JanM

Well, if the best teams don't show up it's impossible for the winner to be the best team :), which is one of the reasons not to hold an extra event. Our primary goal is still to select the two best teams to represent the US in the Bermuda Bowl.

Another Trials would be far from free, for anyone - the players who'd have to take the time out of their schedules, pay for plane, hotel, meals, etc; the sponsors who'd ditto plus pay the pros; the USBF volunteers who are already stretched pretty thin. It's just not going to happen.

That's a fascinating idea - I'll "run it up the flag pole" :)

Because the 2008 USBC will pick our Olympiad team. Again so why not two trials in 2008? One early for 2008(olympiad) and one later in 2008 for 2009(usa1)? Have a third trial in 2009 for usa2. Again if money is the main issue then Justin's idea as used already in the Womens seems cheapest and fairest. I am a bit lost on what the main number one priority is....saving money or other? There are some players who think one Trials every year is too many (we're currently asking for opinions on that from the players). I think there is about a 0% chance of selling the idea of 2, even if that made sense. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't - one of the objections to what we do in the Rosenblum year (select USA1 for the following year's BB in a USBC held later than normal in the year) is that there's too much time between selecting the team and the team playing in the BB. That might be okay when the alternative is not to hold the USBC that year, but not when there's already a USBC that year. The issue isn't money, it's time - there are already a lot of bridge events on the calendar. There really isn't room for another. Note that we can hold the Rosenblum year USBC late because the World Championships are held early. In 2008, the Olympiad is likely to be in the early fall.

Because the 2008 USBC will pick our Olympiad team.

I think that between 25 and 30 teams will enter, probably closer to 25. A one-winner event now takes 11 days. I think we're looking at no more than 14 for a 2-winner event, and hopefully 12 or 13. We allow 9 minutes per board. I know that seems high, but somehow it doesn't seem to be in practice. That's hard - for one thing, I'm not sure what your different models are, and for another it's very hard to analyze the strengths of teams. Most of them played this year and last, and you can see the scores on the usbf website, but I don't know if that's an appropriate method to evaluate or not.

Wow! Thanks for all the thoughts. If I can figure out how to quote several things in one reply, I'll try to answer as many questions as I can and see whether you can help some more B) Isn't that what we currently have? BB is every other year, and we have a trial each year. The winner the first year is USA1, the winner the second year (which USA1 doesn't play in) is USA2. Or am I thinking of something else? In 2008, the USBC winner will be the only US team in the Olympiad. Therefore we have only one USBC to select both teams for 2009. That's how we do it for the Women. But there is fairly strong feeling that we have too many strong teams in the Open to start the Repechage with the Semi-final losers, so we're trying to come up with something that lets earlier losers get back in without making the whole event too long. That makes a lot of sense, except for the problem someone pointed out later that it means we either have to wait to start the USA2 bracket until the USA1 winner is decided or play a lot of irrelevant matches. That's sort of what we're looking at, but it's not as easy as it sounds - the problem is that we want the two events to run side by side and teams keep dropping into the USA2 bracket, so the matches have to be different lengths, and where do you start (IOW, which losers first get into the USA2 bracket). Before continuing to struggle with numbers of teams and lengths of matches, I was wondering if anyone might come up with a better suggestion :) I guess that depends on what you mean by subjective and objective. If you mean that we're not likely to be swayed by mathematical models that conflict with our impressions of what has worked in the past, you're right. The reason that you would have a hard time convincing me that a single elimination KO is "better" than a RR followed by a KO is because my experience convinces me that seeding isn't anywhere close to perfect, and the first round of a KO is going to be very strongly influenced by seeding. Maybe I'm wrong, but a lot of people seem to agree with me, even some who disagree with me on almost everything else. With regard to conventions, I think you've misunderstood me - the reason that we don't use the WBF rules is that most of our players are more familiar with ACBL rules and we aren't willing to force them to comply with a slightly different, not necessarily better, set of rules for the USBC. Of course, the winners (and maybe a second team) will have to comply with those rules for the WBF event, but they'll have a captain and coach to help with that, as well as a few months to work on it at a time when they know it will be relevant for them. I don't know what sort of constraints you mean, but basically: The USA1 bracket is going to look like this year's USBC (maybe some matches might be shorter because they don't completely eliminate anyone. USA2 needs to be chosen in an event that runs parallel to USA1 and where USA1 losers drop into it. A double elimination KO if you want to call it that, but some other format might be possible. The USA2 event would ideally end no more than 3 days after the USA1 finals (because of fatigue for the players mainly). That's how we did it in 2001, and despite the excellent result (USA2 won the Bermuda Bowl that year in case you've forgotten), there was a very strong feeling that this wasn't a good format and I don't think there is any chance that we will use a 3-way again :) As to byes, there's a very strong opinion that the three major KOs during the year should be "part" of the USBC, which is achieved by the bye structure. That gets debated periodically but so far the "Byes" have it. As to augmentation, the USBF has to approve augmentees and we have strict rules and a very strong Credentials Committee who review any proposed augmentees, to avoid augmentation of someone who is not as good as the rest of the players on the team. So far it seems to be working and I certainly hope that will continue to be the case. I agree with you and I think that our basic approach is a good one. But every fourth year, we have to choose 2 teams, and that's our current issue.

For a change of pace, and to get any good ideas you might have :P, how would you choose 2 teams from one Trials. Assume you start with the decision that both teams should be chosen as teams (iow, even if you think a pairs trials would be better, it's been rejected), and that the basic selection method for one team will look like this year's USBC, how would you go about selecting the second team from the "losers bracket" ?

Gee, if you're going to do my work for me :angry: , did you make a list of which pairs are playing what? Seriously, how did you differentiate between Natural with 2+ clubs and 1♣ clubs or balanced? And when you counted "variable NT" did you include minor variations (a lot of people play 14-16 and 15-17 depending on position and vul, ditto 11-14 and 12-14 - I wouldn't call those "variable"). What about 2♦ as both Majors? That's also a fairly popular method. Another area that always interests me is jump overcalls - how many are playing ambiguous 2-suited jump overcalls (Michaels over a Major) and how many prefer to use an extra bid to avoid ambiguity. Jan, going back to the salt mines (reading and summarizing the convention cards) :lol:

Well, your proposed 2♠ bid falls under the definition of BS, and I'd certainly be willing to allow BS overcalls of a BS opening bid :angry:. Maybe where all of this is getting us is that deciding whether to allow BS overcalls shouldn't turn on whether the opening bid is "conventional" or not?

That example is another good reason why "natural" and "conventional" aren't really opposites. And also perhaps to some extent explains my problem with calling a 1♣ bid that includes balanced hands with 2+ clubs "conventional." I guess I think of "conventional" as whether the bid carries meaning about another suit. When I open 1♣, even though I don't promise more than 2 clubs, neither do I give my partner any specific information about any other suit. So looking at the (admittedly very flawed) definition of "conventional" as carrying a meaning other than willingness to play in the denomination, or length or strength in the named suit, it's hard for me to view the 1♣ bid as meeting that definition - unless somehow carrying the meaning that one has an opening bid is information about suits other than clubs - I suppose it is, but then are all opening bids "conventional." And to be honest, I think my main feeling here is that there's a difference between being "natural" for purposes of whether artificial overcalls are allowed and being "natural" for other purposes (whatever they might be - obviously I haven't thought this out very completely). I just have a difficult time understanding why BSC bids should be allowed if 1♣ promises 3 but not if 1♣ might be 2. I'm not sure whether I would feel differently if "natural" were being used for another reason (is it? if so, what?). One of the posts in the thread Richard linked to suggested that a Precision 2♣ bid is conventional. I don't see why that would be so - after all, it carries no meaning other than about clubs. So perhaps I just don't really understand the meaning of "conventional" (and thus, for WBF purposes, "natural").

I agree that the WBF Systems Policy defines "natural" as "not conventional" - when I said that to me it seemed as if the 2+ non-forcing, no strong option, club was somewhere in between, I meant that I could see how some people could think it is natural and some could think it is conventional, and therefore the WBF Systems Committee might come down either way on whether Brown Sticker-like overcalls are permitted over it. There's obviously a whole spectrum of possible 1♣ openings, with a 1♣ bid in a 4 card Major, bid Majors first, system being the most "natural" and a 1♣ opening in a Strong Club system being the most conventional. There are plenty of bids along that spectrum - 1♣ in a 5 card Major, longer minor system, 1♣ in a 5 card Major, 4 card diamond system, 1♣ in a 5 card Major, unbalanced diamond system, 1♣ in a Polish or Swedish system (forcing and includes strong hands but can also be minimum opening with clubs the longest suit). I've probably left some out. I don't know where the line between "natural" and "conventional" should be drawn on that spectrum, although I've been told by someone who should know that the WBF draws it just before the Polish/Swedish club. At any rate, I've asked, with reference to Shanghai, so I guess I'll know the "official WBF policy" soon. I don't think the Laws Commission is going to change the definition of "convention," not because it's a good one but because it's really not possible to write a good one.

Oops, sorry - I just skimmed through the Venice Cup convention cards, didn't really pay attention to the names :rolleyes:. I think "holo bolo" is the name given to the 1-level ambiguous overcalls that Brink-Drijver use over a semi-natural 1♣ opening. They are clearly Brown Sticker if used over a natural opening bid, because they are weak and do not promise length in a known suit.

I'm sure you'll understand if I ask for a ruling on this from someone other than you. The WBF rules are not clear on this point, turning on whether a 1♣ opening that is non-forcing, either long clubs or a balanced hand which may have 2 clubs, is "natural" or "conventional" - I think it's somewhere in between, and therefore these unusual overcalls might be considered BS or might not. That these methods are allowed in the Netherlands, where they're apparently moderately common, does not mean that they are necessarily allowed in WBF events. By the way, I find it surprising that holo bolo is allowed in the Netherlands without advance notice. I'm pretty sophisticated, but when one of the Netherlands pairs made one of their ambiguous 1-level overcalls against me, I had no idea how to deal with it. I doubt your "zillions of simple club players" would do better.

The third pair is in the Venice Cup - Havas-Travers. Probably I wasn't clear that it was 3 pairs total in both events :) The third Netherlands pair is Bakkeren-Bertens, who don't play any BS conventions. It's an interesting question whether the various overcalls are BS if they are made over a 1♣ bid that can be only 2 cards but is not forcing. The BS overcall rules say they apply over a "natural" opening bid. Natural is defined as "a call or play that is not a convention (as defined in the Laws)" and the Laws define a convention as a "call that, by partnership agreement, conveys a meaning other than willingness to play in the denomination named (or in the last denomination named), or high card strength or length (3 cards or more) there." Is a non-forcing 1 ♣ bid that might be made on a 2 card suit in certain balanced hands a "convention" under that definition? Since one of the pairs on "my" team (USA1) plays that sort of 1♣, I suspect I'll find out :)

It's interesting that with Brown Sticker bids allowed only in the KO phase of the Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cup, there are only 3 pairs in those two events who have chosen to play any BS bids. I don't know whether that's because of the additional effort required to play different systems in the RR and KO, or because the biggest gain from BS methods has always been in the RR where opponents had less opportunity to familiarize themselves with the methods and work out defenses. At any rate, for anyone who's interested, the following are the methods being used: 2♥ "multi" - weak with either 6+ hearts or 5+ spades (I wonder how many more spade hands than heart hands they'll have with this definition?). (Bermuda Bowl - Brink-Drijver - Netherlands) (1m)-2♥ & 3♥ "multi" - weak with either hearts or spades (no differentiation on length for the overcall). (Bermuda Bowl - Brink-Drijver and DeWijs-Muller) (1 ♣)-1♦ = Diamonds or both Majors (Brink-Drijver) (1m)-1♥ = Spades or (4 hearts + minor) (Brink- Drijver and DeWijs-Muller) (1m)-1♠ = Hearts or (4 spades + minor) (Brink-Drijver and DeWijs-Muller) (1♣)-2♣ = Weak, clubs or diamonds (Brink-Drijver) (1m)-2 ♠ = Intermediate, clubs or diamonds (Brink-Drijver) (1m)-2NT = Weak, clubs or hearts (Brink-Drijver) Most of these are only NV, and the Conditions of Contest allow only 3 BS conventions per pair, so they will probably not be playing all of them in Shanghai. In the Venice Cup, Havas-Travers (Australia) have kept 2NT = Rank from Crash opening 2 bids.

Another request for "show played cards" - Actually, since many people will be using the BBOTV option to kibitz, not to play, and surely some of them will be relatively unsophisticated, I'd vote for "show played cards" to be the default. :)

Chip and I are somewhere in between you and Eric & Beverly - we try to keep the defenses, especially those that must be memorized, reasonably short, although our BS defenses are fairly long. For instance, our defense to 2♥ = weak in spades or (hearts + minor) is 4 pages long, as compared to your 3 lines. That's partly because we write out all the follow ups carefully so people can find them at the table, partly because the defense is more complicated. That method seems to have disappeared, by the way. Our position is a little different from Eric & Beverly's on dissemination of the defenses, however - we tend to give them to anyone who wants them, because (to be honest) we'd like to see the BS methods go away and the better the available defenses are the sooner they're going to disappear :D

2♥ multi actually came up a few years ago (the Norwegians in the Paris Bermuda Bowl played it). The bid was allowed, obviously as a Brown Sticker bid. It came up once in the finals, I think during the segment where the USA team was having its huge comeback against Norway - I'm too lazy to go find the hand, but my best recollection is that the ambiguity about the Major allowed the US pair to bid and make 3NT when the Norwegian pair didn't after a natural 2M opening - not a disadvantage you'd expect for what is clearly an extremely weird method. In preparing defenses to the 2♥, 3♥ and (1m)-2♥ bids (all of them showing one Major, weak), our worst problem was not knowing how often the bid would be passed and also how often 2♥-DBL would be passed and what that Pass would mean. That was relevant both to help us decide with what hands we could afford to pass and DBL also to help us figure out what hand the opener would have. After all, if responer is going to bid with some random balanced hand with 3-2 in the Majors or something of the sort, the 2♥ opener would have to be prepared to play 3♥. If responder was going to pass on random balanced hands with equal majors, the 2♥ opener wouldn't be eager to open it with a good spade preempt. We never got very good responses to lots of questions about what responder would do with specific hands. The method seems not to have withstood the test of time, so hopefully we won't have to confront it again. 2♣ multi, which doesn't have the problems of 2♥ and is "obviously" easier to defend against than 2♦ was actually really hard to devise a defense for. I guess that's because of course no-one can resist all the extra bids they give you, so the defense can be much more complex than that to 2♦ multi. That opening also doesn't seem to have withstood the test of time, so I haven't looked at the defense in some time, but I know that it took Chip and Eric ages to come up with it and it was pages and pages and pages long. Jan, about to start reviewing convention cards for Shanghai to see what new and imaginative things people have come up with this year :D

In poker I think they use cameras (or maybe some sort of reader on the table) to show an upside down card. I'm not sure whether that would work for the Vugraph situation. At the moment at least, I don't think we can have a card reader built into the table, so we're talking about a webcam or something of the sort that's attached to the screen and points at where the cards are played? That would certainly help with some things - for instance, the reason I sometimes can't see Jeff Meckstroth's cards is that he often holds them at an angle to the table so they're visible to those in front of him but not to the person sitting behind him (and since his usual preferred position is South, the VG operator is behind him). So a webcam aimed at where his cards are played would help there. It might also help with the Sontags of the world, who play their cards very quickly - but that would need some operator intervention, I think, to go back and pause on the moment the card is visible. For the players who tend to hold their hands over the played card, nothing will help (I think), although maybe being able to go back to the moment the card is played would. But since one of the problems is time - you can't take the time to "rewind" the webcam and pause it and still keep up with the next trick, I don't think it would be likely to work during play - perhaps it would allow the operator to go back and re-do a hand at the end of the session though. For the issue that started this thread - very fast play and claims, there's probably nothing that will help. I don't know enough about the technology of webcams to know whether an inexpensive and simple one would solve some of the problems. But I promise to add it to my long list of "things I need to investigate." :P

You're right, I should have been alert enough to say that :). In actual fact, I don't use GIB often enough to have "green cards" instantly trigger the image of a hand where one has invoked GIB's double dummy analysis, so it took me a while to figure out what he meant.

Sorry: I know this is snarky, but I can't resist From the sounds of things, you're using 1♣ - (P) - 1♦ as showing 4+ Hearts (potentially in Walsh style where you could have a longer minor) In a similar vein 1♣ - (P) - 1♥ shows 4+ Spades, could have a longer minor I assume that 1♣ - (P) - 1♠ shows an unbalanced hand with Diamonds Whats your suggested defense to these nefarious transfer responses? You see, I'm having an amazing amount of trouble getting defenses approved to some transfer opening bids that look to be very similar. It would be very helpful to understand the wonderously simple defense that you have available to these transfer responses. Who knows. It might even help me get a submission through the Conventions Committee. This has been discussed before, I think Jan has even posted the two possible defenses she suggests if opponents ask. Richard doesn't really want to know what defense I recommend against a transfer response. He wants to complain that the Midchart does not require an approved defense for transfer responses but does require one for transfer opening bids, right, Richard? You almost sucked me in with this, but I think I'll just leave it alone - there are differences and similarities. Luckily for me, one ACBL committee I haven't ever served on is Competitions and Conventions, so I didn't make the rules. I'm not even sure why some members of C&C are so opposed to transfer opening bids. Oh, and don't assume things - our 1♠ response doesn't promise diamonds, just a hand worth a response that doesn't have a 4-card Major and doesn't fit into other bids. It's very often a balanced hand that wants to be able to pass opener's 1NT rebid, sometimes a decent hand with diamonds, sometimes both minors.

As an operator, I almost always ask for confirmation of the number of tricks claimed when the hand is over. Sometimes I can be pretty sure I know, but other times I can't and since we don't want to have to change the score in the movie (that loses the bidding and play records, in case you didn't know), it's important to make the claim properly. It's also important not to communicate when we (operator or commentators) disagree with the claim, btw, that's not appropriate, so asking always is better than asking only when the claim seems wrong. Also, I don't think the players mind being asked how many tricks were claimed, since that question comes when they are in between hands. OTOH, I virtually never ask to see a card that has been played, although I have asked some of the most egregious card-hiders to please try to place their cards on the table so I can see them (leading Jeff Meckstroth to say "but you can see the cards on the computer in front of you, why do you have to see what I'm playing?" in all seriousness - when I said that the computer told me which cards started in his hand, not which ones were currently there, everyone laughed). After that, Jeff did try to do a better job of playing his cards, but of course his primary concern was playing bridge, not letting me report what had been played. I think that's fairly typical of players - they don't want to make life difficult for the Vugraph operator, but they don't want to be distracted from the hand being played either. For some, handing over the notes about bidding is a distraction, for others it isn't. Some tend to hunch over the table and leave their hand on the cards they've played, some play the cards and then lean back. Some play very fast, some take their time. We can't really expect them to change their habits significantly for the benefit of the Vugraph audience, although we can ask for some clarifications.

Actually, what Chip has said is that he would "consider" switching to a STR NT system, not because it's inherently better, but because there has been more development of "gadgets" (for want of a better word) in the STR NT context. For instance, support doubles don't work as well with weak NTs as with STR. Ditto good/bad 2NT. I think there are some others but I have forgotten what. My opinion is that the main advantage we get from playing weak nt's is when we don't open one. We get an extra round (sometimes two because we use transfer responses to 1♣) of bidding after 1m on our STR NT hands, and that often helps us find a better contract. And I think usually it's better to have opened a 5 card Major 1M than 1NT with 15-17. I know that most STR NT'ers open 1NT with 5332 and a 5 card Major, but I think that's not because it's better but because opening 1M with too wide a range is worse, if that makes any sense. One of the things I like about weak NTs is that I don't have to judge whether a particular 5332 should open 1M or 1NT - I just open 1M unless it's a very awkward pattern (2533 without a strong 3 card minor).

Hand 2 obviously amused my husband, because it was one of only two hands from the LMP he mentioned to me, and he brought it up twice, both times saying "you hold ♠AK73 ♥J10 ♦Q5 ♣KQJ96 and your partner opens 2C, what do you bid?" I suggested a very short auction (7NT) the first time, but he convinced me that partner might have some very shaped hand with a void and we could be off an ace. In fact, Zia tried 2D (waiting!)-2H-2NT-3D-3H-3NT-4S(RKCB hearts, just to make sure!)-5C(1 or 4)-7NT. Chip spent the flight home annotating the hand records from the LMP, so if anyone wants to know what the winners did on a board, just ask :D