advice to less-experienced players on how to answer questions

[dfm]

What advice do you give to relatively inexperienced duplicate players about how to answer questions from the opponents?

[ais523]

Post by dfm
What advice do you give to relatively inexperienced duplicate players
about how to answer questions from the opponents?

The most important thing to bear in mind that the questions that you're
allowed to ask the opponents are about partnership agreements. As such,
you need to explain your partnership agreements, not anything that's
going on in the actual hand.

For example, suppose you're in a pickup partnership, and you agreed to
play Acol with Michaels and red suit transfers (without going into
details). The bidding goes:

(1D), 1NT, (-), 2D

You're the 1NT bidder, and now your RHO asks you what 2D meant. The
correct answer is "We haven't discussed whether we're using the same
system over a 1NT overcall as we would over a 1NT opening. However,
we're playing a variant of Acol in which without the 1D bid, 2D would be
a transfer to hearts, and without the 1NT bid, 2D would show both
majors." Note that you're not saying what the bid actually means, and
you're not guessing what the bid means; you're simply explaining the
extent of your partnership agreement. In cases where you don't have an
explicit agreement, you have to explain what agreements you do have that
you might be trying to extrapolate the meaning of 2D from (the
relevant agreements here are your bidding system, and the meanings of
the bids in the absence of interference).

It's important that you don't say how you intend to interpret your
partner's bid; that would give unauthorized information to your partner
(and it's not information that the opponents are entitled to know).
Likewise, it's important that you don't try to deduce the meaning of the
bid based on your own hand.

If this were an experienced partnership rather than a pickup
partnership, a situation like this has probably happened before, in
which case you'd have more of an agreement (by seeing what typically
happens in that sort of hand). In such cases, for example, the reply
might just be "It's a transfer to hearts", although you'd want to go
into more detail if asked further, e.g. "it shows at least 5 hearts but
could be made on a hand of any strength, although if it's weak then it
probably doesn't want to play in notrumps; that might be because it's
generally imbalanced or because it's short in diamonds specifically".
Note that you're answering in the context of this auction, rather than
explaining in the abstract, as that's what the opponents are likely to
care about.

Another piece of advice is to explain what a convention means, rather
than simply saying the name. For example, the reply above said "both
majors" rather than "Michaels". The reason for this is that your
opponents might not know the convention, or worse, might think they know
the convention but have a different idea of what it means than you do.

You also have a duty to explain anything knowledge you have based on
your partner *not* bidding certain bids. For example, in a sequence like
this:

1H, (-), 1NT

if you, as the 1H bidder, are asked what 1NT means, you should probably
explain whether or not it's possible for your partner to have spades (as
the fact that your partner didn't bid 1S is fairly noticeable in a
sequence like this, so you'd want to explain what basis your partnership
uses to choose between 1S and 1NT).

Finally, remember that each bid has to be explained by the bidder's
partner (this is something I kept getting wrong when I first started
playing duplicate). This means that if your opponents ask for a review
of the auction, then you each have to take turns explaining your
partner's bid. If the auction is over and you're the declaring side, you
can then correct any misexplanations by your partner. If you're the
defending side, you can't correct them until play is over (your partner
has to go through the play based on their own understanding of what your
bids meant). Incidentally, once it does become clear that a
misexplanation has happened, you typically need to call the Director in
case they need to allow a player to change their call or to adjust the
score. (Note that you can correct *your own* misexplanation immediately;
waiting until the end of the auction / the end of play is only required
when you realise your partner has made a mistake.)

[Dave Flower]

Post by ais523

Post by dfm
What advice do you give to relatively inexperienced duplicate players
about how to answer questions from the opponents?

The most important thing to bear in mind that the questions that you're
allowed to ask the opponents are about partnership agreements. As such,
you need to explain your partnership agreements, not anything that's
going on in the actual hand.
For example, suppose you're in a pickup partnership, and you agreed to
play Acol with Michaels and red suit transfers (without going into
(1D), 1NT, (-), 2D
You're the 1NT bidder, and now your RHO asks you what 2D meant. The
correct answer is "We haven't discussed whether we're using the same
system over a 1NT overcall as we would over a 1NT opening. However,
we're playing a variant of Acol in which without the 1D bid, 2D would be
a transfer to hearts, and without the 1NT bid, 2D would show both
majors." Note that you're not saying what the bid actually means, and
you're not guessing what the bid means; you're simply explaining the
extent of your partnership agreement. In cases where you don't have an
explicit agreement, you have to explain what agreements you do have that
you might be trying to extrapolate the meaning of 2D from (the
relevant agreements here are your bidding system, and the meanings of
the bids in the absence of interference).
It's important that you don't say how you intend to interpret your
partner's bid; that would give unauthorized information to your partner
(and it's not information that the opponents are entitled to know).
Likewise, it's important that you don't try to deduce the meaning of the
bid based on your own hand.
If this were an experienced partnership rather than a pickup
partnership, a situation like this has probably happened before, in
which case you'd have more of an agreement (by seeing what typically
happens in that sort of hand). In such cases, for example, the reply
might just be "It's a transfer to hearts", although you'd want to go
into more detail if asked further, e.g. "it shows at least 5 hearts but
could be made on a hand of any strength, although if it's weak then it
probably doesn't want to play in notrumps; that might be because it's
generally imbalanced or because it's short in diamonds specifically".
Note that you're answering in the context of this auction, rather than
explaining in the abstract, as that's what the opponents are likely to
care about.
Another piece of advice is to explain what a convention means, rather
than simply saying the name. For example, the reply above said "both
majors" rather than "Michaels". The reason for this is that your
opponents might not know the convention, or worse, might think they know
the convention but have a different idea of what it means than you do.
You also have a duty to explain anything knowledge you have based on
your partner *not* bidding certain bids. For example, in a sequence like
1H, (-), 1NT
if you, as the 1H bidder, are asked what 1NT means, you should probably
explain whether or not it's possible for your partner to have spades (as
the fact that your partner didn't bid 1S is fairly noticeable in a
sequence like this, so you'd want to explain what basis your partnership
uses to choose between 1S and 1NT).
Finally, remember that each bid has to be explained by the bidder's
partner (this is something I kept getting wrong when I first started
playing duplicate). This means that if your opponents ask for a review
of the auction, then you each have to take turns explaining your
partner's bid. If the auction is over and you're the declaring side, you
can then correct any misexplanations by your partner. If you're the
defending side, you can't correct them until play is over (your partner
has to go through the play based on their own understanding of what your
bids meant). Incidentally, once it does become clear that a
misexplanation has happened, you typically need to call the Director in
case they need to allow a player to change their call or to adjust the
score. (Note that you can correct *your own* misexplanation immediately;
waiting until the end of the auction / the end of play is only required
when you realise your partner has made a mistake.)
--
ais523

All excellent advice.

One extra point: if you have no agreement, or if you are unsure, say so. Opponents will quite often say that you should say no more!

Dave Flower

[Barry Margolin]

Post by Dave Flower
One extra point: if you have no agreement, or if you are unsure, say so.
Opponents will quite often say that you should say no more!

It depends on the opponents. Remember, many of the people asking the
questions don't really know the rules themselves. They think they're
entitled to know how you're taking it.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by ais523
It's important that you don't say how you intend to interpret your
partner's bid;

I find your explanation very good, but I don't quite agree with
the quted statement. Here is an answer that I once gave to a
question. The bidding was something like this:

I mede the 1S bid:

(1D) - 1S - (P) - 3H (not alerted)

RHO now asked what the 3H bid meant, and I said:

We have no agreement on this sequence. A raw 3H would be
preemptive, but that makes no sense after my 1S overcall,
so it must be a positive hand with long hearts.

My partnership understanding told me as much, and the opponenets
were entitled to that information. Do you disagree?

[Charles Brenner]

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by ais523
It's important that you don't say how you intend to interpret your
partner's bid;

I find your explanation very good, but I don't quite agree with
the quted statement. Here is an answer that I once gave to a
(1D) - 1S - (P) - 3H (not alerted)
We have no agreement on this sequence. A raw 3H would be
preemptive, but that makes no sense after my 1S overcall,
so it must be a positive hand with long hearts.
My partnership understanding told me as much, and the opponenets
were entitled to that information. Do you disagree?

I like the first sentence but, if I were RHO, I would not want you to say the rest. It's not information, it's analysis and it reassures your partner how you will interpret the bid.

If there is a related sequence that may be pertinent -- i.e. if the truth is that we have agreed fit-showing jumps in various sequences but never considered them after an overcall -- then it's fair that RHO should have that information. But even then, how to tell RHO of the possibility without communicating to partner is a delicate problem.

(By "pertinent" I mean to distinguish between the hypothetical preemptive 3H bid which, as you say, is *not* a plausible interpretation for the present auction, versus fit-showing which *is* plausible though it may or may not in the end be how I take the bid.)

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Charles Brenner

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen
We have no agreement on this sequence. A raw 3H would be
preemptive, but that makes no sense after my 1S overcall,
so it must be a positive hand with long hearts.
My partnership understanding told me as much, and the opponenets
were entitled to that information. Do you disagree?

I like the first sentence but, if I were RHO, I would not want
you to say the rest. It's not information, it's analysis and
it reassures your partner how you will interpret the bid.

It's not analysis. It's the only possible hand that would make
partner make this bid. And it's not fit-showing. He tells me that
spades is a no-go and that I should go for hearts if I just have
2 of them.

[Barry Margolin]

Post by Charles Brenner

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by ais523
It's important that you don't say how you intend to interpret your
partner's bid;

I find your explanation very good, but I don't quite agree with
the quted statement. Here is an answer that I once gave to a
(1D) - 1S - (P) - 3H (not alerted)
We have no agreement on this sequence. A raw 3H would be
preemptive, but that makes no sense after my 1S overcall,
so it must be a positive hand with long hearts.
My partnership understanding told me as much, and the opponenets
were entitled to that information. Do you disagree?

I like the first sentence but, if I were RHO, I would not want you to say the
rest. It's not information, it's analysis and it reassures your partner how
you will interpret the bid.

I disagree. You're required to disclose both explicit and implicit
understandings. Although they don't have an explicit agreement about the
sequence, his partnership experience produces this implicit agreement,
so he should explain it.

Yes, it results from analysis, but that's true of many implicit
agreements.

[[e-mail]]

Post by Barry Margolin

Post by Charles Brenner

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by ais523
It's important that you don't say how you intend to interpret your
partner's bid;

I find your explanation very good, but I don't quite agree with
the quted statement. Here is an answer that I once gave to a
(1D) - 1S - (P) - 3H (not alerted)
We have no agreement on this sequence. A raw 3H would be
preemptive, but that makes no sense after my 1S overcall,
so it must be a positive hand with long hearts.
My partnership understanding told me as much, and the opponenets
were entitled to that information. Do you disagree?

I like the first sentence but, if I were RHO, I would not want you to say the
rest. It's not information, it's analysis and it reassures your partner how
you will interpret the bid.

I disagree. You're required to disclose both explicit and implicit
understandings. Although they don't have an explicit agreement about the
sequence, his partnership experience produces this implicit agreement,
so he should explain it.
Yes, it results from analysis, but that's true of many implicit
agreements.
--
Barry Margolin
Arlington, MA

No. Partnership experience creates implicit agreements from knowledge of what had been held in similar situations. Not "we play this, so logically we must play that, even tho it has never come up." The reason is that partner may have drawn a completely different inference about what we must be playing.

Carl

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by ***@verizon.net
No. Partnership experience creates implicit agreements from
knowledge of what had been held in similar situations. Not
"we play this, so logically we must play that, even tho it has
never come up." The reason is that partner may have drawn a
completely different inference about what we must be playing.

I asked about my explanation in a Danish forum, and one
international TD answered. His final suggestion for a better
explanation was:

We don't have en agreement on this sequence, but a raw 3H
would be preemptive. I do not know whether the bid is
forcing or not.

"Raw" was the word I used. I meant "direct" - that is with no
overcall in between.

[Fred.]

Post by dfm
What advice do you give to relatively inexperienced duplicate players about how to answer questions from the opponents?

Regardless of what the opponents actually ask, treat their first
inquiry on a bid as a request to explain your agreement on
partner's call.

I recall an auction where partner opened a weak no-trump and
RHO made a lingering pass. Holding 10 or 11 HCP and a nice
4-card holding in each major, I decided to give RHO another
chance by signing off in 2D.

After 2D got passed around to RHO he took on the air of a
prosecuting attorney and demanded of partner whether the
2D bid had been "weak or strong". This question, not so
bright given that partner had passed 2D, intimidated
partner into responding "weak", rather than our actual
agreement which was that 2D was a signoff.

RHO proceeded to bid 2S which I doubled and we set by two
tricks. RHO then complained to the director, who had been
watching play at our table that my hand certainly wasn't
weak. The director ruled with us, I think largely because
RHO behaved obnoxiously during the subsequent discussion,
but a proper description of the 2D bid would have made
things much simpler.

Fred.

[ais523]

Post by Fred.

Post by dfm
What advice do you give to relatively inexperienced duplicate players about how to answer questions from the opponents?

Regardless of what the opponents actually ask, treat their first
inquiry on a bid as a request to explain your agreement on
partner's call.

This leads to a good obvious followup subject: how to ask questions.

The only questions you should ask are "Explain «most recent bid by an
opponent»?" when it's your turn to bid, and "Explain your auction?"
between the end of auction and the start of the play. (The wording
doesn't massively matter as long as you're consistent, but "explain" is
just one word long and easy to remember.) Most notably, you generally
shouldn't ask about specific bids (other than the most recent) if
you're a defender (or could potentially become a defender), because it
can look a lot like you're trying to give your partner unauthorised
information on what card to lead (either intentionally or
unintentionally). There have been plenty of cases where a player has
something like six clubs, an opponent has bid 1C and ended up
declaring, and the defender with all the clubs has asked a number of
questions about 1C because they can't believe it's natural;
unfortunately, that tends to get through to their partner and end up
revealing the suit they want lead. Asking the opponents to review the
entire auction, regardless of which bid you care about, helps to avoid
leaking information in this way.

(And, of course, bear in mind that your opponents have to tell you their
system but they don't have to tell you their hands! They might have
deviated from their system a little due to having a hand that doesn't
have any appropriate bid to describe it, or even psyched, and either way
they'll be describing what the bid is supposed to mean. So you have to
use some caution when trying to make use of the answers.)

[Steve Willner]

Post by ais523
The only questions you should ask are "Explain «most recent bid by an
opponent»?" when it's your turn to bid, and "Explain your auction?"
between the end of auction and the start of the play.

Most of ais523's answers are good, but I'm not fond of the above.
Calling attention to any call, even the most recent, can convey UI.
"Please explain" is better, asking for an explanation of the complete
auction, is better. The problem is that most opponents won't know what
to do, so you will end up asking specific questions anyway. There is a
difference, though, because now the problem is not your fault.

The relevant Law is 20F. L20F3 calls attention to the UI that asking
about a single call may create. It's not likely to be a problem if only
one call was alerted, but keeping questions general when possible is better.

[ais523]

Post by Steve Willner

Post by ais523
The only questions you should ask are "Explain «most recent bid by an
opponent»?" when it's your turn to bid, and "Explain your auction?"
between the end of auction and the start of the play.

Most of ais523's answers are good, but I'm not fond of the above.
Calling attention to any call, even the most recent, can convey UI.
"Please explain" is better, asking for an explanation of the complete
auction, is better. The problem is that most opponents won't know what
to do, so you will end up asking specific questions anyway. There is a
difference, though, because now the problem is not your fault.

From my point of view, if you just heard an alert on your left and you
ask any questions at all, it's almost guaranteed that the most recent
call is the one you're interested in. So asking about the whole auction
at that point doesn't give any different UI from asking about the most
recent call, and you might as well try to save time on the board.

I admit that it's probably different if your opponents just made an
un-alerted call, though. I should have made that clearer in my original
post.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Steve Willner
"Please explain" is better, asking for an explanation of the complete
auction, is better.

It is unrealistic to expect players to enter such a timewasting
project every time they need to ask a question.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by ais523
Most notably, you generally
shouldn't ask about specific bids (other than the most recent) if
you're a defender (or could potentially become a defender), because it
can look a lot like you're trying to give your partner unauthorised
information on what card to lead (either intentionally or
unintentionally).

The law gives players pernmission to ask such questions. I
disagree with any advice that one shouldn't do it. But one must
of course be aware that doing it conveys UI to partner and thus
usually limits his legal actions quite a lot.

[p***@infi.net]

Post by dfm
What advice do you give to relatively inexperienced duplicate players about how to answer questions from the opponents?

Great responses so far. I commonly hear "How do you take two diamonds?" This is an improper question, but as Barry says, most questioners don't know the rules. Just answer as if they asked the proper question, "Please describe two diamonds according to your agreements." "We haven't discussed it" is a proper response, if true.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by p***@infi.net
Great responses so far. I commonly hear "How do you take two
diamonds?" This is an improper question, but as Barry says,
most questioners don't know the rules. Just answer as if they
asked the proper question, "Please describe two diamonds
according to your agreements." "We haven't discussed it" is a
proper response, if true.

... but usually not sufficient. Partner obviously expects you to
figure something out from the undiscussed bid, and you need to
give as much information about that without revealing your hand
or conclusions drawn from it.