Self alert without screens

[mycroft]

Alerts in F-t-F is a known problem at the best of times. These days are not the best of times, because:

• People are "used to" online, and are still confused as to how it always worked before;
  
• People are more comfortable with the good as well as the bad of self-alerting, and how much more difficult it is when partner doesn't get to tell you "we're on the same page", never mind "here's how I'm taking it" (and we're not on the same page);
  
• People are now noticing some of the issues with partner-Alerts, especially F-t-F partner-Alerts, that they didn't notice before The Great Migration. Other people are getting back into "what was comfortable before", and some of their opponents are starting to notice how it manages to be so comfortable now, where it wasn't last month online. And wondering if this is entirely legal...

And, in the ACBL at least, the Alert procedure was overhauled last year, and "nothing actually changed" while online. So not only are they trying to remember what to do F-t-F, they're trying to learn the changes to the Alerting process at the same time. Or they're not, because that's not important. And some of the opponents aren't thrilled with that, either.

 

What is an "unexpected Alert" has always been really hard to judge, at least sometimes. What is "on the same page" UI is also interesting, as is what to do about it. "unexpected failure to Alert" is a little easier to figure out, thankfully.

 

Per the Laws, "unexpected" is a very key word. Expected Alerts or failures to Alert are not "extraneous information" between partners, or the game would be unplayable ("Oh, no, partner told me he thinks I have 15-17 balanced. I mean, I do, but how do I carefully avoid using that information?")

 

I have to admit, all the problems with self-Alerting being admitted, I have always been shocked at how many people were so ecstatic with other online servers that allowed "F-t-F style" communication and Alerting. Because self-Alerting is much better. But maybe all the ecstatic ones were the ones who really missed having partner Alert on cue, and maybe even were happy when the opponents asked about the Alerts so they could hear what partner was going to say...

[pescetom]

I have to admit, all the problems with self-Alerting being admitted, I have always been shocked at how many people were so ecstatic with other online servers that allowed "F-t-F style" communication and Alerting. Because self-Alerting is much better. But maybe all the ecstatic ones were the ones who really missed having partner Alert on cue, and maybe even were happy when the opponents asked about the Alerts so they could hear what partner was going to say...

 

In my experience it was the RA and not the players themselves that were ecstatic about having "FtF style" online. The service supports virtual screens and I don't believe the players would have objected to that, although it does mean learning a third style after FtF and BBO self-alert (most club players here have never played with screens FtF). Many players even of undistinguished level said they considered the return to FtF style as a step backwards after BBO and felt awkward about it.

[axman]

 

 

Per the Laws, "unexpected" is a very key word. Expected Alerts or failures to Alert are not "extraneous information" between partners, or the game would be unplayable ("Oh, no, partner told me he thinks I have 15-17 balanced. I mean, I do, but how do I carefully avoid using that information?")

 

 

 

Mycroft>> Expected Alerts or failures to Alert are not "extraneous information" between partners,

 

Not so. Sometimes language needs to be adequately scrutinized:

 

16B1: 1. Any extraneous information from partner that might suggest a call or play is

unauthorized. This includes remarks,

 

The law identified 'remarks' as extraneous information. that leads to the answer to the query, 'are f2f alerts remarks?' Which is yes. So called 'unexpected' are merely a subset.

 

Well the law could go (which would be a misnomer) 1984 and proclaim lie is truth.

 

Mycroft>> or the game would be unplayable

 

Which is so.

 

The truth is that tournament players (myself not among them) not only want to cheat they are proud of it. It is how they were trained. They can't get along without alerts. That they exist suggests that Vanderbilt got something wrong nearly a century ago. That it is still wrong attests to the genius of how great his ideas were are.

 

And as Holmes said, Eliminate the impossible (alerts) and what remains is the truth.

 

Since 2015 a great number of forests have been clearcut in an uproar over cheating. My observation is that the answer to date has been to decapitate cheaters rather than deal with the cause of cheating. To me it makes sense that the outcome of players cheating is to be expected when everybody is trained to cheat (alerts); and thus it makes sense that alerts must go.

 

To understand, it is a good idea to review where alerts came from. Ostensibly, alerts came about because of Vanderbilt's unfair scoring: easy to bid contracts (majors) were outlandishly rewarded while difficult to bid contracts (minors) were heavily punished. A cursory inspection makes it clear that Vanderbilt scoring has more bidding steps to find easy to make contracts and fewer bidding steps to find difficult to make contracts. In other words ignore minors creates extra bidding steps to optimize majors. This fact makes complex artificial systems not merely worthwhile but considerably so. Hence the disclosure problem that brought alerts to the surface and proliferate (and became themselves impossibly complex, unworkable systems of communication- errrr disclosure).

 

This alone suggests that if unfortunate Vanderbilt scoring cause alerts (that must go) then Vanderbilt scoring must go. Which begs the question, if VS goes can its substitution solve the disclosure problem. I suggest that majors =20 and minors=30 and NT=40 and clubs outrank NT (7S is highest contract) will align difficulty with reward and make it the player's interest to have mostly natural system (with fewer complex conventions) to disclose/ learn.

 

For they who want the cheating problem fixed here is something to chew on. For they who want the disclosure problem fixed here is something to chew on. Me, I'm worn out.

[pescetom]

Mycroft>> Expected Alerts or failures to Alert are not "extraneous information" between partners,

 

Not so. Sometimes language needs to be adequately scrutinized:

 

16B1: 1. Any extraneous information from partner that might suggest a call or play is

unauthorized. This includes remarks,

 

The law identified 'remarks' as extraneous information. that leads to the answer to the query, 'are f2f alerts remarks?' Which is yes. So called 'unexpected' are merely a subset.

 

Well the law could go (which would be a misnomer) 1984 and proclaim lie is truth.

 

Mycroft>> or the game would be unplayable

 

Which is so.

 

The truth is that tournament players (myself not among them) not only want to cheat they are proud of it. It is how they were trained. They can't get along without alerts. That they exist suggests that Vanderbilt got something wrong nearly a century ago. That it is still wrong attests to the genius of how great his ideas were are.

 

And as Holmes said, Eliminate the impossible (alerts) and what remains is the truth.

 

Since 2015 a great number of forests have been clearcut in an uproar over cheating. My observation is that the answer to date has been to decapitate cheaters rather than deal with the cause of cheating. To me it makes sense that the outcome of players cheating is to be expected when everybody is trained to cheat (alerts); and thus it makes sense that alerts must go.

 

To understand, it is a good idea to review where alerts came from. Ostensibly, alerts came about because of Vanderbilt's unfair scoring: easy to bid contracts (majors) were outlandishly rewarded while difficult to bid contracts (minors) were heavily punished. A cursory inspection makes it clear that Vanderbilt scoring has more bidding steps to find easy to make contracts and fewer bidding steps to find difficult to make contracts. In other words ignore minors creates extra bidding steps to optimize majors. This fact makes complex artificial systems not merely worthwhile but considerably so. Hence the disclosure problem that brought alerts to the surface and proliferate (and became themselves impossibly complex, unworkable systems of communication- errrr disclosure).

 

This alone suggests that if unfortunate Vanderbilt scoring cause alerts (that must go) then Vanderbilt scoring must go. Which begs the question, if VS goes can its substitution solve the disclosure problem. I suggest that majors =20 and minors=30 and NT=40 and clubs outrank NT (7S is highest contract) will align difficulty with reward and make it the player's interest to have mostly natural system (with fewer complex conventions) to disclose/ learn.

 

For they who want the cheating problem fixed here is something to chew on. For they who want the disclosure problem fixed here is something to chew on. Me, I'm worn out.

 

Methinks you have been imbibing too much Christmas spirit :)

 

"Alerts = bad idea" is worthy of discussion, but I don't see why "Natural bidding" has to be the only alternative, rather than some alternative disclosure mechanism or single system events or whatever. And "F2F without screens = bad idea" is both easier to argue and more strongly correlated with cheating.

 

"Let clubs outrank NT" sounds like a great trampoline for yet more artificiality (an extra level of bidding following a 1NT opening ).

 

"Alert = Unexpected Alert = Remark" makes no sense to me, sorry.

[mycroft]

He's saying that anything spoken that is not "calls or plays" is a remark, and therefore passes extraneous information to partner.

 

Which of course, to one reading - a pretty reasonable reading, in fact - is completely true. And the results of this are legion. And largely ignored in all but the top rank of games, because the alternatives are expensive, anti-social, and cause their own issues. And, frankly, because too many people like their crutches, and don't know they are crutches until they're taken away. But using that reading (as opposed to the obvious reading of "remarks", like "oh, nice club suit") to go on to say that F-t-F bridge can not be played, because of the EI being passed isn't productive (even if it is fun to play with rules).

 

Going from there to "therefore no Alerts, therefore everything has to be Natural, and if that is difficult in the current environment, changing the scoring system to enforce it" - well, good luck with that. I might even enjoy playing NotBridge, but it's not the game I play and direct.

 

You are not going to stop artificiality in bidding (I mean, on day 1, we teach people to bid a suit that says nothing about that suit, and asks about suits not bid!) There are some that believe that homogenizing bidding (more than it currently is) will allow the true Skill of Bridge to shine - that being the beautiful play of the cards. Which of course, they're very good at. No coincidence there, I'm sure. (Note: I'm not saying that applies to axman, just that a lot of the "we need to return to bidding 'people' can understand" comments are really "I want to play my 40-year-old system and have it be as effective as it was 40 years ago, because learning that part of the game is hard").

 

There are too many people who "know what the Laws say", and some of them are on the WBFLC. Most of them (I would hope *all* of them on the WBFLC) are mostly right, but I would prefer that when the Laws can be read differently than intended (or should be read differently than intended!) that the Laws get changed to come closer to "what they say" (more often, say, than once a decade) rather than the game have to change so the misreading of the Laws isn't important any more.

 

I also note that "extraneous information" is not necessarily "unauthorized information", and even if it is, UI doesn't trump AI (and AI doesn't necessarily trump UI). Sure, that leaves us with the nasty "we think partner woke you up, but the evidence isn't sufficient, so..." problems (some of which go away by turning "expected Alerts" in one of two cases into "expected failure to Alerts" or "expected Alerts" in both cases) and all the rest of the F-t-F problems; if they bother you enough, play online instead (and deal with all of those potential information-passing issues) or invest in screens for your club (and piss off all the "social" bridge players for the sake of one or two "not obvious enough to call the director over" uses of UI.

 

Having said all that, I said a number of times back in the start of the flood that those that are only seeing cheating with the move to online weren't paying attention. Now that we're coming back from online, those that are only seeing these games now - weren't paying attention. Now they are. This, I think, might be a good thing, especially for the "club players" that were the source of the BW-wannabes' "as long as you go in understanding it's not Really Bridge" snark-comments who are now noticing that "hey, this seems wrong somehow..." when it gets perpetrated on them.

[axman]

Methinks you have been imbibing too much Christmas spirit :)

 

"Alerts = bad idea" is worthy of discussion, but I don't see why "Natural bidding" has to be the only alternative, rather than some alternative disclosure mechanism or single system events or whatever. And "F2F without screens = bad idea" is both easier to argue and more strongly correlated with cheating.

 

"Let clubs outrank NT" sounds like a great trampoline for yet more artificiality (an extra level of bidding following a 1NT opening ).

 

"Alert = Unexpected Alert = Remark" makes no sense to me, sorry.

I'll point out part of what I implied. The suggestion was rewards in line with difficulty. The scheme makes each advance in bidding step a bit more expensive. To cash in the bonus for minor suits it is a good idea to figure out it is available before you run out of makeable contracts- which is likely when the bidding is artificial (needs unused bidding steps)- where are you going to find them when they are useful? This implies that fewer conventions (whether artificial or natural) will be useful which in turn removes an impetus to license conventions. Out of self interest players will choose conventions that work and the universe of conventions that work will turn out to be much smaller than the current lot. This alone will reduce a leaning curve and make the disclosure universe much smaller. All in all it is much better to have players choose any system because they want it rather than point a gun at them telling them what they can't.

 

I suspect your response is knee jerk. Formulate your complex methods to paper (have your chiropractor handy): play with the nuts and bolts and form opinions. Remember that it takes 4 players to solve a hand and you can use any artificial device you choose.

[pescetom]

I'll point out part of what I implied. The suggestion was rewards in line with difficulty. The scheme makes each advance in bidding step a bit more expensive. To cash in the bonus for minor suits it is a good idea to figure out it is available before you run out of makeable contracts- which is likely when the bidding is artificial (needs unused bidding steps)- where are you going to find them when they are useful? This implies that fewer conventions (whether artificial or natural) will be useful which in turn removes an impetus to license conventions. Out of self interest players will choose conventions that work and the universe of conventions that work will turn out to be much smaller than the current lot. This alone will reduce a leaning curve and make the disclosure universe much smaller. All in all it is much better to have players choose any system because they want it rather than point a gun at them telling them what they can't.

 

I suspect your response is knee jerk. Formulate your complex methods to paper (have your chiropractor handy): play with the nuts and bolts and form opinions. Remember that it takes 4 players to solve a hand and you can use any artificial device you choose.

 

It wasn't a knee jerk and not intended to be dismissive about reforming bridge scoring, either : I was just pointing out (in a good humoured way - I love the idea of 1♣ Stayman :)) what looks like a major flaw in your suggestion. I think most of us would agree that Vanderbilt's scheme is far from perfect and over rewards game in majors in particular. Gilithin recently offered what looked to me a more convincing suggestion of how things could be reformed.

 

But as I see it, evening out the game/slam playing field is more about making a wider range of hands interesting, rather than making the bidding more natural, even assuming that is desirable. Incentivating bidding of minor games for many of us means interesting oppportunities to devise new conventions, rather than a desire to be freed from them and play what would essentially be Whist.

[barmar]

To pass muster the alerts that may be prescribed are among those that do not conflict with law (L80). As I pointed to L73B2 which states that there is no crime greater than partners communicating by a system other than by call or play, and, alerts are a system of communication other than by call or play they do not pass muster.

I'll reiterate what I wrote above. It specifically says "prearranged system". It also says "other than those prescribed by these laws."

 

Alerting is prescribed by the laws (because they authorize the RA to specify the method of alerting). And unless you've agreed to some special code in your alerts (e.g. "if I describe your bid as 'weak' it means I have support, if I say 'preemptive' I don't), it's not a "prearranged system".

 

It's true that hearing partner's alerts may pass UI. But passing UI is not in itself an infraction -- the Laws are clear that the infraction is in acting on that UI.

 

And when it specifies "unexpected alerts or failure to alert", the obvious implication of including the qualifier "unexpected" is that expected alerts are not intended to be included. If all alerts heard from partner constrained you, the game would be unplayable in the traditional ftf manner. It makes no sense for the RA to require alerts and then have players be constrained when they hear them.

 

I've been saying it for years: the Laws were intended to be interpreted by human beings applying some common sense based on understanding how the game is expected to be played, not robots taking the words literally without understanding the context.

[barmar]

Alerts in F-t-F is a known problem at the best of times. These days are not the best of times, because:

• People are "used to" online, and are still confused as to how it always worked before;
  
• People are more comfortable with the good as well as the bad of self-alerting, and how much more difficult it is when partner doesn't get to tell you "we're on the same page", never mind "here's how I'm taking it" (and we're not on the same page);
  
• People are now noticing some of the issues with partner-Alerts, especially F-t-F partner-Alerts, that they didn't notice before The Great Migration. Other people are getting back into "what was comfortable before", and some of their opponents are starting to notice how it manages to be so comfortable now, where it wasn't last month online. And wondering if this is entirely legal...

And, in the ACBL at least, the Alert procedure was overhauled last year, and "nothing actually changed" while online. So not only are they trying to remember what to do F-t-F, they're trying to learn the changes to the Alerting process at the same time. Or they're not, because that's not important. And some of the opponents aren't thrilled with that, either.

I played for 9 days in Austin, and I'm sure many of my opponents were playing f2f for the first time since the pandemic began. Not once did anyone slip into self-alert mode. I'm sure this has happened occasionally, but I doubt it's really a serious problem.

 

I think people had more trouble getting back into the habit of sorting their cards than reverting to partner-alerts.

[axman]

It wasn't a knee jerk and not intended to be dismissive about reforming bridge scoring, either : I was just pointing out (in a good humoured way - I love the idea of 1♣ Stayman :)) what looks like a major flaw in your suggestion. I think most of us would agree that Vanderbilt's scheme is far from perfect and over rewards game in majors in particular. Gilithin recently offered what looked to me a more convincing suggestion of how things could be reformed.

 

But as I see it, evening out the game/slam playing field is more about making a wider range of hands interesting, rather than making the bidding more natural, even assuming that is desirable. Incentivating bidding of minor games for many of us means interesting oppportunities to devise new conventions, rather than a desire to be freed from them and play what would essentially be Whist.

You suggest that you do not comprehend that the motivation for repudiating Vanderbilt scoring is that it is unjust when it can be improved with scoring that is just (the motivation is not to get more natural bidding). In other words, it is bad policy to be motivated to repudiate VS merely to achieve a goal such as get rid of alerts (more natural bidding); after all, that is how we got alerts in the first place- disclosure was wanted and the bad policy of alerts got created when the consequence of cheating was ignored. A consequence of a just scoring table reduces the 'need' for alerts. A scoring table rooted in justice is good policy; and a consequence of a just scoring table is disclosure without (being motivated to use) alerts. And that puts motivation in a proper perspective.

 

As to the bidding method consequences, when you say you like the idea of bidding stayman with 1C, are you overcaller or responder? And are you aiming for 4H partial or 4C game?

 

As to your reference to Gilithin you do mean BBO Do some players really enjoy everything being in 3NT ? My initial thought is that part of the Vanderbilt genius was the sophisticated scoring table that is easy to compute. Could say more but it would be repetitious.

[pescetom]

You suggest that you do not comprehend that the motivation for repudiating Vanderbilt scoring is that it is unjust when it can be improved with scoring that is just (the motivation is not to get more natural bidding). In other words, it is bad policy to be motivated to repudiate VS merely to achieve a goal such as get rid of alerts (more natural bidding); after all, that is how we got alerts in the first place- disclosure was wanted and the bad policy of alerts got created when the consequence of cheating was ignored. A consequence of a just scoring table reduces the 'need' for alerts. A scoring table rooted in justice is good policy; and a consequence of a just scoring table is disclosure without (being motivated to use) alerts. And that puts motivation in a proper perspective.

 

As to the bidding method consequences, when you say you like the idea of bidding stayman with 1C, are you overcaller or responder? And are you aiming for 4H partial or 4C game?

 

As to your reference to Gilithin you do mean BBO Do some players really enjoy everything being in 3NT ? My initial thought is that part of the Vanderbilt genius was the sophisticated scoring table that is easy to compute. Could say more but it would be repetitious.

 

Yes, that is the thread containing the proposal of gilithin that I was referring to. Just an idea that struck me as interesting. I can see various motivations for wanting to change Vanderbilt scoring (beyond the changes already made in 1987) and almost all lead to making minor suit games more attractive. I would be curious to see how it worked out, although it's not high on my list of desired changes to bridge.

 

Bidding 1♣ Stayman is for responder, obviously; for overcaller it would be Landy :)