February 2025 - 36

RULING THE Game
Q
I learned to play bridge online
during the pandemic, and now
I play both online and faceto-face.
My partner loves to teach me
lots of conventions. I try to be very
careful about following the rules,
so I have learned which ones are
Alertable. I learned to Alert my bids
online so I could explain our agreements
to the opponents.
Now that we are back to playing
at the club, I have discovered that
partner is not as diligent at remembering
to Alert. They remember the
convention, but they forget the Alert.
This frustrates me terribly. I suspect
I show my frustration when partner
does not Alert an agreement they are
required to Alert.
Because we Alert our own bids
online, why do we have to rely
on partner to remember to Alert
face-to-face?
A
There has long been a culture
of self-Alerting in online
bridge. That is, the person
who makes the Alertable call Alerts
it, adding an explanation to go with
the Alert. The reason this can work
in the online environment is that the
software can keep partner from seeing
what you wrote or even that you
Alerted at all.
Distilling Law 16 down to its most
important parts, it says that you're
not allowed to base a call or play on
extraneous information from partner.
Explanations of bids are extraneous.
Online, you have no idea if
partner knows what your call means,
even when you explain it to the opponents.
Face-to-face, you find out
quickly whether partner remembered
your agreement, which is information
you're not legally entitled to use.
Self-Alerting in face-to-face bridge
would tell partner what you intended
your calls to mean. To prevent this
exchange of information, the partner
does the Alerting face-to-face.
Partnerships still get unauthorized
36 | Bridge Bulletin | February 2025
information that shows they are
having a misunderstanding; this
is a smaller problem than allowing
players to describe to the whole table
what they intended their bids to
mean.
Q
Holding:
sA 6 h9 7 5 dJ 7 3 cQ 9 8 3 2,
I was on lead after an auction by the
opponents of 1d-1NT; 3d-Pass.
With the opponents stopping short
of game and my only having 7 HCP,
I knew partner had some values.
I couldn't decide whether to try to
lead a club or a spade. I decided to
try the sA, hoping to find partner
with the sK and get a ruff. Dummy
came down with an uninteresting
assortment:
sQ 7 5 hQ 8 4 dQ 10 2 cJ 7 6 5.
Declarer asked my partner what
we lead from ace-king, and partner
said we lead the ace. Partner played
the s4, and declarer contributed the
s9. We use upside-down carding.
Partner might have been playing
their highest spot card from 4-3-2,
which would be discouraging. They
might also have been playing their
lowest spot card from K-(J)-8-4,
which would have been encouraging.
Declarer's question about our lead
from ace-king suggested to me that
they did not have the king. I continued
a spade, hoping for partner to
win and give me a ruff. It was not
to be; declarer was the one with the
king.
I was taken aback by this discovery.
Why would declarer ask what we lead
from ace-king while looking at the
king? This seems unethical to me. I
asked our director about it later. They
said they agreed that my opponent
might have done something bad, but
they did not think there was anything
that could be done. Was there?
MODERATOR: MATT KOLTNOW
NATIONAL TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR
rulings@acbl.org
A
We are sympathetic to your
reaction to this situation, and
we will offer another viewpoint.
If there was a rule that declarer
is only permitted to ask a question
about a specific carding agreement
when the relevant card is missing,
that would give away information
about their own hand. In this case,
declarer might be trying to decipher
your partner's signal at trick one, or
even what you might conclude from
their signal at trick one. It's a bit like
the mystery board game Clue; knowing
what information others have can
be important to your own strategy.
This is a reminder to all declarers
that the convention card is there for
you. Looking at a properly filled-in
card would answer this question.
The new version of the card lists even
more carding situations, so declarer
can find out what they want without
having to ask. Sometimes the card is
not clear, and declarer resorts to asking
a question. We normally suggest
general questions rather than specific
ones; in this case, declarer's specific
question could well have been the best
way to find out about this particular
carding agreement. Another hazard of
asking is the creation of UI for partner.
Of course that does not matter
this time, because partner is dummy.
Some declarers ask questions out
of habit. As we've said before, one
advantage of asking questions when
the information does not affect your
decision is that it masks the reason
for asking. In this case, it just does
not sound as if there was an attempt
to deceive you; you drew your conclusion
about the question declarer
asked at your own risk. We would
hate to dismiss your concern entirely.
You might well have reason to
suspect that this question was asked
with ill intent. At your club, you can
bring concerns such as this to the
director's attention; at tournaments,
you can file a player memo to share
your concern with the Recorder. 2
February 2025

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