gombo121

I'm sorry I did not clarified the jurisdiction point. I understand that in a generally restrictive environment like GCC it does not stand a chance. But I'm not really going to try this concept in practice (at least, yet) and my actual jurisdiction (Russia) tends to be very permissive, so I'm interested in regulations (or, may be unwritten consensus) at international level concerning events that generally allow brown sticker conventions. Concerning practical realization of the RNG, there is a very simple method - shuffle your hand before you look at it and then interpret red cards as zeros and black cards as ones - you get 13 bits of randomness, which should be enough for any practical purpose! (OK, it won't work in online bridge, but then you probably can use RNG of your PC directly).

While discussing building a system with a friend I arrived to a curious question: suppose I'd like to introduce an two-way opening 2♥, which promise 1) 11-15, 6+♥ 2) 5-8, 5+♠, 20%(!) but with a twist - second variant is used not each time when a suitable hand presents itself, but in only, say, 20% cases chosen completely at random. Is there any general regulations against such agreements (besides it is being obviously brown sticker)? I feel that probably there are some, but cannot come up with any concrete example. The second, somewhat related question - is it legal to have two separate bids that describe the same (or, may be, overlapping) type of hands with choice between them being random?

May I respectfully suggest that current approach to the problem of the information that arises from hesitations of opposing side during the play is completely misguided? First, it is completely unreasonable to expect completely uniform tempo of play from anybody in any circumstances. It just would not happen - ever - provided we do not employ technical means to enforce it, which I think is unlikely. Second (the Law) allow a player to draw conclusions from opponents' hesitations (though it is clearly extraneous information), but prohibit them to vary tempo in order to confuse the player. That puts opponents in a vulnerable position in many cases, where it is known that it is really necessary to play "smoothly" (meaning really fast) or you are done. (The best known such position is, of course, two-way finesse - if you hesitate, you'll be finessed and if it fails you are liable for prosecution for trying to mislead declarer, since you have "no bridge reasons" to think/hesitate. In fact, in the same book Rodwell describes "the speed of lightning" play, which is based exactly on the fact that there are positions, where defender are compelled to play low fast -"at the speed of lightning" - because any pause is a dead giveaway.) Moreover, this provisions of the Law create perverse incencentive for the player to watch for hesitations or other tells from opponents (though it is prohibited under the Law), because he can rely on them being unfeigned. I strongly believe that we would be much better if we allow players to use variations of tempo in order to confuse opponent (not to convey infomation to partner, of course!) - that means pausing for thought at any moment, including before playing a singleton. This approach would drasticly reduce ability of declarer to rely on extraneous information, beside bids and plays, just because it suddenly become much less reliable. And this is a good thing, because making decisions based only on bids and plays is the ideal promoted by the Law, isn't it? At the very least, we should stress the "at his own risk" clause of the Law 84D1 and firmly deny players any redress in any cases of erroneus conclusions made from deliberate mannerisms of opponents while preserving penalties (PP or possible adjusted score) for offending side. This would strongly reduce incentives to follow clues from such mannerisms and it is completely within current law (though contrary to prevailing practice). Answering to original post: it seems that varying tempo to own advantage is frowned upon in current trend, but, really, it should not be.

Thank you for prompt response. :)

Let's say I want to practice slam bidding after 1NT opening with my favorite partner. I start bidding table, set balanced hand for north, strong hand for south, north dealer, and proceed. So far, so good, but now I'd like to switch roles randomly between parntner and me. It seems I could use "randomly rotate hand 180 degree" but I can't, because deals are rotated but dealer position is not and half of the time dealer does not have 1NT opening. Can we please either have "randomly rotate hand 180 degree" option to rotate dealer definition accordingly or otherwise have some way of pegging distribution to first/third seat? Thank you in advance. (If such option is already in place, I'm profoundly sorry, but I was not able to locate it and other people also have similar problems: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/42352-dealer-alternating-first-seat/)