[barmar]

The extra space can give you room to make a game try, when otherwise you would have had to commit one way or the other. This isn't an "agreement over an insufficient bid", because your bid presumably has the same meaning it would have had if the bid had been sufficient or the opponent had passed.

[Zelandakh]

barmar, on 2012-October-17, 17:31, said:

E.g. if your normal agreement is that a response on the 1 level shows 6+ HCP, then that agreement still applies in the auction 1♠-(1♦)-1♥. And if you play step responses after an overcall, it should be fine if the steps are the same regardless of whether the overcall is sufficient or insufficient.

Ken already pointed the fallacy of this argument. Why should the "6+hcp" agreement apply and not the "lowest heart response is game-forcing" agreement? And this still does not address the issue of those that play a transfer-based defence to overcalls or other conventional possibilities. I am still hoping to hear what the top relay pairs do here - surely Fred, Ben, Justin or Mike must know at the very least? For that matter, Ben plays such a transfer-based defence - perhaps he could fill us in on how he would take the various bids in some common IB situations.

barmar, on 2012-October-17, 17:31, said:

What you can't do is play steps over sufficient overcalls, natural over insufficient overcalls.

Why not? if you adhere strictly to the comments of the ACBL Director quoted above then this is your only option!

[jh51]

jeffford76, on 2012-October-15, 10:35, said:

As to the "you can't really think", I always did think this was legal. I know that when I play with my wife, she will *always* make herself dummy after a lead out of turn. I don't even know whether we explicitly talked about this at some point or not, but it seems hard to believe that the legality of it depends on whether we did or didn't.

I have a friend who will routinely do this as well when playing with her now ex-boyfriend who taught her the game. Of course, she will also prefer to have him play in 4M or 5m when the hand clearly belongs in 3NT played by her hahd.

[jh51]

Not long ago I was at a Regional where one of the guest lecturers was an ACBL TD. One of the subjects he touched on was insufficient bids.

He remarked that one should always require that the insufficient bid be replaced with a sufficient legal bid unless:

• The bid was so bad that you want the opponent to play in that suit, possibly doubled. For example, your partner has bid 3S, and is overcalled with 3C. You have AQTx of clubs, and would love to have them play it there, and will probably double them. You certainly don't want them to substitute a pass.
  
• They have gotten you off the hook with their insufficient bid. For example, you have a clear misfit and are headed for a bad result. Don't let them substitute a pass and put you back in trouble.
  
• You are able to use the "extra bidding space", as had been discussed here.

Under this last topic, there are certainly implications when one supports partner at a lower level. For example, I recently was able to support partner at the same level of the suit that she had bid because of an IB. She drew the inference that I was minimal, which was correct. The TD in question seemed to be saying that this was perfecly legal so long as there was no agreement in advance.

[Vampyr]

jh51, on 2012-October-18, 11:13, said:

The TD in question seemed to be saying that this was perfecly legal so long as there was no agreement in advance.

But what if it happens again? Now you have an agreement in advance.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2012-October-18, 04:06, said:

Quote

What you can't do is play steps over sufficient overcalls, natural over insufficient overcalls.

Why not? if you adhere strictly to the comments of the ACBL Director quoted above then this is your only option!

But isn't that a clear example of "varying agreements", which you're not allowed to do?

So the regulations say you're not allowed to vary your agreements after an irregularity, and the email says you're not allowed to use any conventions after an irregularity. This implies that you're not allowed to use any conventions at all, because you must ensure that your normal agreements don't vary from what you would do after an irregularity.

Since this conclusion is obviously counter to how the game is intended to be played, the premises must be wrong (reductio ad adsurbum).

[jeffford76]

barmar, on 2012-October-19, 09:45, said:

Since this conclusion is obviously counter to how the game is intended to be played, the premises must be wrong (reductio ad adsurbum).

Or alternately, both rules are in fact rules in the ACBL, and the rules in the ACBL are "counter to how the game is intended to be played". Presumably because not enough time has been spent thinking about their consequences.