[dickiegera]

---

Legal????

[pescetom]

Any bid was legal unless your RA says differently on some legal basis. What is the RA and what is the agreement about this opening?

[LBengtsson]

Irrespective of the position and vulnerability, even though I have nowhere near the knowledge of qualified tournament directors, I would rule this bid as a psyche for one reason only: you are playing 2/1 which is a 5M opening system. But what the law says might be different. I am interested what more experienced forum members who have knowledge on rulings say about this.

[jillybean]

1♠ is a psyche, 1♥ is just awful

[Cyberyeti]

jillybean, on 2023-March-28, 14:38, said:

1♠ is a psyche, 1♥ is just awful

We used to open this 2♥ (nat 4+ cards) but were banned from doing so systemically recently

[mycroft]

I'll start by saying "bids are not legal or illegal. Agreements are." As requested in the subtitle, ACBL discussion to follow.

So, what is their agreement? If it's a traditional "could be a good 8 or 9 in third seat", then I think it qualifies as a psych: "generally an ace outside the agreement". Psychic bids are legal. Yes, the ACBL has issues about "using judgement to make a call that would be illegal if that were their agreement", and if AKxx and out was acceptable, I think there's an argument that this is not a gross enough deviation to be psychic.

Okay, so would it be a legal agreement counting the deviation? In an open game, YES (in a Basic/+ game, no). The relevant part of the Open Chart - remember this is "Disallowed":

Quote

A Natural or Quasi-Natural 1-level opening bid in first or second seat that could contain less than Near-Average Strength.

There are other lines about Artificial 1-level bids, but 4 hearts is clearly Natural.

In the first version of the Open chart, the limitation was in all four seats, but too many top-level experts opened on AKxxx, or AQTxx and out and got dinged for illegal agreement and took to several places to point out how the rules makers can't play bridge. So they changed it in the first set of revisions. And they changed it on the Open chart as well as Open+, because sometimes those players played with clients in Stratified Pairs events. The 751 players just out of the Gold Rush, or deciding to play the morning Side Game? Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

And because of the fight they were going to have with AKxxx vs AQxxx vs KQxxx vs... now 0+ is a legal agreement, in third seat.

Oh, but it should be Alerted, right? No. There is no strength-based Alerting requirements on Natural suit bids (except "weak 2s" or 3s that could have 12 high). Well then, a Pre-Alert? No. The relevant part of the Pre-Alert list:

Quote

Playing different systems depending on seat or vulnerability. It is not considered a different system if the only change is No Trump Range (and responses) or Opening Bid strength.

But surely this is unfair to the 90% of bridge players that "just play normal, and would never expect anything like this"? Me, I couldn't say. I'm just posting the rules. Maybe if enough make enough noise, the Powers That Be will make another adjustment.

So, how do you know? Like many things about minimums since the new charts came out, you have to ask. And to know to ask, you need to have been caught by it. And the number of times you'll ask and get "normal, why would you ask?" will be high. I would hope that if this is part of their agreement, when asked, they would do better than "normal for third seat".

[pescetom]

Thanks for the clarification that ACBL and 2/1 are in the subtitle. Unfortunately subtitles are not visible on a phone (or at least not on my phone with this browser) so it would be better to repeat vital information in the OP.

[blackshoe]

It's not a psych if the bidder did not intend to psych.

[mycroft]

Warning: none of this is relevant to the question in the OP. No matter what their actual minimum is, in Open/+ games in the ACBL, the agreement is legal, and their alerting requirements are "you don't have to say anything, but we assume it's on the card."

Not true. It's not a psych if the bidder did not intend to grossly deviate from their agreements.

"It's what I wanted to do, but it's not a psych" is not a get-out-of-psych-free pass. All the "tactical bid" people love this idea, but they're wrong.

There's three places as far as convention charts go:

• It's not deliberate. Okay, explain what you thought you had, or what you thought you were bidding.
  
• it's deliberate, but not a gross deviation from your agreement. Okay, what is your actual agreement, is *that* legal, and why is that not what you are telling your opponents? Either that, or it's absolutely gross, what planet are you from?(*)(**)
  
• it's deliberate, and a gross deviation from your agreement. Whether or not you intended to psych, you made a psychic call. That's the definition.

Now, I know you don't like the ACBL's "you can't use judgement to make a call that would be illegal if it were your actual agreement" language. But how do you write it so that "just call it judgement, they'll let you play it" doesn't work? Because we have 60 years of experience that people do this. It's just that now, it's people that post on That Other Site being nailed for "Just Playing Bridge", rather than those awful opponents of those people, who were clearly Trying To C-.

[*]Okay, I have some unusual ideas about what is "a gross deviation" that, while nobody I think would dismiss out of hand, many would not agree with. For instance, "11-15, 4♠-5♥" on a 4=4 (because the reason for the bid is to handle that one poor distribution, and 4=4 will have a normal sequence available), or the range change required for a balanced 3-HCP call to be gross compared to a not necessarily balanced, 11-point range call. I might rule gross there, but without the "pull the other one, it has bells on" overtone.
[**]Please note, this is where people want to land, for reasons I do not understand. I guess because there's still a stigma over the P-word, and there isn't the same stigma over "this is what we write down, this is what we tell people, but this is our actual agreement, and 'if you could play bridge', you'd understand they match; why should we have to clue in the opponents who 'can't play'?" Funny how they seem to also be the people that freak out when the opponents do something they wouldn't do, and expect to have every single possible ramification explained to them.

[pescetom]

blackshoe, on 2023-March-28, 22:49, said:

It's not a psych if the bidder did not intend to psych.

Which I always thought was a rather odd recursive assertion.
I think what it is trying to say is that a gross deviation is not a psych unless the primary aim of the bidder is to deceive the opponents.

jillybean, on 2023-March-28, 14:38, said:

1♠ is a psyche, 1♥ is just awful

And this is another rather odd issue in the definition of psychic bids.
The Laws insist that grossly misstating strength is a psych, yet the majority of players will deny this and a good number of Directors will give them rope too.

I would be curious to know from those who think that 1♥ here is just awful, whether 1♠ with ♠Q6432 ♥73 ♦T53 ♣J83 would be the same.

[blackshoe]

The point is that you can't just point to a particular bid made with a particular hand and say "that's a psych". You need more information.

[mycroft]

100% agree. Which is, of course, why I started my statement with "if their agreement is the standard...". But that's not the same as "if they didn't intend to psych".

[sanst]

To answer the original question: yes, it’s legal. Only X and XX are illegal according to the Laws. Without more information nothing more can be said. Was this a deliberate bid? If so, was it some, rather odd, kind of psych? Did S pull the wrong card from the box? Is S known to make calls like this? Etcetera.
I don’t know, but did score EW a lousy result on this board and is that why this is posted here?