Jeremy69A

No idea why we ever use victory points. It seems reasonable to have a cut off so you lose whatever you lose but you can't win more than whatever constituted 20-0.

Yes. I don't think that is true. The regulation or ruling in question and/or those that produced it come in for some ridicule first. Maybe you should reread your contributions to a thread of over 900 posts on another forum. Indeed. Whether that is the most helpful or constructive way is perhaps open to question. If they work at a congress then sure but not for any voluntary work on a committee.

Thanks for the offer. A couple of members of the L&e will retire(in rotation) at the next AGM in November 2017. Nominations for election have to be in around 4 weeks before this and each county is notified of this in advance of that date. All that is needed is for you to be nominated for the committee.

Since I started as chairman there were no elections in 2014 or 2016 and one person stood to replace a retiring member in 2015. Not my intention. First of all I don't accept your definition. Secondly they are regulations which have been studied, updated and refined by some dedicated volunteers whose expertise comes from their quality of play in some cases, their experience as national directors in others and their knowledge of the law in all cases. Scrutiny is fine.Persistent negativity is not. It will deter volunteers. The booklets are intended for all to see how the appeals process works. It isn't actually all the appeals as some are as dull as ditchwater but all those with any point of interest. The same criterion is applied to those discussed at L&E meetings. If you read stories about football refereeing at lower levels you will see that one reason for the shortage of volunteers is the constant questioning of decisions (sometimes violent). At least the violence has not yet made its way to bridge in this regard thus far! At one time i was a volunteer cricket umpire for my school. I'm quite sure I made mistakes. I went on a course to seek to become better at it but even if I had been perfection itself that would have not stopped the carping usually not from participants but proud parents. Given that pillory means "attack or ridicule publicly" I think that reveals your motivation in this and your refusal to understand the difference between constructive criticism and what you choose to engage in here and on other forums.

The School Uniform regulations at the place I used to work had significant detail and, of course, students could have a lot of fun with phrases like "logos on outdoor coats or jackets must not be bigger than the size of two postage stamps" Any idea how big a stamp from the Pitcairn Islands is? Much of this was resolved by adding one line that said "or any other item deemed unsuitable by the headteacher" Perhaps the time has come for a simple, brief, addition to the Blue Book? It is getting harder to find volunteers for both the Selection and Laws & Ethics committees. It does not help when a frenzy of abuse from social media follows decisions whether they are right or wrong. The Blue Book is half the length its predecessor was partly in response to comments about 72 pages of regulation. Its reasonable to write regulations as clearly as possible and the wording of what you can or can't agree to open a strong artificial two will no doubt be looked at even if it would be preferable to watch paint dry. I'm not looking forward to the meeting and I bet I'm not the only one! The members of the committee can rest assured that whatever they decide will be put to the court of Facebook, this forum, Twitter, Bridgewinners and found deficient. A couple of the regular posters on this forum are amongst the worst and most guilty in this regard IMO.

Indeed a grace period has been given in the past with changes to give players time to get used to it. There is some dramatic licence here as the Blue Book 2013 included these changes so 3.5 years not 12 months. The following is inaccurate And it is a suit bid i.e. you still don't alert 4NT.

Ask him not to return!

The EBU is not "desperate" for unaffiliated clubs to join although it certainly welcomes those who want to do so. If you award masterpoints and the system is to mean anything then there must be regulations for how many points you can award and when. That's why, for example, there is a scale based on number of pairs, a minimum number of boards etc. To give an extreme example if you have 24 tables and play one section with 48 boards in play then some pairs will have 0 boards in common and most will have few boards in common which is not any sort of competition. Although that is extreme there is certainly a club where 22 tables has been found using one section. If you take the more common example of 11 tables then playing 24 boards you have quite a lot of boards not in common. If you discuss them afterwards which I accept many will not do then that is at least partially spoilt but playing only some boards in common has been compared to having a round of golf where competitors play about 13 of the 18 holes and they are different to another competitor. Would you award ranking points for that? I wouldn't. It seems to me that this is a storm in a tea cup. Some clubs will need to change the odd movement. Change often does not go down well at first. Many will be unaffected. A delay until early 2016 before this or a variant comes into force will apply so any alternatives that came to light late on in the process can be considered.

If a card had been supplied I could have exchanged it with my opponents at the start of the round and looked surreptitiously to find out what the bid was. The fact that the opponents are playing some methods, haven't produced a card, haven't announced it before the round diminishes any sympathy I might have. In any event the x of 2H looks obvious on this occasion. Clubs are entitled to ignore regulation (but not law) so the Blue Book is not a requirement. It is not true to say that in the absence of any statement to the contrary Level 4 or any other level applies. It would be a reasonable assumption however that in the absence of any statement the norm relating to announcing and alerting applied. A club deciding to plough its own lonely furrow would be wise to make its deviance clear.

Announcing gives some information, typically enough to determine whether you need more. So saying "Weak" when partner opens 2H might mean that later the opponent will want to know the range or whether it might be frequently on five cards. The announcement for a short minor "might be 2" draws attention to the likely system the opponents are playing. You might pre alert if, for example, Weak NT hands with 4 diamonds go through one club. You might let the opponents know if you are declarer (although I am not too keen on that approach because if you say you may have 4 diamonds and you don't opponents have been know to get, irrationally, upset). What I don't think too much of is inventing your own announcing system or alerting when you know perfectly well it should be announced. It may make you feel better, more pure etc but it often confuses the opponents for little advantage. I think they would disagree with you. The changes to announcements got a great deal of discussion and the committee looked carefully at the balance between how much disclosure there should be at this point, the length of announcement and how much information was immediately needed.

We often get told the EU is about harmonising rules and regulations yet bridge is a sport in some EU countries and not others including the UK. Where Bridge is not recognised as a sport it tends to be taxed more and it tends not to be accepted for a variety of funding initiatives. By way of example Badminton which has about as many members as the EBU has got something in the region of £8.5m for its preparations for the 2012 Olympics. We can have arguments about what constitutes a sport and produce the silliest examples we can find of something that is (my vote is for baton twirling) but the list that HMRC depend upon is the one that Sport England use. They don't seem all that keen on explaining how it is justified and how one may appeal against exclusion. It is "with their legal team" at present. The Charity Commission on the other hand have no problem with defining Bridge and Chess as sports so at the very least we have inconsistencies both within the UK and also between the UK and other EU countries.

Yes. There are difficult situations but nonetheless if players remembered three rules then about 98% of all difficulty would go away. In your two example whether there was or was not an alert I would expect there to be a check before it was, say, passed out. I think the rule, albeit a generalisation, does cover doubles whether the opponents bid is an opening, response, overcall, raise or balance. I can conceive there might be exceptions and above 3NT it is slightly different however as above if players alerted according to what you categorise as generalisations I believe we would all be better off

I don't thin anyone who is responsible for alerting/announcing regulations should worry overmuch about consistency between countries. Whilst there is still confusion about when to alert after a double the confusion Nige1 has is found amongst a number of regular decent tournament players who throw up their hands expressively and say "how am i supposed to know" followed by some thoughts about the sanity of those in the eBU who made these regulations. Given the regs are: 1. If the opponents bid a suit naturally then double is deemed to be take out. If ANYTHING else alert 2. If the opponents bid NT naturally then double is deemed to be penalty. If ANYTHING else alert. 3. If opponents bid a suit artificially double is deemed to be the suit. If ANYTHING else alert then I don't think this is very difficult. Of course if people decide that a sequence such as 3D (3S) x is so obviously penalty that they won't alert it it is hard to deal with although frankly unlikely to do much damage. Whilst you can say there is a bit more to the regs than what is above (above 3NT for example) the basic set is fairly simple and should not be too hard to get used to even for those who don't want to read the regulations.

When people started getting excited at poor umpiring decisions in this summers Ashes tests they began to appreciate that an awful lot of the best umpires come from England and Australia and could not stand in the series. In a WBF event such as Bali the best directors may be present but their effect is diluted by the "need" to have directors from each of the zones. When players are polled their minds are on other things and they often, I feel, give an answer designed to get rids of the polling TD as soon as possible. Neither of these things bode well for the end of appeal committees although given the speech at each captains meeting which includes "Don't even think of appealing because we have the best directors on the planet, who are never wrong and you WILL lose your money" it was perhaps inevitable. Theoretically there should be some cost advantage as the dozen or so appeal committee members put up in 7 star hotels will no longer be needed and travelling expenses from Ursa Major will also be reduced. I wondered whether for Bali they had considered having judges in the Miss World competition, which took place in the same building, doubling up as appeal committee members.

Psyches and (suggested) fielded misbids are routinely recorded at all EBU tournaments. They are held centrally but not electronically. Periodically they are used to assist with a discussion at the Laws and Ethics committee if the record of a pair is questioned. The situation I've enjoyed most during my chairmanship was the completed form of a player which said he had not psyched in a similar position with the same partner in the previous couple of years. This arrived at the meeting together with the four other examples of such a denied occasion. I think the letter started "It is my sad duty to inform you................." Very occasionally recorded psyches from county events make their way to the EBU but almost never from a club.