[BMWZ8]

I was dealt a hand with 7C, 17 HCP and a singleton JD. I knew the correct bid was 1C but my right hand opponent passed but I was concerned that my partner would also pass.
So, I opened 1NT. I realize now that is not a legal bid. My opponents bid to 4S and I bid 5C and made the contract. What should the penalty have been?

[pilowsky]

BMWZ8, on 2024-February-23, 21:27, said:

I was dealt a hand with 7C, 17 HCP and a singleton JD. I knew the correct bid was 1C but my right hand opponent passed but I was concerned that my partner would also pass.
So, I opened 1NT. I realize now that is not a legal bid. My opponents bid to 4S and I bid 5C and made the contract. What should the penalty have been?

Put your right hand in a bucket of iced water for 20 seconds.

[jillybean]

Well done, it would be interesting to see the full hands. You may have had an easy auction getting to 5C after opening 1C?


ACBL WORLD

I hear it is legal to open 1nt with a singleton as long as the singleton is a Ace, King or Queen.
I hear it is legal to open 1nt with a singleton as long as partner expects a balanced hand.
Each year I hear that a 15-17 nt range does not need to be announced.

I don't keep up with alert regulations, players don't adhere to them and I no longer care.

[blackshoe]

According to the laws, what can be regulated is agreements, not actions. That is, your Regulating Authority might say "you can't have an agreement to open 1NT with a small singleton". What they can't legally say is "if you open 1NT with a small singleton one time, you will be presumed to have an agreement to do so. That agreement is illegal, so what you did is illegal." Nonetheless, there is at least one organization (the ACBL) that does exactly that. Unfortunately, if you're playing in an ACBL sanctioned game, you're not going to have any luck arguing against a ruling on the basis that the ruling is illegal. The only choices are to live with it, or not to play in ACBL games.

A psych is, according to law, "A deliberate and gross misstatement of honor strength and/or of suit length". So what you did was to psych a 1NT opening. That's not illegal, even in the ACBL.

All that said, I have two questions: 1) who is your Regulating Authority (normally, except in North America, your National Bridge Organization)? 2) What happened that led you to conclude that what you did is illegal?

[blackshoe]

jillybean, on 2024-February-23, 22:17, said:

Well done, it would be interesting to see the full hands. You may have had an easy auction getting to 5C after opening 1C?


ACBL WORLD

I hear it is legal to open 1nt with a singleton as long as the singleton is a Ace, King or Queen.
I hear it is legal to open 1nt with a singleton as long as partner expects a balanced hand.
Each year I hear that a 15-17 nt range does not need to be announced.

I don't keep up with alert regulations, players don't adhere to them and I no longer care.

David Burn, an English player and laws expert, is fond of saying "bridge is not a very good game". This is why. The rules are a mess, adjudication is a bigger mess, and sooner or later nobody cares what the rules are. :-(

[pescetom]

blackshoe, on 2024-February-24, 07:15, said:

David Burn, an English player and laws expert, is fond of saying "bridge is not a very good game". This is why. The rules are a mess, adjudication is a bigger mess, and sooner or later nobody cares what the rules are. :-(

The reason he says that is that he cares what the rules are and wants to improve them, otherwise he would never have taken on his thankless but important current role.

[jillybean]

I do care about the laws and I do try to gently introduce the laws in the games I run and the players I teach.
As a player, the tide is too great, I have given in.

[blackshoe]

"Never give up! Never surrender!" :-)

[mycroft]

What they can say is "you are allowed to have this agreement provided you agree not to deviate in the following ways..."

Used to only be "provided you agree not to psych it". Now it's being used as a hard line: "as long as you agree not to deviate in ways that, were it your actual agreement (*), would make it not allowed." If you want to argue that the language used on the Convention charts isn't exactly that - fine. But the permission given to RAs by the WBFLC, even back in the Endicott Fudge days, was "global and complete". And it has been proven that anything not a hard line will stop people from slippery-sloping this to death.

Please note, this does NOT apply to a misbid. If you truly thought you had ♥J6 ♦AKT, and you actually had ♥J ♦AKT6, you have not made an illegal bid. You might have issues convincing the director that's what happened, but...

But if "a Jack is almost a Queen", then I'm sorry, step back from the line a bit and "use judgement". Or play right to the line, and "agree not to deviate over the line". Or not play in the ACBL, which from my experience playing "right to the line" would be considered a net positive by a majority of the rest of the players in the event. I'm not thrilled with *that* attitude, either.

(*) Because if you're willing to consider it "close enough" to your agreement, it arguably is "your agreement". Even if you're on the side of the angels and not just saying "10-12. We don't open 9 counts, that's illegal. :-) But this 9 really is 10." Which, for 60 years, people 100% did, and not just with KQTx KJTx T8 963.