Rules on light openings and alerts?

[Vilgan]

Bit of a disagreement in our club to the alertability of light openings. For people playing a system who regularly open light hands, what is the point at which it becomes a pre alert? I'd heard "if you can open with 8 hcp more than "extremely rarely" then it is a pre alert" in the past, but no clue what relation that has to the rules (if any).

 

Any sort of reference to the laws would be especially awesome, as 2 different tournament directors in our district are giving 2 different answers.

 

Thanks!

[jdonn]

On the ACBL alert chart, next to opening bids, it says this under "alert":

 

Frequent very light openings (fewer than 10 HCP by agreement). Also, pre-Alert

That seems to leave no doubt. Pre-Alert and make regular alerts.

[rbforster]

I thought (potentially) light openings were a prealert only, rather than an alert. Alerting every precision 1M opening (9-15) seems kind of annoying.

[G_R__E_G]

Again assuming it's ACLB-Land....

 

A club has a lot of latitude when it comes to what conventions/methods they will allow. If your club goes with what's on the GCC as being what's allowed (as the ACBL does in tournaments at all but the top levels) then it's actually not simply alertable when you regulary open at the one level with 8 points - it's actually illegal.

 

Here's a link to the GCC:

General Convention Chart

[jdonn]

A club has a lot of latitude when it comes to what conventions/methods they will allow.  If your club goes with what's on the GCC as being what's allowed (as the ACBL does in tournaments at all but the top levels) then it's actually not simply alertable when you regulary open at the one level with 8 points - it's actually illegal.

That's not true, look at your own link. Under disallowed, you can't play opening bids that show less than 8, so obviously you can play 8+ openings. I think you are misinterpreting the provision mentioning "all purpose 1♣ and 1♦ openings" that must be 10+. If they are playing natural openings, then that doesn't apply.

[jdonn]

I thought (potentially) light openings were a prealert only, rather than an alert. Alerting every precision 1M opening (9-15) seems kind of annoying.

I used to think that, but now that I'm an old old man I will forget the opponents play light openings after a hand or two unless I get reminded by the alert. Btw I would consider 'normal' precision to show 10+ for an opening, even though there are hands with a lot of shape where you can open with less (I don't think such hands qualify as 'frequent'.)

[G_R__E_G]

A club has a lot of latitude when it comes to what conventions/methods they will allow.  If your club goes with what's on the GCC as being what's allowed (as the ACBL does in tournaments at all but the top levels) then it's actually not simply alertable when you regulary open at the one level with 8 points - it's actually illegal.

That's not true, look at your own link. Under disallowed, you can't play opening bids that show less than 8, so obviously you can play 8+ openings. I think you are misinterpreting the provision mentioning "all purpose 1♣ and 1♦ openings" that must be 10+. If they are playing natural openings, then that doesn't apply.

You're correct - I was thinking 8 or less but it's actually less than 8.

[awm]

The rules are pretty clear about what the alert responsibilities are. You have to pre-alert and also alert during the auction. Of course, if you do one of these and not the other, the director is extremely unlikely to rule that your opponents were damaged, but that's not relevant.

 

Where the rules are extremely fuzzy is what exactly qualifies as a "light opening" method. This (like all too many things in ACBL-land) is left wholly to the director's discretion. So you're likely to get different rulings from different directors, and probably are best off alerting if in doubt.

 

My own judgment would be that "standard" opening range is to open almost all twelve-point hands, a fair number of unbalanced eleven-point hands, and occasionally on a very pure unbalanced ten. If your style is about a point lighter than this, I'd say you're still okay -- if it's more than a point lighter than this I'd rule you need to pre-alert/alert your light opening style. That would correspond to routinely opening almost all ten-counts, or frequently opening unbalanced hands with nine or fewer high card points.

[straube]

http://www.acbl.org/play/alertprocedures.html

 

According to this site, within the ACBL, if you routinely open hands with less than 11, you need to pre-alert the opponents. Similarly, you have to pre-alert 10-12 NTs, etc.

 

We recently faced this as we open 10 pt hands routinely in 1st and 2nd. A tournament director advised us that we needed to pre-alert.

[keylime]

We announce this in our pre-alert, and it's in our system notes under general guidelines.

[pretzalz]

I thought (potentially) light openings were a prealert only, rather than an alert.  Alerting every precision 1M opening (9-15) seems kind of annoying.

You are essentially prealerting your passes, not your actual bids, so you don't have to alert every pass.

[peachy]

Clubs in ACBL have lot of freedom to set their own rules, both as to what methods are allowed and about what methods need to be alerted. If the event is a more formal ACBL event, then the ACBL alert regs are clear on your question. Prealert before round and alert as the bid occurs.