iviehoff, on Mar 2 2010, 04:24 AM, said:
You may be aware that you are partnering one of the only two players in the club who psyches. Your opponents have no reason to be aware of that.
Sure they do. The first sentence of my previous post was
Quote
At my local club, there are one or two players who have a reputation for occasional psyches.
By "they have a reputation" I mean that it is well known in this club that these players occasionally psych.
As to the rest of what you said, ivie, I know all that intellectually, at least. But there I am at the table, the auction has gone wonkie, I'm convinced it's my partner who has psyched, and... what? I'm supposed to carefully avoid taking what may be the only action that prevents us getting a bottom, on the assumption that if I do anything at all that seems to help our situation, the TD will rule against us? Will partner ever play with me again? Besides, if the situation does come up, it's gonna take me about thirty minutes to figure out which of my possible actions might be "fielding", so I can avoid them and now I've put
partner in a bind.
The other side of the coin is that those who don't understand this whole psyching thing are likely to feel cheated if someone psychs against them, playing with a regular partner, and the psyching side gets a good result. Call the director every time? Sure, that'll go over well.
Either psyching is legal, or it's not. Making it damn near impossible for the partner of a player who psychs to avoid an adverse ruling seems to me tantamount to making psyching illegal. Some people are quite happy with that, I suppose.