First, and to get it out of the way, I agree with blackshoe's original response to the original question, and of course E should have acted differently in the Correction Period.
pran, on 2012-February-10, 07:11, said:
PeterAlan, on 2012-February-10, 04:24, said:
pran, on 2012-February-05, 00:02, said:
If East can show evidence of "no agreement" I agree, but the question is then: Why did East bid 4♣ in the first place?
The simple answer to this is because he had to bid something. The problem he has is that, whatever he bids next, you're going to rule that he has an agreement about it.
The very simple answer from looking at his actual hand is that East should have no problem bidding 4
♣ if the partnership understanding (in his opinion) is that this shows a side suit in clubs. (In that case he should simply have offered a correction to his partner's explanation of the 4
♣ bid before the opening lead.)
If instead the partnership understanding is that a 4
♣ bid is artificial in any way then it appears to me that his hand is perfect for a 3
♠ bid.
So what is his
real problem?
You keep starting from the position that there must be a partnership understanding, and then try and view everything in that light. To the man with a hammer, everything is a nail.
If, instead, you entertain the shocking possibility that, notwithstanding W's statement,
there was no partnership agreement about the bid you get a perfectly sensible picture. There is evidence for this: first, and quite tellingly, W thought it was a cue bid whilst E, who made the bid, clearly did not. Unless and until they are forgotten, one of the main characteristics of partnership agreements is that the partners agree on them. Second, as a result they've had a bidding misunderstanding whch has led them to a failing NT slam instead of a decent
♥ one. Last,
we also now have the advantage of the OP which tells us so.
The answer to your question "So what is his [E's]
real problem?" is that he doesn't agree with you that his hand is perfect for a 3
♠ bid. He is faced with the necessity, as I said earlier, of bidding
something to keep the auction going. I'm not an expert player, least of all in the bidding, so that probably qualifies me to fill E's shoes. Obviously, his bid needs to be relatively cheap, and I suggest that none of his choices are going to be perfect: if we can agree that he thinks neither 3NT nor 4
♥ are realistic options, it really comes down to choosing between 3
♠ and 4
♣. He probably concludes that re-bidding
♠ is what he would do with a hand that has semi-solid
♠s but nothing else, so opts for 4
♣ since that at least reflects the limited other feature of his hand.
AlexJonson and others may well regard this as a bad bid, but it's a perfectly understandable one if you bid as badly as I do, and if I were to bid like this with a scratch partner I would expect them to conclude as a matter of logic more than GBK that, since I had passed up
♥,
♠ and NT, then I had nothing further to say about those denominations. And as I'm nevertheless having something more to say with my hand, then I might therefore be indicating that whatever else I've got in it has something to do with
♣. This is not a partnership understanding, its just common sense.
W is then faced with deciding what E's saying about the
♣. In the absence of any agreement, I'm not surprised that W concludes that the only sensible thing E could say about
♣ in this auction is that he's got a control, and bids accordingly. However, being one of a pair inexperienced in the ways of tournament bridge (remember E didn't know to call the TD and correct W's explanation before the opening lead), instead of saying firmly "we have no agreement about 4
♣ in this sequence" he said, when he was asked later on, what he thought the bid showed. Big mistake - but that, of course, is what you (though not the Laws and the regulatory authorities) want him to do. He may possibly have genuinely believed that that was their agreement; if so, E disagreed and the OP tells us that it was E not W that was correct.
But this, of course, is fantasy. Obviously, they have a concealed agreement, one of them has forgotten or lied about it, and they've pulled the wool over the eyes of the OP as well. Fortunately, pran, you're there to see through the charade.