I agree with the premise behind what you are saying. If partnerships attempt to confuse their opponents through inadequate disclosure then they are behaving in what must at least be considered an unethical manner and if it persists it should be punished. However I don’t think that there is anything wrong with playing methods which make it difficult for the opponents even if they are in a sense destructive. Any preempt is destructive bidding since you are using up the opponent’s space when you do not expect to make the contract yourself most of the time.

For example, I see nothing wrong with opening 10-12 notrump in first or second chair and staying within that point range. It is clearly marked on the front of the card and I suspect the notrump range is one of the first things most people look at when they study the convention card.

Having defended against it I know it makes life harder for opponents and I admit that is one of the reasons I play. On the other hand I could say the same about playing Bergen raises and bidding at the 3 level with 7 points and four trump.

I remember one time in Florida my partner and I were accused of cheating for playing 12-14 notrump!

In the same way other reasonable methods such as very weak preempts should be allowed as long as there is adequate disclosure. It is the concealment that I have a problem with, not the methods.

It is very gratifying indeed to have Bobby Wolff contributing to the bridge blog. (Note to Ray: save me a copy of his upcoming book!)

In my opinion, the entitlement to understand the opponents’ methods is fundamental to the game of bridge. No distinction should be drawn in this regard between players of standard methods and modern, aggressive ones.

Suppose your RHO opens 2NT, marked on the card as 20-21, and later plays in 6NT. At a critical point, you have to decide whether or not to play him for the jack of hearts. You choose to, since he needs to have it to make up his 20 points. As it turns out, declarer has an ordinary 19-count, and your defense costs a slam swing. “Very unlucky”, you say to yourself. “I wonder: did he miscount his points, or did he just succumb to a spur-of-the-moment fit of optimism?”. Later you discover that this partnership, when holding a balanced, ordinary 19-count, opens 2NT as often as not.

This kind of misinformation is quite common. My feeling is that most of it is not intentional. It seems to be a common shortcoming of human nature to fool ourselves into thinking that our standards are higher than they actually are. Maybe you decide to play Flannery and mark it as 12-16 on the card. Then you pick up an ordinary 4-5-3-1 11-count and start to think. “Surely this is an opening bid. What is the best way to handle it?” You come to the conclusion that a two diamond opening is the best way, and in any event, you enjoy putting your methods to use.

I am sympathetic to the difficulties of dealing with players of unfamiliar methods, and I support the judicious regulation of systems and conventions. For my money, pair games could be restricted to Blackwood and Stayman; much more should be permitted in long matches at the World Championship level. My disagreement is with the idea that any partnership has a lesser obligation to disclose their methods.

Roy: Your concern is certainly a valid one and one which requires a balanced, experienced reply.

I agree with your laissez faire approach to the difference between opening 2NT (marked 20-21) with 19 non-descript points or 12-16 Flannery bids (with 11 and a 4-5 random 3-1). Please consider the following:

1. While playing Jacoby 2NT as a forcing major suit raise, the following
partnership conditions existed. They open very light, now treating a 5-3-3-2, 12 HCP hand as an intermediate opening and the responder bids 3NT which conventionally shows an intermediate opening bid (forcing club system) without disclosing this to the opponents.

2. After a Non-forcing or Semi-forcing 1NT to partner’s 1 heart opening which ends the auction, before the opening lead, the declarer announces (unsolicited) to the opening leader that partner forgot to announce that the 1NT response may contain 4 spades.

Number 1 above happened to me years ago at the 1985 Fall Nationals in Winnipeg during the Reisinger when one of the world’s top pairs did not disclose their very light opening bids (and their particular agreement) which caused me, like you, to play the opener for a particular queen instead of partner which allowed him to make the contract and lost us the board.

Number 2 happened several years ago at the Cavendish Invitational when a well-known expert, as declarer, volunteered gratuitous information about the possibility of his having 4 spades (he in actuality held 3 small) causing the opening leader, Paul Chemla from France, not to lead a spade as he had intended and because of his failure to do so, did not defeat the contract. To cap this disgrace, the declarer went on to say afterwards that he felt duty-bound to alert the opening leader since his partner failed to do so. Maybe there is a bridge out there somewhere this person wants us to buy. To Chemla’s credit, he bellowed for all to hear, cautioning that this practice is unacceptable. To be more to the point and less diplomatic — if someone like Grant Baze would make that pronouncement — the opening leader could be sure that declarer held not only 4 spades — but 4 good spades, to boot.

Bridge Rules were not necessarily written in the best interests of the game. They should focus on emphasizing that the spirit of the game is such that everyone(particularly at the top) abide by the Golden Rules of Bridge, one such premise being — alerting the opponents and being alerted in return. Unfortunately, the technicalities of the rule book did not take into consideration Active Ethics (much less preventing outright cheating), and all participants, especially high-level players playing in high-level games, are expected to treat the game as our forefathers intended — a game played by gentlemen and gentle ladies.

You summed up very well the difficulties in remembering to announce that 2NT could be a good 19 (5 card suit) which has since gone down to almost any 19. Also your description of the mindset with Flannery of wanting to announce one’s distribution at the expense of 1 insignificant HCP supersedes the judgment and almost always is not done with evil intent. Also opening Flannery with 4-6 has become commonplace and sometimes the opponents are not alerted to that possibility.

Roy, I feel as you do about the restriction of conventions (especially home brews) in pair games, and I also realize that many small gaffes are done unintentionally. Remind me (when we both have more time) to discuss my belief that alerts and forced pauses (skip bid warnings, but sometimes without skip bids) should be made when there is a need to know and when there is a need to NOT help partner.

Thanks for writing. I obviously appreciate your views.

Hello,

with all due respect to the amount of experience that the poster in this thread have, I would like to say that I disagree with some points.

For instance I wonder about the condemning upside down signals as stealthy techniques. I can testify that here in Germany noone has problems with them.

Leave alone that I can hardly remeber when I met the last time standard signaling at a club.

Another point is that about restriction of conventions. I have the impression to face again Jorge von Burgos (The name of the rose).

I started playing at the university. A huge amount of the fun was to discover and try out conventions. Of course we had been better of without if we consider the achivement to score 1% better to be the ultimate goal. Instead we chose to enjoy a card game.

Now you could say that our fun came at the cost of the other players. No way, we mostly met friendly people having a good laugh at our latest toy. Hey it was even fun for them to get a convention card and read “Baby Power” as system (thy Ron Klinger).
Of course that didn’t stop them to double us merciless.

So please restrict world championships to stayman and blackwood. Those players have seen it all since decades, but don’t steal part of the fun for young players.

I have, in various forums, “campaigned” for bridge to be played more on computers. I mean, playing on a screen with a BBO-like interface, but with appropriate monitoring to prevent unauthorized communication.

There seems to be to be at least a small inconsistency here. In one post, Bobby rails (correctly) at trial by rumor when there is no proof. Then he turns around and excoriates pairs for playing 10-12 NT but saying “It’s usually 8 or 9, and they have a private agreement to never double.” Are there really that many pairs that do that? I don’t play in what Bobby calls the “expert game.” But I wonder if Bobby isn’t still living somewhat in what Edgar Kaplan called the “Black Magic” days.

Back to the computer thing though – wouldn’t it be marvelous if a pair’s history was automatically available? If you could actually call up all the hands they’ve played and find out how many 8 or 9-pt NT bids they made, or how many 2-suited preempts on Qxxx Jxxx? And more importantly, how many times partner fielded them? In practice, while we do have a recorder system, only the smallest percentage of hands where something unusual happens get recorded.