Jacki

As you know ACBL has approved a Youth North American Bridge Championship, the first to be held in Atlanta in 2008. I know that many districts and units have teachers and programs in existence teaching a new generation of youth players and I would appreciate your help in getting the information concerning this event out to all of your local areas. The Youth NABC website is: www.youthnabc.org

A psych by any other name is still a psych. (Apologies to Wm. S.) Jacki ;)

Anyone who played in an ACBL game during the month of April got a 'ticket' each time they played, for a drawing that was help on 5/1. The winner's prize was a play date with Larry Cohen in an 8pm Open Pairs ACBL game here on BBO. More interesting events will be coming up in our ACBL games, so don't miss out! You know what they say about 'snoozers.' Jacki :)

In ACBL games alerts should be given at the time they are made. If a bid is made and THEN alerted, it's often too late since the player's LHO has most likely already made his bid. Ideally explanations should be included with the alert, but the most important part is the alert itself. Explanations can come after the bid and alert, but alerts can't come after the bid without potential harm to the opponents. If an unalerted or late alerted bid causes damage to the opponents then an adjustment is called for and is made....IF the TD is so informed. It's very simple to do this, just click on the alert button before clicking on the bid, then they come out together. If players do not click on the alert button before the bid, even though they think they have, and maintain they have immediately alerted, speed of computers and speed of internet connections can and do delay the alert getting to the table to be seen by the next bidder before he makes his call. Thanks for starting this topic, I hope a lot of people read it since this is a continuing problem with people thinking they're doing what they should do in alerting and not knowing that timing is an issue. First click on alert, second click on bid. No problem :) Jacki :P

Although the forum posters are correct about kibitzer's rights and they MAY be ignored by a TD if called by them, I think it's perfectly acceptable for anyone at all to draw attention to an illegality or irregularity, particularly if it appears to be ongoing. If this means the person seeing this irregularity calls attention to it after the fact, since they may have no right to call at the time it happens, isn't that better than not reporting it at all? We have a great many players in our games, some of the games are quite large, some of them are quite fast and some are both large AND fast. This means that a TD cannot see what's going on at each table all the time or even most of the time. The TDs rely on player's calls to adjudicate. The ACBL Coordinator on BBO relies on email feedback to attempt to fix ongoing or budding problems. So, if the question was, should a spectator write to ACBL@bridgebase.com to point out what appears to be an ongoing irregularity in the bidding? Then the answer is: Absolutely. Just as someone seeing a violation of BBO rules on language may report the incident to abuse@bridgebase.com even though they were not directly involved in the incident themselves. Jacki :)

Maybe I'm reading something wrong or not looking closely enough, but I don't see anything from the original poster here indicating at what level this opening transfer preempt was made. So, first, an opening four-level bid that transfers to a known suit is perfectly legal under the ACBL GCC. And second, anyone at any time is welcome to write to ACBL@bridgebase.com with any question about allowed bidding, play or anything else bridge related whether they are actually playing in a game, watching a game or just curious. Jacki :)