[polecat69]

At a local bridge club the other day East and West bid as follows with North and South being silent.

East 2NT opening
West 3H
East said "that is a transfer to spades" (voluntary statement i.e. not in response to a question) then bid 3S
West 4H
East Pass

Did either player do anything wrong?

[manudude03]

Hard to say. What is their actual agreement? Assuming 3S was a transfer, what does 4H show? What was East's actual hand?

If 4H just showed both majors NF, then it would be normal to pass with xx AKJx AKJx KJx etc.

ps. It may not matter much but are transfers over 2NT announced where you are?

[blackshoe]

It appears the OP is in England. Unless there's been a recent change, EBU regs require an alert, not an announcement, of transfer responses to 2NT. So the (incomplete) answer to your question is "yes", because East should have alerted, not announced. However, the answer is incomplete because we don't know if West did anything wrong, and we can't know that without seeing the hands and knowing their agreements.

[polecat69]

Further to my post West's hand was

S: AK7 H: QJ2 D: AK874 C: K4

East was

S: 52 H: AK9543 D: 9 C: T875

Agreement was stayman and red suit transfers over a 2NT opening.

Country was England

[Vampyr]

polecat69, on 2012-April-14, 15:57, said:

Further to my post West's hand was

S: AK7 H: QJ2 D: AK874 C: K4

East was

S: 52 H: ak9543 D: 9 C: t875

Agreement was stayman and red suit transfers over a 2NT opening.

Country was England

Ah. Well, spades are at least as long as hearts, so West has an obligation to correct.

[blackshoe]

Either you have the hands reversed, or you have the bidding reversed.

[lalldonn]

Vampyr, on 2012-April-14, 16:02, said:

Ah. Well, spades are at least as long as hearts, so West has an obligation to correct.

Huh? Why?

[blackshoe]

On the assumption that it was West, not East, who opened the bidding, because the hand attributed to West in the later post is a 2NT opener, and the hand attributed to East is not. Stefanie is saying that passing suggests that West has seen East screw up in this way before. As I understand EBU regs, this is a "fielded misbid", but absent evidence that West has seen East do this before, I'd rule it Amber, so no score adjustment and no penalty other than warnings, but record the incident for future reference.

Added: BTW, East has UI from West's announcement (and would have if West had properly alerted, whether or not he'd been asked to explain), so another question is whether East has a LA to 4♥ over West's 3♠ bid, whether bidding 4♥ could demonstrably be suggested by the UI (I think this one is obviously 'yes'), and whether the LA would have resulted in a worse score for EW. In that case the TD should probably adjust the score. I don't think there's an LA though.

[Vampyr]

lalldonn, on 2012-April-14, 16:13, said:

Huh? Why?

Because passing is catering to partner's having forgotten the system. True West has no UI, so the ruling would probably be "fielded misbid" instead.

[blackshoe]

Heh. Cross posted.

[Vampyr]

blackshoe, on 2012-April-14, 16:29, said:

Heh. Cross posted.

Indeed.. I think it is clearly red though

[blackshoe]

Perhaps so. I was going from memory of the OB, not from any experience using the regulation (which I don't have, not having directed in England).

[Vampyr]

blackshoe, on 2012-April-14, 16:24, said:

Added: BTW, East has UI from West's announcement (and would have if West had properly alerted, whether or not he'd been asked to explain), so another question is whether East has a LA to 4♥ over West's 3♠ bid, whether bidding 4♥ could demonstrably be suggested by the UI (I think this one is obviously 'yes'), and whether the LA would have resulted in a worse score for EW. In that case the TD should probably adjust the score. I don't think there's an LA though.

Yes, this too.

I think it is red because West knows East has UI... I know that's a little convoluted... but also he has a basically cost-free way to cater for partner's having misbid. In addition, I would not be surprised if West has some UI, even if he does not know it himself.

The other day I was thinking about passing a bid, then remembered that I was in a game-forcing auction. Passing would have been best, and I thought later that I must have had some UI suggesting that partner did not really have the values for her bidding so far. But I did not consciously notice anything.

[AlexJonson]

If opener alerted the 4H and explained that partner was prone to forget, would this no longer be a CPU and therefore Ok? Or does he need to include the memory failure in the explanation of the 3H bid?

[Vampyr]

AlexJonson, on 2012-April-14, 16:56, said:

If opener alerted the 4H and explained that partner was prone to forget, would this no longer be a CPU and therefore Ok? Or does he need to include the memory failure in the explanation of the 3H bid?

This is sort of beside the point. It would make a difference if they had agreed that 3♥ was 2-way.

[lalldonn]

I don't understand why passing 4H is a fielded misbid. If you have equal length it's normal to just pick one. In fact there is good bridge logic to choose the QJx suit rather than the AKx suit opposite 5-5.

Are we attributing an agreement to this pair, that we don't know they had, to always go back to the first suit?

Or is it the case that if if responder (mistakenly) shows 5-5 in the majors but actually holds only one major, and opener is 3-3, that whichever one opener picks constitutes a 'fielded misbid' if it happens to be the one responder really has? That doesn't make any sense.

I understand the concept of a fielded misbid. But passing 4H caters to partner forgetting the 3H shows spades. Bidding 4S caters to partner forgetting that 4H shows hearts. Everything you ever do that is not 100% required by system could be fielding a misbid. Maybe I don't understand it after all...

[nige1]

deleted

[campboy]

lalldonn, on 2012-April-14, 17:35, said:

I understand the concept of a fielded misbid. But passing 4H caters to partner forgetting the 3H shows spades. Bidding 4S caters to partner forgetting that 4H shows hearts. Everything you ever do that is not 100% required by system could be fielding a misbid. Maybe I don't understand it after all...

One of those is a misbid that sometimes occurs in real life, the other one isn't. There are a fair number of players out there who are aware that their partner has a tendancy to forget transfers and will expect this sequence to mean "whoops, I forgot we were playing transfers again". Of course, the player in question might not be one of those people.

Personally I think this is obviously amber, since both options are perfectly reasonable. Red for this auction would be if opener had 3=2 in the majors.

[Trinidad]

lalldonn, on 2012-April-14, 17:35, said:

I don't understand why passing 4H is a fielded misbid. If you have equal length it's normal to just pick one. In fact there is good bridge logic to choose the QJx suit rather than the AKx suit opposite 5-5.

I agree with you on that. And if I would have had Ax of clubs, I certainly would have passed 4♥, for the reason you give. But with Kx of clubs, I think it is a good idea to be declarer rather than dummy.

I doubt, though, that such a reasoning is worth anything to a player who plays with someone who forgets he is playing Jacoby transfers (unless it is a paid pro).

Rik

[lalldonn]

campboy, on 2012-April-15, 07:19, said:

One of those is a misbid that sometimes occurs in real life, the other one isn't. There are a fair number of players out there who are aware that their partner has a tendancy to forget transfers and will expect this sequence to mean "whoops, I forgot we were playing transfers again". Of course, the player in question might not be one of those people.

Personally I think this is obviously amber, since both options are perfectly reasonable. Red for this auction would be if opener had 3=2 in the majors.

Is it part of the regulation that the director decides which misbids are allowed to be fielded and which aren't? I'm not being sarcastic, maybe it is. I tried to research fielded misbids online and couldn't really find anything, not even a definition.