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Appeal No 7

Misinformation

Event: : Life Master Pairs, 13 August, first final session

Board 8
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None

			6 2
			J 8 7 5 4 2
			10 3
			6 5 2
	9 8 7 5	N W E S			A 4 3
	10 9				A 3
	J 7 2				A 8 6 5 4
	K Q J 10				A 4 3
			K Q J 10
			K Q 6
			K Q 9
			9 8 7

West		North	East	South
Rakhmanin		Passell	Washington	Greco
Pass		Pass	1 (1)	Dbl
1NT		All Pass
(1)	Alerted; explained as "could be short" before South doubled

The Facts: 1NT made one, plus 90 for E/W. The Director was called at the end of play. South had not been told that E/W open 1 with any strong notrump hand. South stated he might have bid 1NT rather than double had he received a proper expla-nation of the 1 bid. The Director ruled that there had been no damage and allowed the result to stand.

The Appeal: N/S appealed the Director's ruling. Only South attended the hearing. South stated that upon receiving the explanation "could be short" he assumed that it was the normal 4-4-3-2 distribution. Had he known that it could have been a strong notrump, possibly with longer diamonds, he would have overcalled 1NT, leading to the possible N/S results of 2 down one or E/W contracts of 2 or 2NT down one. South said that beating the opponents to 1NT at neither vulnerable would have been clear if he knew East could have had a strong notrump.

The Committee's decision: The Committee believed that South had not done enough to explore the implications of East's explanation. For example, when asked what E/W's notrump range was, South said he did not know at the time but now knew it to be, "11 to 14, or maybe 10 to 12." Because knowledge of E/W's notrump range was critical to South's decision, failure to inform himself of that fact was in no small way responsible for South's dilemma.

Also, relying on the opponents to have specifically a 4-4-3-2 weak notrump in the finals of the Life Master Pairs was an inference that South took at his own risk. Finally, it was possible that South would have been worse off had he overcalled 1NT since E/ W scores of plus 100 (2 doubled) or plus 110 (in 3 after doubling North's transfer response) were reasonably likely. The Committee allowed the table result to stand since South had not sufficiently demonstrated damage solely from the opponents' actions. E/W were assessed a five matchpoint procedural penalty for failure to disclose their agreement ad-equately.