JanM

I now have a new understanding of one reason why transfer 1-bids shouldn't be allowed in 2 board rounds, one I hadn't thought of for myself but that indeed makes sense. The transfer 1-bids are very high frequency bids - look over any hand record and you'll see at least 10 times as many 1 of a Major opening bids as 2 of a Major openings (probably even more than that). So if the transfer 1-bids are allowed, they'll come up a lot. And each time they come up it is going to take time for the opponents to comprehend the meaning of the bid, review the defense and then try to figure out what to do. As a result, it's pretty likely that the table at which the transfer players are playing will get behind, not once, not twice, but several times during a session. That will make the session of bridge less enjoyable for all the other players, especially the poor pair who happen to be following them. The more boards there are per round, the less overall delay there will be - people will only have to go through the comprehension process the first time the bid is used, and there will be "fast" hands on which the table will catch up.

OK, I'll try to find out what's going on about the 1♦ transfer. And the board requirement, although I have a feeling if they've talked about that they're not going to change their minds. As far as minutes, I suspect that the reason there aren't any published minutes is because no one is doing them. It's not as easy as it seems to do minutes and if the committee doesn't happen to have someone who's good at it, they just don't get done. I am confident that all of the members of the committee (whether you mean C&C or the Conventions Approval Committee) would be very happy to be out of that particular job - it's no fun, believe me. All of the committee members (and their spouses) would much prefer to sleep another couple of hours in the morning at NABCs than to get up to go to committee meetings.

It isn't the opening Pass that's destructive or difficult to deal with, it's the opening bids that show all the hands you and I would pass with - hands too weak to open the bidding, with no long suit so they are appropriate for a preempt. Usually that's all the bids at the 1-level. They show different varieties of bad hands. Those are the bids that are difficult to defend against and those are (usually) the bids that are inadequately described, not in terms of the opening bid itself, but in terms of what responder will do in (& sometimes out of) competition. Strong club pairs open 1x with the same hands as you and I - they've just removed some strong hands from the opening 1 bids. That's really nothing like, for instance, opening 1♠ with 0-7 and any shape - but not really any shape because some of the 0-7 hands are opened something else.

Jan's posting touched on two different themes: Theme 1: The posting could be viewed as some kind of back communiqué from the Conventions Committee indicating that they are willing to consider licensing new defenses. More specifically, that they might agree to license some defense to MOSCITO style transfer openings. If this were the primary intention, I consider this to be great news. No, I'm not trying to communicate via some back door what isn't coming out the front door. I don't have much inside information on this, although I suppose I hear a little more than you. I was and am actually only saying what I think is the case based on what I've seen over the years and recently. I haven't seen the correspondence to which you refer - I know it was several years ago. And I know that whenever I ask Chip about some specific bid (usually it's 2♦ majors because for some reason that keeps coming up when I'm a Vugraph operator) he says that no one has submitted a defense. The Conventions Committee wasted enormous amounts of my time playing passive aggressive little games. They never had the balls to openly admit that they would never approve any defense. Instead, they preferred to create ever more ridiculous hoops for me to jump through while privately agreeing that they were never going to approve any defense. I think that in this case as in most where there are two sides with strongly divergent views, both sides are right and both are wrong. The people who want to play a method aren't trying to submit a bad defense, but they haven't played against the method so they really don't know what problems will arise. Those who have to review the defenses don't have hidden motives, but they're busy and if it doesn't make sense to them, they're not going to spend extra time figuring it out. You weren't trying to waste the committee's time with bad defenses; they weren't trying to waste your time trying to get you to fill in the blanks. But that's how it looked to them and to you. The convention approval process has developed over a long period of time. First there was a time when the C&C committee was responsible for creating defenses for methods they approved - that's why we have the really inadequate defenses to multi by the way. With that burden on them, of course the committee didn't want to approve much - it's hard to create an adequate defense and then write it in a way that is comprehensible to someone who hasn't been part of the creation process. The committee then realized that it wasn't making sense for them to do defenses, so they put the burden on the people who proposed a method. They got a lot of badly thought-out and incomplete defenses. Shockingly :), this made them unhappy and perhaps they did come across as having hidden agendas and never going to approve something when in fact they were tired of reviewing the 23rd defense that didn't include any continuations or didn't make any sense (I remember seeing one defense to a weak opening that provided no way to penalize the opening side) or wasn't clearly written. After a long time and a lot of experience with how the whole midchart has worked, the committee decided to put a major effort into something they hoped would work better - separating out those methods that are sufficiently easy to understand and combat to be reasonable in events with 2 boards per round (such as 2M showing a weak hand with 5 cards in that major and a second 4+ card suit - both the meaning of the bid and the defense can be explained in about one sentence) and other more complex methods that needed long enough advance discussion to be reasonable only in longer events (such as multi). Individual people may disagree with how some bids have been classified, but it is now clear what is allowed when. I did say that nothing had been submitted recently - if you were to dig out those old emails, I'll bet you'd find they were several years old. And whether the committee would have approved a reasonable defense back then if it had been presented at the start instead of only after much back and forth and a lot of work by the committee members on inadequate defenses, I don't know. I do know that the general attitude of people playing that particular method (transfer 1 bids) was less than wonderful - I remember one event where a pair arrived at my table and told me they were playing transfer 1 bids. I called the director who told them the bids weren't legal. They argued, appealed to higher authority and eventually didn't play them against me, but then I happened to overhear them when they arrived at the next table: "we play transfer 1 bids." That sort of attitude perhaps contributed to the response you received (I am not suggesting that you did that, just that it might have affected the committee's attitude). Reading that, can you see that it isn't the right way to approach a committee? Can you see that that "deign to approve" tends to make people angry? Can you even consider that just as you were not deliberately presenting an inadequate and unclear defense in order to gain an advantage when you played this unfamiliar method, the committee wasn't acting in a closed and dishonest manner, they were just learning what was and was not possible and have now changed the rules to try to make things better?

Transfer openings aren't banned; they are midchart but no one has presented an adequate defense for them. Just like 2♦ showing both Majors (sorry, I know that is completely off topic, but it happens to be my personal pet peeve that none of the people who play that have bothered to submit a defense and then they complain that they aren't allowed to play it, or just play it anyway). I know a lot of you think that the nefarious convention approval committee has insidiously refused to approve a defense to transfer openings, but actually, no defense has been submitted, at least recently. Now that the committee has the option of approving something for a stated number of boards, I would be very surprised if they wouldn't approve a reasonable defense to transfer openings, at least for 6+ boards or something like that.

You mentioned that one of the "suits" was Gary Blaiss. I have never seen him at an NABC in anything other than a suit and tie, so I think it is virtually impossible that he "dressed up" for you.

I was surprised to see that Auken-von Arnim had chosen to give up the weak 2♠ bid when not allowed to play multi - they used 2♦ as a weak 2♥ bid and 2M as Muiderberg. I suspect the reason for the 2M bids was that they're used to playing those that way and thought the possibility of forgetting was more serious than the need for weak 2 bids. But I still wonder why they chose to keep a weak 2♥ and lose 2♠ - maybe they figure that 3♠ is such a useful bid they don't mind having to bid that with some of the 2♠ hands.

Isn't that one of the aims of bridge - to create problems for your opponents. Of course it's not as simple as that. Putting a box of tissues on top of my bidding cards would create problems for them as well. Although, as I read what happened to Chip and Lew on those three hands, they - Failed to make an agreement in a situation that obviously should have been discussed - Forgot their agreement - Collected a number So it's hard to feel that much sympathy for them facing the ferts. I was actually discussing three different hands, and the 2♣ hand was a different pair. And when you're given very little time to prepare, it's difficult to know what "should have been discussed" - I've seen enough people who think they know what they're doing against multi (and say that it's "easy" to defend against) have accidents to know that people don't discuss everything and never will. I'd also point out that there's a difference between forgetting ones agreements and looking down at an auction that looks like one thing and not remembering it's really another. It's difficult to prepare for things, and particularly difficult to be fully prepared for something when you have 2 days to prepare for it. Part of the question raised by "when should <fill in your own favorite method here> be allowed is how much do we want to advantage people who can hire someone to prepare defenses and who have the time to study the defenses and practice against strange methods. Or perhaps I should say it the other way - how much do we want to disadvantage the more casual player who doesn't have the money to hire someone to write defenses or the time to practice against lots of unusual methods?

Really? I don't even think it's been half that long, although I wouldn't stake my life on it. You're probably right, although it seems like a fairly long time.

Back in 1987, in the Bermuda Bowl, one of the pairs on the English team (actually I think it was Great Britain then) played a forcing pass system, with various fert openings. Back then, we didn't have an internet and there was no advance disclosure of systems - we arrived in Jamaica and found out about the forcing pass system. Also, back then, teams from the USA and Europe entered the event at the semi-finals, so the English pair had played many hands before our team played them. My first experience with developing defenses was spending hours on a lovely beach in Ocho Rios poring over play records (hand-written by hard-working recorders, because of course we didn't have BBO back then either) to try to figure out what sorts of hands the pair was opening which fert, how they were "responding" to the strong pass and I've now forgotten what else. Chip & Lew (the "scientists" on the US team) then developed a defense. They tried to keep it reasonably simple - as far as I recall, they treated the pass as an opening bid, so that their bids over it were "overcalls" not openings; they passed with good hands over some of the ferts, in order to have a chance to get the opponents later; otherwise they tried to get back to their own system as quickly as possible. Sounds easy, right? Why would world class players have any problems? Well - on one hand, one of the US players had a hand with which he would have opened a strong 2♣ in first seat. But he was in second seat and the English player opened 1♦ showing less than an opening bid and I don't know what else. The US pair had decided that after a fert opening, their 1-level bids would be as if the opponent had passed. Unfortunately, they hadn't discussed the 2-level. The player with the strong hand decided that based on their discussion, a 2♣ "overcall" should be the same as a 2♣ opening bid, his partner thought differently - they played a grand slam in a partscore. On another hand, Chip & Lew(the "scientists" who should have been best able to cope), had an accident when one of them made what he thought was a forcing bid on the third round of an auction that had started with an English strong pass - looking at the bids on the tray, he forgot that his partner's opening 1♠ bid was really an overcall and therefore his 2/1 response wasn't game forcing. Chip & Lew did succeed in getting a number after one of the ferts, and our team out-played the English team, so the US won the Bermuda Bowl. But to suggest that a strong pass creates only "a few problems" is really a huge underbid.

Talking about the very top partnerships is different from talking about the best partnerships in a region let alone the average partnerships. I'm not sure what the first quoted sentence means. There are certainly a large number of long-term partnerships among the top pairs in the world. There have also recently been a number of partnership break-ups at that level, and I think that they have been caused by several of the things on Frances' list, just as break-ups at lower levels are caused by different things. Among top pairs who've been together for at least ten years: In the US: Meckstroth-Rodwell Garner-Weinstein Levin-Weinstein Gitelman-Moss Greco-Hampson Cheek-Grue Smith-Cohen Boyd-Robinson Martel-Stansby Note- these are listed as they occurred to me, not in any particular order (except I politely put my husbands last :D). Recent break-ups and causes: Berkowitz-Cohen - different objectives (Larry didn't want to play "bridge at the top" any more) Rosenberg-Zia - it wasn't fun for them to play together any more (I know some will say it was because Hamman asked Zia to play with him on the Nickell team, but I don't think Hamman would have asked or Zia accepted if Z-R were still having fun together - sort of like I don't really believe marriages break up because one of the spouses meets someone new, that happens because the marriage was shaky to begin with) In Europe: Lauria-Versace Fantoni-Nunes I guess Lanzarotti-Buratti, although I haven't heard anything of them recently Helgemo-Helness Balicki-Zmudzinski Gromov-Dubinin Elinescu-Wladow Elahmady-Sadek Auken-von Arnim Brink-Drijver (I think they've played together more than 10 years) Recent break-ups (don't know any reasons, sorry): Bocchi-DuBoin Brogeland-Saelinsminde These are just the ones that I thought of without putting any effort into it. Still don't know the point, though. Obviously long-term partnerships have a big advantage - they have had time to develop their bidding system, they know what sorts of things their partners will and won't do, they're usually comfortable together. So it's no surprise that good pairs stay together.

We will be covering the finals of the Senior KO Wednesday at 1:00 EST - sorry that it's so last minute and was indefinite earlier. If anyone is in Boston and wants to be a Vugraph operator tomorrow, send me an email (marteljan at gmail dot com) or find me at the tournament.

My perennial plea: If you should find yourself in Boston without a partner, you might want to consider helping as a Vugraph operator :rolleyes:. I never know in advance what ACBL will be doing in the Vugraph department, but best guess is that the final two or three days of the Senior KO will be on Vugraph if there are operators available, as will the final day of the Reisinger. So if you have a free day (or session) during one of those events and would be interested in being a Vugraph operator, send me an email (marteljan at gmail dot com) and I'll try to coordinate with whoever is organizing ACBL Vugraph in Boston.

This hand is being discussed in relation to an appeal - partner's DBL was slow (I don't know how slow - but even with screens, it's so unlikely that opener would have a problem in this auction that I guess it doesn't matter how long the break in tempo was) and this hand bid 3NT, which was successful. Although I think I would bid 5♦, I'm not at all certain that partner's slow double suggests bidding 3NT. There are a lot of hands where partner would be unhappy about doubling but wouldn't have a spade stopper. The slow DBL is most likely to suggest either a light hand or an off-shape hand. I'm not sure what that suggests about my bid. Remember that the laws on UI say that the UI needs to demonstrably (I think that's the right word) suggest the bid that was chosen. Did it here?

In general, I don't think seating rights are a big deal - I've seen the same two pairs play back to back sessions where one pair dominates the first session and the other pair the second (this is assuming the pairs are pretty even). But in the case of HUM & to some extent BSC, seating rights make a big difference. There are some excellent players who just don't do well against unusual methods. Some who can't be bothered to refer to their written defenses but just guess at what bids mean. Some who just get irritated at "oddness." And before you tell me that no "expert" would do that, give it a moment's thought. Not all experts are the same. Some are "scientists," some aren't. Being able to play the pair that's "good" against artificiality against the other team's pair that's playing HUM or lots of BSCs is definitely an advantage. Because by and large, HUM and BSC methods gain only because of their unfamiliarity - a well-prepared pair that's comfortable against a HUM system will almost certainly come out ahead over the long term. A pair that "hates" unusual methods may not, even though they are better players than the HUMmers. In response to "so if both teams have pairs playing HUMs, who gets seating rights?" If two teams both have HUM pairs, seating rights revert to normal. Also if two teams have pairs playing more than 2 BSCs (at least that was so at the latest WBF event where HUMs and BSCs were allowed): WBF Supplementary Conditions of Contest for Shanghai: §17.8 Seating Rights for Pairs using Brown Sticker Conventions Teams will be awarded seating rights if they are playing against a pair or pairs using two or more BS Conventions but not if both teams have a pair using 2 BS Conventions. §17.11 When a team that includes a pair using a HUM System (whether or not such pair will play) is opposing a team that has no such pair, the HUM System team will always be the Visiting Team. No special seating rights or line-up restrictions shall apply when two teams containing pairs using HUM Systems (regardless of line- up) oppose one another.

These rules are generally what we play, except that the delayed DBL (TRFR)-P-(accept)-P-(P)-DBL for us is a strong balance hand (about a STR NT or better). That allows advancer to make an intelligent decision between defending when we have the balance of strength but not necessarily good trumps (vs Namyats we're very unlikely to have much in the trump suit) or playing the hand when one of us has values and the other shape. I'd bet that Phil and I would make a delayed DBL on the same hands, we're just using different language - to me a penalty DBL is one where I really want partner to pass, not where I want partner to use judgment :). I think that it's much better to play the immediate DBL as takeout and the delayed DBL as balanced values because the immediate DBL of a transfer preempt is so safe - advancer isn't forced to choose either to defend their suit DBL'd or to play the hand; s/he can just pass without either shape or strength. If you reverse the meanings (DBL with values, delayed DBL T/O), advancer can't choose to let the opponents play the hand undoubled after the T/O DBL. Note that these general rules work against both transfer openings and transfer advances of opening bids. Overcalls are different because we've already done something. So, vs a transfer opening or transfer advance when we haven't bid anything: DBL = T/O of suit(s) shown Simple bid of suit shown = 2-suited P then DBL = Balanced values (about STR NT) Other bids natural, delayed bids lighter.

I asked my "expert" and after thinking about it a bit, he said "I think I'd lead a heart." Main reason for deciding partner was more likely to have a heart void than a diamond void was it was weird for partner, with a diamond void, not to bid over the negative dbl of 1♥.

Carson City is a *long* drive from South Shore. If you're willing to drive that far, I think you'd do better to go the other direction to Sacramento. The Sacramento Bridge Center is close to Highway 50 (which is what you take West from South Shore) and I'm pretty sure there are games every day. There's also a club in Citrus Heights and one in Grass Valley, but both of those are off 80, which isn't so convenient from South Shore. Oh wait, there's a club in Shingle Springs, which is really quite close to South Shore off 50 - you might look at that also - it's definitely closer than Carson City.

One thing no one has mentioned - bidding judgment (not system, judgment) is dependent on declarer play: in order to analyze a contract, you need to be able to play the hand in your head during the bidding. So declarer play is relevant not only to defense (where you need to visualize declarer's problems in order to help him or her get them wrong) but also to bidding.

You might be interested in the Time Regulations contained in the USBF General Conditions of Contest. Those regulations address the issue of when use of time is appropriate and when it is not. They attempt to impose reasonable penalties and limit some penalties to situations in which there is a monitor present. It has been difficult to recruit knowledgeable monitors, but we do try to have a monitor at a table where a time problem is anticipated. Recently, the USBF's ITTC Conditions of Contest Committee has been discussing possible ways to encourage habitual offenders to waste less time. The discussion arose because for next year we have decreased the time allotted per board from 9 minutes to 8.5 minutes and there was some concern that this would result in more late finishes. Suggestions that were made included removing Positioning Points for the following cycle from players who were late in more segments than they were on time (Positioning Points are the points that can result in a team receiving a bye to a later round of the Trials and are therefore a valuable commodity) and barring players from the following year's trials for egregious lateness (this is already allowed by the Conditions of Contest, but only in extreme situations). The possibility of video coverage of potential problem tables has been raised, as has the idea of using the Vugraph to measure the amount of time taken. The discussion is ongoing. Edited to put the URL in the background, thanks blackshoe (although I'm Jan, not JoAnne).

1) IBPA 2) I think the journalist who writes the hand up submits it, but not sure 3) No idea, I'm afraid. There's an IBPA website <www.ibpa.com>, which ought to have it, but doesn't (or at least I couldn't find it) I'll ask someone who should know.

If you give a little effort to selecting the games, you should be able to get 35 in well under 40 sessions; there seem to be all sorts of special games clubs can run that increase the awards considerable. Play in a charity game during International Fund month (timely - it's September), earn extra points (I assume they're still black?) and also help to support the US and Canadian international teams. :) :P :P

For me, there's a difference depending on which Major they opened. If it's Spades, 2NT...3NT shows a game force with a stopper and 4 hearts - so the doubler can choose between 3NT and 4♥. After 2♥, the jump to 3♠ is is available for that hand, so the 2NT...3NT auction shows doubt - probably only a single stopper. Without discussion? No idea.

Not all of the players on Vugraph have BBO identities. However, the Vugraph operator can fill in information about the players in the profile, and you can access that information by mousing over the player's name. Most operators will try to put in first names and country, although they may not have time to do that at the very beginning of the broadcast.

A couple of issues are relevant here. First, the banner gets created when the hands are loaded into the computer, at a time when there is usually time pressure on the person getting things set up. Particularly in KO matches after the first segment, where the score also has to be entered, there is a lot for the person setting things up to do. And if you make any mistake (Piars instead of Pairs last night for instance), you have to start all over again - locate the hands, type in the name of the event, type in the segment, type in the team names, type in the score. Second, and this is probably more important, there used to be a limit to the number of characters allowed in the event name. There isn't any more, but some of us take a while to adjust to changes. Third, and most important (although it didn't apply to the Australia broadcast), if there is more than one table from the same event, in order to get a different LIN file for each table, there has to be a difference in the first 20 characters of the event name. Of course, a little thought would let someone put "Match 3 - Australia Teams Championship" instead of "Australia Teams Championship - Match 2" but that gets back to the first issue - the person doing this is under time pressure and can't fix anything after entering it.