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Quick moan Systems on vugraph

#1 User is offline   gerry 

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Posted 2007-February-07, 23:34

I feel forced to burst into print because yet again I have gone to watch a viewgraph hoping to learn something from the commentary as well as be entertained but have had to sit through miles of drivel from the system nazis complaining about the methods of some pair or other.

Their argument always comes down to familiarity, so does that mean I have to play the same system as everybody else even if I think it is inferior? Of all the lame excuses for a poor result unfamiliarity with the opponents methods is the lamest.
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#2 User is offline   mike777 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 01:52

As an old ex debater...you really need to be able to debate both sides......

Can you come up with stronger arguments as a System Nazi?
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#3 User is offline   Free 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 02:51

Why aren't people in Australia complaining about bidding systems? :D
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#4 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 02:55

This debate has been going on for ages and will continue to do so. This is because the system nazis and the system anarchist both have good cases for their positions. Maybe it boils down to this: some people consider system development part of the game, others don't.

Personally, I would prefer tournaments with all kind of different (lack of) regulations to be set up. Then market forces would select the "best" level of regulations.

Unfortunately (?), de facto standards naturally evolve and are quite stable even if inferior. My pet peve is the multi 2 opening. For historic reasons, WBF Brown Sticker definitions make an exception for multi. An absurd consequence of that is that WJ2005 has replaced Wilcosz 2 with multi 2.
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#5 User is offline   mike777 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 03:37

"Personally, I would prefer tournaments with all kind of different (lack of) regulations to be set up. Then market forces would select the "best" level of regulations."


Are not market forces doing exactly this, even if in its usual even, up and down form, in the short run?

Keep in mind "market forces" is a very extreme broad term that means many things over the decades.

One of the main reasons is as Richard Roll of UCLA said ....we do not know what the "market" means.
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#6 User is online   mycroft 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 10:40

The thing I find frustrating - specifically vugraph w/ weird systems (and I have a well known bias on "what should be legal", not commenting again about it here) - is that I don't know what's going on, and neither does anyone else (okay, maybe one person).

In Really Big events, CCs have to be posted, and we can use them; but I think at least in long session vugraphs that it should be a *strong recommendation* for the SO to require CCs they can post. I would think that the strange-system players, in particular, would be more than ready to have that information.

Michael.
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#7 User is offline   FrancesHinden 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 12:09

Posted cc's are often pretty useless for explaning anything other than the opening bid and (maybe) the response. There are some honourable exceptions, but that's the rule.

The Vu-graph organisers try their best to have someone on hand who understands any particular system being played to advise the commentators.

I might add that as an occasional commentator on a pair I don't know, where I don't even know their basic system, I have been advised by spectators with absolute certainty that the pair plays Precision or that they play Standard American...
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#8 User is offline   gerry 

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Posted 2007-February-08, 16:50

Firstly my apologies to all the unbiased commentators who do a good job. My remarks only apply to the ignorant few, of course.

I can certainly sympathise with the difficulty of commentating on unusual systems without adequate information. What I specifically found off-putting was the ridicule one pair was subjected to after a (very) long auction to a 6 contract that was dismissed as easy to bid quickly by natural methods. Naturally the contract was 3NT in the other room :(

Also insulting was the assertion that teams playing artificial methods often perform well in the round robin stage of a tournament but less well once the knockout starts. This is hardly earth shattering given that fully half of the teams qualifying are gone after one round!

I understand the remarks about "Market forces", but of course to give these forces a chance to operate the powers that be must allow all competing products equal chance to show their worth. That is not the case now and arguments from some sort of pseudo democratic principle that most players dont want to face strange bidding are spurious for many reasons not least of which is that what is strange varies form country to country and even from club to club. I once played in a small club where it was normal to make a jump overcall on jack fifth and a 12 count because non jump overcalls denied holding as many as 12hcp!! This was certainly unfamiliar but I did not go crying to the director.

My point is just that players will NEVER be fully familiar with their opponents methods and in fact often less so against supposedly natural bidding. Another example, the pair who bid 1-1NT-3 holding a 2533 19 count. The bidding continues 3-4 and now we found it hard to diagnose that we had to get our third round club trick fast. When asked they explained that they had to bid like this to show 5 hearts, yeah, thanks for telling us.
With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same may mean for some men to do as they please...with the product of other men's labor.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of of liberty.

-A. Lincoln
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