[jillybean]

akwoo, on 2026-October-10, 15:24, said:

There are a few standard psychs that are common knowledge to all advanced players, and it's sometimes hard to tell whether the opponents need an alert, especially when you're an inexperienced partnership that hasn't used or discussed the psych but know that you're both advanced players.

Should one routinely alert and explain that this is a standard psyching situation?

If the bid is an a standard psych that is common knowledge to all advanced players then it appears to be a concealed partnership agreement.
A very serious matter indeed.

[mycroft]

Why? I've made at least two of the common ones in high level events, and they backfired spectacularly when (only) CHO didn't get it. Others have worked well, of course.

I'm sure I've made the other common one more than once (though IIRC never with the same partner). I'm certainly at the point with one partner at least, that against Montréal Relay pairs, we should probably make formal (and Alert) that after 1♣-, and especially after 1♣-p-1♦, one of a major overcall is "that suit or takeout of that suit".

Psyches are legal. There are places, that are in fact "generally known to bridge players" (even if this way of actually taking advantage of them isn't), where logic says you're much safer to fool around, and actions that make it "generally clear to bridge players" that a player has fooled around ("passing a forcing bid", for instance). Where "fool around" becomes "gross distortion" is a place to make judgement, but they exist, and if people were never told (or have forgotten) that psyches are legal, that's their lookout.

I absolutely agree with the ACBL that there are psyches that are made for imProper purposes (whether I land on exactly the published metrics is another question, but I do love pointing out to the "as long as you like to psych never" folks that the published metric for "excessive psyching" investigation is "three or more psyches in a *session*") should be treated like any other attempt to subvert the validity of the competition. But that's not the same as saying that "working out that if there are 50 points in the deck, it is incredibly likely that the person 'fooling around' is the third-seat, white-on-red, 1♥ opener"; or that after 2♥-2♠; 3♠-4♥, responder might not have spades (and if so, probably doesn't have points either); or that after 1♥-X, 1♠ might be "trying to pick off the opponents' suit" (especially if you subscribe to the "advancer's double is takeout, because we can always trust our opponents" system, and have shown that to this pair before) is "concealed partnership agreement" just because partner either *has seen it before* (from opponents or a different partner), or simply because they can count to 40.