aleaxit

I've been trying to understand at what ACBL convention-card level(s) (per http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/about/CONVENTIONCHARTS2_2020.pdf ) I am allowed to play what seems to be emerging as a very popular approach -- "can be short" 1 Club opening bid (used on all balanced hands unsuited to an NT opening bid) with transfer responses (1D means Hearts, 1H means Spades, etc). If I read correctly, only the "Open" and "Open+" levels would allow that (because they don't outright forbid it), not "Basic+"; so I could not use that approach in any limited-MPs competition, such as Midflight Pairs. Am I correct on this point?

Happened again: the robots' "system" makes a certain common hand impossible to bid without outright, complete lies (i.e. making bids that directly violate a description). This time: robot partner opened 4♥; with a good hand, I considered whether to control-bid or blast slam. So I hovered on the descriptions of various bids available to me: 4♠ is natural (long strong ♠); 5♣ shows the A of ♣ and denies the A of ♠...!-( So if you have both black Aces, as I did, you cannot control-bid without outright lying, i.e., outright direct contradiction of a key aspect of the description of the bid you're making (for example, bid 5♣, mendaciously denying the A of ♠ which you do have). Another more common example: you open 1NT, partner transfers to, say, ♥, on your 2♥ they bid 3♦, and you fit both red suits. What should normally be a joyous occasion is turned to ashes by the terrible descriptions of your various bids now available: every bid showing ♦ supports categorically shows 2 cards in ♥, while you have 3; every bid showing 3+ hearts categorically denies the 4 cards in ♦ which you also have. So with a double fit what are you supposed to do -- give up the game and turn to tiddlywinks?! If BBO cannot devote staff time to correct such glaring mistakes (surely some bid should be available for every reasonably common hand, easily obtained in this case by having some cheap bid, say 3 ♥, promise 3+ ♥ without constraints on the length in ♦), I suggest they crowd-source the corrections! To be specific, I suggest...: Publish the marked-up (whatever markup language) text (and whatever machine-readable description of bids the robots must consume, or whatever structured hand-describing language can be easily compiled into such a MR description) on, say, github; selectively accept PRs from volunteers to fix the text and MR description for some sequence or groups of sequences. Surely there can be no commercial or other disadvantage to BBO from such an act, as the robots' 2/1 is hardly a trade secret or source of competitive advantage to BBO, right? Many of us would happily volunteer to express our frustration with logically inconsistent bid descriptions by offering PRs for them, and once a volunteer has proven their worth and dedication by giving enough contributions of high-enough quality BBO might decide to promote them to "core committer", able to review and authorize other contributors' PRs, further reducing the workload on BBO staff if that's an important consideration. Comments, feedback, kudos, barbs...?

I checked with my inexperienced-Director wife, specifically about the practice advocated in many (if perhaps a bit old-fashioned) books and intermediate courses, that there are hands that are too strong to open a pre-empt, but not strong enough to open a 1-bid (not my style, but still quite a popular one). For example, per http://www.pittsburghbridge.org/JimmySez/JRKLess05.pdf , a weak two guarantees at least 2 of the top 4 honors in the opened suit, and is never opened with two outside Aces or Kings; so, QJTxxx-Kx-Kx-xxx cannot be opened 2♠ because of the two outside Kings... while QJTxxx-Kx-xx-xxx, weaker by 1 King, can be opened 2♠. But that does not mean that in the first hand you have to open 1♠ -- a pass is of course perfectly OK... even though if you "take away some honors" you would open. She believes this style is perfectly OK in the ACBL; I've asked her to check with more experienced Directors. So, the statement that in the ACBL "would be illegal to pass a hand that with the same shape but take away some honours would open" is simply false, unless my wife the inexperienced Director is badly mistaken.

In the very common sequence where I open 1NT and my bot partner transfers with, say, 2♦, and on my acceptance rebids, say, 3♣, I not rarely am sitting there in the nice position of having a double fit, i.e., 4 cards in ♣, 3 or 4 in ♥. The weird thing about the robot's system is that there is no possible rebid for this opener hand -- every single rebid by opener (try hovering on each and every one to check) is specified as showing either exactly 2 cards in ♥, or less than 4 cards in ♣. So, in this situation, as opener, the alleged "system" forces me to lie. I usually lie about the ♣ fit, of course, denying it even when it's as good as, say, KQJ10 -- the risk of missing a game in ♥, particularly at matchpoints, makes lying by denying the ♥ fit too horrible to contemplate. But this does cause good ♣ slams on 4-4 fits to be missed, and it's not unusual for the slam to not be there in ♥, as the 5-3 fit doesn't play quite as well. Why have a system that mandates lying, when it's so easy to fix the problem? There are opener rebids which are assigned pretty useless meanings (such as, showing a side suit responder is hardly likely to be interested about, instead of focusing on responder's suits) which could be easily re-purposed to specifically show the double fit; or, at least, make one rebid showing one fit not necessarily deny the other one. This is just one case where the robot's "system" can force lies; for example, there are many sequences where, say, a bid of 3 ♠ shows playable ♠, while 4 ♣ is a control bid denying the Ace of ♠ -- so one is completely stuck with a hand worthy of a control bid but so "unlucky" as to hold both black Aces (!). And so on, and so forth. Could maybe a mechanism be put in place to allow "crowd-sourcing" of fixes to such system vagaries? I sure would not mind volunteering time and effort to suggesting tweaks and solutions for such sequences!

Because there's really nothing to gain in return for giving away information and opportunities, such as letting RHO do a lead-directing double of 4♥ and suffering a ruff there. And if partner denies the K♥? I'd better take charge anyway, since, as I showed, 6♥ is pretty sure to be 50%+ unless we lack two keys. Presumably partner would jump to 6♣ with the club void and an odd (1) number of keys. If you do play 3-round-control responses to specific-suit asks then you won't be able to securely ask for the K♥ at this time, since, on 6♥, partner would bid 6N with a doubleton in hearts. However, with a void in clubs and a doubleton in hearts, partner would have typically 5 spades and 6 diamonds, so, in addition to the heart-finesse chances, there are prospects of establishing diamonds; overall, far from a terrible grand even without the K♥. Far more likely, on a 6♥ SSA on their 6♣ void-showing, partner will deny the K♥ by bidding 6♠, or promise it by bidding 7♣, so we can play a small or grand slam accordingly. Doesn't appear to be particularly germane to this hand. Anyway, the Wikipedia entry mentions as possibilities ranges of 10-14 or 11-15 HCP, either of which make sense to me, as well as 10-12, which I find a bit light (though it may coincide with Barbara Seagram's indication of 13-15 including distribution, if the singleton plus 4 trumps is valued at 3). OK then: opener's hand is Ax-AKJ98x-Kxx-AJ; bidding is 2C-2D; 2H-3H; 4C. To recap, the quiz says you should bid 4D, claiming that partner will then ask with 4N. I say that partner should not bid 4N, hearts being trumps, with 0 keys, or 1 key and no Q♥, since now a reply of 5♠ by opener would force the partnership to slam in full knowledge of two missing keys. And yes, opener could perfectly well have just 2 keys in this sequence, for example AK-KQJ98x-KQJ-QJ (22 meh HCP vs 20 good HCP in the actual hand, identical shape).

[spoiler ALERT]: if you haven't taken the "Le Bridgeur" quiz on Blackwood you'll probably want to do so before reading this thread. I disagree with some of the official answers in the quiz and I think they're worth discussing. My main beef is about deal #4, where I opened 1♠ with AQ987-AQ53-A-1062 and partner responded with a splinter 4♣, which I take as showing 4+ trumps and about 11-14 HCP (not counting a possible singleton honor). The official answer is that you should now bid 4♦ to gain the "essential" information about the ♥K. It is nice for me to see that the quiz (on this hand like on others) implicitly assumes the "Italian" style of control bids (first- and second-round controls allowed) and not the rigid "Aces first" control bidding the robots use, which I find much less useful. But, that's just an aside. Rather, my focus is: what makes the ♥K "essential"? Even without it the slam should at worst be 50% (on the ♥ finesse), but can easily be better than that, e.g if responder has something like KJxx-xxx-KQJxx-x -- a bit to the light side for the splinter, but, despite this, 12 tricks should easily cash with ♦ 4-3 in opps' hands, and, should ♦ be 5-2, there are other chances (trumps 2-2 would allow 12 easy tricks too, for example, and of course there's always the ♥ finesse as the last chance -- overall, a small slam with very, very good chances). So what's the point of ascertaining the presence of the so-called "essential" ♥K, since you won't (shouldn't) give up if responder denies it, anyway? Why freely and uselessly give opps more info than needed about your hands? Just check with 4N against the risk of 2 missing key-cards, and give 6♥ a try if partner has one key...! My other disagreement with the quiz is on deal #5, where, having opened 2♣ with 4 keys, 6 strong ♥, controls everywhere, I'm supposed according to the quiz to hold off Blackwood to give partner a chance to use Blackwood on me. Only problem: if partner has no keys, or one key and no ♥Q, they'd be loco to bid 4N and risk a 5♠ reply by me (if I had a different hand) telling them "hi partner, now you know for sure that we must not bid slam, but the rules of bridge force you to bid slam anyway, isn't that fun?". This is really a fatal flaw of RKCB (compared in particular with Kickback) -- asker needs a certain minimum number of keys to ask with 4N (depending on trump suit -- everything is fine of course when trumps are ♠, which is exactly when Kickback also uses 4N as the ask!-) lest askee's reply force the pair to slam in the full knowledge that 2 keys are missing! So what do y'all think...?

I've tried that repeatedly as I was playing a friendly match with and against friends today, and never saw any of the numbers change (i.e. refresh). You sure this is a "way to do it"?

I just played several deals with & against friends, and just could not figure out how to refresh the results -- one hand in particular remained in the "no comparison" state all the way to the end of our play (hour+). So we don't really know for sure who won the friendly match! Surely there must be a way to "refreesh"? But it's darn well hidden if so!-)

Consistent explanations and robots deviating from them us one thing, and may be hard to fix. What's intolerable and should be easily fixable (I suspect it would be enough to just edit a bunch of text!) is when explanations are inconsistent, lacking logical coherence. This happens often. For example, when (say) out of two possible heart raises, one is shown as being "11-13 total points", the other as "15+ total points" -- there being NO documented way to raise hearts with exactly 14 total points. Even worse: in a cuebidding situation, on partner's 3H, 3S is explained as showing a spade FIT (spades having also been bid previously), while 4C is a cuebid showing the Ace of clubs and denying the Ace of spades (as if 3S was a cuebid being skipped -- which according to 3S's own explanation, it's not). Then there are the cases where explanations, while not logically inconsistent, make no bridge sense. For example, the many cases where, say, 3D is explained as showing "4+ diamonds" when it would make zero bridge sense to bid it with just four cards; in fact the robots bidding it always happens to have 5+ (as makes bridge sense), but the explanation appears to be broader than the reality. Not damaging but VERY annoying are explanations which just aren't "updated" as the bidding develops, such as a bid being explained as showing "strong rebiddable hearts ... 4+ hearts" -- the 4+ part should be snipped because the strong rebiddable part implies it, and more than it. If the explanations are natural-language reflections of constraints actually programmed into the robots' bidding, the fix is less easy than just editing text, but even more important: the constraints should reflect every bid having a sensible meaning, and there being a legitimate bid for every possible hand. If, as I suspect, explanations and actual operating constraints are not automatic reflections of each other, then it should be just a job of text editing. One way or another, improving the quality of explanations removing all the issues I've mentioned here is probably my most-desired improvement to the robots!

The text `"!H AKQ, no !H" makes no sense at all` yet it's part of what appears as the explanation for the rebid of a Soloway jump shift; specific sequence being 1!D-2!H; 3!D-3!H. It should be trivial to edit the source of the explanation text to remove the nonsensical, distracting `no !H` fragment.

Sequence (opps silent, robot dealer): 1D-1S; 1N-2C- 3NT. Hovering on robot's 3NT, explanation: "No support nor new major -- 2-5 !C, 4-5 !D, 2-4 !H, 2-3 !S". But clearly 3 !S would be "support" and 4 !H would be "new major", so since both are denied those possible lengths should clearly be removed from the explanation.

Systems-on after your 1NT gets doubled is quite feasible as long as you play responder's pass and redouble as transfers too: pass commands opener to redouble (responder is strong and means to pass, or weak and means to scramble with a non-both-majors 2-suiter), XX commands opener to bid 2C (responder is weak, and will pass, sign-off in 2D, or bid 2H with both majors) -- any further complexity after responder's pass or XX is fully optional, this simple arrangement I was just introduced to by my new partner bdleitner@ (as we switched our NT opening range to the 12-14 we both prefer) is workable and easy to remember.