[blml] Psychs

[Brian]

On 06/18/2007 09:54 AM, Eric Landau wrote:
> On Jun 17, 2007, at 12:50 AM, Marvin French wrote:
> 
>> I came across a very old ACBL convention card of mine that had
>> four check boxes for indicating psych frequency: Never, Rare,
>> Occasional, and Frequent.
>>
>> 1) This seemed like a good thing, but someone on BLML said it
>> was bad. Why?
>>
>> 2) Psyching is part of the game, as recognized by the Laws.
>> Should not a pair that has an agreement, explicit or implicit,
>> that they never psych, be obliged to disclose that in advance?
> 
> Of course they should.   Your opponents are entitled to know as much  
> about your methods as you do, and that's clearly an important piece  
> of information.
> 
> It was expunged from the ACBL convention card in the 1970s when the  
> ACBL, under the leadership of Don Oakie, mounted an intensive  
> campaign to convince ACBL players that psyching was somehow  
> illegitimate -- protected by the laws, but not something that a  
> genuinely ethical player would do.  The explicit objective of Mr.  
> Oakie's campaign was to rid the (American) game of those nasty  
> psychic "disruptions" altogether.  Since the checkboxes on the CC  
> served to remind players that they were allowed to psych despite the  
> ACBL's opinion of the practice, they had to go if players were to be  
> convinced that the law's protection of psychs was, as Mr. Oakie  
> believed, nothing more than a loophole for cheaters.
> 
<...>

As far as I remember from my time playing bridge in England, there used
to be a statement in the Orange/Yellow/whatever book that WBF convention
cards were acceptable under certain circumstances, but only if all
references to psychic habits had been obliterated. I don't think it was
just the American game.


Brian.