[mikeh]

Ken, I commend you for the depth to which you think about your actions, but your posts often, and this one certainly did, remind me of something my then-partner told me some 14 years ago, when I explained how it was that I had carded in a certain way....my carding 'had' to suggest a certain holding.....which I didn't have, and so the opp should go wrong. This was late in a national team trial, so the opp was certainly 'expert'.

Gord laughed and said, in essence: 'Mike, nobody thinks like that at the table....your opp was never going to be fooled because he'd never think that way'

He was correct.


Your 1N is a psyche. Calling it an loon rather than a duck doesn't alter the fact that it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck. You can guess to whom the word 'loon' refers

Your subtle reasoning won't impress a committee if your partner reads the psyche in a borderline situation, and the fact that a weird action of yours once or twice worked against good players only suggests to me that you take a lot of weird actions.....sometimes they will work.

Did it ever occur to you that, if you really do bid as you so often suggest on these forums, that your partners are going to become constrained by knowing of your propensities?

[han]

mikeh, on 2012-February-16, 14:03, said:

The psyche of 1N idea calls to mind the old Frances rant post recently resurrected.

Yes indeed, for me too. I have more sympathy for the old rant now.

[y66]

4S auto for me. I see why others think 3S may be more prudent at match points and this vulnerability.

[kenrexford]

mikeh, on 2012-February-16, 15:19, said:

Ken, I commend you for the depth to which you think about your actions, but your posts often, and this one certainly did, remind me of something my then-partner told me some 14 years ago, when I explained how it was that I had carded in a certain way....my carding 'had' to suggest a certain holding.....which I didn't have, and so the opp should go wrong. This was late in a national team trial, so the opp was certainly 'expert'.

Gord laughed and said, in essence: 'Mike, nobody thinks like that at the table....your opp was never going to be fooled because he'd never think that way'

He was correct.


Your 1N is a psyche. Calling it an loon rather than a duck doesn't alter the fact that it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck. You can guess to whom the word 'loon' refers

Your subtle reasoning won't impress a committee if your partner reads the psyche in a borderline situation, and the fact that a weird action of yours once or twice worked against good players only suggests to me that you take a lot of weird actions.....sometimes they will work.

Did it ever occur to you that, if you really do bid as you so often suggest on these forums, that your partners are going to become constrained by knowing of your propensities?

I understand your points well. My point, however, which you still seem to be missing, is that the call is not made to mislead as the primary focus but rather to send the auction into a different structure. The call is not meant to give the opponents a different view of the hand as much as to get them into the wrong sequence.

Maybe a different, unrelated example of the principle will enlighten. I have on occasion opted for a negative double without, say, four hearts. I might have three. An example might be 1♣-1♠-X. I am not making the double to convince them that I have four hearts when I really have three. Rather, having looked at their CC, I am pushing them into a Rosenkranz Redouble sequence, for whatever reason that the same seems to make sense at the time. To object that the double is a stupid psychic because no one would be fooled by this maneuver is nonsensical to me. I don't care what anyone thinks I have, to a degree. I want the opponents to use or to not use Rosenkranz, for some reason.

There are many other situations like this, where a call is made that is not strictly the "right" call, or not even close, to the point where it could be viewed as a "psychic." It might also meet that definition. However, the reason the call is made is to induce a structural shift, in the new example a shoft to include Rosenkranz Redouble.

In the actual example, people often have not discussed support doubles if Advancer bids 1NT. This is one reason for the call. They end up in uncertain territory.

Another reason, for that matter, is to induce those who do use support doubles to double. That keeps the auction low enough for partner to make another call, like 2♦ perhaps.

2♠ or 3♠ gives the wrong view to partner at these colors. So, giving him a wrong view with a 1NT call in a sense is just a degree of misbid. If my misnid is worse but causes structural problems for the opponents or induces a double low enough for my partner to complete some description, I have found this sequence to work out well.

And, btw, in my regular partnerships where I would do this, we alert 1NT and explain it.

[mikeh]

kenrexford, on 2012-February-16, 16:10, said:

I understand your points well. My point, however, which you still seem to be missing, is that the call is not made to mislead as the primary focus but rather to send the auction into a different structure. The call is not meant to give the opponents a different view of the hand as much as to get them into the wrong sequence.

Maybe a different, unrelated example of the principle will enlighten. I have on occasion opted for a negative double without, say, four hearts. I might have three. An example might be 1♣-1♠-X. I am not making the double to convince them that I have four hearts when I really have three. Rather, having looked at their CC, I am pushing them into a Rosenkranz Redouble sequence, for whatever reason that the same seems to make sense at the time. To object that the double is a stupid psychic because no one would be fooled by this maneuver is nonsensical to me. I don't care what anyone thinks I have, to a degree. I want the opponents to use or to not use Rosenkranz, for some reason.

There are many other situations like this, where a call is made that is not strictly the "right" call, or not even close, to the point where it could be viewed as a "psychic." It might also meet that definition. However, the reason the call is made is to induce a structural shift, in the new example a shoft to include Rosenkranz Redouble.

In the actual example, people often have not discussed support doubles if Advancer bids 1NT. This is one reason for the call. They end up in uncertain territory.

Another reason, for that matter, is to induce those who do use support doubles to double. That keeps the auction low enough for partner to make another call, like 2♦ perhaps.

2♠ or 3♠ gives the wrong view to partner at these colors. So, giving him a wrong view with a 1NT call in a sense is just a degree of misbid. If my misnid is worse but causes structural problems for the opponents or induces a double low enough for my partner to complete some description, I have found this sequence to work out well.

And, btw, in my regular partnerships where I would do this, we alert 1NT and explain it.

As for whether your 1N is a psyche....you, as a lawyer, should well understand that the Director and any committee will call it a psyche....if you doubt this, then go look up the definition of 'psyche' as used by the ACBL. You will find nothing therein that exempts an otherwise psychic call from being a psyche merely because the bidder has a more subtle goal in mind than misleading his opps.

As for the negative double with only 3 hearts, when the usual usage is 4+, well any reader of the BW will know that experts (the MSC panel) will often make negative doubles with less than 4 cards in the promised major, if no other call seems as good. I doubt that anyone would call this call a psyche unless your CC or notes expressly stated that the negative double ALWAYS shows 4+.

A psyche of that nature is never 'silly' (altho it could work out poorly), and will almost never be readable in the auction, by anyone. It is not remotely equivalent to your suggested 1N call.

Finally, if your partnership bids 1N in this auction with sufficient frequency to warrant an alert, may I suggest that you are playing a ridiculous system. 1N means 'either I have whatever 1N shows for normal people....say about 10 hcp and stoppers in the opps suit and no primary spade support, or I have a preemptive raise where I want to throw my opps off track'.

The ethical pressure to which you subject your partner is enormous. Assuming you avoid the committee hearings that seem to me implicit in this agreement, there will ...there have to be....many occasions when your partner will make a terrible decision, being unable to work out what you have. If you claim that your partners never go wrong, then either your partner is so perfect that you'll beat everyone playing straight-up (and thus shouldn't use this method) or your partner is reading your psyches improperly

[S2000magic]

Seems like an easy 4♠ to me. Occasionally partner has a decent hand for his overcall. If all he has is ♠ A K x x x and junk, I'd expect the opponents to have a slam somewhere.

[the hog]

I think there are only 2 possible calls - pass and 4S. Playing against a top pair, pass is probably best. Any S raise will allow them to judge their fit and make it easy to bid a slam. 4S seems like a good bid against weak players.

[bftboy]

If you bid 4♠ on this, opponents shouldn't even bother looking at their hands before doubling and collecting 500 80% of the time. When your 4♠ call keeps them out of slam they will collect 800 or more and a top anyway. Maybe one time in twenty they weren't making 4♥ so it loses again. To me the real choice is between a call like 3♠ which at least gives them a guess they will sometimes get wrong, or out of the box calls like 1nt or even 2♦. I don't really expect any of these calls to work, but they might. 4 ♠ just concedes them a good result.

[bigbenvic]

bftboy, on 2012-February-16, 21:09, said:

If you bid 4♠ on this, opponents shouldn't even bother looking at their hands before doubling and collecting 500 80% of the time. When your 4♠ call keeps them out of slam they will collect 800 or more and a top anyway. Maybe one time in twenty they weren't making 4♥ so it loses again. To me the real choice is between a call like 3♠ which at least gives them a guess they will sometimes get wrong, or out of the box calls like 1nt or even 2♦. I don't really expect any of these calls to work, but they might. 4 ♠ just concedes them a good result.

My choices were between pass and support later, bid 2♠ and if I can 3♠ next round, or to punt 3♠ now. I don't have 4♠ as an option for the reasons bftboy says.

I decided on 3♠ now, I like 2♦ fnj or 3♦ as a fit jump but usually it's done as lead direction (as well as allowing partner know how high to go) and I have a terrible suit and pre-emption is what I needed.

I love the discussion of 1nt by Ken & others it's good stuff.
Ken, what do you say in the Alert?
Do you have a comprehensive set of system notes, is it in there?
Does your partner also bid 1nt here with these type of hands?

If not I worry about the legalities of having something that only 1 player does. If you both do it I may not agree on it (the methods not your logic of them) but if alerted and explained properly I don't think it's an issue.

[ggwhiz]

kenrexford, on 2012-February-16, 14:43, said:

Some of you seem to me to be assuming that the only reason for a "psychic" is to mislead the opponents and thereby to cause problems. If you notice, I did not call the 1NT bid a psychic, for a reason. I called it a weird bid.

My partner (and I) are ethically as pure as the driven snow in follow ups to such weirdness and I think it has a place in the game for comedy relief, especially Matchpoints. Just know your ethical obligations or suffer the wrath of the federales.

I've had a few performed on me by some truly World Class players that all resulted in a chuckle and I was pleased that they viewed myself and my pard as being able to take a joke regardless of the outcome. The follow up auctions were always spot on ethics wise by the "straight man" from their side.

I posted one a while back where it went 3♣ - p - 3♥ to me and I had a moose with KQT9xx of hearts in it and salvaged an average but should have found the slam. All my rho tried to do was buy the hand in 4♣ doubled instead of 5 and with proper ethics I consider it a legitimate tactic.

That doesn't require an alert or my pard has to alert all of mine with "He's weird".

[32519]

A lot has already been said about this hand. Can we see whose arguments were better?

bd71 can you kindly post the full hand?

[bd71]

the hog, on 2012-February-16, 17:54, said:

I think there are only 2 possible calls - pass and 4S. Playing against a top pair, pass is probably best. Any S raise will allow them to judge their fit and make it easy to bid a slam. 4S seems like a good bid against weak players.

So this comes closest to my reasoning ATT, where I did pass (although we weren't playing against anything close to a "top pair").

The pass may indeed have helped contribute to their missing a slam (4H+3)..although since I don't have the hands I can't fully assess how much was that vs. simple poor bidding. Spades were 3-0.

Of course, one good result does not make it right and it seems like this approach is swimming against the tide of opinion here.

[jdeegan]

Pass in tempo. Vul is wrong to preempt effectively, so why help the opponents?

My second choice is 2 spades. Got to try to screw up the auction.

[kenrexford]

mikeh, on 2012-February-16, 16:41, said:

Finally, if your partnership bids 1N in this auction with sufficient frequency to warrant an alert, may I suggest that you are playing a ridiculous system. 1N means 'either I have whatever 1N shows for normal people....say about 10 hcp and stoppers in the opps suit and no primary spade support, or I have a preemptive raise where I want to throw my opps off track'.

Or, it could be defined as a "normal out of context" 1NT response, showing many potential hand types similar to what you show after a 1♠ opening.

When partner opens 1♠, I play that 1NT shows (1) a balanced hand, (2) a bust spade raise, or (3) any distribution imagineable with iinsufficient values to bid at the two-level.

When partner overcalls 1♠, in some partnerships I play (and alert) that 1NT shows (1) a balanced hand, (2) a bust spade raise, or (3) any distribution imagineable with insufficient values to bid at the two-level.

If 1NT is not bid as a psychic, meant to confuse and throw off the opponents after 1♠-P-1NT, despite holding any number of crazy, unbalanced hands, possibly with a spade fit, then you might see that 1Nt can also be bid in this sequence for similar reasons?

[Zelandakh]

kenrexford, on 2012-February-17, 08:03, said:

When partner overcalls 1♠, in some partnerships I play (and alert) that 1NT shows (1) a balanced hand, (2) a bust spade raise, or (3) any distribution imagineable with insufficient values to bid at the two-level.

Nowhere in your original post:

kenrexford, on 2012-February-16, 13:16, said:

If I am totally honest, I have to admit that at the table I would bid 1NT. With a ten-fit in boss spades, five cards in the unbid suit, and a yarb, vulnerable against not, this deal is going to result in a crazy auction. So, I will make a crazy bid.

This may well work out wonderfully, if Opener raises hearts and partner, as expected, has four hearts, as he may well smell a rat somewhere and tread with caution. Better, the opponents might get all screwed up somehow.

was there any mention of having such a special agreement. Indeed the "crazy bid" term strongly suggests that you are making this bid with normal agreements about it. If you have an agreement to bid 1NT on hands such as this then obviously it is not a psyche; if you bid 1NT with a hand like this with standard agreements then it is a psyche. The 2♦ bid that I threw out as a wild possibility would also be a psyche and has the same aims as your 1NT.

I think this auction is completely different from the one in Frances' thread because here we either bid to the limit or we go low (Pass, 1NT, 2♦, 2♠ have all been suggested for this) and then shut up hoping the opponents misguess. Starting with a psyche and then jumping to 3♠ or 4♠ later would be really bad. You either do one thing or the other. I still believe it depends who your opponents are as to which strategy is best.

[kenrexford]

Zelandakh, on 2012-February-17, 08:15, said:

Nowhere in your original post:

was there any mention of having such a special agreement. Indeed the "crazy bid" term strongly suggests that you are making this bid with normal agreements about it. If you have an agreement to bid 1NT on hands such as this then obviously it is not a psyche; if you bid 1NT with a hand like this with standard agreements then it is a psyche. The 2♦ bid that I threw out as a wild possibility would also be a psyche and has the same aims as your 1NT.

I think this auction is completely different from the one in Frances' thread because here we either bid to the limit or we go low (Pass, 1NT, 2♦, 2♠ have all been suggested for this) and then shut up hoping the opponents misguess. Starting with a psyche and then jumping to 3♠ or 4♠ later would be really bad. You either do one thing or the other. I still believe it depends who your opponents are as to which strategy is best.

Obviously, from the context of what I have written in all of the pasts in this thread, I play with different partners from time to time.

In those partnerships where this sequence is discussed and agreed to play this special method, 1NT is agreed to be as described.

In some others, 1NT is Suit/Lead (showing something in clubs).

In others, there is no agreement, in which case I might bid 1NT anyway, as if Option #1, because I notice when playing the AGREED option #1 that the opponent's structural agreements are thrown off due to expectations being off.

Thus, when I responded as to what I would do in the context of a non-agreement partnership, I mentioned the "undiscussed 1NT" as my call because I would probably do that in practice, knowing from the Option #1 agreement partnerships how that messes up the structural defaults for the opponents.

[Phil]

kenrexford, on 2012-February-17, 08:03, said:

Or, it could be defined as a "normal out of context" 1NT response...

(snip)

When partner overcalls 1♠, in some partnerships I play (and alert) that 1NT shows (1) a balanced hand, (2) a bust spade raise, or (3) any distribution imagineable with insufficient values to bid at the two-level.

If 1NT is not bid as a psychic... (snip)

If I responded 1N to an opening spade bid with 5 spades and no points, I would consider that a psychic.

[gwnn]

32519, on 2012-February-16, 23:59, said:

A lot has already been said about this hand. Can we see whose arguments were better?

bd71 can you kindly post the full hand?

The arguments are still available - the posts in this thread have not been erased yet. You can read them and decide for yourself. The full hand has nothing to do with whose arguments were better, and only a little to do with which action is better.

[kenrexford]

Phil, on 2012-February-17, 10:34, said:

If I responded 1N to an opening spade bid with 5 spades and no points, I would consider that a psychic.

What?!?!?

So, with ♠xxxxx ♥x ♦xxxxx ♣xx, red on white, if partner opens 1♠, you pass? I mean, if 3♠ is a limti raise (let's say), 4♠ a sick bid (to some like me), and 1NT forcing with potentially a bust hand but support (a fairly normal treatment), then the lack of 6 HCP means that bidding at all with this hand is a psychic?

I don't live in your world.

[Phil]

kenrexford, on 2012-February-17, 10:56, said:

What?!?!?

So, with ♠xxxxx ♥x ♦xxxxx ♣xx, red on white, if partner opens 1♠, you pass? I mean, if 3♠ is a limti raise (let's say), 4♠ a sick bid (to some like me), and 1NT forcing with potentially a bust hand but support (a fairly normal treatment), then the lack of 6 HCP means that bidding at all with this hand is a psychic?

I don't live in your world.

In my world we read posts a bit more carefully, before releasing the ?!?!?!'s.

I said the call was a psychic. I did not say I wouldn't make the 1N call.