[blml] Declining to ask a bid's meaning to achieve a specific purpose

[Peter Eidt]

Hi Jerry,

From: "Jerry Fusselman" 
> On board 1, North deals and opens 1C, alerted "precision"; East bids
> 1S, which is alerted.  If East is showing four or more spades, South
> has a great bid to show his hand. But East might not be showing
> spades, and South will not know until he asks why it was alerted. 
> So, cleverly, South doesn't ask, and he bids 2S (which, assuming
> it is a cue bid, shows 9+ HCP, no 5-card suit and no spade stopper). 
>     South expects North to treat 1S natural for the purpose of
> understanding South's call, because South has not asked what the
> alert means.  South meant 2S to be a cue bid in their system, and
> North was listening to the absence of a question about the alert and
> understands it that way, even after he later finds out the meaning of
> East's 1S conventional bid:  It shows a red or minor two-suiter. 
>   On board 5, same dealer and same auction, but this time South has 5
> spades, so he asks the meaning of 1S.  It again shows the red suits or
> the minors.  South bids 2S again, but this time with a totally
> different meaning:  (Here it is a natural bid showing 4-7 HCP and
> five spades.)    I have been told that South and North are lawful
> here because no player is ever required to ask the meaning of an
> alerted bid, but I suspect that North and South on board 1 are both
> in violation of Law 73A1.  North-South agreements after the 1S
> overcall depend on what 1S shows, so I think that they must find out
> the meaning of 1S.  They must not use the presence or absence of a
> question by South to affect the meaning of their calls. 
> South's declining to ask is not AI to North, and North should
> continue the auction as if South understood what 1S showed. 
> What's more, South's lack of question is UI to North
> and North is in a situation where Law 16A applies in full force. 
> Anyway, that's what I currently think.    But I am no director.
> Am I right or not?  Even if this is right, there is probably a much
> clearer way to put it, and when is the proper time for East-West to
> call the director?  And what should the director do?

IT's not Law 73 A1 but 73 B1 und B2
Law 73 B1:
"Partners shall not communicate through the manner 
in which calls or plays are made, through extraneous 
remarks or gestures, 
_through questions asked or not  asked of the opponents_ 
or through alerts and explanations given or not given to them."

Law 73 B2:
"The gravest possible offence is for a partnership 
to exchange information through prearranged methods 
of communication other than those sanctioned by these 
Laws. A guilty partnership risks expulsion."

If you play a two-way defence against an opponent's
method it's your duty to be sure you know the systemic
meaning of opponent's call. You neither are allowed
to ask to wake up partner, nor to refuse to ask to
imply a natural meaning into opponent's call.

Regards
Peter