Deal Of The Week: August 29, 2024
Both vulnerable at matchpoint pairs, you hold:
♠ A J T 8 6 4 2 ♥ A 4 ♦ Q T 5 ♣ A
LHO is the dealer and opens a weak 2♥. Partner passes and RHO bids 2♠. What's your call here?
The player who held this hand realized that RHO's 2♠ was forcing and chose to pass. Not much else really makes a lot of sense. Partner will see a double as takeout, and a cuebid as a stronger takeout. 4♠ might expose the psyche, but are we sure it is one? With 0-1 hearts and five or more of the unseen six spades, RHO might just be trying to improve the contract.
Unfortunately, not everyone recognizes the RONF concept (over a weak two, a Raise is the Only Non Forcing call) these days, and 2♠ was passed out. Declarer remained stoic and calm and went down five for -500, holding this hand:
♠ 9 ♥ 8 5 ♦ K J 2 ♣ K Q J T 7 6 5
And now, here is the real question: how do you react to this? Your side can make ten tricks in spades or notrump for +620 or +630, but got only +500 against the psyche. (It could have been +600 had you followed the A♣ opening lead with the A♠ when the dummy hit with the singleton K♠, but we'll forgive you for switching to a diamond and letting declarer cash the ace-king and ruff a third in dummy.)
Here's where the Corleone brothers come in. Sonny, against the advice of consigliare Tom Hagen, would call the Director and angrily expose this psyche, taking further offense when told that psyches are legal and the result must stand, and would probably blow uncounted tricks and matchpoints the next several hands with smoke coming from his ears. His final score would suffer and if he was unable to calm down he would become unpopular with opponents and partner simultaneously, and we remember from the movie how that turned out.
Michael Corleone would react differently. He would recognize what the 2♠ bidder was up to: partner's 2♥ opener, denying more than three spades, tells RHO that his opponents have a spade fit, and will probably find it even over a jump in clubs or a raise in hearts. If instead RHO bids 2♠, confusing the next player enough to pass with no real options, LHO will have to make a second call, since 2♠ is forcing, and then RHO can bid clubs enough times to maybe buy the hand. It's not personal, it's strictly business!
Having passed 2♠, if you hear 3♥ from LHO and 4♣ from RHO, are you coming in with 4♠ now? Probably not, it sounds far more likely that you're getting a plus score by defending here.
Too many of us react to an opponent's successful psyche like Sonny instead of Michael. In fact, if they're psyching against you, it shows respect: it means they think you will prevail in a sane auction, and that their only chance is to stir things up and hope to emerge unscathed! It's not personal, it's strictly business!
On this hand, +500 was slightly above average for the defenders, as only one pair of five was allowed to play in 4♠, and another got the same -500 score in 5♣ doubled! Others failed in 5♠ or 4♣.
Psyches like the 2♠ call are legal, but only if done infrequently: once they become expected or suspected as a possibility by partner, you have an implied partnership agreement. The possibility needs to be communicated to the opponents, especially if the situation is one on which previous psyches have been made with any sort of frequency. Most such gambits put the partnership at great risk of disaster since the call will be taken seriously by partner and might result in getting too high.
However, some of them do work, and when one works against you, it is best to simply congratulate the imaginative player and move on. Going into full vendetta mode will only result in more poor results. If there is a question of frequency, or a hesitation that may have revealed something to the psyching side, or a strange call later by the partner of the psycher, call the Director and accept the decision. If you disagree with a decision about a psyche, you can file a player memo online, which will help if the partnership gets many such psyches reported. But such bids are legal as long as the psychic bidder's partner is as much in the dark as the opponents are.
By the way, a bid that is only slightly off what is expected is not a psychic bid as defined in the Laws. If your opponents get to 4♥ on a 4-3 fit and it makes, despite one of them being a heart short for the opener or the response, that's no psyche. If someone is a few points short of the normal requirements for a bid and the contract makes anyway because three finesses work, that's no psyche either. A psychic bid is a "deliberate and gross misstatement of honor strength and/or of suit length," not a bid that is a little short of expectations.
So the next time you get a bad result because an opponent's psychic bid worked, remember the advice of Michael Corleone: it was done out of respect, knowing that you would likely prevail on normal lines. It's not personal, it's strictly business!
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