Jottings - Insufficient Bids - a pragmatic view

The people who make the laws and the scribes, fundamentalists and scholars who agonise over the minutiae of the law do have their place in this world. They eventually work out how to interpret the Laws of Bridge and explain it all in short sentences and monosyllabic utterances to the likes of me. I just do what I understand is the right thing and read out the bit of Law I’m told is applicable. In fact most TDs do that and because of the serious amount of training we undergo it comes out much the same whoever gives the ruling. There is a general view that EBU Directors are among the best trained and most consistent in the world.

When the new laws came in, in October 1997, one of the most significant changes which occured was the treatment of insufficient bids. You used to be able to make a bid good and provided the original call would have been natural, and you made your new call at a minimum level in the same strain generally there weren’t any penalties. This meant you could undercall oppo’s 1NT opening with 1D, correct to 2D which was now deemed to be natural.

Quite understandably the powers that be noticed that you could now play an Astro defence (immediate 2D) directly over 1NT and simultaneously a Natural defence (1D then 2D) In practice of course the TDs were aware of the problem and in general there was no blatant abuse of the law as it stood. Nonetheless the WBF fixed the Law up.

What happened was that they said that if either the original call or the substituted call would be conventional then partner got silenced. This seems a good idea, as now you make your undercall of 1D and the TD finds out you play Astro and then tells you to guess the final contract (as partner is silenced whatever you do). This is all very sensible ..............

But wait ..... Partner opens 2NT and sleepily you respond 2H transfer. "Hey you cant do that!" say the oppo so you change your call to 3H transfer. About now someone thinks it might be time to summon the Purple Carapace. Oh dear! There would have been no problem if your calls had been natural, the TD will probably offer LHO the opportunity of accepting the undercall first and if that doesn’t happen will wander off again... but when they’re conventional ...

What can the TD do? Well his problem is that you’ve made your own arrangements and the full force of the Law is about to descend on you like a ton of bricks. However someone much cleverer than I has spotted a little loophole and at the moment you get a chance to change your innocently substituted call when it’s conventional which seems sensible. Partner’s silenced anyway so you can do more or less what you like except double.

So heed this warning all you undercallers! Call in the TD before you change your call or you could end up in a very silly contract. I may not agree with the Law, considering it to be an ass, but I’ve no option other than to apply it. Just to protect everyone I’ll ask you to suppose I’ve put in here the usual sort of disclaimer.