Teams; 4H by North; lead J♣; Table result NS+620
SB was unhappy again on the above board from a North London club this week. RR, North, attempted to open with a weak 2♥ and had pulled out the stop card when SB, West, pointed out to him that he was not dealer. "DIRECTOOOOOOOR", summoned SB, "I think there may be some UI issues here", he added. OO arrived and clarified that a stop card was not a bid or call and the auction reverted to South who had to carefully avoid taking ANY advantage of the UI. ChCh, South, opened 1S, and the Rabbit vaguely recalled that he was too weak to bid 2H and responded 1NT. ChCh raised to 2NT, which RR thought was 18-19, as a 1NT rebid would have been 15-17, so he closed proceedings with a jump to 4H and even he managed to ruff a club in dummy despite wrongly drawing two rounds of trumps prematurely, after the J♣ was ducked to RR's king.
"I think South's 2NT bid took advantage of the UI that his partner had one of two hand types, either a three level pre-empt or a weak two in hearts or diamonds," SB's tirade began, "and the risk that partner had a balanced 5-count had been eliminated". He paused for breath. "ChCh had an ethical duty to carefully avoid taking ANY advantage of the UI," he continued, "and Pass was a logical alternative which would have been considered and selected by a significant number of South's peers. Not that ChCh knows what ethics means - I am sure he thinks it is one of the home counties. And, finally, RR could have been aware that his infraction of taking out the stop card could damage the non-offending side."
"That's rubbish", responded ChCh, "only an idiot would risk RR bidding 4H or signing off in 3C or 3D over the 2NT rebid". So, he continued, "2NT, which increased the chance of RR playing the hand in game, was the call that had to be chosen".
How do you rule, and this time the hand actually occurred, with some embellishment perhaps?
Extra Information: NS were playing a weak NT and three weak twos and 1NT was non-forcing, 5-9 as they were not playing 2/1FG. 2NT was invitational, not 18-19 as RR mistakenly thought.
This post has been edited by lamford: 2018-October-26, 13:54