[sceptic]

A lot of discussion gos on about Psyches, whilst I have no real opinion about the rights and wrongs of such bids, a few questions come to mind.

Is a psyche with a pick up partner a sensible thing to do or is it totally stupid?

Is a psyche with a regular p really a psyche after the first time? or is it trying to get an edge or is it down right cheating?

if you decide to answer my question, tell me how long you have played the game and how often you psyche (especially with a regular pard)

do you psyche with regular opps or friends (just for a bit of fun) do you psyche in major tournaments against unknown opps

then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment, lack of system tools you can use?

what level in your bridge development would you consider playing psyches are an intrinsic part of the game, do you think beginners should learn them or intermediates or advanced or even expert players.

do you also think that you should play them as expert against weak opps?

and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

[ArcLight]

Why Psych?

If you are playing weaker players, your skill will give you victory in the long run. Against superior players you need an edge.

They gain when they cause the opponents to start suspecting psych bids from you all the time, and start making bad bids.

Psych bids can backfire on you too. If you psych with a pick up pard, you will probably annoy them. (I would be annoyed with a pickup pard who psyched more than once.) Psyching can destroy partnership trust, and cause pard to bid differently as well, damaging your overall score.

The advice from "Why you lose at Bridge" by SJ Simon is "Dont worry about the opponents psych bids. Sometime you will get a bad result, sometimes you will get a good result when the bid backfires on them. You only get hurt when you start altering your play becaus eyou become paranoid".


If you psych frequently, and your pard is aware of this, you are obligated to tell your opponents.


I've played for over a year, so I'm not that experienced, but I've seen enough bad bids from "Advanced" and "Intermediate" players that I don't think psych bids are needed, their "natural" bids are frequently psych bids.


>then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment, lack of system tools you can use?

A psych early may rattle the opponents and get them to start altering their bidding, to your advantage. Experts will also psych on rare occasions.
IMHO one would be far better off working on improving their core skills, rather than psyching. One book on psyching is by Victor Mollo called "The Fine Art of Bridge". But those players also play on a far higher level than most here (i.e. they are world class players).
Psyching is not just making a random bid, its picking specific cirumstances, perhaps during a slam bidding sequence.

The only psyching I do is sometimes making stupid weak 2 bids. And on occasion I've gotten burned. I'm not sure what my overall net score is with them. But I have annoyed pick up pards with them.

>do you also think that you should play them as expert against weak opps?

Not a chance! An expert will destroy weak opps, and should not throw away their advantage. Thats specifically addressed in "Why you lose at Bridge".


>and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

Bluffing, yes. But poker may have luck than bridge over a long series of hands. Knowledge of probability will give you the edge. Poker is not a game thats mostly bluffing, thats a common misconception. I'm not saying that poker requires more skill than bridge, just that over a large series of hands luck is reduced.

What attracts me to Bridge is the deductive reasoning, not the language aspect of a large number of bidding systems/sequences or bluffing. I'm not a fan of psyching, as I think its disruptive and adds randomness if done frequently. If I win because opponents psych and it backfires, I dont enjoy the game. And I dont enjoy losing out to the psych. I enjoy the deductive reasoning, so for me its lose-lose when a pysch is made. The key is to not let it affect your judgement.


I suggest you read the chapter in "Why you lose at Bridge" to get a nice coverage. I havent seen anyone else address that as well as SJ Simon.
"The Finer Art of Bridge" by Victor Mollo is far more advanced, and its not likely a non-expert would pick up much.

[luis]

Ok if you want feedback I have no problems in providing you my information:
I've been playing for 14 years.
I think there're 2 kinds of psyches: the crazy ones and the logic ones, the crazy ones are the poker-psyches, things that can go very very wrong or very very well depending on things you don't know. On the other side there're logic psyches, positions where you know some bid may be difficult to handle by the opponents while it should be harmless for your side. Some logic psyches are not even a psyche at all but considered psyches for the definition of the term. Example 1m-x-1M with 2 cards or similar.
I do a crazy psyche once every 1000 hands. I reallly don't like them but I d like to have some in my "Records" so some players remember that :-). Fear leads to the dark side.
I do logic psyches once every 100 boards approx.
Whenever my regular pd makes a bid where I recall a psyche or something strange I inmediately alert the opponents about what I have seen before like "he's known to have done this with such and such"

[ochinko]

sceptic, on Mar 17 2005, 08:08 AM, said:

A lot of discussion gos on about Psyches, whilst I have no real opinion about the rights and wrongs of such bids, a few questions come to mind.

Is a psyche with a pick up partner a sensible thing to do or is it totally stupid?

Is a psyche with a regular p really a psyche after the first time? or is it trying to get an edge or is it down right cheating?

if you decide to answer my question, tell me how long you have played the game and how often you psyche (especially with a regular pard)

do you psyche with regular opps or friends (just for a bit of fun) do you psyche in major tournaments against unknown opps

then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment, lack of system tools you can use?

what level in your bridge development would you consider playing psyches are an intrinsic part of the game, do you think beginners should learn them or intermediates or advanced or even expert players.

do you also think that you should play them as expert against weak opps?

and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

I am not skillful in psyches. I would like to know more about them, so there are players that I have marked as friends specifically because they tend to psyche often, and I want to watch them play.

The situation when I saw psyches against me were when one of the opps opens 1H. His partner will often bid 1S with a singleton and a heart fit to avoid us making a spades game or sacrifice. I saw this more than once against different opponents.

It certainly makes the game more interesting but there are many more useful skills to learn before one becomes an expert.

I believe psyches only work against weaker or similar opponents, not against better ones than your pair/team.

Petko

[ArcLight]

>I do logic psyches once every 100 boards approx.


Luis, can you describe some of these?

[hotShot]

sceptic, on Mar 17 2005, 01:08 PM, said:

A lot of discussion gos on about Psyches, whilst I have no real opinion about the rights and wrongs of such bids, a few questions come to mind.

Is a psyche with a pick up partner a sensible thing to do or is it totally stupid?

Is a psyche with a regular p really a psyche after the first time? or is it trying to get an edge or is it down right cheating?

if you decide to answer my question, tell me how long you have played the game and how often you psyche (especially with a regular pard)

do you psyche with regular opps or friends (just for a bit of fun) do you psyche in major tournaments against unknown opps

then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment, lack of system tools you can use?

what level in your bridge development would you consider playing psyches are an intrinsic part of the game, do you think beginners should learn them or intermediates or advanced or even expert players.

do you also think that you should play them as expert against weak opps?

and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

Well to psyche is a litte bid like poker, if you are caught, you might pay big.

It is as sensible to do with a pickup partner than with you regular partner, if a psych does not come as a surprise, it is a partnership agreement.

Since i usually play with people that have just started to learn bridge, psyching is something I can't do often. But since opps learn to trust my bids too, if I psyche, some opps tend to belive me more than their own partner .

You usually psyche to get a better score. So you do it if opps are better than you, or if you are sure htey have the better cards.

Take a typical 3rd seat situation.
Bidding is: P -P - ? you hold x, xxx, xx, QJTxxxx (vul: w/r)
You hold 3 hcp, since your partner did not bid, he will have something like 10 hcp with a flat distribution. Your LHO will hold 17+, and you expect opps to have a full game. If you bid, 3♣ opps will have a prepared defence for that kind weak of opening. But if you open 1NT now, your opps will have to use their NT defence. These are often designed to be agressive against strong NT's, so your LHO might not be able to bid a strong hand. And they might not find their game now. You can pass a stayman answer form your partner, accept a transfer to ♥ and try to save yourself bidding 3♣ if needed. If you are not dbled -7 will cost only 350 while opps game is 600+. If you get dbled, you might pay big.
Psyching is doing something stupid, hoping to make opps do something even more stupid.

You should be starting to psyche at any level! Otherwise you will never get the experiance what psyches are more lucky than others.

And as pointed out in another thread, if every 3rd seat bid from you is alerted by partner telling opps my partner is known to psyche in 3rd seat, partner and opps won't trust you all the time. But since partner is forced to follow your agreements, it is harder for your opps.

Psyching is done, because you expect opps to score well against you otherwise.
If you play weak opps, you expect them to miss games, miss overtricks and so on.
Psyching can hardly give you a better score here.

[hrothgar]

sceptic, on Mar 17 2005, 04:08 PM, said:

>Is a psyche with a regular p really a psyche after the first time? or is it trying to
>get an edge or is it down right cheating?

As I noted in the past, I don't believe that psyches exist. With this said and done, the regulatory structure applies this concept, so we are forced to. Regardless, its hard to argue that a tactic that is specifically protected in the Laws can be deemed "Cheating"

>Is a psyche with a pick up partner a sensible thing to do or is it totally stupid?

Playing with a pickup partner, you have near complete protection against claims that you have concealed partnership agreement.

>If you decide to answer my question, tell me how long you have played the game
>and how often you psyche (especially with a regular pard)

I've played for about 15 years, though not particularly seriously. I don't ever "psyche" with serious partnership, because our partnership agreements explictly permit these bids.

>Do you psyche with regular opps or friends (just for a bit of fun) do you
>psyche in major tournaments against unknown opps

I make tactical bids when I hold the appropriate cards and the stars are right. With this said and done, if I knew that a psyche was extremely likely to piss off the opposing pair, I'd be more likely to make a tactical bid. The opponents will get upset and this will throw them off their normal game.

>then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment,
>lack of system tools you can use?

To improve my expected score

>what level in your bridge development would you consider playing psyches are
>an intrinsic part of the game, do you think beginners should learn them
>or intermediates or advanced or even expert players.

There are any number of "classic" pysches. These should be introduced to players at the same time the appropriate portion of the bidding curriculeum. Case in point, when you introduce a 2NT asking bid over a weak 2♠ opening, you should explictly note that this is often played as a two way bid, showing either game foricng values or a preemptive raise.

>and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

I always find this question to be puzzling. I recognize that historically bridge and poker drew from very different social classes. Associated with this, behaviour such as bluffing that are integral part of poker were somehow considered to be "beneath" gentlemanlike bridge players.

Players are more than welcome to apply their own arbitrary/idiosyncratic moral standard to their own behaviour at the bridge table. But please don't expect me to follow your lead...

[Brandal]

ochinko, on Mar 17 2005, 09:06 AM, said:

The situation when I saw psyches against me were when one of the opps opens 1H. His partner will often bid 1S with a singleton and a heart fit to avoid us making a spades game or sacrifice. I saw this more than once against different opponents.

That's cheating in my book,with the
word "often" in there and no alert

[luis]

ArcLight, on Mar 17 2005, 02:11 PM, said:

>I do logic psyches once every 100 boards approx.


Luis, can you describe some of these?

The last two were:
x,Axx,Kxx,QJxxxx
I opened 1c, pd bid 1d and I rebid 1s we end up in 3d they had 4sp. Since 1d usually denies 4 spades I decided they did have a huge spade fit and I can always retreat from spades to diamonds so that was quite logic in my mind.

Or this one (can be labelled as crazy by conservative minds)
Kxxxxx, x,JTxxx,x
After two passes I opened a 12-14 1NT planning to pass a transfer to hearts (2d) or to clubs (2s) if pd transfers to any other suit we are super and if he bids 2NT I can retreat to 4s and even hope to make it.

Both were things I decided at the moment and never had occurred to me before. Between both hands I played about 100 boards without doing anything strange, in general I believe that if you play well you really don't need to psyche but from time to time it's fun to do something creative :-)

[hrothgar]

Brandal, on Mar 17 2005, 05:18 PM, said:

ochinko, on Mar 17 2005, 09:06 AM, said:

The situation when I saw psyches against me were when one of the opps opens 1H. His partner will often bid 1S with a singleton and a heart fit to avoid us making a spades game or sacrifice. I saw this more than once against different opponents.

That's cheating in my book,with the
word "often" in there and no alert

Amusing use of the word "Cheating".

Earlier in this thread I made reference to "classic" psyches. A 1♠ advance of a 1♥ opening easily falls within this category and clearly falls within the realm of general bridge knowledge.

The fact that many players wish to remain willfully ignorant of certain aspects of the game should not accord them protection under the law. Nor, should it allow them to accuse others of cheating.

[Gerben47]

Quote

Is a psyche with a pick up partner a sensible thing to do or is it totally stupid?

Not more or less sensible than with your regular partner. If you psyche you have to assume partner will be fooled as well, regular or not.

Quote

Is a psyche with a regular p really a psyche after the first time? or is it trying to get an edge or is it down right cheating?

Depends. If you have psyched an 1NT opening once that does not mean that next time you psyche an 1NT opening bid partner will be counting on that. It is simply not true that if you have ever psyched an 1NT opening bid with this partner that he should alert it every time after that because it might be a psyche because you psyched it once.

Quote

if you decide to answer my question, tell me how long you have played the game and how often you psyche (especially with a regular pard)

Been playing for 14 years or so (but with ups and down in seriousness). I don't psyche with regular partners unless it is "obvious" but this is very rare. Some bids are simply agreed upon, for example: 1NT weak (dbl) 2♣ = natural, or without clubs and plans to run when doubled. This is not a psyche because it is agreed upon and explained as such.

With not-so-regular or pickup partners maybe 2 to 4 times a year. But every time it seems to be memorable. And always for a reason.

Now tactical bidding, that's a completely different question...

Quote

do you psyche with regular opps or friends (just for a bit of fun) do you psyche in major tournaments against unknown opps

See above, really.

Quote

then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment, lack of system tools you can use?

Lack of system tools will result in "punting" not psyching, i.e. at one point my partner opened 1♥ and RHO doubled. Now I did not know which bids partner would take as forcing so I decided to wait it out and pass. 1♠ 2♣ pass to me. I still didn't know what would help me and punted 7♥. This is an extreme example and one might think to pass 1♥x with a huge hand is psyching but I simply didn't know what would help me find out what was best.

Psyching is specifically for a swing and to feel better afterwards if it worked.

Quote

what level in your bridge development would you consider playing psyches are an intrinsic part of the game, do you think beginners should learn them or intermediates or advanced or even expert players.

I think beginners should made aware of the possibility so that they later will not turn into those kind of people who yell at you when you psyche and were successful but simply say "Well done, you got us there".

I would not teach anyone psyches. If the player is good enough to think of good ones themselves, either by being hit by a successful one or otherwise, that's the only way.

Quote

do you also think that you should play them as expert against weak opps?

Regardless of the ethical situation I doubt it is a good tactic to psyche against opponents that would give you 70% expected value if you would just bid normally. You'd have to be sure that the actual psyche would give you more than that in expectation, and that's pretty hard!

I make a difference here between beginners and bad players. Don't psyche and have your bid exactly against beginners.
If people played for a long time but play badly nevertheless, no more pity from me.

Quote

and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

The big difference between poker and bridge is in the ethics. In poker it is perfectly okay to mislead your opponents by change of tempo and mannerisms, in bridge it is not. Bluffing however, is allowed in both games. It is just that poker is more well known for this.

[Brandal]

hrothgar, on Mar 17 2005, 09:27 AM, said:

Brandal, on Mar 17 2005, 05:18 PM, said:

ochinko, on Mar 17 2005, 09:06 AM, said:

The situation when I saw psyches against me were when one of the opps opens 1H. His partner will often bid 1S with a singleton and a heart fit to avoid us making a spades game or sacrifice. I saw this more than once against different opponents.

That's cheating in my book,with the
word "often" in there and no alert

Amusing use of the word "Cheating".

Earlier in this thread I made reference to "classic" psyches. A 1♠ advance of a 1♥ opening easily falls within this category and clearly falls within the realm of general bridge knowledge.

The fact that many players wish to remain willfully ignorant of certain aspects of the game should not accord them protection under the law. Nor, should it allow them to accuse others of cheating.

Amusing use or not,this seemed to be a regular
partnership who bid 1s over 1h almost every time
without notifying opps 1s can be anything from
single to whatever.

I doubt they play many boards on 4-1 fit in spades so......?

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Mar 17 2005, 09:27 AM, said:

Earlier in this thread I made reference to "classic" psyches. A 1♠ advance of a 1♥ opening easily falls within this category and clearly falls within the realm of general bridge knowledge.

I wonder why no one has published a book of "general bridge knowledge".

While this may be a "classic" psyche, it is no longer a psyche of any kind if it has become a partnership agreement.

Tim

[mikestar]

TimG, on Mar 17 2005, 02:43 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 17 2005, 09:27 AM, said:

Earlier in this thread I made reference to "classic" psyches.  A 1♠ advance of a 1♥ opening easily falls within this category and clearly falls within the realm of general bridge knowledge.

I wonder why no one has published a book of "general bridge knowledge".

While this may be a "classic" psyche, it is no longer a psyche of any kind if it has become a partnership agreement.

Tim

Further, if it is done often enough to become a partnership agreement, in many jurisdications it is an illegal one--obviously not GCC legal, if it doesn't promise a known suit it is Mid-Chart illegal (even setting aside the ridiculous defense requirement).

[mike777]

TimG, on Mar 17 2005, 09:43 AM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 17 2005, 09:27 AM, said:

Earlier in this thread I made reference to "classic" psyches.  A 1♠ advance of a 1♥ opening easily falls within this category and clearly falls within the realm of general bridge knowledge.

I wonder why no one has published a book of "general bridge knowledge".


Tim

They have:

The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge 6th edition.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Mar 17 2005, 07:22 PM, said:

I wonder why no one has published a book of "general bridge knowledge".

They have:

The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge 6th edition.

Here is an interesting quote from the Fifth edition of that same publication:

"A psychic that has long been almost so standard a part of the repertoire that it is thought hardly worth using anymore is the 1♠ butt in over an opponent's takeout double of partner's 1♥ opening." ACBL's Encyclopedia of Bridge p. 354

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Mar 17 2005, 12:06 PM, said:

mike777, on Mar 17 2005, 07:22 PM, said:

I wonder why no one has published a book of "general bridge knowledge".

They have:

The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge 6th edition.

Here is an interesting quote from the Fifth edition of that same publication:

"A psychic that has long been almost so standard a part of the repertoire that it is thought hardly worth using anymore is the 1♠ butt in over an opponent's takeout double of partner's 1♥ opening." ACBL's Encyclopedia of Bridge p. 354

These things change over time. It was common, routine, almost required, to make some psyches in 1938. I have a book that gives something like xxx Qxxx Jx xxxx as a mandatory 1H opening bid because if you pass partner will know you are not bust!