ACBL Alert Regs

[peachy]

Method is: Over partner's weak two opening, 2NT asks for a side suit. Opener rebids his suit if he has no side suit, or rebids a new suit to show four cards in that. I know the 2NT is not alertable whatever it asks if it is artificial and forcing, but is the 3S response alertable? I was a defender and before I lead, I asked what did 2NT ask, and got the response "asking for a side suit". After the round, I went to ask the TD (a regional tournament) The TD did not know the answer at first but he came back later and said the 3S is not alertable because it is a natural bid and the lack of side suit is a negative inference which are not alertable.

 

I cannot find anything in the regulation to say yea or nay to the alertability, but my own feeling (not worth much) is that it should be alerted. Should it? Or should the opening itself be alerted since the inference is that a second suit is routinely allowed in a weak two opening?

 

What do you think?

[blackshoe]

I think you should have asked for an explanation of the entire auction. :ph34r:

[bluejak]

The danger of no alert is not that he will ask for one specific bid only, but that he will not ask at all.

[blackshoe]

True, David, but that wasn't my point. There seem to be questions about all three (?) bids in the auction. A request for an explanation of the auction would presumably have resolved all those questions.

 

BTW, peachy, was the opening bid 2♠? If so, I disagree that 3♠ was a natural bid, since it conveys the information that opener has no side suit.

 

This seems to me an unusual treatment, but whether it's unusual enough to require an alert on that basis at some point, I'm not sure.

[bluejak]

My point, Ed, was that if I am playing in the ACBL, and it goes 2♠ - 2NT - 3♠ it would not occur to me to ask about any call without an alert.

[jdonn]

Technically I don't think it has to be alerted. If 2NT (after 2♠) asks for a feature and 3♠ simply denies one, I don't know what the regulation says but I've never seen it alerted, nor have I ever seen anyone complain when it wasn't alerted against them. By similar logic here, any 'waiting' bid simply denying the ability to make another bid needn't be alerted.

 

That being said, step outside the alert procedure (and I'll preemptively agree that it's bad). You are making a bid the opponents might reasonably want to know the meaning of. As David says, they won't think to ask the meaning if you don't alert. Why would a reasonable person, who knows the purpose of an alert procedure is to inform the opponents of facts they are likely to want to know but otherwise won't know, and who knows that in practice you will never get in trouble for 'over alerting', not alert? Or at the very least offer the information after the auction? Who would actually care that a detailed reading of a bad and ever-changing procedure can't prove it is alertable?

 

So my own feeling is the director made the correct ruling, but you were a bit shafted by opponents who (perhaps intentionally, or perhaps with fair intentions) didn't live up to the principle of full disclosure.

[peachy]

To clarify my OP.

Yes, the opening was 2S.

No, there was no ruling, as I did not call the TD. But I was interested enough to find out later because my gut says it should be alertable for the reason that it is not only a natural call but it also contains information that I might find necessary in defense. Without any alerts, I would have thought opener was minimum and didn't have a feature to show. What prompted me to ask was the fact that in the same match there were other hands in which these opponents had strange methods that actually don't require alert, but which (to me) were unfamiliar and which I would never think of as "standard". After those occurrences, I started asking even when there was no alert. Their convention card title was "Standard, old timers". An example, 1H (2C overcall by my partner) Dbl (P by me) 4C. Turned out that opener had 5 clubs and the 4C call was natural, clubs...

 

I have no reason to believe they had any intention of deliberately having "secrets" - one of the opponents was a TD himself, the other a true old timer of novice level (I thought). This was in Bracket 2 KO in a regional this week.

[paulg]

My point, Ed, was that if I am playing in the ACBL, and it goes 2♠ - 2NT - 3♠  it would not occur to me to ask about any call without an alert.

Except that you know that 2NT is artificial and forcing because it was not alerted, so it seems sensible to ask what it means.

 

In the context of 2NT asking for a side suit, then 3♠ denying one does seem a fairly natural call that is not particularly unusual.

 

Paul

[barmar]

The problem with the explanation that negative inferences don't need to be alerted is that the opponents don't know what negative inference there is in this case. With no alerts, they have every reason to assume that this was the "standard" feature-ask 2NT; the negative inference from rebidding the suit is that opener either has a minimum or no side feature. But in this case, that's NOT the correct negative inference, because 2NT was asking a different question.

 

I'm with Josh on this one: it falls through a crack in the alert procedure, and the letter of the law doesn't require it to be alerted. But I think it should be alerted by the spirit of the alert regulations.

[blackshoe]

The problem is that if the TD feels that it should be alerted "in the spirit of the alert regulation" and rules on that basis, he is at best in a very grey area, and at worst is in violation of the law himself.

 

The term "negative inference" appears once in the alert regulation:

In general, when the use of conventions leads to unexpected understandings about suit length by negative inference, a natural call becomes Alertable. Some such agreements have become expected and are fairly common, therefore no Alert is required.

So I'm not so sure that "negative inferences are not alertable" is in fact what the regulation says.

 

The alert regulation speaks briefly about the 2NT response to a weak two opening, saying it's not alertable if it asks for further information about opener's hand. It says absolutely nothing about opener's rebid.

 

The idea that opener's rebid in this auction shows or denies a feature (whatever that means :blink: ) is one of those negative inferences that is common enough not to require an alert. The idea that opener's rebid shows (or denies) a side suit is, it seems to me, highly unusual (I've never heard of it, and it wouldn't occur to me that anyone would want to use 2NT in this way), and so by the quote on negative inferences above requires an alert.

 

Conclusion: I think the TD's ruling was wrong.

 

That said, if at the table I asked about 2NT and was told "asks for a side suit", I'd ask further questions. :ph34r: