DrTodd13

No, if anything, the game you are playing now is fundamentally not bridge. Bridge intends to have you listen to the opponents bidding and adapt to it. You are just used to playing a crippled version of the game that allows you to not think and you've gotten used to it.

"x" essentially means "double-sharp" and is the equivalent of two semi-tones above about printed note. So "xF" is the same as "G." After a note is marked as "x", it remains that way for the rest of the measure unless marked otherwise. The "natural #" marking is just saying that the note goes back to one-sharp rather than a double-sharp. Check out the wikipedia page on music notation which should answer many of your questions.

I did say what money is. It is anything that people agree is a common unit of exchange. Money expresses the value of everything, not just labor. I support this definition the same way every definition works. It is the way that people have agreed to define the term. My contention is that as soon as you don't have a 100% reserve gold standard then the benefit of the gold standard starts to go away. So, while technically there was small amount of gold backing to our currency until 1971, that is looking at it at a shallow level. The system in 1971 much more resembled the current system in terms of restraint on money creation than it does 1910 when, IIRC, we had 100% gold backed currency. To be clear, I'm not in favor of a government run monopoly on money whether that is fiat or gold-backed. However, if money must be solely created by governments then I think that gold is better that fiat. I would support anybody being able to issue currency backed by whatever they desire and to have free trade in those currencies.

Money doesn't even represent labor any more than it represents anything else. It isn't fair to say the great depression occurred during the gold standard because this was also during the era of the FED and they had some bizarre fractional reserve gold system where they kept decreasing the fractional reserve requirement. So, in essence, they were inflating the money supply and when tough times hit they contracted it. The double whammy. They now think they learned their lesson and so rather than contract now they want to inflate like crazy.

Money is common unit of exchange. Labor isn't money. People trade labor for money. If you keep increasing productive effort but keep the money supply constant then either the velocity of money will increase or prices will fall. These falling prices are not deflation. Keep velocity constant and money supply constant and prices will fall. That includes the price for labor. So, your wages fall by 10% but you are no worse off because the prices of everything else has also fallen 10%. If you have any savings then you are even better off because effectively the value of your savings keeps increasing as overall prices fall due to increased productivity. This is one of the huge differences between the Austrian school and the Keynesian school. Keynesians would say that wages resist falling and that you perpetually stay at a state of decreased output until wages rise to previous levels. Austrians would say that wages will fall and that full output is again quickly reached. For those born in the fiat money era, they are so accustomed to everything becoming more expensive then yes, wages will be somewhat sticky but, imo, only temporarily so. It would take some re-education about how an economy functions based on commodity money but it is possible and would be beneficial for the average person.

You can say it needs to expand until you are blue in the face but that doesn't make it so. The only difficult thing about gold not allowing the money supply to expand is for governments and bankers who then have a much more difficult time stealing from you. We had a thriving economy while we were on the gold standard and from what I've read there is no reason it couldn't be so again. While it is generally true that a fixed supply and more people results in higher demand for money, so what? The cost of money goes up like anything else would. Higher interest rates are not a bad thing!!! Another lower than the natural interest rate spurs mal-investment which when it comes to an end equals misery for everyone. How can you be in favor of natural supply and demand for everything else but not for money?

How can you say these things after admitting you haven't studied the topic? You've bought into the propaganda of the banking elites who like the current system because it enriches them at your expense. There is absolutely no proof, in my informed but amateur opinion, that inflation is necessary for a healthy economy. Say it as many times as you want but no one should be swayed by your economic fearmongering without at least some evidence. The following is the classic treatise on the topic: Von Mises: Theory of Money and Credit

I have read a lot of materials on this subject and I am convinced that there is no "optimal" amount of money, even relative to the current amount. I'm of the Austrian school and many disagree with their conclusions but it isn't just about "good for the economy" for me, it is also about ethics and a system built around consistently stealing 2 to 3% of people's money per year is not ethical and never acceptable even if it produced utopia. Al...when you say to create money at the same rate as the creation of value, do you mean increase it by an amount equal to GDP? The total amount of US dollars is around 11 trillion. US GDP is around 14 trillion. That sounds like 127% inflation to me. Even if you assume that "creation of value" is just the average profit from that 14 trillion then profit would be around 1.26 trillion (historical 9% rate of profit) which is still like 11.4% inflation.

Why? What's the proof?

Well, I think that 4 or even 5% is an unnaturally low interest rate. I don't care what the FED rate is because that is even more insanely low or the spread. Historically, from what I am aware of, a non-manipulated interest rate is typically quite a bit higher than 5%. In my opinion, any inflation is evil...not just high inflation.

You have to pay the piper sooner or later. Unnaturally low mortgage rates is part of what got us into this mess. Interest rates below their natural level necessarily create malinvestment. All malinvestment has to work its way out of the system at some point and it is never pleasant. The solution to this problem is not to create an even bigger bubble that also has to pop. Anything other than dismantling the FED and limiting the government's ability to modify the supply of money is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I don't think this is correct. The interest on the loan would be an asset but the principle of the loan simply vanishes into nothingness. If what you are suggesting were true then fractional reserve would have no power. Banks could loan to each other and then immediately pay it off and then count that as an asset on which to loan more against. They could do this in an automated fashion and increase their assets without limit. It is enough of a moral evil the way it is, please don't give them any more ideas.

Edited after I saw something I had missed. I agree though that HCP is an unacceptable way to judge "king below average hand." HCP is not mandated in the laws nor should it be in regulations or in determination of infraction.

As Helene pointed out, the government can't simply "print" money and reduce its debt because our government is essentially not in the business of "printing" money. The privilege has been handed to the Federal Reserve and their constituent banks and even they have to abide by an asset to money ratio. Where do they get the assets? Mainly treasury bills. So, to increase the money supply the government has to go into more debt, not less. Money is also created when banks loan out money and money is destroyed when loans are paid off. So, people now are paying off their loans but fewer new loans are being taken out. Therefore, the supply of money is going down and this is deflation. That is why they are desperately trying to drive down interest rates to get people to acquire more debt. I saw a paper written a few years back by a federal reserve board member but not the chairman. The paper argued that soon the standard method of spurring growth would fail because you can't lower interest rates lower than 0 (they are now at 0.25%!!!!) and so he was suggesting various ways of creating new money rather than new loans spurred on by lowering of the interest rate.

It isn't consistent we know but a lot of this is probably a snap judgment. If you describe it as you did where you needed a bid for the stuff left over then I would bet it would be classified as "all-purpose" and allowed. However, one would have trouble honestly describing a system where everything managed to get defined except intermediate hands with exactly 4 hearts. If you could it would probably be allowed. If you hear the description it sounds like that was one of the first bids defined, not the last. They wanted to allow various "catch-all" bids in 1♣ and 1♦. If you wanted to precisely define that term you probably couldn't do it but it is like pornography, they know a catch-all bid when they see it.

What am I proposing? I said I don't know much about EBU regs and only assumed something for the purpose of discussion. My comment was only about how it is unfair to compare them. Look if EBU wanted to allow everything, their convention card would say "Everything is allowed." You cannot therefore state "Well, EBU's convention card is only 3 words long, why can't ACBL's convention card be 3 words long." The goals of their convention cards are entirely different so comparing their length serves no purpose. So, it is impossible to have a meaningful discussion about the length of two convention cards unless the purpose of those writing them is to allow or disallow roughly the same things.

Hold on a minute. You make it sound as if there is no middle ground. Have you seen the Orange Book from the EBU? It certainly seems clearer to me than the ACBL convention charts. It's obviously not as short as they are, so I can understand the tradeoff, but it doesn't have to be "almost as long as the Laws". This is not a fair comparison. EBU and ACBL allow different things. I don't know much about EBU regs but assume that what EBU allows has a much more consistent underlying philosophy than what ACBL allows. Given this consistency you can write exhaustive and precise rules in a shorter amount of space. In contrast, sit down with an ACBL representative and try to write down everything that is allowed and then extract commonality so as to minimize the space required. The inconsistencies in the GCC are going to make this much tougher and will necessarily produce a longer set of rules. To the degree that the humans doing this will fail to find and extract commonality, the rules may either lengthen or shorten. They will do the former if the rules remain precise but non-coalesced and the latter if rules are coalesced incorrectly via imprecise language.

"All purpose" is not the same as "any purpose." Perhaps one could make an argument that they should mean the same thing but as far as I know, in this context, all purpose never did mean nor was it ever intended to mean "any purpose." A 1♣ showing exactly 4♥ would be a "specific purpose" bid. They would argue that "specific purpose" and "all purpose" are mutually exclusive.

I don't think the GCC being thinner than a phone book is any advantage to players. Those that don't play anything strange don't need to look at it. So who looks at it? The rare pair who want to play something maybe unusual, the director who has to determine if it is legal, and the people who decide what is legal and write the GCC. If the GCC were a phone book sized thing of allowable stuff then players could consult it and find if what they want to play is in there and if so write down the line number. If they can't determine if it is legal based on the document then what good is it to them? If the director is asked if it is legal, just give the line number. So, it seems that the people who benefit most from vague rules are the ones who would have to compile the laundry list if people didn't tolerate the vagueness. Ask Rick Beye and you don't like the answer? Just keep asking directors until you find one that has him own opinion of the vague "intention" and allows your convention and then keep playing it and quoting the director who said it was legal. But seriously, what is legal changing day by day based on who the director is is no way to run anything. Either go for the laundry list or confine yourself to a set of generic but precise regulations, which should dramatically reduce uncertainty as to something's legality. If you can't write something generic and precise then, imo, that is a hint that you shouldn't be trying to write it at all. Yes, you may end up banning stuff that people actually play in order to keep stuff you don't want out or vice versa but in my opinion that situation is preferable to many sections of the GCC that are so vague as to be useless.

The Lorenzo system (pass=8-11, 2x = 4+ cards, 0-7 points) looks like an attempt to make a bizare system which is not BSC/HUM (dunno if it's GCC though). Problem is, 8-11 points is very useless message to send to p. With hands in that range you want to say something about your shape. However, since you cannot play ferts it is difficult to require a pass to show something about your shape. I thought of something like pass = 4+ hearts, 0-15 points 1cl = 16+ 1di = 8-15 catchall 1he = exactly 3 hearts, 8-15 points 1sp = 5+ spades, 8-15 points 1NT = 5+m, 4 spades, 8-15 points 2cl/di = 4+ cards, 0-7 points 2he = 2-3 hearts, 4-5 spades, 0-7 points 2sp = 5+ spades, 0-7 points. I know that at least the 1♦ isn't GCC legal since it doesn't promise at least 10 points. Of course, there isn't anything in the GCC that says you must use A=4,K=3,Q=2,J=1 but try to make that argument and see how far it gets you. :) One thought I had of something way up the ridiculousness scale was to have 1♣ show an odd number of points and 1♦ show an even number of points above the GCC minimum of 10 of course. Again, I'm sure this would be ruled as not an "all purpose" bid. Although, once I did modify a two-way club system called Tangerine to attempt to be GCC legal and have 1♣ as 10-12bal or 16+. We played this in a tournament (it wasn't a good system) and there were some director calls but I don't remember if it was for the 1♣ bid or some other bid. I don't recall the two non-contiguous ranges to have been declared not GCC legal though. If two distinct ranges are GCC legal when why not 3 or 4 or 5?

I actually ran into a pair once playing a 7-8HCP balanced 2NT opening.

It does not necessarily follow the I would want to play the "best" system. Maybe I want to play the system that is most fun.

I always thought it would be fun to cobble together a GCC-legal system where for each bid you search around and find (or create) the most bizarre yet still legal use of each bid. The system would be utter crap holistically as results goes but would still be legal unless you run afoul of the generic "failure to try to get a good score" rule. A panel of judges gives a score for each system from 1 to 5, 5 being the most ridiculous system. Add to that the number of director calls you get when you actually try to use the system. 3 points for each director call where they rule your GCC-legal bid isn't GCC-legal. Add to that how many other pairs you manage to beat. Top cumulative amount is the winner.

What do you mean by constructive? It it supposed to be a bid that helps us reach a contract we can make? Then I suggest we ban sacrifices. Is it supposed to be a bid that helps us get the best possible score on a hand? Then I suggest we allow any bidding system that can mathematically be shown to accomplish this. I think people find that the more they try to define constructive and destructive the more illusive the definitions become. To me, the only thing I'm willing to call destructive is a bid that literally says nothing about the person's hand. However, I can't think of a single example of anyone ever trying to employ such a bid. The example many quote here is the 1♣ (precision) - mandatory 1♠ overcall auction but this "mandatory" was never really mandatory. There were definitions were 1♦, 1♥, 1N, etc. overcalls and so in essence they didn't use pass (or used it for something else) but instead made 1♠ the catchall. And catchalls do describe your hand by virtue of excluding all the other possible calls. If all bids besides 1♠ were undefined and never used and in effect all 1♠ meant was "I have 13 cards" then this is one thing I'd be willing to ban.

Also, don't forget that people may play 2♥ not because in and of itself it gives good results but it frees up an extra bid that you could use to mean something else to try to get better results. So, to be fair, when doing a performance comparison, you'd have to compare 2♥ and 2♠ as both weak 2's versus 2♥ (weak 2 in either major) and 2♠ (whatever else you dream up here). EDIT: I guess Adam basically wrote the same thing while I was doing a bunch of other stuff and typing this response.