mrdct

In the absence of local alerting regulations, I think each of those meanings of double would be alertable unless one of those treatments was the ubiquitous standard in that particular club, country or event. In Australia, where our (silly imho) regulations prohibit the alerting of any doubles, redoubles, bids of opps' suits and above 3NT, none of those treatment would be alertable during the auction but you would probably pre-alert the "shows 4+ spades" under a generic pre-alert of "we play transfers in low level competitive auctions and sometimes doubles and redoubles are transfers which won't be alerted so it might pay to ask".

It is just so important to have conditions of contest that cover tie splitting properly. A couple of year ago my team tied for first place in the Northern Victoria GNOT qualifier with the winner getting an airfare subsidy and entry fees for the GNOT Finals at Tweed Heads. Under the Victorian Bridge Association Tournament Regulations, my team would've won the tie split but under the Australian Bridge Federation Tournament Regulations the other team would've won. The GNOT Regulations said that it was up to individual convenors of regional qualifiers to establish their own conditions of contest, but the convenor in this case (who was also a member of other tied team) had not done so. In the handful of regions where conditions of contest were put in place, some referred to the State Body's regulations and some referred to the National Body's regulations. Ultimately it was referred to the ABF for a decison which took almost 2 months and was in favour of the other team so I missed out on the trip.

A prototype of the system to be used at the this year's Bermuda Bowl was used yesterday in the World Youth Congress as reported in Bulletin #4 at page 10. It seems that the system is based around optical character recognition and not embedded chips in the playing cards which makes a lot of sense to me as the latter would no doubt be prohibitively expensive.

Any chance you could show us what LHO & RHO held in the end position, and perhaps indicate what trumps are?

Makes no difference here, but I think you should've done that at the end of the auction before the opening lead. As for bridgeboy's credentials as a player, refer to recent BBO News item, Singapore goes to the Bermuda Bowl - BridgeBoy and Krobono.

I found that a little bit hard to believe, but upon looking-up and reading the ACBL Bidding Box Regulations, it does seem that the ACBL are completely silent about the correct procedure for placing one's bidding cards on the table. I would suggest though that given that the ACBL regs are silent as to the mechanics of placing one's bids on the table, it wouldn't be unreasonable to follow what the WBF General Conditions of Contest say about bidding boxes, "Starting with the dealer, players place the bidding cards on the table in front of them, from the left and neatly overlapping so that all calls are visible and faced towards partner ..." As an unrelated aside, the WBF General Conditions of Contest appear to have been recently updated without much fanfare. Is anyone aware of anything interesting or contentious in the new version?

I don't think the slow 2NT by South or the slow double by North really suggest anything in particular, so I think the only UI of relevance is North's suggestion that 2NT was "lebensohlesque". As aquahombre has pointed out, South is obliged to bid as if partner had confidently described 2NT as "both minors", in which case perhaps 3NT would be the indicated bid with equal length in the minors. It appears to me that South may have taken advantage of the UI, but to his own detriment as a 3NT bid would've lead to the superior 4♦ contract in all likelihood. It is important that the TD should try to ascertain what the North-South agreements are so he can determine if this is a misbid or misexplanation case. He also needs to quiz South on why he chose to bid 4♣. The other thing the TD should do is ask West if he would've still bid 3♠ if 2NT was described as "both minors". Assuming misexplanation here, West was denied the chance to cue-raise rather than direct raise, so depending on how East-West would differentiate between 3♣ and 3♦ that may well have lead to quite a different auction. Another way of looking at this is to pretend there are screens. South would've told West that 2NT was "both minors" so a 3♦ cue raise looks quite likely. On the other side of the screen where North tells East that 2NT is "lebsensohlesque", 3♦ now looks natural and forcing so North may well keep quite, in which case I guess East may sign-off in 3♠ with his dodgey stiff ♣K, but East does have a pretty good weak two and could easily envisage Kxx, AKQx xx xxxx in partner's hand so may pull out a 3♥ bid or a 4♠ bid some of the time. I voted "no adjustment" but mainly focussed on the UI issues and not the misexplanation issues. I now think that had East-West been in possession on the correct explanation of 2NT as "both minors" but North not in possession of that information, they have a reasonable chance of getting to 3♠ but will also kick-on the 4♠ some of the time. I'm going to look at a weighted ruling of 3♠E= 60% and 4♠E-1 40%, but if that gives EW an inferior outcome to beating 4♣ I'll revert to the table result.

That isn't an "enhancement", it's a material rewording conveying an entirely different meaning to that set out in the Laws. Law 66A states, "So long as his side has not led or played to the next trick, declarer or either defender may, until he has turned his own card face down on the table, require that all cards just played to the trick be faced." My emphasis added but no "enhancements". Once you have turned your card over you no longer have a right to inspect a quitted trick, irrespective of whether or not your side has played to the next trick. Pursuant to Law 66B you can look at your own card from the previous trick (before your side has played to the next trick) but you can't expose it.

I fully agree with that, but the quote talked about playing "fast" which to my mind implies playing out of tempo which, if done intentionally in circumstances where it could work to your advantage, is an infraction.

Is anyone else troubled by this practice of varying one's tempo in order to gain an advantage? Law 73D1 states, "It is desirable, though not always required, for players to maintain steady tempo and unvarying manner. However, players should be particularly careful when variations may work to the benefit of their side. Otherwise, unintentionally to vary the tempo or manner in which a call or play is made is not in itself an infraction. Inferences from such variation may appropriately be drawn only by an opponent, and at his own risk." My emphasis added. Being careful about tempos which could work to your side's advantage is a "should" requirement, so a breach is an infraction but not often penalised, however read on to Law 73D2 which states, "A player may not attempt to mislead an opponent by means of remark or gesture, by the haste or hesitancy of a call or play (as in hesitating before playing a singleton), the manner in which a call or play is made or by any purposeful deviation from correct procedure. " My emphasis added. In the Laws, "may not" conveys the second strongest form of prohibition (ahead of "shall not" but behind "must not") so a breach of Law 73D2 is something that would routinely be penalised and if done persistently with intent to gain an advantage illegally would be (imho) classed as cheating. The question is whether or not speeding up so you can read your opponent's tempo better is an "attempt to mislead"? The Oxford defines "mislead" as cause (someone) to have a wrong idea or impression. It is probably a stretch to describe this sort of action as an attempt to mislead, but I think it is certainly a breach of correct procedure and should be discouraged. If it is a repeated behaviour one could look at penalising the perpetrator. What Rodwell seems to be suggesting (although I stress that I've not seen the full context from which the quote was taken) is to intentionally vary one's tempo for the purpose of inducing one's opponents to give-up important information about their hands through their response to the variation in tempo. I think it's fair to describe it as borderline unethical, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheating. It is a little bit like an insta-play from dummy the second it comes down when you have a suit combination in the suit lead which will potentially put RHO under pressure to find a good falsecard, the right intermediate card or the right signal. As most people would know, insta-plays from dummy are seriously frowned-upon in expert circles. Perhaps what Rodwell meant to say was, "it pays to play fast in normal tempo as the defenders might give away the position of the high cards by their tempo".

I'm with Pran on this one. Conduct and etiquette are vitally important to the game and are one of things that sets us apart from other sports. Nobody likes spending time with rude or unpleasant people so if the 'politeness police' can weed out a few of these recalcitrants - good luck to them.

I disagree. The laws are quite clear that irrespective of whether or not a claim was accompanied by a stated line of play, the benefit of any doubt always goes to the non-claiming side (Law 70A). Mike Flader's dicta doesn't alter the way in which disputed claims are adjudicated. Any player who has had a claim disputed will be well aware that dodgey claims are high risk. The "practical ruling effect" is that there may be an increase in sub-standard claims (e.g. "the rest are mine" on a hand requiring some delicate care and/or drawing of trumps) but TDs will continue to follow the guidance in Law 70 together with any pronoucements by their Regulating Authority under Law 70E2.

What do you mean by "discourtesy"? If you mean not saying please and thank-you, warmly greeting your opponents or standing up when a lady enters the room, I don't think any "zero tolerance" or equivalent policy is going to have much effect. In my local jurisdiction (Victoria, Australia) we have Disciplinary By-Laws which require that any formal complaint about behaviour be investigated and, if found to be in breach of the By-Laws, mandatory sanctions apply within discretionary ranges to be applied by the Chair of the Disciplinary Committee or the full Disciplinary Committee depending on who made the complaint and whether or not a sanction is appealed. In practice, only verbal abuse of opponents tends to be reported as the more common situation of partner-abuse is rarely, if ever, reported. First offences usually attract a warning or reprimand but repeat offenders or more serious offenders can be suspended from all bridge in Victoria and be reported to the National Authority. I'm only aware of one suspension that's been applied since the current Disciplinary By-Laws were enacted in 2004 and I think player behavior is generally very good in Victoria.

Another change I can think of compared to five years ago is that GIB (formerly DF) analysis is disabled for vugraph operators; although it probably would've made more sense to disable it for commentators! I also think there has been some development with the F9(?) features to amend the match details after a session has started without having to shut-down; but I don't think these feature are documented anywhere and are very much "handle with care". The somewhat counter-intuitive "B" vs "O" designation remains, so remember to select "O" if two tables are being broadcast and "B" if you are only doing single table coverage. Number one on my development wishlist is semi-automatic commentator assignment where people interested/available to commentate can register in a similar way to how one registers to be a substitute in a tournament and then the operator can click a button to generate some commentator invitations if his table is short. Enhanced functionality would be to have "pre-approved" commentators who, if online and not playing, automatically go into the pool to receive invites and you could even allow the operator to set some parameters such as "stars" or "country=X" to cast the net a bit wider. Individuals not interested in commentating should have the option to automatically ignore commentator requests though.

Totally agree with all of that, although I would suggest that whilst it's not stated in the BBO rules, best practice is to type in your explanations as you alert which is what I always do.

If you are in genuine doubt you need to alert, but I'd suggest it's highly unlikely that anyone would misunderstand a natural 1♣ opening so I wouldn't hold such doubt. As a common courtesy, however, I would tell my opponents what my general system is at the start of the match or round. It wouldn't hurt.

It's sometimes a tournament specific thing, and I'll try to dig up some example regulations later, but most tournaments I've played in either follow the WBF GCC requirements or have a regulation that says that the correct procedure is for attention to be drawn to a break in tempo from the other side of the screen and in circumstances where attention is drawn to a BIT by a screenmate, unless the person who tanked admits it, there is presumed to have been no BIT.

Unless you were playing against people who you were absolutely certain knew you were playing 2/1 and understood the system, it would be clearly alertable under BBO rules as some doubt would surely exist about whether or not your opponents would understand what your 2/1 response or 1NT response meant. Simple rule: if in doubt you alert.

Bidding 3♣ would not have crossed my mind with or without more comprehensive explanations.

[hv=pc=n&s=s98752haqjtd8ct83&w=sat4h963dkjcaqj92&n=sjhk542daqt643ck6&e=skq63h87d9752c754&d=w&v=e&b=16&a=1n2c(exactly%204%20hearts%20or%205+%20hearts%20with%204+%20spades%2C%200%20to%2015%20points)p2n(%22invitational%20strength%22%20when%20pressed%20%22around%2011%20points%2C%20no%20further%20specifics%22)p3d(%22this%20is%20his%20side%20suit%22)p3hp4hppp&p=cac6c5c8c2ckc4ctdad2d8djd3d7hadkhqh3h2h7hjh6h4h8hth9hkd5h5d9s2s4dqs3s5stdts6s7c9d6sqs8cjd4c7s9cqsjskc3]399|300[/hv] I've put the hand into the correct format, but it might be useful to know the jurisdiction to answer this properly. My preliminary thoughts, however, are that even if you were told that north could or does have longer ♦ and that south's values might be shaded slightly, the ♠A looks a pretty unlikely lead; so I'm not going to adjust the table result. I'm probably going to put the torch to north-south though for failing to have a properly completed convention card at the table (if the local regs require same) and no matter what the jurisdiction the description of 3♦ is inadequate and should've had the qualifier "could be canape" or similar. I'm not too fussed about the explanation of 2NT as players are allowed to employ "hand evaluation" and south does have a pretty useful hand opposite 4+♥. North-south could argue that if north's 3♦ bid had been described as canape that actually increases the likelihood of south having a long ♣ suit and makes the ♣A look even more attractive.

I agree with that ruling, but would add that it's important to refer to Law 70C which deals explicitly with the situation where the claim statement didn't make any reference to an outstanding trump. Basically if there is any likelihood that the claimer was unaware of the outstanding trump and he can lose a trick to it via a "normal" play (could be careless or inferior but not irrational and takes account of the class of the player involved) you award such trick or tricks to the opponents.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is "BLML"? This topic is all about whether or not Mike Flader's assertion that stating a line of play when you claim is "not a requirement" which is being properly assessed in this thread against the requirements of Law 68C. The grammatical construction and interpretation of Law 68C is entirely germane to this topic.

I think a semicolon would work better in that sentence.

For a person who has only ever seen SAYC and 2/1, in their mind only two types of twos exist: "weak" and "strong".

I can't begin to express how remorseful I am that I caused you to waste so much of your valuable time trying to locate the "help" button in the flash version. I fully understand why that would be the last place one would look. Complicated alert regulations with pre-alerts, self-alerts, delayed-alerts and announcements may well have merit for bridge played without screens as alerting does create a lot of UI issues, but when playing online or with screens you just alert anything remotely alertable and you can't go wrong - particularly if you type your explanations in as you alert. But in my experience, most players don't have the time or inclination to wade through a 10 page document (that's how long the ABF Alerting Regulations are inclusive of a one and a half page executive summary) and we would all get a far better outcome if they just used the "if in doubt - alert' approach. The BBO regulations contain precisely the right amount of detail to describe that regime.