[gerry]

awm, on Nov 1 2007, 06:11 PM, said:

As far as I can tell, the new laws do not give the authority to regulate people's bids, only the authority to regulate people's agreements.

So you can't just "specify the final contract" -- bridge does not work that way.

True, but in reality regulating agreements IS regulating people's bids. Any non new partnership has imlicit agreements about everything. My partnerships understandings about when to open 1H might well be too hard for a new player to understand and if there are a few of them in the field they can tell us our understanding is 'special' and ban it. That applies to every call we make. They can now decide that all of them are special understandings. They can keep deciding that until we transform our system into exactly what they desire.

They certainly can regulate style and hand evaluation also, this is not hard to do in the new laws. A rule such as "any opening bid at the one level that by partnership agreement can be made on less that 12 hcp is a special understanding" can legally be made. Who is to stop them? I had a director bleating at me the other day "a cue bid shows an ace or a void, a cue bid shows an ace or a void, baa, baa".

Anyway this is my final post on this as I am getting too bloody angry. The upshot is that regulating partnership agreements about normal natural bids IS regulating style and judgement.

They should not have done it.
The consequences will be huge.
Trust me

[paulg]

If your faith in the competence and integrity of your local bridge organisation is so poor that this law change is considered a major problem, then you are in trouble whatever the laws say.

The new laws are not the problem here.

Paul

[1eyedjack]

There is I think something to gerry's concerns, in that:

Laws are only changed as a result of positive pressure to do so. There must have been a perceived flaw in the original laws for anyone to go to the trouble of changing them. Those who were instrumental in driving forward these changes were, I suspect, broadly the same individuals as those who wield power in the sponsoring organisations.

In other words, we can probably expect a positive and concerted move by the sponsoring organisations to make use of the new licence granted to them, as they are unlikely to have gone to so much trouble for no purpose, and it was they who went to the trouble of bringing about the changes to the laws. It would be naive to think that they have gone to all that trouble without intending to take advantage of the result.

Nor am I entirely convinced by the argument that the laws have simply been changed to bring them in line with prevailing practice. "If you can't beat it, legalise it". Everyone drives at 80 in a 70 zone. Change it to an 80 zone and they will all just start driving at 90.

I am mainly in favour of granting as much power as possible to those in direct charge of events. Therein lies a mechanism to have a diverse variety of events that cater for a wide spectrum of the playing population. At local club level, the club's committee are the best placed individuals to determine the preferences of the club's members, not some centralised authority hundreds of miles away.

Where I perceive a possible problem is if the National Organisations, who lobbied for this change, accept the devolved powers as licence to issue regulations without in turn allowing that power to filter down the ranks and in turn delegate powers to those at ground level. The effect of this would be manifest in national competitions, for which the NBO is the SO. But local clubs would be largely unaffected and might even benefit.

[helene_t]

At our Christmas drive, we play under some rules that deviate from the laws. No problem.

The new law is a signal: you can set up an event with restrictions on natural bidding agreements and WBF may still consider it serious competition.

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. The idiosyncrasy of the Dutch AC has been discussed here already, and the Amsterdam district is even worse, making rules that are not only illegal and moronic but also completely incoherent. And Netherlands, with some 150,000 BF members, is, relatively speaking, not even a banana republic, bridgewise.

OK, the Dutch AC controversy is about conventions rather than natural agreements so this example may be off target. Then think of the BBO tourneys with rules as "no psyches" or "no 1NT with a stiff". Fine for the Christmas drive but someone need to make clear that serious bridge requires serious laws. Granting amateuristic local authorities more power to make their own messy laws is a step in the wrong direction.

[mgoetze]

gerry, on Nov 2 2007, 06:27 AM, said:

True, but in reality regulating agreements IS regulating people's bids. Any non new partnership has imlicit agreements about everything. My partnerships understandings about when to open 1H might well be too hard for a new player to understand and if there are a few of them in the field they can tell us our understanding is 'special' and ban it. That applies to every call we make. They can now decide that all of them are special understandings. They can keep deciding that until we transform our system into exactly what they desire.

You think too complicated. They'll just disallow agreements about bids other than 3NT except the agreement that they all show exactly 37 HCP. (You'd be free to show distribution and/or which HCP you're missing with all those different bids, of course.)

[mycroft]

For many years, the ACBL, the EBU, and other organizations have wanted to restrict things they couldn't, by a reasonable reading of the Laws, legally restrict. Sometimes they were called on it, and backed down, or found other ways of doing the same thing.

They came up with this "no conventions after this natural bid" trick, which effectively makes it impossible. After people complained that this is perverting the rules to the point of uselessness, someone decided to ask the WBFLC for an opinion. Their opinion, frankly, is that ZOs know what is best for the game in that organization, and therefore their right to regulate conventions was total, and that in particular, this is perfectly legal.

It also backended "single-system" games - because they can say "You play Standard Moravian with these conventions and carding and no other, or you can play no conventions at all, ever."

This still sounded like perverting the regulations, and led to complaints of "instead of trying to find loopholes, write the rules the way you want, and follow them. At least the people who disagree will have clear text to disagree with." So they did, here and in other places, with the new Laws.

They really only say what they "said" before. The ZOs just can now regulate directly rather than doing endruns. I don't think it's going to change much - they're just going to say you can't open 1NT with less than 10HCP instead of "You can do it, but you can't play Stayman, or SOS XX, or Blackwood afterward", or "weak 2s must have 5 and 5" instead of what's currently in the GCC.

Michael.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on Nov 2 2007, 05:18 AM, said:

There is I think something to gerry's concerns, in that:

Laws are only changed as a result of positive pressure to do so. There must have been a perceived flaw in the original laws for anyone to go to the trouble of changing them. Those who were instrumental in driving forward these changes were, I suspect, broadly the same individuals as those who wield power in the sponsoring organisations.

I don't think they changed the Laws to allow for lots of new, oppressive regulations. Rather, they changed the Laws to say what many organizations have long been interpreting the old Laws to mean, or if you want to be less charitable, what they have been pretending the old Laws said.

Yes, there was "positive pressure", but I believe it was from people who complained that the Laws didn't really authorize what was already occurring. Rather than try to change all the NBOs' practices, they changed the Laws to conform to existing behavior.

[aelred]

Now, there are some that think this is not a major change - because anyway SOs could regulate however they wished under the old laws, using the "Endicott fudge" to ban the use of conventions thereafter.

Leaving apart the fact that the said "Endicott fudge" had a very dubious look, that is now gone, I'd like to point out the obvious difference: yes, before SOs could use the said fudge for their purposes - PROVIDED the SOs had enough competent persons aboard to know about the said fudge in the first place and to be able to draw such regulation. I can mathematically prove that SOs where no such competence can be found exist - in the usual mathematical way, by providing an example (only upon request).

More exactly, I refer to an NBO - a national body. I happen to play in this NBO - I was born here. I'll better leave it unnamed, the precise identity of my NBO is of no concern.

The problem, as I see it, is this: the rules of bridge should work. They should work everywhere. The responsibility for drafting rules that work should go to the rulemakers. The rulemakers seem to be drafting rules that confer SOs, NBOs etc lots of power and rely on these organisations having enough competence to exert that power.

My NBO does not seem to have the said competence and also not the means to acquire it. So the rules do not work, and moreover if you happen to know what the rules require you to do (as a player) you are usually just restricted further than the field (that does not give a damn).

It's not about good will - I'm pretty certain most guys in power around here have the best intentions. However, although there is lots of good will, I'm afraid resources are severely lacking. And I'm also afraid no change of persons in power will get us anywhere.

Now, in such an environment there is already enough trouble with keeping the game running as it is. If you add more regulating power, the problem is, well, at some time someone will certainly use it. And it certainly won't be a thing of beauty.

And over here, there is lots of regulating power added - the advantage of the guys in power being honest, simple-minded and not that well learned was, well, that you could tell them "hey, you're only supposed to be regulating conventions" and they'd say "oh, is that so? we did not know, sorry".

And when the time will come that we'll have to cope with a stupid, horrible regulation that will detract massively from our enjoyment of the game, please allow me to hold responsible not the guys that will be imposing it (after all, they know no better) but those gentlemen in the laws drafting committee that thought it was just a small, convenient change.

[DJNeill]

Hey,
I think that the reduction of said fudge by changing the laws to meet the behavior is good. As long as a club can theoretically allow any convention it could before, there is nothing wrong. Even if they banned mid-chart period, we would still have BBO and homegames. I have not gone to my club in a long time because they banned mid-chart conventions a year ago, but I don't hold it against them. They are growing the game nicely, with a higher tablecount than there has been in a decade. Pros might enjoy more populous clubs.

Thanks,
Dan

[gerry]

aelred, on Nov 3 2007, 08:09 AM, said:

If you add more regulating power, the problem is, well, at some time someone will certainly use it. And it certainly won't be a thing of beauty.

And over here, there is lots of regulating power added - the advantage of the guys in power being honest, simple-minded and not that well learned was, well, that you could tell them "hey, you're only supposed to be regulating conventions" and they'd say "oh, is that so? we did not know, sorry".

And when the time will come that we'll have to cope with a stupid, horrible regulation that will detract massively from our enjoyment of the game, please allow me to hold responsible not the guys that will be imposing it (after all, they know no better) but those gentlemen in the laws drafting committee that thought it was just a small, convenient change.

Thank you

This is exactly the point

[mycroft]

It wasn't a "small, convenient change". It was a matter of making clear what their policy was, and is.

If "security by obscurity" is the only thing that works - and saying "you can't regulate that, it's not a convention" when *you* at least know that they could endrun it, hoping that they don't, is disingenious, at best - then you're in the same problem as anyone else who relies on obscurity - many eyes make all bugs shallow. If you're going to gripe about the "Endicott fudge" being disingenious, as many have (including me), at least now it's out in the open where not only unworldly NBOs know about it straight up, but also unworldly players who might have thought that they were actually protected by the Laws. And if enough of them have a problem with it, well, then, things can get changed.

Remember, this, and the election that allows ZOs to let you look at your convention card (wanna bet that will only apply if your convention card is Standard or 2/1?), is in the Laws because the Laws commission thinks that's what the players want. And frankly, if you listen to the grumbling, it *is* - for every one of you and me and Richard who think that things are too restrictive already *and say so*, there are 10 or 100 who grumble about "those people who play those weird systems. All they're trying to do is win by confusion, not by Playing Bridge."

Now, those who can see their pet systems being legislated out of the game realize that that is a possibility. Let's see if they become as vocal as the "why can't they just play the same as 'everyone else'rs [meaning, of course, 'me']".

What would you prefer - the TSA's "there's a rule against it, and we can punish you, but you can't see it, because there's a rule against that, too (you can't see that one either)", or everything out in the open and a clear target to deal with or attack?

Michael.

[gerry]

I take your point. I think my point of view is different because I have played all my bridge in one of the more liberal organisations in the world (NZ). ACBL superchart is much, much more restrictive than what we allow in even the lowest level of non-restricted tournaments. Our NBO has never used any Endicoytt type fudge, so I guess I am annoyed that things will now probably change for us in this enlightened part of the world.

[helene_t]

Why should it change? If your legislators didn't want to ban multi 2♦ under the old laws, why would they ban 5-card preempts under the new laws?

[gerry]

You have to be here. Things have been evolving slowly in the antipodes, remember, a New Zealander invented symmetric relay and I have played forcing pass (with cascade) at regional level.

However, we have been making a steady progression in the reactionary direction for twenty years and now we have just appointed in a new constitution a "chief director" with almost God like powers. This person has very primitive views on systems and has been restrained up to now by issues of authority, I fear that now the administrators may have created a situation that they will find difficult to control, and major changes will happen that they can do little to prevent save by alterations in personnel.

[gerry]

I have been trying to think of a good analogy.

American football allows forward passes but only in restricted circumstances, it would be a fundamental change to allow individual states to ban forward passes altogether.

In soccer the goalie is now restricted in when he or she is permitted to handle the ball, and it may be restricted further, who knows, but that is different in a qualitative sense from allowing countries to do away with a keeper completely.

In rugby union there are a myriad of bizzare technical rules surrounding the ruck and mall that change every second week, some of these rules alter how often rucks develop and even what tactics may be best to use on the field, but if one allows rucks and malls to be banned then you have changed the game into rugby league, a different beast entirely.

It is always difficult to go backwards. It is all very well to say that we now have a target but it is too late. The game is fundamentally altered for good. I feel that this is wrong and that I have had something precious stolen from me. The great unwashed will always want what they are told to want. Bridge is bridge, and if some, or even the majority, dont want to play it as it is then go and invent another game, just dont change the nature of the game completely and tell us that it is still bridge.

[awm]

If you're looking for sports analogies, I'd compare it to American baseball, where the dimensions of the field and the playing surface are not mandated by rules and differ from stadium to stadium.

This certainly effects the strategy of putting a team together and so forth... but it'd be silly to argue that playing in one city rather than another really makes it a different game.

[gerry]

But if the number of bases were allowed to change would that make a difference?

[mycroft]

If you're going to play Association Football rules changes, realize that the rules limiting when the keeper can handle the ball changed dramatically less than ten years ago, mostly because it was really boring to have everybody play keepaway, then kick to the keeper, who would pick it up, hold for a few seconds, and boot it back downfield for another round of keepaway.

The problem is that the powers that regulate have had these powers for years, and have wanted them for more. And the powers that be have said "the ZOs know better than us what's best for their membership". People like you and me complained that the laws didn't say that, and that it's twisting the words until they scream to get what they want. So they wrote it in plain language.

I'm actually happy with these apocalyptic posts - the LC did what we asked and said "this is what they can do", and now the people who didn't know that they could do it and are worried are coming out of the woodwork. Maybe the silent minority who didn't know they could be oppressed will be less silent now - and maybe that may change their minds, or limit how the ZOs use their "new" power.

Michael.