[blml] ACBL LC Detroit minutes [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Hans van Staveren]

[HdW]

The agreement could well be "baked into" the system. If I have 
systemic agreements to show hands A,B and C, but I happen to have hand 
D, which conforms to neither of those three, then the call that I do 
make "describes" hand D. Either I use the call that shows A (or B or 
C) and then my partner's explanation "A" is wrong, since it should be 
"A or D", or I use a fourth call, and then my partner's explanation 
"no agreement" is also wrong, since it should be "we have calls to 
describe A, B and C, so he must have another than those".

So even if I never have seen hand D in my life (like a 35-pointer, 
which happened last month in Lier), I can have implicit agreements 
about those.

[HvS]

Totally agree. Years ago I ruled misinformation when a player bid a
singleton on a small doubleton. The pair was very clear that singleton was
their agreement. When I questioned the player that made the bid about what
his systemic correct bid on the hand would have been he became a bit
puzzled. It turned out that the bid he made was the only forcing bid
available. Neither player of the pair was aware that their agreements
actually had this hole in them. So indeed in this case I ruled
misinformation, since it was the responsibility of the pair making the
agreements to make sure they covered the bases.

Actually, last Tuesday, I was guilty of the same. I had

A
AKQT
Qxx
QTxxx

I opened 1C, partner 1H. Now both 4H and 3S seemed very awkward bids, so I
opted for 3NT, which systematically means 18-19 balanced with 4H. This
turned out to be a good decision, since it helped us to bid the slam that a
lot of the field missed. Looking back at it I think that in our system 3NT
should be the systemic bid on this hand, so we probably should change our
explanation of the 3NT bid. We'll discuss it next Tuesday.

Hans