[Mr. Dodgy]

Scoring: IMP

Bidding:

1♦-2♠!-Pass-Pass;
Dbl-Pass-3♥-3♠;
4♥-Dbl-All Pass

---

I'm not sure exactly when during the play I was called to make a ruling on this hand...it was fairly early on.

2♠ was alerted as "weak". I have a strong suspicion that the bid was not properly self-alerted and the explanation may well have been in response to a query by N/S (because E/W had previously been warned for not alerting their Precision 1♣ opener).

West explained to me:

Quote

my P has bid 2♠ to play after 1♦ opening it need not be weak

I allowed the hand to be played out - 6 under.

How should I rule?

[pbleighton]

First, in the ACBL at least, the standard meaning of jump overcalls is weak, and they need not be alerted. Is this different in your jurisdiction?

Second, it appears that they play it as usually but not always weak. East should have been more forthcoming. That said, North's bidding was atrocious.

No adjustment.

Peter

[inquiry]

You are only required to alert your agreement, not what you hold. If you don't alert properly your agreement, then you give misinformation (regardless of what you held). If you alert correctly your agreement then you provide no misinformation even if you hold something VERY DIFFERENT from what your agreement is.

So as TD, your first responsibility is to determine if the partnership agreement was explained accurately (no need to even look at the hand held to determine this). A couple ways you can do this. Look at their convention card, look at previous hands they have played. Etc. As long as the agreement was adequately explained, then there is no ground for correction.

On this hand, EAST suggest 2♠ was "weak" and WEST expressed it as "to play". WEST explaination sounds like something he might say if WEST was a passed hand. If WEST was a passed hand, and the agreement is that 2♠ could be highly variable (including an opening hand), then the alert would be mis-information (assuming west's explaination is correct). If west is an unpassed hand, then 2♠ is to "play" means by default it has to be very weak. So I suspect you left out WEST initial pass...to make the problem more interesting, lets assume this is the case (the bidding was pass-1D-2S with inappropriate alert).

In this assumed case, you know have misinformation. In a F2F event, you might very decide that EW can not profit from their misinformation and award them 3S making three for EW +140. But lets turn our attention to north's bidding. Misinformation does not protect NS from a wreckless and suicidal action. So you have to judge was north's actions reasonable given the misinformation?

The balancing double, hoping partner has a penalty pass is not a horrible decision I suspect, and opening 1D instead of 1C or 1NT is not wild option either. However, after the risky double of 2S (given the doubleton heart) and hearing partner bid 3H and WEST come alive with 3S, what else can 4H be but reckless. Partner not only didn't pass the 2Sx the 3S bid suggest partner is short in spades and didn't even use a negative double of 2S despite having some hearts. The 4H bid is so reckless, that NS deserve their 4Hx-6.

Did the misinformation (explaination of agreement if it could include an opening hand) lead to NS bidding too high? I think the answer could be yes, so I would like to roll back EW result to 3S=. But NS real problem was norths bidding, so I would like to leave their result as 4Hx-6. At F2F, this kind of adjustments is possible. On BBO, sadly it is not. There is no fair way to correct it on BBO currently. Perhaps Average EW, and average - to NS but that doesn't seem fair either. NS deserve much worse.

[keylime]

I'm leaving the result as it stands. So what if East deviated from an agreement? It's clear West was not in on the act for they didn't take a call. Can't excuse North's erratic bidding. No adjustment, a sitdown discussion with N/S warranted.

An analogous example of what happens when the TD does get involved wrongly happened to me about 18 months ago. I don't remember the exact auction but it went something like this:

1C* (strong) - P - 1S* (hearts, diamonds, or 12-14 balanced) - X
XX (business) - P - P (I had the 12-14 balanced) - 1NT
X - 2C/D - X all pass

They took 2 tricks vul at imps in an ACBL tourney. They complained to the director about the meaning of the redouble (which was alerted as the day is long) and got their well earned bad score erased to avg minus for them, avg plus for us. The director stated, "I can't let this bad score stand - it'll mess up the entire field's comparisons." This hand was the hand that broke the camel's back in terms of ACBL tourneys and me and I have not actively played in it since.

You can't excuse bad bridge and expect to piss and moan your way out of it. That's why you have the penalty double - it is to punish (hello?) your opponents when you step out of line. What's the malfunction?