paulg, on 2013-September-04, 15:52, said:
This means that the spread of abilities, even in the main pairs event in the Summer Congress, is much wider than an equivalent event in the ACBL. Relative novices playing internationals is not uncommon so Rik's assumptions are not necessarily valid.
What did I assume?
The explanation was "an ordinary preempt". If their agreement is that this includes distributional hands that would be minimum 1 level openers in first seat, then it is "an ordinary preempt in third seat".
I assumed that all players could look at the board and notice the vulnerability and position. That is hardly a wild assumption. Therefore, "in third seat" is redundant information: Everybody knows that the player is in third seat. To me it is like: "An ordinary preempt for a bridge player". A sensitive opponent might consider his intelligence insulted.
The problem might be that the person asking didn't know what an ordinary preempt in third seat could look like. But this is not a "special partnership understanding". If I play with you and you open 3
♣ in third seat, I know that it will have a wider range than a first or second seaet preempt, even though we have never played together and we haven't discussed it.
Say someone opens 1NT which is alerted and asked (in a jurisdiction without announcements). It is explained as 12-14, balanced. The hand pattern turns out to be 3235. The asker is annoyed because the hand had a five card suit and is, therefore, not balanced. What do you do? There are two ways to approach this:
1) Inform the asker that a 3235 pattern is generally considered balanced.
2) Tell the explainer that he needs to be as explicit as possible about the distributions, because not everybody may know what "balanced" means. Since the asker could not unerstand the answer, it is up to the explainer to make sure that his explanation is complete and completely understood.
The same goes for the "ordinary preempt". The explainer thought that this was understood by the asker. However, the asker didn't know that in third seat "ordinary preempts" are not the same as "ordinary preempts" in first seat. You can:
1) Tell the asker that this is an ordinary preempt in third seat.
2) Tell the explainer to be more explicit, since not everybody may know what "an ordinary preempt" means.
Rik
I want my opponents to leave my table with a smile on their face and without matchpoints on their score card - in that order.
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