[blml] A Psyche Classification

[David Burn]

[TWM]

My "vehement opposition" is to those idiots who rule a psych "red" when
the agreement that has been deemed to exist is an otherwise legal one and
the matter is like any other disclosure ruling.

[DALB]

Nobody "deemed an agreement to exist". East-West pretended in committee to
be playing fit non-jumps in order to convince the appeals committee that
they weren't actually cheating. Your version of events seems to be that they
actually were playing fit non-jumps; they just forgot to alert. But no one
would actually bid 2S on the East hand whatever the methods; as Alain
correctly said, East was psyching.

[TWM]
 
If no such agreement is deemed to exist then it's a green psych.

[TWM]

Of course it isn't. East's bid showed spades - long spades, not necessarily
high spades. West did not raise his partner's presumed long spade suit when
West had four-card support. Do you seriously suggest that this does not
constitute at least some evidence that West knew his partner might be
psyching?

[TWM]

If you deem the pair to have had no disclosable
agreement/understanding/experience then you have no option but to rule
the psych green.

Of course I do. Suppose East-West really did have the undisclosed agreement
that East would bid spades with shortage in auctions of this kind. How would
East-West's auction differ from their actual auction?

[TWM]

So you judge there is an improperly disclosed understanding (such is the
right of a TD).

[DALB]

Oh, I don't judge that there is such an understanding, only that there might
be (since West would always have bid as he did if there were such an
understanding, and might not bid as he did if there were not).

[TWM]

What you are not permitted to do under either EBU
regulation or the law is rule that failure properly to disclose, of
itself, makes a convention "illegal".

Nobody is doing any such thing. This isn't a question of improper disclosure
of an understanding (that has nothing to do with psyching, for it is a sine
qua non of a psyche that it is not based on any kind of understanding). When
we classify a psyche (or more properly, the actions of a player following a
psyche by his partner) as "red", we do not actually say "you had
such-and-such an understanding, and you didn't tell your opponents about
it". What we say is "you behaved as a pair would who had such-and-such an
understanding, and didn't tell their opponents about it" (it goes without
saying that the understanding would be worthless if one ever did tell the
opponents about it).

I really don't propose to spend any more time on this. It is, as I have
mentioned before, no coincidence that those who psyche a lot are rushing to
the defence of this particular East-West pair with a number of arguments
that are simply wrong. There is no question here of playing a method that
was improperly disclosed; what East was trying to do was fool the opponents
into thinking they had spades when they didn't, and what West was doing
could be regarded as colluding in this deception (even though this might not
have been his intention, but in order to classify the action as "red" one
does not have to assert that it was his intention, only that it might have
been on the basis of the evidence).

David Burn
London, England