[Cascade]

In the weekend I played against a pair that claimed to have no carding agreements.

That is no count, no discard, no suit preference, no agreements about leads etc.

Is this legal?

Is it practical? It occurred to me if they really had no agreements then they would have a bigger responsibility than usual disclosing their partnership experience.

I mean "fourths but occasionally ..." which might be the explanation for pair with normal sorts of agreements. Whereas this pair may need to give much more detailed information about their experience when asked.

[blackshoe]

Legality would be a matter of regulation. There is, if I'm not mistaken, a regulation against it in the ACBL, but I don't know about New Zealand.

Practical? I don't think so. Agree about the responsibility thing.

If they have partnership experience, then "we have no agreement" is untrue.

[Bbradley62]

blackshoe, on 2011-May-01, 20:03, said:

There is, if I'm not mistaken, a regulation against it in the ACBL

ACBL GENERAL CONDITIONS OF CONTEST FOR ALL EVENTS, GEN_CoC_All Events Revised December 2009 said:

Section "Play", Number 7 on page 4...
Carding Agreements: - A pair may not elect to have no agreement when it comes to carding. There have been pairs that say they just play random leads or that they lead the card closest to their thumb. They must decide on a carding agreement and mark their convention cards accordingly. Of course, some leeway needs to be given to fill-in pairs or very last minute partnerships.

http://www.acbl.org/...l-AllEvents.pdf

[shintaro]

mmm

Is not their Claim to Have NO Carding Agreemments An Agreement anyway

If they are a regular partnership Then they could never ever persuade anyone that they Do Not have an agreement

[JLOGIC]

Seems shady as hell. I doubt they literally randomize their cards, and if they don't their partner can probably figure out their patterns with time.

[helene_t]

It could be that they are just unable to play the systematic card in tempo and/or unable to notice partner's carding, in which case they might as well play randomly. If that is what they really do then it is much better that they say so, rather than that they claim to play standard leads and carding although they deviate almost as often as not.

But unless they are novices it sounds unlikely that they would do so in all situations. Leading a random honour from QJTxx or a random spot card from Q8532 or 82?

[mjj29]

I have had people in the past say "We play/discard cards which we don't want to keep" - which obviously doesn't cover leads, but seems like a reasonable agreement to have if you don't want to watch for or work out how to give signals. It does still give information to declarer, of course, but much weaker information.

[shintaro]

mjj29, on 2011-May-03, 02:01, said:

I have had people in the past say "We play/discard cards which we don't want to keep" - which obviously doesn't cover leads, but seems like a reasonable agreement to have if you don't want to watch for or work out how to give signals. It does still give information to declarer, of course, but much weaker information.

true however this is an 'Agreement' is it not

[mjj29]

shintaro, on 2011-May-03, 04:33, said:

true however this is an 'Agreement' is it not

Sure, but when people say "we have no agreement", I suspect this would be an appropriate restatement of the situation (unless, of course, they are attempting to signal without having an agreement, which after a while will become a different agreement implicitly)

[bluejak]

There was certainly a discussion about this about thirty years ago in the EBU which basically came to the conclusion that if experienced we do not believe them.

I think that is reasonable: I don't believe them.

Someone said if they play random ... Sure, but for a start random is a carding agreement and anyway it is very unlikely that anyone does play random.

Recently the EBU L&EC investigated a pair that claimed to lead random from xxx. When asked detailed questions it was discovered that in some situations they always led high, in some situations low, and =in some situations middle. It was explained to them that this was not random.

[barmar]

For this type of regulation to be meaningful, I think they must implicitly mean "agreement that carding has specific meanings."

And "We discard cards we don't want to keep" is hardly an agreement -- who would ever discard a card they wanted to keep (unless they're squeezed)? A discard agreement is a meaning assigned to the card chosen among available candidates.

[chrism]

How about the situation where we need to explain (or hear partner explain!)
"Our convention card says that we play ...[whatever]... but long experience has shown that partner ignores all but the most blatant signals, so much of my carding is as likely as not to deviate from our agreement. As for partner, the best I can hope for is 90% conformity to 'follow suit when possible'"

[barmar]

You're allowed to deviate from your agreements. You just have to have an agreement in the first place, to deviate from.

I guess the idea is that declarer can try to figure out when you might be giving an accurate signal. In that case, he needs to know what form your signals take.