david_c

Well, those two quotes aren't necessarily contradictory, as David Stevenson is referring to specifically the alerting regulations. The ACBL quote says that full disclosure must be achieved, but not necessarily by alerting. But the appeal certainly does illustrate that there's a lot of disagreement on this subject.

On the subject of agreements about natural bids being alertable, you might be interested in Appeal no. 2 from this week's EBU event in Brighton: page 5 of this document

Transfers definitely cause problems. This is because a significant minority of players use 1NT:2♦ and 1NT:2♥ as natural bids, and these have to be non-alertable. And yet we need a way to distinguish these natural bids from transfers. For face-to-face bridge, the ACBL method of announcements is excellent. But for some reason it seems that the same players who are accustomed to announcing transfers in face-to-face bridge don't bother to alert them at all online.

But of course it's completely impossible to come up with a satisfactory definition of "special". So examples are good, because they at least take care of the most commonly-occurring situations. So it's a good thing that the ACBL regs say explicitly that an unalerted 1♦:1♥,1NT may include 4 spades, and that the 2006 EBU regs say that 1NT:2♦,2♥ is alertable if it denies 4-card support. Of course, what actually happens is that it is the job of the TD to rule on whether an understanding is special or not. This is just going to be one of the many situations where some judgement is needed in interpreting the Laws. Another thought: Suppose you do have a "special partnership understanding", whatever that means. Then 40B says that this must be disclosed in accordance with the regulations of the SO. But might not the regulations of the SO say that it is only to be disclosed if and when the opponents ask a question?

Ah, I see what you've done there, you've put in the words "by partnership agreement" :) I don't think that's a good idea. In the case of "different from SAYC" it's simply redundant, because if you've agreed a system with your partner then that determines your opening bids. And if you haven't agreed a system with your partner ... then you're playing SAYC! :P The more interesting question is, should players be required to alert artificial bids even when they are not covered by partnership agreements? I think the sensible answer is yes. Otherwise you will be in the unfortunate position that an unalerted bid means either that it's natural, or that it hasn't been discussed. Much better to require an alert. And I think this can still be reconciled with the fact that it is only partnership agreements that have to be disclosed. If someone makes an bid which is intended to be artificial, then they must be expecting their partner to understand its meaning. In nearly all cases, this in itself can be taken as evidence of a (possibly implicit) partnership agreement. The only exception is when it is possible to deduce from the auction that a bid cannot be natural; but in that case the opponents will never be misled anyway.

Thanks helene, you've saved me a load of typing B) Indeed, "not natural" might be a better phrasing than "aritificial". The EBU regs do it that way. I think the question of whether certain natural bids should be alerted is quite difficult. There are some which I believe definitely should NOT be alerted (such as the 1♣-1♥-1♠ and 1♣-1♥-1NT examples above) - this has been discussed before. But there are other things which are so unusual that it would be sensible to require an alert - for example, non-forcing change-of-suit responses by an unpassed hand. The problem is that it's impossible to write a regulation which does this objectively. You could write a long list of things which you want alerted (again, the EBU regs do this), but no-one's going to read it! And such a list can never hope to be exhaustive anyway.

Double is OK in my opinion, but I'd prefer 2♣. In response to the double, I think 2♥ is much better than 2♦. I would expect 2♦ to promise a stronger hand (though this one isn't too far away because the fit is likely to be good). 3♦ seems a poor choice: 3♠ would have been much more descriptive.

Good points - for the most part I agree completely, and I've started a new topic "simple alerting regulations" in order to address this properly. But I assure you, I don't expect that people will change their alerting habits. In fact, if they did, then "alert all artificial bids" wouldn't work so well!

Yesterday I suggested the following as alerting regulations: You MUST alert: - ALL artificial bids; - opening bids which are not the same as in SAYC. I know that many people don't like this (particularly the first point), so I'd like to explain why I still think it is a good choice. First of all, we need to accept an important fact of life: Hardly anyone is going to read the alerting regulations anyway. And we need to recognise what it is that we would like to achieve: 1. simplicity and clarity; 2. it must cover as many clearcut MI cases as possible without any room for argument; 3. no loopholes; 4. not too many "pointless" alerts. Now, alerting "all artificial bids" scores very well for 1, 2 and 3, though not so well on 4. It would be possible to reduce the number of unnecessary alerts by introducing some exceptions: "alert all artificial bids except for Stayman and a strong 2♣ opening." I don't plan to do this, however, mainly because of the loss of simplicity. (You also would have to worry about what "Stayman" actually means, which is problematic.) From the TD's point of view, what is the point of having alerting regulations if people aren't going to read them? (see "fact of life".) Well, the reason they are there is so that if someone fails to alert when it was clear they should have done, you can tell them with confidence that they should have alerted, and point them to the regulations if necessary. But suppose that the regulations require an alert in a "pointless" situation, e.g. Stayman. Then in this case it doesn't matter if they don't alert, because you're never going to adjust for MI anyway. (see my other topic "ruling #1".) Though, as a TD, I might still say, "Please alert Stayman - it helps if you are consistent and always alert artificial bids." Let's consider two types of players. These are ordinary players, who don't bother to read the alerting regulations and just go on alerting in the same way as they always do. We have: - the "goodies", who always correctly alert things which their opponents might not understand, but might not alert Stayman, Blackwood, etc. - the "baddies", who don't alert properly at all, e.g. by failing to alert a multi 2♦. I hope it's clear that we should aim to punish the "baddies" but not the "goodies". The way to do this is to have unambiguous, strict alerting regs: "alert all artificial bids". When the "goodies" fail to alert Stayman, you can advise them politely to alert in future, but they won't get penalised for MI (though people who repeatly ignore alerting regs would obviously get a PP). However, when the "baddies" fail to alert their multi, you've got them covered. One other point: according to my suggested regulations, you would always have to alert a 2♣ opening bid, whatever its meaning is. I do not think that this is as ridiculous as it might appear. First of all, the software allows us to explain our bids immediately, and people who are conscientious enough to alert 2♣ at all will be likely to use this feature. But apart from that, a significant proportion of SAYC players will not alert 2♣ anyway, so from an opponent's point of view it is always advisable to ask about an alerted 2♣ bid. So even though the idea looks silly in theory, I believe it would work very well in practice.

Richard, you've slightly misread what I wrote: it's only opening bids which would require an alert if different from SAYC. I completely agree that requiring all non-SAYC bids to be alerted would be a terrible idea.

One other point: I didn't think it was completely clear that 2♠ was intended as a cue-bid. Maybe South bid it as some sort of psyche (that would explain why he had a weak hand for the bid). But South didn't want to say very much, and so I wasn't able to determine what it was.

Thanks for the comments. The good news is I ruled that the result should stand, and my replies to East were almost exactly what Ben says above. As for the alerting regs, I'm still in the process of trying to decide what the best thing to say is. I'm considering phrasing it like this: Please alert anything which your opponents might not understand, and explain in English. You definitely MUST alert: - ALL artificial bids; - opening bids which are not the same as in SAYC. Any comments on this? (For today's tourney, I only wrote the first sentence.)

I've now run two tourneys on BBO (many thanks to mr1303 for co-directing the first one). There has only been one ruling of any interest, and I'd appreciate comments on how it should have gone: [hv=d=w&v=n&n=st852hak853dajt8c&w=sj64htdq9762ct987&e=sak973hq6dcakqj64&s=sqhj9742dk543c532]399|300|Scoring: MP W . N . E . S P - 1♥ - 2♥ - 2♠ P - 3♦ - 4♣ - 4♥ 5♣ - P - P - 5♥ P - P - X - all pass[/hv] The 2♥ bid was alerted and explained as Michaels. 2♠ was not alerted. E/W called about half-way through the play, to point out that 2♠ had been bid on a singleton. 5♥X made an overtrick. East asks for an adjustment, making the following points: 2♠ must be alerted. N/S bid incorrectly. South was too weak for 2♠. West would have supported spades if 2♠ had been alerted. 2♠ should show at least a stopper. OK, whether or not you agree with those points, should there be an adjustment?

It would be nice if it were possible to give the sub an average without affecting the other players. But I suppose if you can't do that, it's better to leave well alone.

Either 1♣ or 1♥. In Acol you are allowed to use judgement as to which suit to open. So it depends on suit quality, etc. Having said that, some people generally prefer 1♣ and others generally prefer 1♥. In the EBU's "Standard English" system, you're supposed to open 1♥.

to candybar: The TD did not deal with the alerting situation correctly, but it looks like you were at fault for being thrown out of the tournament. In particular, don't do this: That is aggressive behaviour. And once the TD has made his decision, you have to accept it and continue playing. It's true that the TD shouldn't try to give an explanation himself, but if he thinks that's the best way to resolve the problem, then you just have to accept that and get on with the game.

That's going too far, surely. If a player deliberately makes a call which goes against the partnership's agreements, then that is a psyche. The regulations have to say whether this is allowed or not. Hence, you can't remove the concept of psyches from the regulations. Certainly, there are related concepts which can be confused with psyches, and it would be good if a clearer distinction was made. Examples include: genuine multi-way bids (such as the Gardner 1NT overcall) genuine mixed strategies (as part of an explicit or implicit partnership agreement) "controlled psyches" (this has nothing to do with psyches at all - as I see it the term is just a euphemism for "poorly disclosed partnership agreements") But if you open 1♠ on a 2434 5-count playing SAYC with a pick-up partner, then that's a psyche. There's no other way to describe it.

It doesn't do any harm to alert, so go ahead. (But don't expect your opponents to do it - they might think differently.) NB. In face-to-face competitions in England, at the moment we always have to alert the completion of a transfer. Next year this is going to change. But when the completion of the transfer shows something specific, e.g. "denies four-card support", then it will still be alertable. Isn't it nice to have regs which deal with this explicitly!

1♦ is fine. Personally I'd have opened it 1♣. I think it's become more or less standard nowadays to raise to 2♠ on this hand rather than rebidding in clubs. Bidding 2♣ and then supporting spades would show a stronger hand. That means, your 3♠ bid here should have been forcing!

Yes. It's an unfortunate situation, but people have to learn that not everyone plays the same system as they do. But it's not clearcut. You could write alerting regulations which said explicitly that 1♦:1♥,1NT was alertable if it could conceal 4 spades. That would be fine, as long as people played in your games regularly enough to learn the procedure. But for online play, that is never going to happen: players come and go, and the new players won't bother to read the alerting regulations. Now, even if the regulations don't say so explicitly, you might still feel that you have a duty to alert your opponents when such a sequence comes up. So, that's fine, you go on alerting. The problem comes when you expect other people to do the same. The vast majority of players will not believe that their 1NT rebid is alertable, whichever way they play it. So it's no good trying to enforce alerting here. We're left with the alternative, which is that if you want to know, you have to ask. People will eventually come to realise that this is the case, and so full disclosure is achieved after all.

Wow, do you really believe that declarer play has improved that much? I thought the reason people are taught 25 rather than 26 nowadays was that people's opinions about bidding had changed, rather than their expectation of the card play. Or maybe defence has got worse? :(

Yes. But this problem seems to be worse in AUC than in other weak no-trump systems. Possibly the reason is that opponents will interfere over the AUC 1♣ more readily than over natural opening bids. [And the fact that you haven't shown a suit doesn't help either.]

I don't like AUC because I feel it puts you in a bad position on the "strong no-trump" hands. The problem is that your 1♣ bid only promises about 11HCP, so opening 1♣ with a strong no-trump hand doesn't get the hand across. I much prefer Polish Club variants (changing to a strong 1NT opening) or Millennium Club variants (changing to a Precision 2♣ opening). AUC tries to avoid both these things and I don't think it works.

Seems unlikely that this discussion is going to turn out any differently to how it did a couple of months ago, but, never mind, I'll wade in anyway. I agree completely with Richard. Yes, transfer pre-empts have their advantages. Even so ... OK, so I won't use "pass then dbl" to show a take-out double. I'll play it the other way round, so that the delayed double is penalty or co-operative. Then this problem goes away. Sure, but I'm still in a much better position than if you were playing natural pre-empts, as then I would have to make a natural overcall one level higher. Hmm. The a priori probability of a strong hand was already rather low; if I've picked up a hand worth a natural overcall in the suit bid, then the strong option (which always includes the suit bid, if I remember correctly) is almost negligible. Right, that's a good point. It's not clear that using the cue-bid to show a "take-out double" is the best defence. But if you don't want to use the cue-bid in this way, you can still play direct dbl = "I would have doubled a natural pre-empt for take-out" pass then dbl = penalty cue-bid = some two-suiter (?) None of the problems 1, 2 or 3 apply to this. It's probably not optimal, but it's still so much better than against a natural pre-empt.

Umm ... what does "error reading XML data" mean? It was fine last week.