Alert rules

[Vampyr]

What nobody seems to have touched on is the reason for announcements. For those opposed to them, consider this:

 

Stayman and major suit transfers are extremely popular. Therefore alerting them is pointless as you are unlikely to ask; asking every time would be tedious. But the time these 2-level suit bids are something other than Stayman or simple transfers, you need to know.

 

Similarly with weak twos. I would like to know if my opponents; 2-bids are weak, intermediate or strong, and especially if they are two-suited (this one is alerted while the others are anniunced), which is probably more popular than the latter two options combined.

 

Don't forget that announcements are only used for the opening bid or response.

 

And announcing NT ranges is the only way to eliminate the French defense.

[Quantumcat]

Before the first board is the time to look at the opponents cc, and discuss defences. If you don't, announcements won't help you if the opponents do something unusual and you and your partner aren't on the same wavelength. Since you are going to look anyway, announcements are superfluous, the least you will look at is the couple of lines containing opening bid lengths, nt ranges and transfers, and two level openings. Here, in congresses and tournaments, you are required to have two copies of your cc and provide them to your opponent at the start of the match before play begins. Maybe you're not required to do that elsewhere so announcing becomes essential, as asking each time would get tedious. I guess that makes sense.

[blackshoe]

The culture in North America seems to deprecate looking at opponents' system cards. This may be because it's sometimes difficult to do so, since the card(s) may be (1) in the player's purse or back pocket, (2) being sat on, (3) the "other side" of their scorecard, and you ain't gettin' a look at that!, or (4) non-existant.

 

I got back into duplicate in England, where (at the time, at least) exchanging cards with your opps at the beginning of the round (and hence not being in possession of them again until the end of the round) was de rigeur. I wish it were so here, but it's not.

[Heron]

The culture in North America seems to deprecate looking at opponents' system cards. This may be because it's sometimes difficult to do so, since the card(s) may be (1) in the player's purse or back pocket, (2) being sat on, (3) the "other side" of their scorecard, and you ain't gettin' a look at that!, or (4) non-existant.

Where I am now (New England), people mostly seem to have cards (at least in the better club games), but they're usually in an ancient convention card holder on which the "clear" plastic has clouded to near opacity, with any remaining legible spots covered with stickers. (Sometimes NABC souvenir stickers, but sometimes just unicorns and suchlike.) They're sometimes even on the table, though usually with a coffee and a doughnut perched on top.

 

I do find it interesting and at least marginally hopefuly that when I place a freshly printed card on the table by the bidding box where RHO can easily see it, RHO will sometimes actually have a look, and at least occasionally that has caused the opponents cards to appear and/or be debeveraged without my even having to ask!

 

That's my little part to try and change the culture at my local clubs bit by bit. (Or maybe I just like tilting at windmills. At least I've learned to stop asking where the alert strips are in ACBL-land bidding boxes!)

[mycroft]

Before the first board is the time to look at the opponents cc, and discuss defences. If you don't, announcements won't help you if the opponents do something unusual and you and your partner aren't on the same wavelength.

The key to announcements is that for the few that are actually Announced, you have already discussed your defences, and you just need to know which one applies.

 

Other RAs have other decisions, but in the ACBL, Announcements are limited to:

• Range of NT (and one should have one's defences committed to memory, right?)
  
• red-suit transfers to majors after NT openings, overcalls, and relevant (i.e. after SAF club openings) rebids (same deal, no?)
  
• potential "short, non-forcing" 1m openings (with, with the exception of the "is it 4=4=3=2" question, again you have discussed your defences)
  
• "forcing" or "semi-forcing" (forcing in theory, passable by flat minimum) artificial 1NT responses to 1M bids (and you have your defences to F, SF, or NF, right?)
  

Certainly in general your argument holds (although finding the things you need to discuss a defence against on the ACBL card is less easy than most others); but the Announcement system is designed for a) very very common situations that b) won't be forgotten and c) need to be distinguished from "real Alerts". Or the NT range, which frankly is there because the WeaSeL defence works against any range if you don't stop it.

[Vampyr]

Before the first board is the time to look at the opponents cc, and discuss defences. If you don't, announcements won't help you if the opponents do something unusual and you and your partner aren't on the same wavelength. Since you are going to look anyway, announcements are superfluous, the least you will look at is the couple of lines containing opening bid lengths, nt ranges and transfers, and two level openings. Here, in congresses and tournaments, you are required to have two copies of your cc and provide them to your opponent at the start of the match before play begins. Maybe you're not required to do that elsewhere so announcing becomes essential, as asking each time would get tedious. I guess that makes sense.

Do you feel that there shouldn't be alerts either, so long as you are in possession of the opponents' CC?

[Quantumcat]

Do you feel that there shouldn't be alerts either, so long as you are in possession of the opponents' CC?

 

No. You cannot contain a whole system in a CC. The CC is just for the basic things.

You are not supposed to memorise the CC either, only gain an appreciation of the opponent's basic methods so you are prepared. E.g. the opponents may play Precision, and you haven't discussed what you do over a Precision 1♣. Having the thing announced isn't going to help you if you didn't discuss it before play started - the opponents aren't going to let you have a quick chat in the middle of a hand.

Announcements are only for the most basic of things, which you can get from glancing at the front page of a CC, not for alerts. It's announcements I am against, because it's your own responsibility to have an idea of your opponent's basic system before you start play.

Alerts are so that an opponent knows the bid has an unusual meaning. He might ask, or if it is something basic [e.g. 1NT (2♦)] he might look at the CC rather than ask. Alerts are essential, because if the opponent does not play your system, he can't possibly have any idea that it is different from what it would mean if he had that auction.

[campboy]

As you say, announcements are only for the most basic of things. They therefore only cause UI problems when a player has failed to remember his own most basic agreements. They avoid UI problems when a player can't remember his opponents' basic agreements (which might be because he read the card at the start of a long round and this bid took eight boards to come up or because he has looked at 10 different convention cards in the course of the evening and isn't sure which the most recent one was).

 

I do not understand why anyone would think that it is more important to protect players who can't remember their own system than to protect players who can't remember their opponents system.

[mycroft]

I'm playing a 24-board match. Why should I have to remember from "first look" at the card on board 21 that *this* 1NT opening is 14-16, even though the other 5 that have come up were 10-12? Why should I have to remember from "first look" that 2♥ is a transfer *this time*, because the NT is 14-16? (Note, real example - but we were the variable NT pair)

 

Why should people be allowed to get away with WeaSeL vs NT because "I know they played something weird, can't remember if it was a weak or variable NT, or something else"? How about the "how short" diamond ask where the answer is invariably "fewer than you have"?

 

Why should I have to remember whether you're playing a Forcing NT or not? or whether your Forcing NT is passable?

 

That's the ACBL. In the EBU, why should I have to worry if 2♦ Alerted is because it's natural (but not the "approved" kind of natural), or because it's Benjamin, or Multi, or actually something odd? Why, with 6, should I have to put the UI out that I have a lot of diamonds, or remember what it was 10 boards into a 12-board match?

 

"Things opponents should note" is great for working on defences; that's not the only reason for Announcements (as I said, if you need to discuss defences to Announced calls, either you're grossly underprepared or they shouldn't have been Announcements).

 

Announcements are, in fact, Alerts; just ones that in the view of the RA are either so common that "everybody" plays them (especially in situations where there are reasonably common "real Alerts"), or situations where WeaSeL works so well and so invisibly that we want to circumvent it, or in cases where it's important to have it Alerted, but insanely unlikely that partner won't remember (EBU's "Announce the strength of natural 2-openings, Alert Artificial ones", the ACBL's "could be short")

[f0rdy]

What nobody seems to have touched on is the reason for announcements. For those opposed to them, consider this:

 

Stayman and major suit transfers are extremely popular. Therefore alerting them is pointless as you are unlikely to ask; asking every time would be tedious. But the time these 2-level suit bids are something other than Stayman or simple transfers, you need to know.

 

Similarly with weak twos. I would like to know if my opponents; 2-bids are weak, intermediate or strong, and especially if they are two-suited (this one is alerted while the others are anniunced), which is probably more popular than the latter two options combined.

 

Don't forget that announcements are only used for the opening bid or response.

 

And announcing NT ranges is the only way to eliminate the French defense.

 

I agree for almost all of these, but I find the procedure works really badly for 2C openings. Apart from whatever proportion of the EBU plays the right forms of strong club, almost every 2C opening I've ever come across in the EBU is either:

a) Artificial, various strong hands

b) Artificial; various strong hands, or a weak 2 in diamonds*

 

The problem is that these are both alerted, so if (as is common in many clubs I've played in) there's no convention card obvious, you need to ask about every such opening, even though very few have the weak option. I know the arguments against making an exception to an easily understood rule, and I don't in general like the US-style approach of "It's alertable if it's not what we expect you to play", but the alerting system works *so* badly here that it seems worth it to me.

 

A much more frivolous aside:

On the subject of "short diamond" "how short?", I'd really like convention cards to be marked with expected diamond length and expected club length, as well as minimum. This is a problem at beginning-of-round time; If 1D is equally likely to show clubs or diamonds, I would like to agree with my partner to play our "nebulous minor" defence; if 1D on average shows considerably longer diamonds than clubs, we will treat it as natural; in between we'll make some arbitrary decision. It's generally hard to get opponents to understand in time what we're asking, but I realise that this is a wish which will never be granted except possibly in clubs entirely composed of maths students...

 

 

*another aside: this is my second favourite convention to find on a card whose basic system was announced as "Benji Acol". My favourite was a weak-only multi 2N in the minors, although that card also had multi 2C and multi 2D.