[pescetom]

Cyberyeti, on 2022-January-05, 03:51, said:

One thing that hasn't been mentioned, was this online or F2F. I can believe E thought he was playing a multi if his partner self alerted 2♦ as weak now 3♥ (if there is no strong hand that bids this) wakes him up, but that still puts his partner under pressure over 3N.

A multi mishap was my first thought when I saw the hand, too, but then I saw that 2♦ wasn't alerted or explained whereas 2♥ was both. And of course the alert is bizarre if self-alerted and worse if partner-alerted.

I don't want to short circuit the two discussions, but as OP doesn't seem interested in enlightening us further, I would point out to sanst that according to the other discussion, E pointed out that he writes articles about psyching and W is his fiancée, so hardly your typical club pair and perhaps a bit more demanding to give them benefit of the doubt.

[mycroft]

I was unclear. I apologize. My concern is not with the table actions (which are their own thing, and I am still interested in the ruling), but with lines like (not aiming this at Cyberyeti, he would not do this, but it is his quote):

Quote

Particularly if W hesitated before the final pass he will come up with the defence of "3N is an unusual bid here, I visualised QJx, KQxxx, AK, QJx where 3N is the only making game".

There are lots of questions about what E-W were thinking in this thread. Good, questions are good. There are a lot of attempts to explain (and multi is a new one I think - actually a very good one. F-t-F, we'd have evidence of East's belief, either Alert vs no Alert, or Alert vs Announcement, or ...) which are also good. But there are some "attempts to explain" that look very much like "the real answer is 'I bet he psyched, and so I'm passing', but I can't say that or I'll be ruled against[*], let's see if I can find something that the director will believe and will let me keep +400".

* whether or not he would be ruled against if he guessed partner psyched. This class of player is not willing to risk it, when they can after spending 3 minutes as dummy "visualize a hand".

That's the attitude I am critizing. And I know 100% for a fact it exists. I could name several players who do this (I won't, for screamingly obvious reasons. But other directors know who they are, and don't disagree with me). I know at least one, very good, player who is willing to tell the director that "if you're not using partner's explanations in your bidding, you're leaving points on the table". And I've penalized him when he did just that.

I'm sure you know it exists too. The comments here, the ones that aren't "well, maybe East thought it was multi" or "hearts look like they run, that must be what he's asking" (AJx instead of xxx or Kx), are of the sort "this is what they will tell the TD" as opposed to "this is what they thought". Lamford's Chimp is a master of this tactic - and we've commiserated about the fact that the Chimp can get away with it (occasionally) - why does this character ring true?

If a player has perpetrated an uncomfortable auction and the TD is called, that player should tell the truth as best they know it and try not to come up with "thoughts that the TD might let me get away with". If it was legal, all to the good. If it was not, the ruling really won't be the end of the world. And the TD will be less suspicious of the next weird mind-Marsing that the player does, which might prompt a "yeah, that was dumb, but it's not illegal. Score stands".