[Gerben42]

My observations about the American regulations is that they try to reinvent a wheel and fail to do so.

On 1 side, the international rules about HUM and Brown Sticker systems are already a working wheel. What has been achieved with the ACBL regulations is that:

* Differences in regulations between USA and international rules prohibit foreign pairs to play their WBF-approved methods in national US events, and conversely the national teams of the USA cannot practice against these methods.

* There is a "MidChart" that notes what COULD be allowed, but some of it will never be allowed because a committee refuses to accept any suggested defense against it.

* Finally, the GCC is defined in such a way that apparently even seasoned directors cannot tell what is allowed and what is not.

Strangely something similar happens in Germany. Other than category "A" (anything goes), "B+" (no HUM but BSC") and "B" (no HUM, no BSC) in their wisdom the DBV has created a category C that is more complicated than B to explain, and makes it but impossible to play normal bridge. In my then local club in Tübingen, Germany on Friday night we played this category "C" until it was deemed to complicated and they changed to "B". The old ladies didn't seem to mind.

If asked, I'd volunteer to be on a committee to fix the mess in Germany...

[mikestar]

My previous comment was in respect to the restrictiveness of the convention regulations. As far as fuzziness is concerned, the ACBL would do very well to take a page from the EBU's book and work much harder on having coherent, well-explained regulations. I offer no defense whatever for this aspect of the ACBL's convention regulation, though neither do I find this sinister.

[fred]

awm, on Feb 8 2008, 05:54 PM, said:

I'm afraid I have to take hrothgar's side on the conventions issue.

While I think it's admirable that Fred presumes the best of people, I simply can't imagine who benefits from the situation when no one can figure out what is or isn't allowed. For example, prior to a recent NABC I was trying to figure out whether we are allowed to play a 3NT opening showing a sound 4M preempt (in national open events!). Looking at the convention charts I could not figure this out. I sent email to Rick Beye at ACBL and he could not figure it out either. He suggested it might be mid-chart (with no reasoning behind this) and that I needed a suggested defense, then informed me that no defense could be approved in the two months before nationals (regardless of the fact that this convention is probably 40 years old and not particularly harder to defend than 3NT showing a "solid major suit" which is on the general chart). Phil Clayton asked a director and was told this convention is general chart and proceeded to play it in general chart events...

I asked ACBL whether 2M showing five cards in the bid suit and a four-plus card minor was allowed on the general chart. I got conflicting answers from two "authorities." I asked ACBL whether I could play 2NT showing 5+ diamonds and a second 5+ suit on the mid-chart and was told that "no defense will ever be approved for this" even though it appears to be mid-chart.

Obviously one can debate endlessly about what "should be allowed" and what "would make the bridge playing population happiest." On most of these issues I have no idea -- my gut feeling is that the majority of bridge players really don't care about these things one way or another. But who could possibly benefit from a situation where the rules are muddled and unclear? The EBU has a very clear set of guidelines with lots of examples. ACBL even took the definition of "relay system" off the convention chart in their latest changes (thus making things more ambiguous).

My view is, the only people who could possibly benefit from vague and fuzzy rules are the people with widely known reputations who have served on a lot of laws committees and such. They can convince the director to rule in their favor (and I have seen this many times) if only because the director can't understand the regulations either and just takes the expert's word. So a fuzzy set of regulations basically means different rules for different people.

IMO you are making a serious mistake by drawing conclusions about what motivates these decisions based on observations you have made about some of the consequences of these decisions.

I agree with you completely that the current state of affairs is not a good one and that everyone (including most of the top players by the way) are confused. I also agree that it is not unusual to find leading players who try to manipulate TDs by intentionally feeding them BS. Probably this happens even more with less experienced players, but the top players tend to be more successful at it.

But to suggest that the leading players have intentionally tried to confuse everyone because that is good for them.... Words fail me.

At least Hrothgar's explanation is credible. Your explanation is not (at least to me).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[cherdano]

Adam, I think the difference is that in the EBU, there are a couple of individuals who are
1. willing to invest a lot of time into this issue, and
2. are highly qualified to do that.
Of course I don't doubt that all the players Fred listed are highly qualified to judge system regulations, but I doubt anyone of them has invested an amount of time comparable to e.g. David Stevenson in the EBU (and I am not blaming them for that).

Your speculation about motives is really off-base, sorry.

[jtfanclub]

fred, on Feb 8 2008, 11:40 AM, said:

While it is true that top players are among those involved in making these decisions (along with teachers, directors, club managers, and politician types), it really bothers me when people suggest that such decisions are motivated by self-interest of the leading players.

Why does this bother you? Why is it denigrating?

Suppose you weren't a bridge expert. Suppose you were a Texas Hold 'Em expert. You sit down to play the Texas Hold 'Em Championships. The first round, it's you (the expert) and seven palookas.

Very quickly, you find that every time you bet, either everybody folds or somebody goes all in. You never, ever see a flop without all you money in the pot. Pretty quickly, you figure out the odds...even if you waited until you had a pair of aces, the odds of beating a random hand is still less than seven in eight. While the odds are higher that you'll win vs. any individual, overall your odds of making it to the next table are slim. Meanwhile, if they played 'like experts' you'd have close to a 100% chance of winning.

This wouldn't just be bad for you, it would be bad for poker. You don't even need to look at your hand in order to play Palooka Poker. You don't even have to know what poker is, you just have to know that if the expert is folding 7/8ths of the time you always fold when they bet, and if he's folding less you always go all in when they bet. I can teach a 5 year old how to do that. If a bunch of 5 year olds are beating the experts, Poker isn't going to survive for long.

So the poker experts change the rules. Rebuys, so even if the palookas eliminate the pros the pros can come in the next round when most of the palookas are gone (the palookas can't afford the stake). Instead of having everybody ante, only two people ante, one high and one medium, which means the palookas can't check, see what the expert does, and then decide whether to go all in. And I suspect their are other rules as well that favor expert players. For example, in palooka poker, once you've dumped the expert your best strategy is to make sure that only one person advances, rather than several people struggle through with less money. So on the last hand you have to survive to qualify, may as well roll dice and high roll takes all. They may have a carryover limit for this purpose.

In bridge, high-variance bids are equivalent to palooka poker. Suppose that I open 5 card suits with 11-15 hcp at the 3 level. That's a huge variance bid. Sometimes it'll get me tops, more often it'll get me bottoms, but the bidding skill of my opponent won't make much of a difference. If I'm playing in an online ACBL game, if I get lucky against the top pair they'll be lucky to scratch. If I get average against the top pair but unlucky against several other pairs, probably one of those pairs is going to win. I've turned the game into a crap shoot.

Why is it wrong for the rules to reduce variance to make it more likely that the best team will win?

[awm]

To clarify, I don't think anyone set out to say "let's design some fuzzy regulations so we can always get our way." It's not that sinister.

What I do think happened, is that at some point a fuzzy set of regulations came into existence. Since that time, there have been a moderately large number of complaints from people who couldn't play their pet methods, or who were unable to determine whether their methods were allowed. A lot of conventions were submitted for "recommended defenses" and relatively few were approved.

So the question we have to ask is, why isn't anyone changing this state of affairs? Certainly it could be that people just don't have the time to work on it. But then we have to ask: why are these folks on the committee to determine this stuff if they don't have time to work on it? We have had a lot of the same names on the conventions and defenses committee for quite sometime (nor am I clear on how these people are selected for that committee). If they can honestly say "we have not improved the regulations or approved defenses because we simply don't have time" that's understandable, but why don't they give way to other folks with more free time to spend? I am sure there is no shortage of volunteers (although not perhaps volunteers with the bridge playing credentials of Jeff Meckstroth and Chip Martel). In fact one could argue that a clearer set of rules would save a lot of people time in the long run since there'd be fewer queries of "is this allowed?" and fewer "please approve my defense" as well as a quicker way to answer any such queries that exist.

Assuming it's not a time issue why isn't anyone changing this state of affairs? I think the logical explanation is that the people in charge don't feel that there is a problem. But given how upset hrothgar (and myself, and others) seem to be, how can there not be a problem? We have people quitting ACBL because their methods aren't allowed, and other people quitting tournament play because people play weird stuff they can't figure out. Obviously if these upset individuals include the people making the rules, or their bridge-playing friends they would perceive a problem and do something. So the attitude seems to be well it's not a problem for us combined with the people who are upset about this are not important or numerous. So while it may not be as nefarious as my previous post seems to suggest, I do think the situation is that the people on the committee can convince directors to approve whatever they want to play, so they don't perceive a problem for themselves. At the same time, the people who do have a problem are a small minority (people who want to play weird stuff and don't have any clout with the directors). So it's easy for the committee to pass this off as "it's a small minority of crackpots who want to play weird stuff" and ignore them. Unfortunately this creates a double standard where "acknowledged expert players who want to play weird stuff" get to play it (i.e. Meckstroth etc) whereas "random players who want to play weird stuff" don't get to, even in the same events.

[fred]

jtfanclub, on Feb 8 2008, 06:48 PM, said:

fred, on Feb 8 2008, 11:40 AM, said:

While it is true that top players are among those involved in making these decisions (along with teachers, directors, club managers, and politician types), it really bothers me when people suggest that such decisions are motivated by self-interest of the leading players.

Why does this bother you? Why is it denigrating?

Because I have served on this committee and I know my motivations for doing so as well as my motivations for the opinions I expressed while on the committee.

Because most of the other leading players who serve of these committees are people I admire and respect. In some cases they are close friends of many years and/or former partners/teammates. While I cannot say that I *know* what motivates these people, I hope I am a good enough judge of character that my take on them is not far off the mark.

Wouldn't it bother you if someone suggested that you or your friends were abusing their positions of power for their own self-interest when you know (at least in the case of your own motivations) or strongly suspect (in the case of your friends' motivations) that it is not true?

Wouldn't it bother you even more if you knew that your own participation in this process was actually contrary to your own self-interest and that your motivations were purely a matter of service and duty?

Undeserved character assassination of people I admire bothers me. Doesn't it bother you?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

This post has been edited by fred: 2008-February-08, 13:03

[blackshoe]

awm, on Feb 8 2008, 12:54 PM, said:

ACBL even took the definition of "relay system" off the convention chart in their latest changes (thus making things more ambiguous).

Huh? In the 2005 edition of the convention charts, which is what I get when I follow the link on the ACBL web site, item 3 under definitions is

Quote

A sequence of relay bids is defined as a system if, after an opening of one of a suit, it is started prior to opener’s rebid.

Is there a newer chart? If so, where might I find it and why does the link still point to this old one?

[helene_t]

I have never served on a regulatory board of a bridge federation and I'm not even a certified TD so my opinion may be mood. But based on my experience from policy-making various other kinds of organizations, including bridge clubs, I would say that
- Rules very easily become muddy
- This is partly due to the lack of lawyers serving on the boards. People without a law degree are generally not able to formulate coherent rules, even if they are very smart and experts on the field with which the organization deals.
- It is also partly due to conflicting positions within the boards. Sometimes a muddy compromise is reached to avoid anybody losing face. Sometimes no consensus is reached so the secretary obviously can only write down mud or else face accusations of being biased.

That the ACBL convention policy is full of mud is believable and unsurprising. I personally do not need any conspiracy theory to account for it. What Arend and Fred writes is completely plausible to me.

[blackshoe]

mikestar, on Feb 8 2008, 12:59 PM, said:

In practice every club I'm familiar with either adheres to the GCC as written or removes the limits on NT defenses.

In practice, every club with which I'm familiar (a half dozen or so here in Rochester NY and nearby areas) doesn't specify any convention regulations. Until, that is, somebody complains about something or other. Then you get things like GCC legal conventions being banned, or required to be treated as if they were mid-chart, or mid-chart conventions allowed without restriction, or other such nonsense, all based on the director's whim of the moment.

The general situation in the ACBL sucks. The situation around here sucks worse.

[dburn]

Having served for many years on the English Laws and Ethics Committee, one of whose duties is to formulate regulations for what systems may be played in what events, I would make these points:

Our motives are as Fred suggested: to make English bridge tournaments as enjoyable as possible for all who play in them. Some who play in them want to be able to use everything from Fantunes to Suspensor to EHAA to... well, complete the list on your own. Others think it would be a good idea if no one was allowed to play anything more complicated than Stayman and Blackwood. For as long as I have been a member of the Committee, our task has always been to achieve the best compromise we can given these extremes. The task is not easy.

One of the more serious anomalies with which we have had to deal over the years has to do with the Multi. In general terms, no ambiguous opening was permitted at other than the highest levels of competition - apart from the Multi. It was charged that this was because all the members of the L&E wanted to play the Multi whenever they could, so we allowed it in every tournament.

Nothing could in fact have been further from the truth. We kept suggesting that the Multi should be subject to the same restrictions as, say, Wilkosz two-level openings (where 2H showed reds or blacks), and we kept being told by the membership that they did not want us to do this because they were quite happy that the Multi should be allowed everywhere.

But this did not prevent accusations that the Committee consisted entirely of people abusing their position of power in their own self-interest. Not that this compared even remotely to the extent to which the Selection Committee was accused (equally without foundation) of the same crime, but I am afraid that comes with the territory.

Whatever regulations we come up with in this area, there will be people who think they are over-permissive, and an equal number of people who think they are over-restrictive. There will be people who think that we attend unutterably tedious meetings half a dozen times a year just so that we can play the Lucas Two Spades Opening (whatever that is) while people outside the corridors of power can't play Modified Wenble Overcalls (whatever they are). There will be people who, as soon as they get the latest set of regulations, will go through them for the express purpose of inventing some daft convention which has just become permissible. What there won't be are people who write to us and say "I think you got it about right" - but again, that comes with the territory. After all, newspapers do not publish headlines saying "Sixty Million People In Britain Not Murdered Yesterday".

Having said that, my personal view is that regulations at the highest levels of the game are far too restrictive. In the Bermuda Bowl and the Venice Cup, you should be allowed to play anything you like, subject of course to full disclosure well in advance. The mindset that says you aren't is, in my view, an unfortunate one, and is in my view driven to some extent by people whose motives are impure. But that is, perhaps, another matter.

[mike777]

"Having said that, my personal view is that regulations at the highest levels of the game are far too restrictive. In the Bermuda Bowl and the Venice Cup, you should be allowed to play anything you like, subject of course to full disclosure well in advance. The mindset that says you aren't is, in my view, an unfortunate one, and is in my view driven to some extent by people whose motives are impure. But that is, perhaps, another matter."

I seem to recall that full disclosure is a big problem at the highest levels let alone at the nonWC level. I do not have the books or magazine articles in front of me, but I seem to recall this issue is discussed often in books or magazine articles written by WC players.

Perhaps I saw some of this in articles by Wolff or Hamman or Rosenberg. I think there is much on this in the new Canada Warriors book from last year.

[Echognome]

dburn, on Feb 8 2008, 01:03 PM, said:

What there won't be are people who write to us and say "I think you got it about right" - but again, that comes with the territory.

Having play both in the EBU and the ACBL, I think that the EBU has got it more right than the ACBL. I can certainly understand that there are cultural differences and what I could play in England, I can no longer play in the ACBL. What I liked in England was that I felt the rules were much clearer. The Orange Book makes it very clear what's allowed and what's not allowed at what level.* The problem I have with the conventions charts in the ACBL is that they are not very clearly written.

*Note: sure there are always going to be some conventions that are ambiguous, but those are often discussed to death on the BLML pages.

[jtfanclub]

fred, on Feb 8 2008, 02:02 PM, said:

Quote

Undeserved character assassination of people I admire bothers me. Doesn't it bother you?

High-Variance methods make it a lot more likely that somebody random will win. Banning High Variance methods means that the pair/team with the most skill will win, not the people who got solid 1700s against somebody using a High Variance method simply by sitting down at the right time.

Why is it character assassination to say that the ACBL tries to make their events skill based instead of crapshoots, and this benefits the highly skilled players who make these rules?

Poker doesn't hide the fact that it's modified Hold 'em rules to make it a skill game instead of Roulette. Why shouldn't the ACBL do the same?

[fred]

jtfanclub, on Feb 8 2008, 09:53 PM, said:

Why is it character assassination to say that the ACBL tries to make their events skill based instead of crapshoots, and this benefits the highly skilled players who make these rules?

Because the suggestion is that the players are motivated by their own self-interest (as opposed to ACBL-interest).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[EricK]

I am prepared to accept that the people on committees are motivated by what they believe the membership want. But there are two things which are generally true about people - they don't like change, but they cope with change much better than they think they will.

So the committees can tell themselves they are acting in the interest of the membership by protecting them from change - and the membership, for the most part, might very well agree with them. But if they did loosen up the rules (maybe only a bit at a time) the membership would, in very short order, get used to the new situation and actually enjoy it.

[david_c]

There's no need to question people's motives. We can judge the ACBL's committee on what they have actually done - and in this respect, the evidence is damning. They have produced convention charts that are poorly written, open to interpretation, and (famously, in the case of the mid-chart) don't actually mean what they say. This is totally inexcusable, regardless of whether the committee's intentions are good.

Perhaps worse, these problems have been widely known for ages (certainly for all of the 5+ years I've been reading internet forums) and the committee has never done anything about them. Perhaps they've had some discussion, but to an outside observer it looks like they haven't even tried.

By way of contrast, I just came across an old email that I sent to the English L&E three-and-a-half years ago. Now, even back then the English regs were much better than the ACBL's. But of the nine things I wrote about, eight of them have since been resolved by the L&E. I copy it in full below as an example of how some authorities actually do try to fix the problems with their regulations. These are all the more remarkable for the fact that some of these things were really pretty minor.

> Apologies if everything I write below has already been considered - I
> wouldn't be surprised if you're already fed up of hearing about these
> things. I'm not going to be asking for anything new to be added, just that
> some things which I feel are ambiguous in the current version of OB ought
> to be straightened out when the next one is produced.
>
> 1. OB 9.1.8: Playing different systems according to position /
> vulnerability.
>
> Maybe this is deliberately vague, but it seems that there is much
> disagreement about what constitutes playing a different system. (e.g.
> switching from 5-card majors to 4-card majors.) I would like to urge you
> to clarify this.
In the new OB (10 A 8) they added some examples of things which did not constitute playing two different systems (including the one I mentioned).

> I suspect that the intention was to prevent people from switching from a
> strong club system to a natural system, or something of similar magnitude.
> If so, then in fact there are very few bids which might cause a problem
> (strong 1C opening, strong 1D opening, forcing 1NT opening; perhaps
> forcing vs. non-forcing 1C/1D), and these can be dealt with individually.


> 2. OB 13.4.2(ii): Treatment of a multi-2D.
>
> "You may not very the above by any sort of treatment."
>
> I think this is ambiguous in a very serious way - that is, there are two
> possible interpretations, of which the second is much more restrictive
> than the first:
>
> a) "You have to abide by the definitions given in 13.4.2(a)-(f), despite
> what it says in 9.4.1 and 9.4.2."
>
> b ) "You are not allowed to 'treat' the multi in *any* way." (So, for
> example, agreeing not to open 2D with a side 4-card suit is not allowed.)

They changed the wording in 2006, making it clear that the first of these was what was intended (new OB 11 G 6 (iii))


> 3. An 'opening' pass.
>
> As far as I can tell, forcing pass systems are not explicitly disallowed -
> they're just unplayable because other regulations make it impossible to
> respond sensibly. I think it would be worthwhile having a regulation to
> cover an "opening pass", along similar lines to 12.3.8. For example, there
> is one (fairly silly) system in which it is madatory to open at the
> 2-level with 0-7HCP, and so a pass shows 8-12HCP. At the moment this
> appears to be allowed at level 2, but that doesn't seem appropriate to me.
A regulation was added in 2006 (OB 11 B 1) which explicitly banned an opening pass which promised values.


> 4. OB 12.2.2(d): Strong club.
>
> "[1C may be] artificial, forcing, at least 16+ HCPs"
>
> Many "strong club" players have an agreement that they can open 1C on less
> than 16HCP if the hand warrants it. It would be nice to see this being
> explicitly allowed, for example,
>
> "at least 16+ HCPs (or equivalent playing strength)"
>
> or, if you wanted to be more specific,
>
> "at least 16+ HCPs or rule of X"
>
> where X might be either 24 or 25.
This was one of the major changes in 2006 (with an extra addition in 2007 after it was decided that the new rule didn't really work as intended).


> 5. More about 12.2.2(d): Strong club.
>
> It's not completely clear whether the definition of a strong club is meant
> to allow things like this:
>
> 1C = 16+ balanced, or 16+ with clubs, or any 20+.
>
> My interpretation of 9.4.2 is that this is not allowed; but perhaps it
> should be.
The new wording in 2006 (OB 11 C 3) made it clear that as long as an opening bid promised a strong hand, any agreement would be allowed.


> That's all that I really have to say, but I would also like to lend my
> support to the following:
>
> - Announcements.
This was the most controversial change in 2006.

> - A strong 1C opening which has a minimum strength of 15HCP; or
> maybe even less, particularly at level 4.
This one didn't get in.

> - Third seat opening bids allowed on less than rule of 19 / 18.
People had been complaining about this for ages, and it was finally changed in 2006 (OB 11 C 10).

> - A 1S negative response to 1C.
This became permitted in 2005, and nowadays any response is allowed. (OB 11 D 8).

So there you go. Eight out of nine is not bad. And I can think of other examples of things that the EBU fixed because of complaints from members. In the same time period I don't know of anything the ACBL has done to deal with the problems people have complained about. On the evidence I've seen, the ACBL fully deserves its bad reputation.

[mike777]

EricK, on Feb 9 2008, 02:18 AM, said:

I am prepared to accept that the people on committees are motivated by what they believe the membership want. But there are two things which are generally true about people - they don't like change, but they cope with change much better than they think they will.

So the committees can tell themselves they are acting in the interest of the membership by protecting them from change - and the membership, for the most part, might very well agree with them. But if they did loosen up the rules (maybe only a bit at a time) the membership would, in very short order, get used to the new situation and actually enjoy it.

It is always a difficult tightwalk to know when to lead or when to follow the membership on any issue. I do not recall the exact numbers but it seems the vast majority of the membership is and always have been non life masters level players.

In other words the vast majority are almost beginner level players. Keep in mind these are the players that pay the bills.

Holding up a sign at the WC is a hundred times more likely to be an issue then any of this stuff.

[kenrexford]

This issue regarding the GCC, IMO, should be analyzed in the context of today's ACBL-land.

1. The ACBL likes to award masterpoints, because people want to get masterpoints.
2. The ACBL abandoned Masters/Non-Masters format because people did not get enough masterpoints. The ACBL abandoned Flighted because people did not get enough masterpoints. The ACBL now has decided upon Stratified, because people get (almost) enough masterpoints.
3. People who should not be playing up play up so that they can get enough masterpoints, so long as they have a safety net to make sure that, when they get creamed, they get enough compensatory masterpoints.
4. People only get compensatory masterpoints if the big boys have an unfair advantage, like playing a big-boy system, and people want more masterpoints.
5. If we level the playing ground for the people who want masterpoints and are playing up, by restricting conventions, people will get more masterpoints.
6. When we have a game that actually is restricted to the big boys, the big boys want masterpoints, too.
7. The big boys who are older do not have to think in the normal games, because of the protections for the masses (who want masterpoints), so they do not want to think in the main events either.
8. So, if you want to play something weird in the big-boy game, you need to have a written defense to that.

My solution would never work. Go back to flighted games and let systems in the big game be more complicated. Let the big boys fend for themselves (no written defense nonsense). Then, award bonus points to Flight B and FLight C if they win with a very high percentage (and thus might have done better had they played up).

This last part is funny, so I'll restate it. If you play in a lower flight (B, C, etc.) and have a game that is 65.00-69.99%, then you get your place in the actual event as if you were in the next-higher bracket. If you have a 70.00+ game, you can jump up two flights. So, a 2nd in C with a 70.05% would receive as many masterpoints as if the pair had been 2nd in A.

That's a great method. I don't have to play against the idiots, but they get all kinds of masterpoints anyway.

[matmat]

kenrexford, on Feb 9 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

My solution would never work. Go back to flighted games and let systems in the big game be more complicated. Let the big boys fend for themselves (no written defense nonsense).

This would be OK in long matches where you exchange system notes ahead of time (even in moderate length matches), but whipping out a random system in a pair game, without some semblance of how to deal with things seems excessive.