DrTodd13

I was once called to testify at a Zero Tolerance ACBL hearing/appeal at a NABC about what I watched transpire at a neighboring table. The behavior was way way over the top though and not the little sorts of rudenesses that people get away with.

Examples are not good because then we define "special" by thousands and thousands of examples of what is special and what is not special. Nobody can be expected to know how to alert when it requires memorizing an encyclopedia of bids that somebody has arbitrarily decided are special or not. If you want such a system then fine but I would prefer one where there is an objective definition of special that is usable and that does not require "interpretation." The regulation is indeed poorly written and would seem to allow a SO from saying all you have to do is to say alert after 3 passes if some bid in the auction was unusual. It defeats the purpose of the regulation but it follows the letter of it. I don't believe it says anywhere that the SO must require timely disclosure, only eventual disclosure.

How about this instead: You MUST self alert: --opening bids differing significantly from SAYC by partnership agreement --bids that are artificial by partnership agreement --partnership agreements that a novice might not expect Adjustments will be given only if ALL of these are true: a] there is an infraction in alerting or explaining b] there is clear damage resulting directly from the infraction c] the circumstances reveal that the non-offenders could not have protected themselves by asking for further information (required in all doubtful cases) Any regulation that uses words like "differing significantly" or "that a novice might not expect" are just invitations for endless squables over what it means to differ significantly and what novices expect. I'm convinced that alert regs should be objective and not subjective. Conversely, the current rules on how to proceed when there is MI are fine and there is no need to restate what is required for an adjustment to be granted.

40B is not as clear as you seem to think it is. If we are to assume (as we should) that every word in a regulation has a meaning and adds something to the regulation and that no word in a regulation is superfluous then we have to ask what the word "special" means in the context of "special partnership understanding." Note, it does not say simply "partnership understanding" but "special partnership understanding." To say that this statement is "clear" is incredible because surely the word "special" is vague in the extreme. Let the debate begin about what is a special partnership understanding versus a regular partnership understanding...somebody please draw the line. Basically, this is the issue we've been debating all along. Alerts are supposed to capture special agreements and not regular agreements. So, I don't see how referring to 40B is helping us at all. What would you say the corollaries to law 40B are? Can I make a bid without alerting based on a non-special partnership understanding that the opponents might not understand all the details of? Case in point, 1m-1♥-1N either denying or possibly containing 4♠. Are both 1m-1♥-1♠ and 1m-1♥-1N alertable because we know that people play it both ways and therefore someone might not understand the bid or should neither of these bids be alertable. My view is that neither of these are special understandings (instead they are a matter of style) and that neither should be alerted. If you are going to argue that both are alertable then I do think you are going down the road to defining every partnership understanding as a special partnership understanding since many pairs will play sequences differently. I'm not ignoring any rule. I am trying to come up with a non-vague substitute for the term "special" so that we can all know what we should alert. Ben is a bright guy with lots of insight so I was hoping he'd provide us with a workable definition of special. Correct me if I'm wrong but all I've seen so far are examples and not definitions.

They have a right to know your agreement but that is not the same as saying that you must alert it. Every bid you make is by agreement but every bid should not be alertable. If they want to know your specific agreements about a certain natural bid then they can ask you. The purpose of alerting is to tell them it has an unusual or unexpected meaning, not to divulge detailed agreements. Let me be clear, a practice where you explained every bid that you made would be an internally consistent (explanation, not alert) system and would be in agreement with the principle of full disclosure but would be more burdensome than only alerting things that aren't natural. What I was trying to suggest to you is that your position on what is alertable does not appear to be consistent in that I can't imagine a rule that would demand I alert things like this 2♥ bid but didn't at the same time demand I alert a host of other bids just because I deny holding certain other hand characteristics. I think that any such rule you did try to write would just muddy the waters and we'd be back to the same point of arguing over what was alertable and what isn't.

I think alerting 2♥ in that auction is going too far. If you extend this principle to its ultimate conclusion then every bid is alertable because it denies the ability to make any of the other bids that were available. If you still feel strongly about it, I'd like you to suggest how you would word the defintion of a "natural bid" that I suggested in David's other thread to demand that we alert 2♥ in this sequence.

According to David's criteria, the ACBL alert regs fail every single point. As demonstrated, it is hard enough to define what natural means let alone the long list of what to alert and what not to alert. If you want people to read the rules and follow them then you're going to have to make them clear and short and repeat them over and over until people get them. Making them read ACBL regs is a non-starter. As for the definition of natural, how about "a bid is natural if it is 1) an offer to play in the specified strain, 2) does not promise length or shortness in any specified or unspecified outside suit, and 3) is forcing if this is a new suit by an unpassed hand responder or non-forcing otherwise."

Why can't we all just agree to alert all artificial bids, no exceptions. Not alerting transfers is a big mistake. This makes people who play 1N-2M, especially over a weak NT, have to alert a natural bid. Even as it is, I think alerting everything that isn't natural is the way to go but we need to continue to pester Fred to improve the alerting system so that common alerts can be saved and maybe even do something like automatically suggesting that the bid be alerted and bringing up the most likely explanation.

In these 2♦ systems with 18-20 bal, I always wonder what 1m-1Z-2N is. What do you intend to use it for?

Normally, 2♠ would be invite+ with ♥ support. In this case, the guy appears to be psyching that bid hoping to be able to play 4♥ undoubled. This isn't exactly a gross misrepresentation of your hand, should NS be penalized for am illegal psyche? ;) It isn't a gross misrepresentation of length but it is a gross misrepresentation of strength. Whether it is a psyche or not doesn't matter. I still don't penalize them. I don't even agree that there is anything called an "illegal psyche." I call any rule that attempts to prohibit certain psyches as illegal itself.

Normally, 2♠ would be invite+ with ♥ support. In this case, the guy appears to be psyching that bid hoping to be able to play 4♥ undoubled.

In my opinion, asking people to alert based on what they think their opponents might not understand has loopholes that a congressman would be proud of. I really believe you want an objective standard of what is alertable and not a subjective standard. Also, the first part of your statement seems to conflict with the second part. I fully expect almost everyone to understand stayman and blackwood. Are those alertable? They certainly are artificial. Is the first part of your statement only meant to refer to natural bids that have unusual meanings...like non-forcing or showing/denying a certain number of cards in a side suit?

If E/W are experts then I laugh at them for not protecting themselves and award no adjustment. If E/W are novices then I explain to them that if a bid sounds strange (like bidding the suit your partner claims to have) and their bid depends on what the strange bid means then they should ask what it means, whether it was alerted or not. N/S don't deserve more punishment because their opps were novices. How are you supposed to know what skill your opps are anyway? If the pre-posted alert rules were violated by N/S, then I give them a warning. If they are habitual violators, then I give them a procedural penalty. I still don't award an adjustment because E/W have to learn the rules sometime and now is as good a time as any.

You haven't said what the relevant alert rules were for your tournament. If you don't decide this information beforehand and post it, how are people supposed to know what they should alert and what they shouldn't. This is unfortunately, no widely accepted default alerting policy. Many people default to whatever alert system they are familiar with while others alert all artificial bids. With respect to the claim "N/S bid incorrectly," please consult Law 40A. A player is entitled to make any bid they want even if it widely diverges from their agreements or from standard practice. There is never a penalty because someone chooses a bid that others might not have made. With respect to the claim "2♠ should at least have a stopper," who are you to dictate what 2♠ should mean to this pair? With respect to the claim "2♠ should have been alerted," like I said, it all depends on what your alerting rules are. In the ACBL, cue-bids of implied suits are rarely alertable. Under ACBL rules, I don't believe this bid is alertable. If you are operating under "alert all artificial bids" then yes this bid should have been alerted. However, my main point here is that the lack of an alert is irrelevant because E/W failed to protect themselves so there is no adjustment. If an opponent is bidding the suit that your partner has said he has and he hasn't alerted his bid and you need to know what that bid means in order to make a call then ASK A QUESTION! I don't find a raise of spades from the west hand to be clear even had they asked the appropriate question. Moreover, even if E/W land in 4♠, south has demonstrated his intent to bid 5♥ anyway. Is 5♠ crystal clear after 5♥? Anyway, this latter question is irrelevant because the main problem here is that E/W did not protect themselves by asking about an obviously unusual bid so I do not award an adjustment. If E/W appealed, I think I'd even give an AWMW (appeal without merit warning).

On the practical side, I can't blame each country for requiring alerts on bids that deviate from the agreement used by most of the people in the country. Such alerts are a moving target as people change their methods over time and what was odd now is normal and what was normal now is odd. This style upsets people because they constantly have to keep up-to-date with change in the alert rules. The alternative is to have a simple rule. Alert all non-natural bids. In this view, neither 1N possibly containing a 4cM nor 1M possibly containing a balanced hand would be alertable because they are both natural bids. If you get burned by assuming one way or the other then you've learned something and you'll learn to ask from now on when it matters what opps style is in this regard. I really believe that neither of these should be alertable. It is perfectly fair for a new pair to get burned by their lack of experience. It is normal and healthy for them to get burned! It is more than fair, it is educational. Moreover, they may learn that people have a different style in this situation by having better players ask them what their style is. From this, they will learn that people play it differently and they may never get a bad result from this particular issue.

1. I'm aware of no regulation from Fred that states that "only bridge according to the official laws of duplicate bridge shall be played on BBO." 2. As such, if someone wants to host a tournament and _EXPLICITLY_ say which of those rules do not apply then no one should have a problem with it. 3. It is more serious if it is a pay tournament and rules are made up on the fly but it is unethical for free or pay tournaments to do this. 4. In my opinion, if you do something in your tournament that the rules don't explicitly allow sponsoring organizations to do then you aren't playing bridge but according to my #1 point above, so what? We are all free to boycott such tournaments and deride their silly rules but trying to force them out of existence is wrong as well. 5. If you host a tourney and don't post any rules, the full set of laws of duplicate bridge are in effect and there are no system restrictions. There is no presumption that ACBL rules apply w.r.t. system restrictions and alerting. 6. We may not like it if people start to flock to these highly restricted tournaments but that is the price of freedom.

There is a word for this behavior. It is FRAUD and it is illegal and unethical. You should immediately contact a yellow and send a message to abuse@bridgebase.com and ask for a reimbursement of your entrance fee and demand that Fred have a talk with this director before allowing him to host any more tournaments.

I have another rule that you should never violate. That rule is "Trust your partner." Even if you're convinced your partner has lost their mind, bid and play as if they are sane. If it turns out they were crazy then at least your partner will appreciate that you trust them and this is a basis for bigger and better things to come. If you start distrusting each other then your partnership will crumble.

It is a rare day when you get doubled in a contract vul versus nv, go down 5 and still get a good score. :blink: If anybody has ever watched me and foobar play, you'll know we play a forcing pass system with a 1♥ FERT. In a serious competition, we'd play 2/1 at this vulnerability but since it is just for fun anyway we're crazy and play FP here as well. We have some regular opps who really love to whack our 1♥ FERT whenever possible and they thought they had their chance today. I had Jxx 9xxx xx xxxx in first seat so I opened 1♥. LHO doubles (bal T/O with 3 or 4 ♥ or any big hand). My partner passes which usually shows 4+♥ and RHO thinks a long time then passes as well. RHO thought this was the time to punish us with his 15 count and AKxxx of ♥'s. Fortunately, for me, dummy came down with xx QJT xxxxx Jxx and it took about 2 seconds to figure out opps were cold for 8NT...errr...make that 7NT. 2♥ tricks giving up the rest for a nominal 3 IMP gain.

2♥ is a reverse so no need to bid 3♥ to show a strong two suiter. Many people play 3♥ here as a very weak 6m5M hand. 4♥ would be splinter for me as well. On this particular hand, I'll probably bid 4♦ but it might be interesting to try 2♥. If partner doesn't bid clubs, then my next bid is 5♠ asking partner to bid 6♠ if he doesn't have two fast losers in clubs. Why clubs? Because it is the unbid suit and a good agreement is that the jump to 5M is asking about the 4th suit if 3 suits have already been bid. What do I do if partner bids 3♣ after 2♥? Maybe now I've screwed myself because partner will think I'm something like 3451 and won't get the right picture of the hand. How likely is partner to offer the 4th suit in this situation?

Just a good CC is not nearly enough. In most systems that people play here, the vast majority of opening bids are not alertable. It is only later in the auction typically that things are alertable and since the CC can't possibly go into this depth then yes we need a better alerting system. I personally use RemoteKeys to automate the alerting process and by and large that works fine for me but even then we typically only cover a couple rounds of bidding and subsequent rounds I still have to type by hand (we use a relay system). I agree though that it is too much to expect everyone to install an add-on and to use it that way. The integration with BBO could be much smoother and it could be easier to use. Here are a couple of ideas. When you make a bid, the system looks at your hand and if you have less than 4 of the suit that you are bidding then it automatically asks you for an explanation (perhaps providing a default answer of "better minor" when the bid is 1♣ or 1♦). You could come up with some other simple rules like opening NTs that are unbalanced ask for an explanation. Perhaps there should be no way to close the alert box without indicating something...maybe you either type something or hit the "natural" button. I also think it might be interesting if you had a "formal" mode where every bid automatically asked you for an explanation. In this mode, I think we should do away with textual alerts as the primary mode of conveying information. These are sometimes hard to interpret when someone is not using their native language. All in all, this could enforce proper alerting. You'd be given a box describing known length in each suit, HCP range, bal/unbal, natural/artificial, forcing/non-forcing, etc. Once you've entered this information by hand you save it away in a list that the user can select from later. You can even let the user save groups of these alerts into a "system" file so that if you play different systems then the saved alerts won't get mixed between the two. Lack of proper alerting is pretty rampant and for some people in a casual game they don't really care but again I do think we need a mode with much stricter alerting requirements. I don't think an education campaign is going to force people to do it because if they don't do it there is generally no punishment. You are going to have to programmitcally force them to behave better.

"Censorship" typically refers to a government arbitrating content. What you are suggesting is that if you have a party at your house and somebody comes there and starts talking inappropriately that you should be unable to make them leave. Simply principle...if you own the location/forum, you should have the completely authority to do whatever you want there. If you want to restrict all kinds of communication on your property then that is your right so let's not confuse government with private property. Having said that, we can still say that the moderators removing this content was needed/not needed. Likewise, if you don't like their decisions then you can always leave. I suppose the moderators are trying to maximize forum usage by balancing people upset by restricted content versus people getting upset and leaving by being offended by some unrestricted content.

There are two problems. First is the memory work. Second, if you want to play prism signals you have to give up trump suit preference which, IMO, is asking too much. Getting the right lead on certain hands is more important that giving exact shape especially when I can typically get all the shape information that I need by the critical point in the hand anyway.

Having players alert not only their bids but their partner's bids is a bad idea because it can only lead to misinformation. Have the person making the bid alert it is optimal and the only reason it isn't done in f2f is the UI issue. Online, that UI issue does not exist so we can do the optimal thing.

I don't think that my suggestion would add significantly to play times. Take NMF for example. If you make a NMF bid, you aren't supposed to alert and say "NMF." You are supposed to describe your bid and not give the name of a convention. The reasons for this are many not among the least that NMF is in no way standardized and people who all claim to play NMF play many different variants. If we are supposed to describe our hand and not use the convention name then clicking min-max lengths for suits and point count won't add a lot to the time compared to having to type in the information by hand. The second benefit is that we can automatically translate this style of information into other languages and we can reduce the language problem. Technology can come to our aide to by having a list of arbitrary names assigned by the pair to a bid and then you can click on the name and it will fill in the real information from some saved profile. Each partnership could develop their own shortcuts in this manner. I think Al misses the point. The pair in question were not refusing to answer the question. They said they were playing NMF and alerted as such but they used the name rather than a point count description and their usage of it highly deviated from normal usage. If we are serious about full disclosure, which we should be, then we have to do something about this issue. Leaving it up to individual directors won't do. Either we implement a much better CC system and a bidding explanation box not based on text and we use that to automatically detect deviation from stated agreement or we add a button that allows opps to report a pair every time they deviate from their agreements. This information has to be collected and analyzed to see who is violating their agreements the most.