Criticised for self alerting

[pilowsky]

Charming Chris! Is a stupid idiot smarter than a dumb idiot or cleverer than a stable genius? What percentage of the population are stupid? Does it change over time? The Janitor and I have decided to share the honour on a daily basis.

[mamos]

I find much of this discussion deeply disturbing and depressing. It is every player's responsibility to research and understand the regulations. I am an EBU player - if I play in another country, I read their regulations for system cards, allowed conventions and alerting regulations. Online bridge at BBO has its own regulations which are clearly expressed, alert your own bids in the dialogue box as you bid. The whole purpose of alerting is to tell your opponents what you are playing. The online format allows you to tell your opponents in such a way that your partner does not know you have alerted or what explanation you have given.

 

What upsets me is when people say things like "I think this is what the rules are" when they don't know or "This is what we do in EBU or ACBL". If you are a beginner ask people who know. Don't listen to some random player at the table who knows tiddley-squat. BBO has online hosts (found in the People List). If you want accurate advice ask them. They are all very nice and kind and patient and they'll give you proper advice not the nonsense you read in too many forums. Tell you opponents everything you know.

[pescetom]

Hopefully without raising tones any further, I do agree that this is yet another area where the BBO UI could be better.

 

The interface does little to guide players towards alerting their own call and the fact that alert must be chosen before selecting the call (as I understand it) is counter-intuitive and also raises new but potentially superfluous problems for directors/laws (see a parallel thread where somebody correctly alerted 2♣ but then accidentally selected 2♠).

 

One better solution might be that after player has selected his call (as is instinctive and logical) he has to choose between "no alert required" and "alert", the latter requiring him to provide an explanation. This might also eliminate the need (adverted by EBU in its online regulations) to leave the BBO "Undo" function enabled, which is undesirable in card playing situations.

[stanmaz]

Is this extension available only for Firefox? I would love to install it, but I prefer Chrome or IE over Firefox. Personal preference.

 

Thanks,

 

Dale

See README.md on the project page for manual installation instructions on CHROME.

The automatic installation and updates are available on Firefox only.

It should not be a big problem to install Firefox dedicated to BBO.

[LarryLL]

I applaud the Users for self alerting. Artificial bids should be transparent. Lately there have been a rash of players that do not alert bids at all and refuse to respond to a question. 2 nights ago an opp opened a short club with no alert. I had KQTxx of clubs. Had I known it was a short club I would bid 2c either immediately or in the pass out seat when they got to 1nt. They are 2-2 in clubs and we were never given the chance to bid 2c which goes plus and gives us a couple of imps. I alerted the director and she did change it from losing 3 to losing 1.8 imps. Not sure why she wouldn't give us 2c +3

 

Many more examples of partnerships profitting from no alerts to be contained in this space. Virtually all go unpunished.