[blackshoe]

Vampyr, on 2015-March-10, 06:22, said:

I must admit that I was unaware that the ACBL and the WBF have equal standing. Perhaps the WBF should be renamed e ROTWBF (Rest of the World Bridge Federation).

It is a pity that there is no table of contents. This makes the book difficult to navigate through if you are not extremely familiar wih it.

The ACBL asserts that in North America the ACBLLC is the final arbiter of the laws. WBF has not, to my knowledge, tried to contest that. Also ACBL holds the copyright on TFLB in the Western Hemisphere. I confess I don't know how that affects things in South America.

I agree about the table of contents. Portable Document Format has the capability to include both a ToC and an index with hyperlinks to the things they reference. Also, you can add hyperlinks (internal or external) in the body of the text. I have long lamented the lack of that capability. In the ACBL, at least, my lamentations seem to fall on deaf ears.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2015-March-10, 09:48, said:

Although I've pointed out that the illegality of insufficient bids can be inferred by reading several laws together, I agree that it sure would be nice if Law 18 were written more like Law 44, which describes the normal procedure during the play period. In particular, 44C makes the requirement to follow suit paramount, much as making sufficient bids is paramount during the auction. A rule book that fails to mention clearly one of the most important rules of the game is obviously deficient.

Blackshoe thinks it's great.

[mycroft]

You know, I don't think there's anyone that thinks the law book's great.

I think it is suitable for almost all purposes it's intended for; and that making a "great" law book would be much more work than it's worth (even to SB's like me), a constant battle to improve (you know, they *pay* the people responsible for fixing the Golf, Indoor Lacrosse,... laws every year), and frankly impossible (even for those whose primary job is to do it).

Also, any attempt to do more than just incremental upgrades to the Law Book would reorganize it, which would cause a massive amount of retraining from the clubs up; and while that desperately needs to be done, the PTB have repeatedly made clear that they are not going to do it.
While the general level of Bridge Law knowledge amongst tournament players is as wonderful as it is (as opposed to, say, Golf or Poker - could you imagine a "law of the day" section in the Vanderbilt Vugraph?) I don't think this is going to change - unfortunately.

[lamford]

mycroft, on 2015-March-13, 11:23, said:

You know, I don't think there's anyone that thinks the law book's great.

I think it is suitable for almost all purposes it's intended for; and that making a "great" law book would be much more work than it's worth (even to SB's like me), a constant battle to improve (you know, they *pay* the people responsible for fixing the Golf, Indoor Lacrosse,... laws every year), and frankly impossible (even for those whose primary job is to do it).

Also, any attempt to do more than just incremental upgrades to the Law Book would reorganize it, which would cause a massive amount of retraining from the clubs up; and while that desperately needs to be done, the PTB have repeatedly made clear that they are not going to do it.
While the general level of Bridge Law knowledge amongst tournament players is as wonderful as it is (as opposed to, say, Golf or Poker - could you imagine a "law of the day" section in the Vanderbilt Vugraph?) I don't think this is going to change - unfortunately.

barmar, on 2017-January-28, 14:13, said:

Lamford, can you resurrect the thread where SB tried to take advantage of something like this?

I have been asked by barmar to resurrect this thread, as the new 2017 Law Book still does not make it a requirement to make sufficient bids. It says what insufficient bids are, but does not say that one is not entitled to make them! Of course, a TD would have to rule that an insufficient bid was an infraction, but adding the phrase. "Calls must be sufficient", which I think covers deliberate "underbids" and deliberate inadmissible doubles and redoubles, would indeed be sufficient! Looking back over the thread, Campboy's wording looks best. A newcomer to the game, from Mars, reading the Law Book for the first time, with this being the only thread on the Laws Forum that he has read, might think that an insufficient bid is a good gambit worth making, a bit like a psyche.

And did this thread really have 16,500 views? And I thought barmar considered SB deeply unpopular!

[barmar]

Why am I surprised that the author of the SB posts would take me literally -- a link in the current thread would have been sufficient.

Anyway, I forwarded the link to the ACBL LC mailing list for 2017 suggestions.

[lamford]

barmar, on 2017-January-30, 10:00, said:

Why am I surprised that the author of the SB posts would take me literally -- a link in the current thread would have been sufficient.

Anyway, I forwarded the link to the ACBL LC mailing list for 2017 suggestions.

That was my original plan, but SB was dismayed at my wrong interpretation of the word "resurrect".