bluejak

No. For many years now it has been completely legal to open 1NT with a singleton, and when announcing came in it was made part of the announcement. But the pairs who take advantage of this are few and far between. I play 1NT may have a singleton honour in a minor with my regular partner, and over the weekend I ran into a pair that have solved some rebid problems by allowing a 4=4=4=1 hand [that's specific] into a 1NT opening. I have a friend who I believe plays that it may include a singleton with his former regular partner but I have no idea whether there are any constraints. But these are few and far between. It would be quite normal to play a whole tournament in England and not meet anyone who allows a singleton in 1NT.

What is hasn't got! :) Doesn't it just mean a link to something on the web, eg: St Louis bulletin 9 You could link to the start of chapters from the Contents, and to individual items from the index, for example, if it was a Law book.

Pretty much. But not as strongly: the one exception has an upside and a downside. The downside is that exceptions weaken the whole structure.

Cannot see any illegality. Why? He disclosed his partner's memory, did he not? He raised to game with a 100% automatic raise to game. What on earth did he expect the TD to do? He told them the system: what is suspicious about it? The rule that forbids fielding a misbid is called Law 40. Unfortunately, and I expect the problem will continue, the term fielding in England means "allowing illegally for". In my time on RGB I have found that a small minority in England, and a large proportion elsewhere, use fielding to mean "allowing for". It would help, as I have asked before, if we could use the English version since it has been defined, and I think is the majority use world-wide, though possibly not by much. If East allowed for West to have misbid, there are two possibilities: He has concealed his implicit agreement that West gets it wrong, so what he is doing is illegal, ie he has fielded a misbid. He has disclosed his implicit agreement that West gets it wrong, so what he is doing is legal, ie he has not fielded a misbid. This is the latter case.

Style is disclosable. Agreeing to have a go when 30 down is adjusting your style and thus disclosable. However, team agreements are not covered by the Laws. Despite what some people have argued, that is an important distinction. So I do not believe that you are required to tell your current opponents about your team-mates's style.

As someone else has pointed out, the regulation does not say it is at least Amber, just that it usually is, ie it is something worth looking at carefully. But don't confuse that with the idea that something unfair has happened: coincidences occur. That is the whole problem: people ignore the word "unlikely" and read it as "impossible". If there are two SID deaths it could be because of genetic problems, but it could be a coincidence. Yet again, I agree they are unlikely, but that does not mean they do not happen. The sad thing is that the RoC is quite a good idea if used correctly. But, of course, it wasn't. Similar to the EBU approach of normally Amber, the RoC should say that if two events happen in juxtaposition that seem pretty unlikely, a serious investigation should be made rather than just assume it is coincidence. But that does not mean that coincidences do not occur nor that the conclusion of such investigation should not be "no worries". :ph34r: Many years ago, in New York, a man got into a car, and was pretty speedily arrested by the police and charged with stealing it. He protested his innocence, claiming it was his car. The police investigated and found that it was not his car. However, they also found out that his car was parked a little further down the street, it was the same make and colour, the same key fitted both cars, and owing to an error on the part of the New York licensing authorities, it had the same registration number. Now that's what I call a coincidence: and most people would call it anything from wildly unlikely to impossible. But it happened.

That's about to change. But certainly five card suits are not alertable. Ooh, I don't think so. As with screens, you alert rather more, because there are no UI problems. Furthermore, you can put the explanation in straight away, can you not, without waiting to be asked? :ph34r: It is a pity that people decide to mis-spell for no obvious reason. I suppose they are so used to SAYC and so on. But while the Acol system was named after the club which was named after the road, it is less clear that the road was named after the village in Kent, or that it has any connection.

It clearly wasn't a claim. We have lots of case Law, including Edgar Kaplan playing a grand slam, to say that informational comments by declarer do not consitute claims per se. I was going to write lots of other stuff, but realised it had been done for me. Exactly - except that I might have weighted the number of tricks. He might have defended the same way, for example! Exactly.

2♠. Pass. Yes. Sorry, I am reading this about three weeks later! I don't agree, and am surprised others agree. Let's extrapolate from your figures. Let's guesstimate what actions people consider. If 3/20 pass then I think we can safely say that at least three more will consider pass. So 30% consider pass, of whom some [15%] actually choose pass. Those figures are well over the numbers required for an LA, which are roughly 20% and 5%. So pass is an LA, not even close. Double? If one chose it, maybe one more considered it. So 10% and 5%: that's not an LA. First, the poll clearly does suggest that pass is an LA. Second, even if it doesn't, the fact that partner has shown values suggests 2♠ over pass, not the reverse. So to give a PP for choosing pass would be wildly inappropriate. The only time a PP is appropriate is when there is no question that partner made UI available, and the player is experienced enough and advanced enough to have some idea of UI rules, and the action chosen is one that is not just illegal but everyone who understood UI rules would realise was illegal

Who said anything about "equitable"? The question is what is right per the Laws. It is not a TD's job to make Laws up. So you know geography? Does that make you unusual? :)

For most people in England, they turn their card up when partner tells them to. This would obviate problems like this one. It always seems unfortunate when a player leads face down, partner does nothing, and eventually they turn it up. Apart from problems like the one in the OP, it just seems so rude.

Written bidding works quite well. Too many people seem to want other jurisdictions to follow their own. You should not feel mean, Chris, because a player has got a bad result through a mistake. It happens all the time, but for some reason people seem to think they should recover from mistakes to do with the Laws. The would not ask for you to adjust if they forgot their own system, would they?

No. Deal with him using Law 23. If a player shows his hand knowing it may give him an advantage, he's committing an offence. Custom & practice decides much of what we do. Deviations from that are irregularities.

My initial reaction is that this communication from my friend Johnathan is bad for the game. As a member of the BoD he really should know better. It is a judgement decision, not completely clear. Of course there have been far worse decisions. All he really means is he thinks it was the wrong decision. If it had been the worst ever decision there would have been far fewer posts because it would have been obvious with little to say. Last year I had a pretty horrible experience when I appealed an NABC ruling. It was not terribly important, but we thought it worth taking to appeal. They spoke to us, and then told us it would be heard "immediately". The TD then went away. 70 minutes later we gave up. I then made the mistake of telling an ACBL TD we wished to withdraw our appeal. He was extremely rude, had a complete go at me, and threatened me with me being dragged in front of the Chief TD. He is quite a senior TD, but the only one I have run into in whom I have no trust whatever. He reduced me and my partner to a terrible state and enjoyed himself immensely. Even my partner's husband, who does not play bridge, had run into this TD in the lift and he had been rude to my partner's husband. What is the point of this story? When I first got involved in ACBL appeals they were organised by Linda Trent. After she stopped doing it, no-one seems to have the job of Secretary. Ok, I exaggerate, sometimes there is someone there, but on other occasions there is not. During our 70 minute wait there was no-one to speak to to find out how long it would be. Basically, there is often no organisation amongst the appeals. While it is no more than a contributing factor, the memories of this appeal is some part of the reason I did not visit the ACBL last year and will not this year. They need an Appeals Secretary. I am not surprised that the appeal referred to here was held at 4.00: they probably had not made suitable arrangements and were running round trying to find people. There is a principle outside North America and Norway that there is no communication across the screen during a hand. This seems eminently sensible, even if it has one disadvantage. So it is far from clear that the Norwegian/ACBL approach is better. There are quite a few posts on differing subjects over the years which look at one item and assume it is wrong, without looking at the overall picture. This is common when discussing individual alerting, where individual items often look poor, but they are necessary to make an overall working structure. Similarly here, the idea of no communication across a screen is good: that there is one item where it seems less than best: that does not make the principle wrong. I notice with interest the fact that both the Norwegians and the North Americans expect players to talk to the partners before the screen is raised. Do they provide phones?

Over many many years there has been a shift in decision making. Sixty years ago it was to rule against the offending side and let the AC sort it out. Slowly it has moved more and more towards good TD rulings. This seems an obvious further step in that direction - once you really trust TD rulings ACs become redundant. No "of course" about it: I am not sure you are even right. Sounds reasonable, but I am never sure it is true. If ACs had never been invented, people would take rulings, both good and bad, and complain about them. At club level TDs may be poor, so let us suppose their rulings are 60% correct. ACs will not be wonderful, with little idea of the Laws or what they should be doing. So how correct will their decisions be? 65%? 70%? There is a lot of fuss and wasted time in appeals. I do not believe that they are justified and as soon as they consigned to history, the better. [sorry, Nigel, for not following the EBU line: I shall try harder in future. :lol: ] An AC can recommend a TD to overturn his ruling on a point of Law or Regulation. The EBU considers he should normally do so unless he can demonstrate to the AC why he is right and they are wrong. There is no "simple" answer, certainly not the MP/VP solution. Shortly I shall be directing the Schapiro Spring 4s. There have been several tense appeals when the final score is 2 imps to one side, and the side being eliminated will appeal anything it can think of. Do you think that the chance of losing imps matters? Everyone seems to think one way is best: I don't. The possibilities seem to me to be: 1 Money deposits, as in the EBU. The obvious disadvantage is that some people can afford them much more than others: no sponsor at the Schapiro Spring 4s is going to let a £30 deposit put him off appealing. But a team of four juniors in a local EBU event might. The advantage is that no-one, even the millionaires, likes losing money. 2 PPs, as in the ABF. The obvious disadvantage is that if it does not matter, as above, it does not stop meritless appeals at all. The advantage is that in some cases it might be critical and thus dissuade. 3 AWMWs, as in the ACBL. The obvious disadvantage is that they don't seem to work! No-one in the ACBL has ever had any further action from getting them. The advantage might be that they are working: no-one has ever had further action because they are not pushing meritless appeals. 4 Master points, tried nowhere. The obvious disadvantage is that lots of people don't care about them. The advantage is that many people do care! I have made two suggestions over the years: no-one liked either! 1 Choice. Give the AC a choice of which of the above four to apply. But the AC might not know, so it is probably a bad idea. 2 Package. This is the one I like! Give them a package of disincentives: so in the EBU if an appeal is deemed frivolous, a team or pair will lose £15 and 1 VP/6 imps/20% of a top and a National Master Point and gain an AWMW. :)

Why? Anyway, aren't you English? The English term is "White", "All White" is an Americanism. If you went to work on an egg, and it wouldn't start, what would you do? Pull the yolk out and it will be all white. :) [i think you may have to be of a certain age to understand that.]

Not necessarily. If bidding the grand can gain 1 VP or lose 10 VPs, you may find that others do not consider bidding the grand. The state of the match is relevant. Of course if bidding the grand is an LA and partner's actions have suggested not, you must bid it. But .... Maybe so, but bridge is a game of odds, and the state of the match might easily affect those odds, even if you could be wrong [see below :D ]. This reminds me of a match I played with John Armstrong as partner against the top team in North-West England [at that time] of Endicott-Hill-Churney-Reveley. John and I bid a slam off two aces followed by a grand off two aces [neither made], missed two games, and went off in a cold game. On the last board Endicott-Hill had a long and complicated sequence. Eventually Grattan had to decide whether to bid six or seven. A glance at his score-card convinced him and he settled for six - and lost the match! What he said to Reveley-Churney about their card doesn't bear repeating! :P

"hesitationwood" is an ugly and old-fashioned name. Nowadays we call it "BITwood" [copyright notice attached].

In several posts over the years I have suggested this for IBs. Many IBs make little difference anyway. At top level TDs are used to dealing with UI. In clubs they ignore UI matters. I think it would work. Calls out of turn disrupt in a much more meaningful way, and I think this rule just means that people who cannot even be bothered to call in turn escape punishment. I dislike this idea. Absolutely. There is too much pressure these days to allow rule-breakers not to suffer. Why should they not spoil the game for others and get away unpunished?

Not true. While a lot of the EBU members who contribute are neither, more to the point administrators and TDs have a perfect right to speak their mind and often do, whether it is pro or anti- the EBU position. Furthermore, in my case, I play a lot of bridge, probably more than almost anyone else here, and in many different jurisdictions. So I see things from the players' point of view in many places. Where I disagree with the EBU I am happy to say so: who do you think introduced Announcements to England from the ACBL and South Africa? They are now used in four-fifths of the British Isles. Even when I played in Scotland a month ago we agreed to announce our no-trump openings at a few tables where opponents wished us to do so. The reason why I agree with the EBU's position on alerting over yours is because I am quite sure you are completely wrong, not because I am unwilling to rock the boat. Not a chance. Ok, for lesser players, simpler and clearer, for example "It is perfectly ok to cheat by using any method of communication between partners you like", but as pointed out several times, global, not a chance. Of course they do, because they do not see the problem. Then, when I play in Scotland, and the bidding goes 1♠ (2♥) dbl they feel something is wrong when they later discover that the double shows clubs, or 1♣ (1♦) dbl when they discover I have shown four hearts. The reason why regulations designed for top level players behind screens work in Scottish clubs is primarily because few people play much complicated, but players there do suffer agaisnt pairs that do. Then they probably complain at the methods or the people, not the bad alerting regulations.

I would not. We tell players what to do in a simple way, along the lines of "If your partner misdescribes your agreed system you must correct, but if he describes it correctly you do not correct it. In neither case is the contents of your hand relevant." Now you say that in a specific rather murky situation you would 'expect' a player not to follow the advice. Why not? This is just wrong. The majority of players never have system notes. That does not mean they should be automatically ruled against. It is up to the TD (or AC) to decide what evidence is adequate in any specific situation. :ph34r: I think the comments made here suggesting a bias on the part of the TD are unfair and do not follow from the description of facts. :ph34r: When the player who had "shown" both majors removed 2♥ to 2♠ did the OP really think he had both majors?

Many many discussions here, on RGB, on BLML, and in emails I have dealt with over the years have proved this to be quite untrue. Accepting a Jacoby transfer is considered a willingness to play in that suit by a large number of very voluble people, and is considered not as a willingness to play but as accepting an instruction by a similarly large number of very voluble people. The OB is a work of reference, like the telephone directory. The suggestion that its main purpose should be to make it easy to read seems very strange to me. It's main purpose should be to provide a framework for the game in this country, which it does pretty well, especially when compared with similar documents elsewhere. :ph34r: I have skimmed through a lot of stuff written here on alerting. I wonder whether some of the posters really play bridge at all. Is the alerting of doubles in England perfect? No. Is it adequate? Yes. Does it suffer from major defects? No. Is it better than the alerting of doubles in, for example, Scotland? Yes, considerably. Do we need to change it because some people find some odd problems? No. Should we adopt Nigel's ideas for world-wide alerting? No. Why not? Because people would hate them, especially being forced to use bad regulations designed for different environments. The main effect of adopting Nigel's ideas would be to reduce the numbers of people who bother with regulations and the number of people who play bridge.

Messy certainly. But if partner uses RKCB and signs off slowly then it is difficult to believe that pass is not an LA. Case law from the ACBL has determined (not unreasonably, in my view) that having miscounted the number of aces/controls does not stop pass being an LA because the BIT has suggested looking at your bidding again. I am never very impressed by arguments that partner "must" have a certain number of aces/controls to have used Blackwood because experience shows that sometimes he doesn't and logic suggests hands with few aces but lots of second round controls are perfect for Blackwood.

It is all very well to pretend you meant something different and reasonable but I have no doubt that if you had not meant to be offensive you would have expressed it differently. A large number of people in England have spent a long time formulating regulations as they see best, and seeing and considering the failure of regulations in other jurisdictions is part of that consideration. Another part of that consideration, often ignored by people from other jurisdictions commenting on English regulations, is that they have seen the effect on the English game of earlier and different regulations. Furthermore they know the English game, and have looked at its particular happenings and problems, another point often ignored by foreign commentators who assume the English game is exactly the same as their own. If they have decided to make the regulations longer that is because they believe it right to do so. Disagreeing with that principle is fine: doing so by suggesting that they are longer "because they get paid for every letter they wrote" is not. Not only is that offensive, it was clearly intended to be.

Partner passes a forcing bid? He may not have psyched, but it is reasonable to assume he did, and thus implies no partnership understanding. Green: no fielding.