Midchart revisions

[hrothgar]

For those benighted souls unlucky enough to be living under the jurisdiction of the ACBL there appears to be some interesting changes in the works

 

There is a proposal for a fairly radical set of changes to the ACBL Midchart available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/172bwzDCItM2FYecq6j7Iv9fXNb72LY8QkraPonxc3Mc/pub

There's a bunch of good discussion taking place at http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/feedback-for-convention-chart/

 

FWIW, here's a few high level observations

 

1. The ACBL is complete doing away with "Suggested Defenses"

2. The multi 2D opening is only allowed in events with 5+ bard rounds (aka team events)

3. A bunch of stuff that wasn't legal is currently permitted. (Lets see how long that lasts)

4. You have a lot of flexibility with respect to two level openings. Sadly, that doesn't carry down to the one level

5. In third seat you get to open on complete crap so long as your opening is natural or quasi natural

6. Transfer openings continue to be banned at the one level

7. The "Rule of N" language has jumped the pond

[barmar]

I suspect that at least 95% of ACBL members rarely ever play in mid-chart events, so this isn't going to make much difference to most people.

[mycroft]

I have a bunch of issues and I'm sure my comments (which I won't post on BW, because I am keeping my quasi-anonymity from employers, TYVM. I will, however, DM the OP) will be ignored, but:

 

• We need bright-line limits. I would prefer if they explicitly stated that while judgement is allowed, judgement that would make an agreement disallowed if it were clear is not; if you want to play right to the edge of legality, you give up your right to "be brilliant". Hopefully, that will get across the idea that you should play a little off the limits (which is what they want anyway) and then get to judge all you want.
  
• If not bright-line, they should be clearly "well, your judgement had better be effectively 'no Logical Alternative'" - i.e. if I take it to players in your game, they would all-or-almost-all do the same thing, if they knew they were allowed to. I'd even be happy to have that written in, so that TDs have a written policy to follow (that the players playing "you can't regulate judgement" can read) when "but KQTx KJTx Tx T9x is clearly a 10 count for my 10-12 NT" hits (which I agree with, by the way).
  
• I actually like using 'rule of X' as an alternative to HCP for the bright-line definitions. Easy to determine, easy to explain, deals with the "but I have ATxxx K98xx - clearly this is better than most of the 8-counts you're allowing me to open!" gripes,... You don't *have* to use it for your bidding judgement (just as you don't have to use HCP); but using an evaluation method that falls afoul of the easy-to-determine choices given means that you're playing a disallowed method. Figure out how to reconcile the two, not *my* problem.
  
• Yeah, showing the "Midchart+ replacement" is heartening, but scary. I want to see the one *I'm* going to be playing/adjudicating with, not the "pros-only" chart.
  
• I love the "but you're calling a 'Zia control bid' a psychic!" people. Yeah, *of course* it is. All your favourite 'tactical bids' are psychics; they're just psychics you'd do, as opposed to 'psychs!' which are ones you wouldn't do, but worked when they did it against you.
  
• A lot of those "Alertable" note calls should be Pre-Alerts. Whether they're also Alertable is arguable; but I think they'll just be noise. Having said that, putting Alerting information into the CC is a bad idea in general.
  
• What do you bet that the rule against crazy defences to natural openers gets lobbied for "quasi-natural" ones RSN, *especially* if T-Walsh ends up being GCC-equivalent?
  

Still thinking...

[steve2005]

Yeah, showing the "Midchart+ replacement" is heartening, but scary. I want to see the one *I'm* going to be playing/adjudicating with, not the "pros-only" chart.

yes, I will be playing whatever is gcc so unless that is liberal ans allows transfer walsh I wont be changing my bidding

[mycroft]

If you're reading the text new, note that there are some changes from feedback already given that isn't yet in the page (dredging it from the comments):

 

"Purely Destructive Bid" replaced with:

An opening bid or overcall that does not contain at least one of the following:

1. A known suit of 4+ cards
   
2. An unknown suit of 6+ cards
   
3. At least 5-4 distribution in two suits (regardless of whether the suits are known).
   
4. X or more HCP (X = TBD)

 

Disallowed, Opener, 1: replaced with:

1. An opening pass that is Forcing.
   
2. An opening pass in first or second seat that shows a stronger hand than an opening 1-level bid with the same shape.

With clarifications that they mean "agreements, and same exact shape, and the agreement by that partnership for an opening 1-level bid (not just "stronger than what is generally accepted as an opener").

 

and a recommendation (not accepted yet) that Disallowed, Opener, 10 be:

An Artificial opening Preempt that shows length in an unknown suit and there are more than two possibilities as to which suit is held.

[Vampyr]

We can't even play 1-level transfer openings here. It is shocking.

 

It is a pity that the ACBL continue to hoe their lonely row against the Multi. Maybe it is incremental change; didn't they recently allow Multi Landry? But anyway if the comment above is true and most players don't play in Midchart events, whom are they protecting?

 

Hopefully those who favour the Multi can at least find an amenable club.

[mycroft]

The current problem with the Multi is that two defences have to be provided; the players have to decide which one to use; both of the defences are absurdly complicated for something that will rarely come up, and the fact that they are theoretically 5-10% better than straight Dixon usually will be repaid when one player doesn't read it right and makes the 80% call instead of the 100% call (and the other one will read it correctly and not play partner for that hand). It's not a "we don't want you to play Multi in pairs games", it's "15 minutes is too little time to deal with the rigamarole". One hopes a lot of that is going away.

 

Having said that, comments have been made, by people who would know, that "multi-in-pairs" is a fight that is known doomed, so there's no use trying to fight it. Same with 9-11 NT openings, and a few other things. I may disagree (in fact I do disagree with a lot of things - my comments were 13 points, and I swallowed a few), but "best possible result, not the best result possible" isn't just something that applies to rubber bridge.