Psyching is an interesting beast. There's this idea that the people you should be psyching against are bad/novice players, that they get flustered and so on, but depending on the type of psych, this isn't really true -- first of all, in theory you are headed for good results against these people anyway, and second of all, they may not count the hand out to make your weird bid pay off during the play.

There are psychs and then there are psychs. Probably the most common psychs are:

1) Opening super light in third seat -- for instance, 1S on KQTx x xxxxx xxx. I don't really consider this a psych so much as a lead-directing bid. Would overcalling 1S on this hand (which I've done; in fact, I overcalled 1H over 1C on xx KQ9x Qxxxxx x just the other day; the auction proceeded something like (1C) 1H (x) 4H (p) p (x) (5C) and when declarer attempted to cross to dummy with a diamond my partner ruffed much to his surprise) be a psych? Would doubling opponents' artificial 1S bid be a psych?

This is technically a psych (if you routinely open less-than-8 (?) counts you have to prealert the opponents), but it doesn't really gummy up the works, and I would say it's more of a tactical bid than anything else.

2) Opening 1NT on generic nonsense. I held Qxx x JTxx xxxxx and confidently opened 1NT all white first seat. Partner bid 2D transfer to hearts which I passed.

The funny thing is that I would have done much better completing the transfer. I won't go too deep into psych theory, but I always get cold feet when I open 1NT and tend to pass partner's next bid in these situations. Partner had a great hand for 2D actually, x AKTxx AQx KQTx, but if I had accepted the transfer partner would (presumably) have bid 3C which would have been a great spot (and partner could easily have had her spade and diamond holdings reversed.) I of course was worried that the next bid would be 3NT or somesuch, but with only four diamonds it was probably odds-on to complete the transfer (and if the points are split evenly-ish I might not have gotten doubled in 3NT anyway, with opponents perhaps cold for game.)

This psych is hard to combat if you aren't playing penalty doubles of 1NT. Sometimes you can just wing a strong-sounding bid later, but this is always troublesome (suppose you have your 18 points, there is no psych, and partner really has a yarborough), and most of your strong sounding bids (e.g. (1NT) p (2H*) p (2S) 2NT) have probably been appropriated by competitive bidding later. You won't really be able to get into a position where partner can express their hand intelligently; most of the time either you will have to overbid and hope both that it's a psych and that partner has some values, or you will have to content yourself with an action that could be made on far worse a hand.

This, of course, is part of why you're not allowed to psych all the time. I once (I admit) conducted a study on BBO where I simply opened or overcalled 1NT on every hand when possible. The psych showed a substantial net profit. Of course, this is playing against randoms who are probably not regular partners and who don't know how to handle the inevitable convoluted sequences, but still I think it's a very powerful one.

So, with this pro-psyching platform so far, I feel like I need to insert some things about how to defend against psychs. Against the 1N psych there's little you can do but hope that the 1N bidder's partner has values and maybe spec double their final contract, assuming 1N opener does not reveal the psych as I often stupidly do. A far more common psych is the following:

(2D) x (2H)

The opponents open a weak two, partner makes a takeout double, and RHO bids a new suit. This is an easy, costless psych; partner is unlikely to raise you and if he does you can always take him back to his suit (perhaps after being doubled.) What's amazing to me is that many people play a double here as takeout! No, no, no. Not negotiating with terrorists is one thing, but trust me, you want to play penalty doubles here. If you haven't seen this one yet, you will, it's among the most common of psychs.

I hadn't had many interesting hands in the last several sessions, but yesterday was really fun. Some highlights:

Despite the fact that the boards weren't that interesting, I had one of the most fun rounds of my life. On the first one, I held some nondescript 4234 14-count. I opened 1C, partner responded 1S, and I bid 2S which ended the auction. Lefty now led the five of hearts out of turn. Partner had five options, and he chose an unusual one: he left the five of hearts on the table as a penalty card. This somehow got his left hand opponent to lead her stiff jack of trumps, and with QT74 facing A953 this was quite helpful, though the defense still had a trump trick. He played out some of the hand and eventually his RHO, who had the H5 as a penalty card on the table, won a trick with the ace of clubs and played back another club! I guess she forgot about the penalty card, but this worked out great for us because a heart return would have resulted in an additional trick for the defense. So despite forcing herself to get it right by the laws, she got it wrong anyway.

On the next board I inadvertently (well, I had nothing else to play for really) pulled off a winkle. I stretched to open 1C on KT 98 K8xx AJ7xx, and soon found myself playing 1NT after partner had bid a spade. LHO led a small diamond and dummy tabled Jxxx Jxx A7x Kxx. In an effort to conceal my points, I won the diamond on the board and played CK and a club to my jack. This held as both opponents followed, and I promptly ran off five clubs. Lefty pitched a heart, a fatal mistake, as after I cashed my DK, with six tricks to go she held AQ of spades, AQ of hearts, and two good diamonds. I threw her in with a diamond; she cashed two diamonds and then SA HA, but on the HQ continuation her partner was winkled! If she overtook the HQ with the HK my jack would be good (she didn't have any spades left), and if she didn't lefty would be forced to lead to my SK for an eighth trick. (It also would have worked if she hadn't cashed the SA and partner had retained a spade.)

So that was kind of neat. Fun hands, and I haven't even told you about the hand where we bid and made six notrump off the ace-king of spades. The moral, as always: don't overcall a jack-high suit lest your partner lead it against the opposition's six notrump.

Last weekend was our district's GNT flight B qualifier. As you may recall, we won this last year and then went on to win the national GNT B; you may recall the dramatic story, where in our first match (in the round of 16!) we went to a playoff and then lost 13 on the first board, but managed to win that somehow. Given that we won nationals, it's the equivalent of a team winning its first round NCAA match with a miracle three from halfcourt and then going onto win the title.

Anyway, this time around, off our win, we were seeded first, although there were similar dangerous teams in the field as last year. Our district has very strong flight B players; counting us last year, we've won three of the last four years at nationals with very different teams. I knew it wouldn't be easy to make it through qualifiers.

Indeed, in the first round, we were up only two (against the last seed!) at halftime, although mostly this was the flat boards. In the second half, things were more like what we might have expected: we picked up 50-ish to win handily. I wasn't sure whether this was an auspicious or an unauspicious start.

In our second match, cutting the field from 12 to 8, we were in a round-robin. Again, the boards seemed really flat; I don't have any remotely dramatic stories to tell you. At halftime, we were something like +15 to one team and -20 to the other; just a few blips, guesses, whatever, not huge swings anywhere. We played fine, I thought; in the second half I really got tired towards the end (I haven't been getting much sleep for various reasons), and felt like the last few weren't so great, but we ended up +1 IMP on differential and advanced.

On to the quarterfinals. I felt like we had gotten a decent draw: a solid team to be sure, but not one of the many dangerous floaters in the draw. So what happened? We were down 41 after the first half. What can I say? They played basically perfectly and none of the positions we took worked, and the same thing happened at the other table. Perhaps the first two boards (though they only cost six IMPs) contributed to their being in a positive mental state. On the first board I held Jxxxx x Jxxx Jxx nobody vul. Two passes to me and I opened 1NT. I didn't really do this because it was the first board; it just seemed like a good hand to psych on. This almost went well. Lefty passed, and partner bid 3H showing four spades and a game force. I thought we would buy this for 4S down a few with the opponents cold for 4H, but unfortunately (system loss!) righty doubled this. I bid a quick 4S and now lefty went into the tank and finally bid 5H. Partner doubled but we had only two tricks (well, he had only two tricks, I had none), -650 the hard way.

On the second board, red/white, I had another awkward hand, x AQx AQJ Q9xxxx. Righty opened 4S in first chair and I made an aggressive double. Partner, holding a 2524 hand with the club king and out, passed, and they again made eleven tricks for -690 the hard way. In retrospect, I think these aggressive doubles of 4S are not a good thing, but not because of what happened. The thing is, you're getting stolen from, but partner may well wing a slam, which will probably go down since he probably expects more from you (and he has to guess because there is almost no room to investigate.) It's hard to recover equity, but of course the same sort of thing is happening at the other table, so you don't need to. And partner, especially at these colors, may stretch to bid instead of passing anyway, playing you for more. I think I'll stop doing this.

Anyway, this was only lose 6, but I think it emboldened our opponents. Like I said, they played flawlessly, there wasn't much we could do. We pulled out the swings in the second half, and some worked, but not enough; we lost another 9 on the set, and, amazingly, we had gone from national champions to losing in the quarterfinals of qualifying. Oh well, can't win 'em all.