO, I fail to keep quiet about it, and say something like "er, wait, what ..?" and all four of us start laughing. Now I suppose at this point we should call director, but we all agree that since RHO accepted the bid we can continue. LHO passes, partner bids 3♥, RHO passes. Flummoxed, I bid 6NT which ends the auction and makes seven on a diamond lead from the jack, partner inserting the ten from this uncommonly strong dummy. Turns out partner is 55 in the majors with both minor suit aces. 6NT+1 is a little above average, beating 6♥+1 and 6NT= but losing to 7♥ which is cold. We all laughed some more and went on to the next board. And no, we never got around to asking RHO what she was up to with the 2♥ bid. So:

2♣ -p - 1NT - 2♥
2♠ - p - 3♥ - p
6NT - p - p - p

Questions:

1. If righty rejected 1NT, and partner substitutes 2NT, is anyone barred or otherwise restricted?
2. Was I ethically constrained in any way, and was 6NT acceptable within such a constraint?

[barmar]

1. Unless 2NT has the same or more specific meaning as 1NT, you're barred for the rest of the auction.

2. You have no UI, so you're not constrained.

What was RHO's 2♥, a psych, planning on running to clubs if doubled?

[billw55]

barmar, on 2013-March-04, 08:52, said:

1. Unless 2NT has the same or more specific meaning as 1NT, you're barred for the rest of the auction.

2. You have no UI, so you're not constrained.

What was RHO's 2♥, a psych, planning on running to clubs if doubled?

Apparently so. Fun times for all

[mycroft]

1. Specifically 2♣-p-2NT shows spades. It is an artificial call, and so can not be corrected to from 1NT without barring you (*Unless* partner thought he *was* bidding 2NT (in which case it's a mistaken unintended bid and can be corrected), or he thought for some odd reason that 1NT showed spades over what ever call he thought he was bidding over (1♥ KI, maybe?)). However, I would be very suspicious of someone, especially someone I felt knew the Law, giving me one of those arguments - and I would ensure that I looked at responder's hand when I could (when it came down, or off the hand records, or at the end of the hand, whenever) to ensure I wasn't being sold a pie.

2. You can do whatever you wish. The whole point of RHOs call is to put you in "I bet you have no agreements about *this* auction" mode, and you're allowed to guess; and you're allowed to guess right.

[Edit: fixed my incorrect jargon. Thanks, iviehoff and barmar.]

[campboy]

I can quite easily believe "I knew I was responding to 2♣, and that I had to bid NT to show spades, but got confused about how many NT I needed to bid". This sort of thing is not that rare and is genuinely not a 25A situation.

Personally I am more suspicious of the opposite argument ("It was a mechanical error, but I didn't notice until someone pointed out it was insufficient"), particularly under the old laws where it was the only way to avoid silencing partner.

[FrancesHinden]

I don't like RHO's actions, if he was 'fully aware of what was going on'. He was obliged to point out the insufficient bid and call the director. He could then decide to psyche 2H if he wanted to, but only after calling the TD and accepting the 1NT bid.

[gordontd]

FrancesHinden, on 2013-March-06, 04:23, said:

I don't like RHO's actions, if he was 'fully aware of what was going on'. He was obliged to point out the insufficient bid and call the director.

I'm surprised by this view. I can see nothing in Laws 9, 10 or 27 to disallow this, and it's something I often do.

[iviehoff]

FrancesHinden, on 2013-March-06, 04:23, said:

I don't like RHO's actions, if he was 'fully aware of what was going on'. He was obliged to point out the insufficient bid and call the director.

What makes you think that? He is under no obligation to call the director if attention has not been drawn to the irregularity. He is under no obligation to draw attention to an irregularity that he is aware of. To make a call that is sufficient in relation to the previous bid, being an insufficient bid, is not subject to any rectification; although we can argue about whether it is irregular or not, if the director is called he will simply direct the auction to continue and sufficiency in future is relative to the last bid made.

[iviehoff]

mycroft, on 2013-March-04, 10:48, said:

1. Specifically 2♣-p-2NT shows spades. It is an artificial call, and so can not be corrected to from 1NT without barring you (*Unless* partner thought he *was* bidding 2NT (in which case it's a mistaken bid and can be corrected)

Let's be careful about this. "Mistaken bid" is not a defined term, and how it can be corrected needs care.

On the one hand, it can be an unintended bid - the player thought he was bidding 2NT but his hand put the 1NT card on the table. This can be corrected under the unintended bid laws if noticed by the player in time, but not if he doesn't notice in time, or fails to follow the correct procedure for correcting it. So the player may have mispulled, but not corrected it under the unintended bid laws.

On the other hand, the player may have had in mind that what he wanted to do was make a minimally sufficient bid in NT, fail correctly to calculate how many NT was sufficient, and put down 1NT rather than 2NT.

In both these two scenarios, when the director asks the player what 1NT means, the player will say it means just what 2NT means, because in effect that is what he was trying to bid, even though in the first case it was a mispull and in the second case it is a miscalculation. In our strange world of the insufficient bid laws, where we need to know what the insufficient bid means, and the only way we can find out what it means is to ask the player's intention in making the insufficient bid. Thus we will find that 2NT has precisely the same meaning as 1NT, because 1NT was bid with the intention of bidding 2NT, whether it was mispulled or miscalculated.

These are scenarios in which an artificial 1NT can be corrected to 2NT without penalty under the insufficient laws, and are presumably what you meant by "mistaken bid". There may be some other rare cases where the player was under a different misapprehension but by chance the correction is allowable, but that would be uncommon.

[barmar]

iviehoff, on 2013-March-06, 04:47, said:

On the one hand, it can be an unintended bid - the player thought he was bidding 2NT but his hand put the 1NT card on the table.

This seems to be what mycroft intended, since he wrote "partner thought he *was* bidding 2NT". He just made a mistake in calling it "mistaken" instead of "unintended".

[mycroft]

Absolutely, thanks barmar. I was looking for L25A (I believe I meant to say "mispull", actually). And a great way of determining that is when the 1NT bidder complains that 2♥ is insufficient. Yes, I've had this one, both at the table and as a TD. It's pretty clear that it's a L25A situation then...

[billw55]

Well, partner clearly intended to show spades when he bid 1NT. Whether that has any bearing, I don't know.