[luke warm]

it seems to me that the relevant phrase is 'full disclosure'... it's true that providing a cc and a link can be construed as full disclosure, but there's still the practical problems associated with timed events

i rather like the way ritong and farfie do things.. if farfie makes an alertable bid, she alerts it... ritong then says 'alert' in the room, and usually explains what it means.. i know some don't like that way, thinking it might tell the other partner what a bid should mean, but the better players already know what their bids mean

i haven't had the pleasure of playing with inquiry as much as i'd like, but when i do i always alert 1nt (over 1M), 2c (over 1M), and the other etm bids he incorporates... i think it's right to even alert fit jumps, and i do so (when they occur)

i don't have any experience at all under any rules but those established by the acbl... while i don't think they're the only, or the best, rules by which people play i do think alerting and explaining bids that have artificial meanings is certainly the ethical thing to do

that is NOT to say that those who don't always so alert are unethical.. far from it... only those who try to obtain an unfair advantage would fall into that category, and none of the people i've seen post in this thread try to gain that

[irdoz]

Having played on 5 online sites I find none of the available cc's very impressive - including here.

It seems to me the concept of automatically providing an explanation and a defense where necessary is a good one even if only a limited version was available that restricted itself to 20 opening bids (fron 1c through 4nt) and required three things for each bid... description, defense if necessary and follow up bids and meanings. If only the description was automatically available (eg upon mousing over the bid) with the option for the opps to click for the defense and further click for a more detailed explanation...the problem with 12 pages is that it is too much and I'm not lazy...when I have a flat hand with few hcps and the opps get into some relay auction and Im on opening lead then I can wait till the end of the auction to ask for an explanation.

Add to the 20 opening bids (which for most people would not have to be filled in) the common competitive bids (2 suited calls over 1m and 1M, and defenses to strong 1c and 1nt) and you have enough to cover most situations.

Additionally a clickable defense database covering common conventions or conventions that had caused problems (eg multi, flannery, transfer openings, transfer walsh etc.) would seem like an easy thing to construct.

I play transfer walsh reponses to 1c on one site and I have a set of notepad defenses that I cut and paste onto the table chat. I also have a cc for multi defenses - and I load this cc when our side opens multi so the opps can refer to it.

[DrTodd13]

There is no reason to be here complaining about having to type
explanations in the alert box. I have posted several times and I
will do it again right now.

GET "REMOTE KEYS"!!!

It is free and can be used to feed explanations into the bidding box window. Just click on the bid to be explained and then click on an
entry in remote keys.

Pre-alerting is nice and a way to give opponents a chance to discuss their general defensive style. This is not an excuse to not alert from now on. Mandating people look at a URL in order to understand your bids is not any kind of a solution for online bridge.

[mpefritz]

Although there can be endless discussion of what should and shouldn't be alerted (I go so far as to alert and fill in the description box for my NT range as 15-17), playing in timed pairs events, I feel the players who play systems which are highly regulated by most large national/global bridge groups MUST be prepared to have rapid descriptions of their system available via remote key alerting (as suggested by DrTodd) or some other cut and paste without opps asking or having to delay to look up the info.

If playing in an untimed event or the main bridge club or in a team event, URLs should be fine (but the above would be nice). Without a time constraint, there should be little griping, and if someone doesn't want to play against such a pair they can feel free to excuse themselves.

So to answer the original question that was posed -- I would like to see alerting with descriptions.

just my thoughts

fritz

[keylime]

Remotekeys is a nice tool - works pretty good for me with all the system explainations I got. At times it's a little fussy, but it's a good tradeoff for time saving measures.

As before, I think before team games of any length in Abalucy's at least, I offer my CC to the opps. It's fair. I'm about fair.

[ack_hh]

RemoteKeys: http://www.freewareh.../RemoteKeys.htm

[hrothgar]

Just back from a long cross country plane trip.

Ben is relatively accurate in characterizing my position. I believe (pretty firmly) that hypertext convention cards are part of an "optimal" solution to providing full disclosure in an online setting. Please note: I'm not convinced that the format that I adopted is the be-all and end-all, however, it is a good starting point.

In response to recent comments, I did a lot of work to shrink the size of the convention card. I was able to get the "main" page down to 4K + 4 x 5K gif files for suit symbols. From my perspective, this page provides players with 90% of the the information that they would need to play against MOSCITO. [This page documents our opening bids and provides suggested defenses to the 2 most unusual openings]. Other information is provided in case players want information about negative inferences, however, it normally isn't necessary to consult this during an event.

Rather than characterizing this as a "28 page file", I think its far more accurate to think of this as a graphical version of the pre-alert strings that many people send when sitting down

http://web.mit.edu/~...ww/MOSCITO.html

Long term, I believe that other components are necessary. For example, I believe implementing a "convention file" that maps a bidding sequence onto a hypertext string is a necessary extension. [If anyone care, The Bridge World is publishing a letter on this subject sometime during the next few issue]. Such a structure could be used to automate most alerts as well as providing a link to a suggested defense. Think of this as an automated version of the functions that some people are coding using Remote Keys. I will note that I think that a "convention card" will still be required, since alert/announcements can't adequately provide information regarding negative inferences.

Five years from now, I wouldn't be surprised to see options to link a given bid to a historical database of hands. For example, suppose that RHO opened 1NT in third seat. It would be highly amusing to be able to right click on this bid and see a graph plotting the HCP strength of that partnership's 3rd seat 1NT opening bids. In particular, if I saw a bimodal frequency distribution this would give me some very useful information about that pair's tendency to pysche.

[bhugi]

So, nothing wrong by not explaining an alert bid when opponents didn't ask. It is the correct procedure. You are not allowed to do so in physical events.
However, you are nicer to do so in online bridge (esp. when opp are not so expertised. )

[hrothgar]

Hi All

Remotes keys looks to be a nice little program.
I was quickly able to whip up a set of keys with alert strings for MOSCITO.
This should save a lot of typing.

Does anyone know where this data gets stored?
I'd like to be able to email files these between machines.

[DrTodd13]

I don't have Remote Keys in front of me because I only have it on
my home computer but there is an export function where you can
name a profile and save it to disk and then send that profile
through the mail. I've done this before and it is pretty easy.

Todd

[hrothgar]

Thanks for the help
Got it figured out now

[mycroft]

I *always* alert. And I - I would have said always, but I didn't just today^ - explain immediately. It may be a short version - I don't believe "6-12, 5+H, any such hand" really makes clear what an EHAA 2-bid is, but it's the best immediate response, for instance - but I do it anyway.

I am very happy for the change to the code so that I don't get halfway through an explanation and have a new "what does this mean" box appear, wiping out 20 characters, any more. Thanks BBO crew!

I like Richard's hypertext card, and with alerts and "quickie" explanations, I think it goes very well towards the ideal.

Why do I disagree with Bhugi? Well, because unlike any F2F bridge, we don't have UI passing when the opps don't ask. There's just no cost to you or partner to auto-explain; even behind screens, there's scritching and time-delay. "Well, you didn't ask" doesn't cut any weight with me - the onus is on the bidding partnership to explain, the "you're expected to protect yourself" bit in most FtF sponsoring organizations' regulations is just a way to minimize UI and slowdowns and interest showing.

If they don't care, they can bid. If they do care, they can wait. If they've heard it 20 times, not my problem. If they *know* an explanation is coming when I alert a bid, they don't have to wonder if they should ask, or click and hope, or obviously show lack of surety, or...

Which, of course, is why I don't like JG and others' "force opps to wait for the explanation". After about 5 EHAA two-bids (say, 10 hands or so), the opps have got it, and shouldn't need to wait - and I shouldn't force them to because I insist on telling them - again - because it doesn't hurt them.

OTOH, I type 65 WPM. I can give pretty, detailed explanations quickly. Typing isn't the chore for me that it is for others, who acquired the computer habit a bit later than nine. (RemoteKeys is nice)

Michael

^ The table was "all-canadian", I was the weakest player in the game, and I alerted a NMF 2C. There, I expected it was standard; if there had been a multinational table, I would have auto-explained.

[Free]

The biggest problem IMO is that there isn't enough space to type a big explanation.

Example my 3H opening: "pre S / FG H + 3S / FG 6C-4D". That's too long, and I don't see how I can shorten that even more... And ops don't always get the picture. If you come up with a FG H, they say you didn't have a preempt in S :- and they think you're not playing fair.

Tip for the programmers: MAKE THE EXPLANATION BOX BIGGER PLZ!

Free

[bglover]

You have an unlimted explanation box available... its the 'chat to opps' option. Control O opens a chat where your message goes just to your opponenets
So, you can make your bid after you tell them "alert!" and the explanaiton for your bid.

Simple!

[wenny]

[td][/td][tr][/tr]

[DrTodd13]

I think the world class pairs that play a lot of artificial stuff have
little cards prepared for the stuff that comes up frequently that
describes the bid. They can just show the card to their
screenmate and save time that way. A paper version of RemoteKeys
you could say. The rarer stuff they still have to write down I
would suppose.

Todd

[Trpltrbl]

When y run a tournament just tell players to alert any non SAYC bid or any non 2/1 bid and y have a lot covered. I already mentioned in another post that a lot of players r trying to win this game by playing a system that most r not familiar with, and therefore get away with some stuff, especially when not alerting. Good for them > and if the want to play a game of real bridge come look me up ;D.

Mike ;D