Post by j***@gmail.comFirst of all, thank you all for your replies.
Why did I post this bidding problem?
1.
In the partnership, for may years a partnership, there was a different interpretation of the mmeaning of the 2NT-bid.
The 2NT-bidder meant it as natural.
His partner explained it to the opponents, on request of his righthand opponent, as an unusual NT for the minors.
In practice het then bid 3C. Well, if he believed his partners bidding why then did he bid only 3C? Why not 4C or even 5C?
I think 3C is justifiable if you believe your partner's bidding
(assuming the opponents are using a fairly standard Multi and your
team's defence to it is also fairly standard, 3C is likely to actually
be the best contract if you believe all the bids). Besides, the bidder
of 3C has no unauthorised information, so legally speaking, they can do
what they want (other than misinform the opponents as to what 2NT
means!) 4C is probably a better bid due to pre-emptive/tactical
considerations, but 3C isn't completely unreasonable.
(That said, I think that there's fairly strong evidence from the 3C
bidder's hand - which contained nine minors - that 2NT wasn't intended
as showing 5-5 minors, given that the opponents weren't doing anything
to indicate a ridiculous number of majors between them. When you set me
the problem under the assumption that 2NT shows 5-5 minors, I strongly
suspected a psyche, and considered passing if not for my policy on
fielding psyches.)
Post by j***@gmail.com2.
The 2NT-bidder held
S A Q 10
H Q 10 8 3 2
D K J 9
C 5 4
2NT was meant as natural.
After having heard his partners explanation of unusual, he then bid 3NT for one down.
Well, was 3NT allowed? IMO the answer must be ''no''.
Do you agree?
For a bid to be illegal based on unauthorised information (such as
hearing a partner explain a bid), there are three things you need to
look at: the offending bidder needs to be aware of the unauthorised
information, the offending bidder had reasonable bids ("logical
alternatives") that would have been less successful than the actual
result, and the unauthorised information demonstrably suggested that the
less successful alternatives would have been less successful.
The 2NT bidder presumably heard their partner's explanation, so that's
the first requirement met. What are the logical alternatives? Pass seems
reasonable if you assume your partner has a large number of clubs and
few points (and that doesn't seem like an unreasonable assumption if
your no-trump bid gets pulled to 3C), so that seems logical to me. Would
it have been less successful than 3NT? It's a 5:2 fit with the K and Q
high, and the opponents have somewhat unbalanced hands, so that seems
reasonable, but we'd need to see the whole layout to be sure on this
one. Was bidding 3NT suggested by the unauthorised information? Yes,
knowing your partner has misinterpreted you as holding the minors makes
it more reasonable to bid on after your partner has shown one. So I
think that, assuming 3C would have scored worse than 3NT, there's a
reasonable case for the directors to adjust the contract here to 3C.
(If a director were attempting to poll players to determine whether
passing is a logical alternative, they'd give the players the hand of
the 2NT bidder and ask them what they'd do over 3C. Showing players the
hand of the 3C bidder wouldn't be useful, as that player has no
requirements other than to state the partnership agreement about 2NT
correctly.)
--
ais523