nige1, on 2014-November-20, 19:30, said:
IMO the WBFLC should not have separate psych and deviation categories, for law purposes. And if they must distinguish them then they should, themselves, specify objective criteria. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the multitude of responsibilities that the WBFLC have delegated to local regulators and failing that to director judgement. FWIW, IMO, a deviation should be at most 1 card or 1 HCP and not both.
I mean anything more is a
gross deviation. I assume the poll is an attempt to define "
minor deviation".
Trinidad, on 2014-November-21, 00:33, said:
For me the definition would focus around intent, rather than HCPs. For me when a person deviates, he is trying to make the best descriptive call he has available. He may be plugging a system hole and not have an other call available, or the call that the system actually would dictate has some drawbacks for the particular auction that developed. In practice, there is no real grey area. People psyche because they deliberately want to paint a false picture of their hand. Then they do not pick a call that is a mere queen off painting a correct picture of their hand.
gnasher, on 2014-November-21, 00:42, said:
I'm surprised that you think it matters. Although the Laws do define a psych, the distinction between a psych and a deviation is irrelevant as far as the Laws are concerned. They are treated identically for the purposes of establishing implicit understandings, disclosure of those understandings, and rectification for damage caused by non-disclosure. There are only two differences in law between a psych and a deviation (MO).
(1) The footnote to 17D, relating to psyching after bidding a hand from the wrong board, and
(2) 40B2d The Regulating Authority may restrict the use of psychic artificial calls.
But this is irrelevant, because the Laws also say
40B1a In its discretion the Regulating Authority may designate certain partnership understandings as "special partnership understandings"
40B2a The Regulating Authority is empowered without restriction to allow, disallow, or allow conditionally, any special partnership understanding.
So even without 40B2d the Regulating Authority could restrict psychs. Or they could define their own terminology for a particular category of deviation, and then restrict that.
On second thoughts, I agree with Trinidad, that
intention should be the distinction. The rules should deal with
deviations, both minor and gross -- normally without consideration of intent. A deviation would then only be classifiable as a
psych (now redefined as any
deliberate deviation) by a director who passed the
TD mind-reading course. A TD who passed with distinction, should be licensed to reclassify a psych as a
pseudo-psych or
CPU (i.e. subject to a concealed partnership understanding).