[franstas]

Last week we had a complaint about a bridger bidding 2H with only 2 points. His defense I have a six card in H. Your input?

[Cyberyeti]

What's the problem ? Of course it's allowed, N hadn't fielded it, the problem is caused by W suppressing his ♠K9x.

[TylerE]

On what basis do you believe this bid should not be allowed?

If I were east/west I would begging all my opponents to bid like this, especially red. +1100 available against 3Hx.

[mycroft]

The Laws only say that you can not have a concealed agreement, and you have to meet any regulations on agreements your Regulatory Authority sets. You are allowed to violate your agreements, even, provided partner is no more aware of your tendency to do this than the opponents.

Your RA may have rules, but I don't know any who regulate this auction, provided 2♥ shows hearts. The ACBL (my RA, so the one I'm familiar with) allows "All Natural overcalls" at the Basic level - so as long as it shows 4+ hearts, it's good, even in the newcomer games.

There are many who believe that it's not legal to make a bid they wouldn't make, and that especially applies to particularly aggressive initial calls (opening a weak 2 on Jxxxx, or a 3 bid on JTxxxx, or 1♠ systemically on a random 9-count with 5 spades). They are wrong, and now is a great time to learn. This is frequently "helped along" by teachers who teach their country's standard as "this is what the bid means", and not "this is what the bid means in our country's standard system. Different systems exist, and they do different things."

Moving from "allowed" to "what should have been done":

If E-W play support doubles, West should double and they find their spades. If they don't, I don't have a problem with 3♦ with this suit, but with only 5, I'd think about bidding 2♠ anyway and hope. If West doesn't show spades somehow, when 3♥ gets to East, then it's likely that double of 3♥ is at best "do something intelligent" and more likely penalty. And red-on-white into a potential misfit with three (and possibly 4) tricks opposite an opener, I would expect this goes for at least 500, which beats any game. If you have slam, it's still likely to go -1100, and if it's only -800, then you still beat all the people who couldn't find slam. If it's "do something intelligent" and partner doesn't pass, they'll bid 3♠ now and you get to the spade game. Or, if double seems too scary, then East has failed to follow Hamman's rule: "If there are options and 3NT is one of them, bid 3NT."

But really, the result on this hand is irrelevant. The important thing to take from it is to remember South bids like this, so that the next time they take a flier, you and your partner punish them for it. For instance, with one of my regular partners our agreement is "without specific agreement, doubles at the 2 level are takeout, 3 level are DSI". However, with one specific person, "something intelligent" especially when they are vulnerable is always "pass and try for -200". He is well known for pushing and relying on his declarer play to survive, and his reputation as a great declarer to stop the opponents from turning a great -100 into a matchpoint death score -200 or -300 (or, sometimes, a great -250 into a less-great -1100). Oddly enough, he doesn't push as hard against us as other players; I have no idea why.

[Tramticket]

Depending on jurisdiction, it is probably alertable if the partnership has agreed to overcall on this 2-count. But certainly legal.

[mycroft]

I avoided talking about Alertability (because that's a whole other mess), except for discussing "concealed". And the OP probably can and should ignore the following (but if she's the director of the game, and the game is an ACBL game, read on).

Since it's been brought up, in the ACBL, it's not strictly Alertable, but if they do make these kinds of overcalls by (even implicit) agreement, I would recommend they take advantage of the "loophole" in the Alert regulations and Alert it anyway. They'll probably find that after doing that for a while, the success rate of this agreement goes down...

[loophole] The new Alert Regulations state that "these Natural bids are Alertable." It explicitly doesn't say "do not alert any other Natural bids". This is deliberate, and is intended to allow players who play sufficiently unusual, but Natural, agreements to Alert them if they believe that they can not fulfil their disclosure responsibilities without doing so. I Have Opinions on this one, when do I not, but this is the New Law. I have fewer Opinions with Appendix O's regulation that states that online, with self-Alerting, it is encouraged to self-explain anything the opponents may not understand, whether Alertable or not.

[success rate goes down] There was a pair that played in the Penticton Regional who played 12-14 NT openings and overcalls. And because they didn't have to Announce NT overcall range, they didn't. When called on this by one set of aggrieved opponents, the directors explained that in fact [old regulations, but still true with the new] what they must do is *Alert* the overcall. Which they, properly, did going forward. By the end of the week, they weren't playing 12-14 NT overcalls any more.

[hrothgar]

If you got a bad score then it is your right, NO your DUTY to complain to the director and try to have this reversed.

Too many people think that bridge is a card game.
Its not. Its all about working the refs and learning how to achieve in committee what you can't accomplish at the table.

[blackshoe]

mycroft, on 2021-February-01, 11:15, said:

[loophole] The new Alert Regulations state that "these Natural bids are Alertable." It explicitly doesn't say "do not alert any other Natural bids". This is deliberate, and is intended to allow players who play sufficiently unusual, but Natural, agreements to Alert them if they believe that they can not fulfil their disclosure responsibilities without doing so. I Have Opinions on this one, when do I not, but this is the New Law. I have fewer Opinions with Appendix O's regulation that states that online, with self-Alerting, it is encouraged to self-explain anything the opponents may not understand, whether Alertable or not.

Do you have evidence that it's deliberate?

The regulation actually says "The default rule for Natural bids and Passes is that they should not be alerted". "Should not", in the common vernacular, does not rise to the level of prohibition. However, in the laws of duplicate bridge, and by extension in regulations made under those laws, if a player does something he should not do, he has committed an infraction of law.

It may be that a member of the C&C Committee, or of the Board of Directors, has stated that the wording was deliberate and furthermore was not intended to invoke the laws' definition of "should not", but IMO unless they so stated in their official capacity and speaking for the body of which they are a member, the statement is personal opinion only and does not have the force of law.

NB: I would not expect a member of the BoD to have a clue what the C&CC intended in their wording.

[pilowsky]

Turning it around, if you open 1NT and your partner did NOT transfer to Hearts, would you be happy?
The Australian youth team had a T-Shirt with "we did not come here to pass" on it.
Everyone in Australia bids like this all the time.
Some guy called Gerald once did it against me in a tourney at Hunters Hill - Peter Gill was the Director and he said it was fine.
Gerald won the tournament - it was the B section.
Australia is a prisoners island - anyone will tell you - full of primitive hungry people (http://bit.ly/SouthernLand) - so maybe it's different here.

[mycroft]

I do, and it is personal communication (from when this was in draft, and they removed the "do not Alert bids not in this list" from the Natural section). Neither of us were wearing our Official Hats during this conversation, but it's as legitimate as anything like that could be.

In fact, it was in response to another issue - there are agreements that are Alertable over a Natural opener that are not over a Quasi-Natural one, and even more that aren't Alerted over an Artificial one. There's zero chance anybody is going to remember that all - okay, there's zero chance *I will* remember that all, and if so, what hope the non-SBs?

Now I'm phrasing opinion, not paraphrasing my contact on the committee, but from our conversations it seems they believe "if you play Artificial openers (or even Quasi-Natural ones like 1m could be "m or balanced") you have to be prepared to ask what they're playing; you know when it is confusing. The majority of the opponents don't, and while they should learn, they shouldn't have to."

Having said that, nothing has the force of law until the TDs apply it, shake out the corners, and deal with the bits that fall out. How much protection "they didn't Alert something they should have, even though 100% of players play it Alertable, we were damaged" is going to get, for instance; how much protection "they Alerted something they shouldn't have, even though it's Alertable over a 3+ 1♦ call (or a Polish, but not Precision, club, or...)

The fact that the first 6 months at least of the new Alert Procedure is going to take place 99+% under Appendix O conditions, where "explain whatever you think isn't obvious" trumps "not technically Alertable", is going to cause other problems, frankly.

[helene_t]

2H by a passed hand, vulnerable, is a bit suspicious. Maybe it ought to show a good six- or seven card hearts with some flaw that prevented it from preempting, most likely 4 or 5 spades.
But more likely it just shows that the 2H bid was a stupid bid, or that the initial pass was stupid, or both.
I don't think that requires an alert.
In one partnership I had the agreement that it showed a 2-suiter which didn't fit in our preempt structure. In this case it would be 5 hearts and 5+ clubs. Obviously that did require an alert.

[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2021-February-01, 15:23, said:

The fact that the first 6 months at least of the new Alert Procedure is going to take place 99+% under Appendix O conditions, where "explain whatever you think isn't obvious" trumps "not technically Alertable", is going to cause other problems, frankly.

Could you explain this one to the other side of pond please?

[mycroft]

Appendix O is the ACBL's online regulations. Relevant to the new Alert Procedure (bolded and italicized only for reference. No emphasis in original):

Appendix O said:

Alerts: Alerts (including announcements) are made by the player making the call. An alerted call should be accompanied by an explanation. Stating the common or popular name of the convention is not sufficient. You are encouraged to explain calls even if those calls do not require alerts. Any call that would be alerted after the auction in live bridge should be alerted at the time of the call.

Because of the bold sentence, nobody's going to learn what has actually changed in Alerting, because they are (or should be) already "Alerting" all Alertable calls (and many non-Alertable calls) already. Because of the italicized sentence, the uptick in Delayed Alerts (basically, adding all slam auctions) isn't going to be learned properly. So we get to do all of this (both education and learning about the confusing/missing/needs clarification bits) now, and again when we go back FtF.

[mikeh]

hrothgar, on 2021-February-01, 11:45, said:

If you got a bad score then it is your right, NO your DUTY to complain to the director and try to have this reversed.

Too many people think that bridge is a card game.
Its not. Its all about working the refs and learning how to achieve in committee what you can't accomplish at the table.

Be careful how you post sarcasm.

Plus, you’re dating yourself. Who has committees anymore?

[mycroft]

Having appreciated Mike's (and Hrothgar's) post (and also being concerned about someone reading it and not seeing the sarcasm), I would add that "calling the director when something seems odd is just fine". And when the director says "yes, they're allowed to do that", with or without anything on explanations, if they say "okay" and get on to the next hand, everything's still good. It's when it becomes a complaint, rather than just a "is there anything here?" director call, that it goes beyond "just fine."

[HardVector]

"Allowed" is different than "Wise". The bid is definitely allowed. Vulnerable with a bad suit and 2 pts makes it not wise, imo.

[AL78]

I don't think there are grounds for a complaint. It looks like South made an idiotic bid, North made a bog standard raise to the level of the fit, and EW failed to take the opportunity to swing the axe for +1100. Daft bids don't always get what they deserve, and you have to take it on the chin when you are on the receiving end.

Why is East blasting to 5♦? It is an obvious penalty double if that is available, or else 3NT must surely be better odds. If double is takeout, West can then show the three card spade support and they find 4♠.

West's hand looks good for a support double if that is available, otherwise if a TOX shows heart shortage and implies something in clubs and spades, I'd prefer that to 3♦.