Psyches and NT Openings

There are bans on psyches and
restrictions on NT openings in our tournaments

A psyche is a call, made for the purpose of deception, which misrepresents the strength of a hand and/or the distribution of a hand. Such calls are generally allowed at bridge providing that, besides your opponents, one’s partner also is totally unaware that the call is phony and behaves accordingly.

Less experienced players can find psyches hard to deal with and often feel aggrieved when the psyche is successful. For this reason, some organizations ban the use of psyches in their tournaments; the BBO Acol Club is such an organization. We do not allow psyches in our tournaments.

There are two methods for evaluating the strength of an opening hand. These are High Card Points (HCP), 4 for an Ace and so on, and Total Count (TC) where the HCP count is adjusted to account for other features of the hand. Typically more than average intermediates, honours together, a long suit, honours and intermediates in a long suit, all increase the TC value of a hand. You will be familiar with these if you have ever played with the BBO robots, who describe their bids using both evaluation methods. The TC is a more accurate reflection of the true strength of a hand.

In the past we have mainly been using HCPs as our criterion for deciding whether a bid is a psyche or not but this has led to difficulties. For instance, consider these two hands:-

The first has a high card point count of 12, whilst the second only has 11. Yet which is better qualified to open 1NT with, playing a normal 12-14 range? The gold standard for estimating the TC value of an opening hand is the Kaplan & Rubens hand evaluator, https://www.jeff-goldsmith.com/cgi-bin/knr.cgi . This gives the first hand with its isolated honours, total lack of intermediates and flat distribution at TC value of 11.4 while It gives the second hand a TC value of 12.9. In spite of the fact that the second hand is actually the stronger of the two hands it would have been labelled a psyche using just the HCP count evaluation.

Our new policy is to say that a hand is a psyche if it falls outside the stated strength range of the bid using both criteria. Thus, for the example shown above, the first hand is not a psyche because it passes the HCP count test, while the second not a psyche because it is in the TC range of 11.5-14.5. Our hope is that this will make players feel more relaxed about using their own judgement on hands and less straight-jacketed by the literal interpretation of their system.

Note that you can still open 1N with any 11 points if you wish. However, if you do, you have to let your opponents know that that is your system. So when you make your announcements at the start you should say, “1N is 11-14” or, if it is more accurate, “1N is 12-14 in 1st and second position, 11-14 in 3rd and 4th", or whatever you actually play. Even if you have only announced 12-14 you will still be ok if you alert your bid as, say, “11-14 in this position” when you actually make it.

Although this discussion has concentrated on the 1N opening bid, please note the generality of this policy applies to all calls at any point in the auction.

The discussion above has focussed on psyches based on misrepresentation of hand strength. Don’t forget that a hand can also be ruled a psyche if you have deliberately misrepresented its distribution for deceptive purposes. In particular, then, if your 1N opener can contain a singleton or a void then this must be announced at the start of the round.

Finally we should mention that mistakes do not count as psyches. So if you miscount your hand and open 1N on ten high card points then the director will not rule this to be a psyche. Well, not the first time you do it, anyway. If it becomes a pattern then it will get ruled as a psyche regardless of your intent.