No Alert Required

[blackshoe]

Ha, no. That said, it makes logical sense to alert or announce both or neither. I forgot about announce before because I play in a jurisdiction with no announcements. Despite my ignorance, I'm confident that the ACBL's problem with convention cards is linked to having the private score on the convention card (why is this the case anyway? That is total madness)

I can only repeat something I've mentioned before: In his 1956 (I believe) book on directing, Alex Groner mentioned that "you can even put your conventional agreements on the back of your score card!" So it seems the score card came first, and the convention card second. Bass-ackwards, I know, but there it is.

 

Frankly, I think the ACBL should scrap the current card entirely and hire a professional forms designer, preferably one who plays duplicate bridge, to design a new one from scratch. But I hear voices saying things like "when pigs fly" and "when Hell freezes over". :blink: :ph34r:

 

Yes, the voices are in my head. Shut up. B-)

[Phil]

Frankly, I think the ACBL should scrap the current card entirely and hire a professional forms designer, preferably one who plays duplicate bridge, to design a new one from scratch.

 

+1. CC's should be designed with the opponents in mind. But they appear to be set up for as a form to be completed by casual partnerships.

 

The WBF card is better in this regard.

[barmar]

+1. CC's should be designed with the opponents in mind. But they appear to be set up for as a form to be completed by casual partnerships.

Maybe we have more casual partnerships? How busy is the partnership desk at most European tournaments, or people showing up at club games without a partner? Here it's quite common to form partnerships within 30 minutes of game time, so a CC that assists in this process is helpful.

 

But that doesn't explain why the private score has to be on the reverse side. I've been saying for years that ACBL should print score sheets with scores on BOTH sides, simply because of all the waste this would reduce. If you're playing with a regular partner, you probably have a prewritten CC, so you don't use that side of the score sheet. And tournament events are usually two-session, so it would make sense to use one piece of paper for both sessions.

[S2000magic]

In the regular Monday night duplicate game in Charlotte yesterday I failed at one table to announce our notrump range when my partner opened 1NT. At a later table I opened 1NT, LHO waited a bit, then asked my partner for the range. A lively discussion (amicable) ensued about announcing notrump ranges. On the next hand my partner overcalled 1NT and my RHO waited a bit before mentioning that I failed to announce the range. I did so (15-18 HCP), then pointed out that on the ACBL convention card it doesn't require announcing the range of a notrump overcall (it's not in blue), although it does require announcing the range of a notrump opening bid. Although I understand that the circumstances of the two are different, I do find the inconsistency a bit . . . I'll be nice here . . . peculiar.

[barmar]

Opening NT announcements were created because of the prevalence of varying defenses. Players were frequently asking opponents for their range, so they simply made it automatic. This never came up with NT overcalls (probably 99% play them in the same standard way, within about a point of each other), so there was no need to announce them -- if you have a nonstandard NT overcall, you alert it.

[mycroft]

Opening NT announcements were created because the WeaSeL defence to an Alerted (yes, we had to Alert non-strong NTs back in the '80s) NT worked so well. It ended up working so well against strong NTs, too (because the non-Announceable range was "somewhere in 15-18", so the reason given for the WeaSeL trigger question then became "but I needed to know if it was 15-17, 15-18 or 16-18!") that they extended the Announcements to ALL balanced opening NT ranges.

 

Since WeaSel *still works* against unAnnounced NTs, it is in one's best interest to do the Announcement, even though "everybody plays 15-17, why should we have to say that?"

 

What, cynical, me?

[barmar]

And apparently there are still rumors going around that the 15-17 announcement has been rescinded. Someone asked about this in this month's "Ruling the Game" column in the ACBL Bulletin.

[S2000magic]

. . . "everybody plays 15-17 . . . ."

That's what my LHO said last night.

 

(For the record, although last night my partner and I played a 15-17 NT, I prefer a 12-14 NT.)

[Vampyr]

+1. CC's should be designed with the opponents in mind. But they appear to be set up for as a form to be completed by casual partnerships.

 

Here in the EBU we have both. "Normal" convention cards are two sides of A4, but casual partnerships can write their agreements on the back of their scorecard.