[benlessard]

Quote

So you think whe should ban the polish club too? It is not common enough in the US?
Or shall we ban precision in my home club because no regular member plays it?

What about Fantunes? Quite uncommon to anybody, because brandnew. We should ban this too?

I guess SAYC had been banned in Poland before the invention of the internet too. Nobody knew that system.

Sorry, this reasoning is not working.

There is lightyear of difference between Polish/Fantunes and a fert bid. In one case the defense fit in 1 page in the FP it take at least 10 pages of agreements.

Quote

I don't see a strong pass as being that special. It doesn't seem that much more strange to us than a strong or artificial club system is strange to people who are not used to it and play "standard" all the time.

Few are familiar with it and thus don't have defences to it, but it used to be that way with strong club as well.

I don't buy the whole non-disclosure argument. I'm sure it's not THAT hard to understand, no moreso that artificial club systems are. And I agree that it's a lot easier to get relevant information out of people playing artificial systems than people playing "natural".

The FP isnt really a problem it the frigging fert that the problem.

[NickRW]

cherdano, on Dec 4 2008, 08:37 AM, said:

Wayne, if you cannot see the difference between preparing for a specific fert and preparing for a strong NT, then I don't think anybody can help you...

I don't go along with that at all. Defending against any NT opening, strong or weak, is inherently difficult - witness the enormous number of defences that have been devised - none of which are entirely ideal. Defending a fert is not inherently more difficult - it is purely and simply that ferts are normally considered HUM and therefore not seen in most competition. No other reason whatsoever.

Nick

[david_c]

ArcLight, on Dec 4 2008, 01:36 PM, said:

>On a personal level, I got  sick and tired of beating my head against a brick wall.

>Do you want to see all the crap that your husband contributed to the process? (it sure doesn't make him look good)


One can always count on Richard to make a well thought out response, that is sure to sway peoples minds.   

Richard's response was perfectly proportionate. The way the ACBL has dealt with this over the years is absolutely shameful.

[cherdano]

NickRW, on Dec 4 2008, 07:45 AM, said:

cherdano, on Dec 4 2008, 08:37 AM, said:

Wayne, if you cannot see the difference between preparing for a specific fert and preparing for a strong NT, then I don't think anybody can help you...

I don't go along with that at all. Defending against any NT opening, strong or weak, is inherently difficult - witness the enormous number of defences that have been devised - none of which are entirely ideal. Defending a fert is not inherently more difficult - it is purely and simply that ferts are normally considered HUM and therefore not seen in most competition. No other reason whatsoever.

Nick

Yup (well some part of your response is non-sense, there are many different defenses against NT because people can't agree what is best, this has nothing to do with the question whether it is inherently difficult).
But that's a pretty big reason. You see, to me devising defenses is one the most boring parts of bridge. Discussing defenses vs 1NT is ok though, because I get to apply them many times, and that part is actually fun. But Wayne wants me to have to waste time to learn a defense vs ferts, and still give the opponents the choice of me never playing against these ferts (I am referring to his whining about seating rights).
And yes there is an inherent difference in popularity between ferts and strong NTs, so this isn't just due to ferts being outlawed in most competitions...

[I don't really have a strong opinion on whether FP and ferts should be allowed, but the "my rights are getting violated attitude" in some of the posts here is pretty annoying. If a huge majority of serious bridge players thinks that bridge is a more interesting game without ferts, then outlawing them in most competitions is the right thing to do.]

[NickRW]

cherdano, on Dec 4 2008, 02:02 PM, said:

Yup (well some part of your response is non-sense, there are many different defenses against NT because people can't agree what is best, this has nothing to do with the question whether it is inherently difficult).
But that's a pretty big reason. You see, to me devising defenses is one the most boring parts of bridge. Discussing defenses vs 1NT is ok though, because I get to apply them many times, and that part is actually fun. But Wayne wants me to have to waste time to learn a defense vs ferts, and still give the opponents the choice of me never playing against these ferts (I am referring to his whining about seating rights).
And yes there is an inherent difference in popularity between ferts and strong NTs, so this isn't just due to ferts being outlawed in most competitions...

[I don't really have a strong opinion on whether FP and ferts should be allowed, but the "my rights are getting violated attitude" in some of the posts here is pretty annoying. If a huge majority of serious bridge players thinks that bridge is a more interesting game without ferts, then outlawing them in most competitions is the right thing to do.]

Well, for most competition, I go along with the idea that these things should be banned, for the simple reason that they aren't common enough to warrant forcing average bridge players to have to learn to cope. The OP was talking about "top flight events" or some such.

Nick

P.S. Later edit. It seems to me that the ACBL has promoted (or perhaps gone along with) an overly paternalistic attitude to what is allowed and what is not. Some paternalism in the interests of protecting new/weaker players is, to my mind, entirely justified - indeed maybe more is required at lower levels in some jurisdictions - but I really can't get into the mind set that where people at higher levels want to blame their opponents methods for their own lack of preparedness and knowledge and then turn to their NBO to enforce their wishes to be protected from nasty opponents. That's not a game to me.

[JanM]

hrothgar, on Dec 4 2008, 08:06 AM, said:

ArcLight, on Dec 4 2008, 03:36 PM, said:

hrothgar said:

>On a personal level, I got  sick and tired of beating my head against a brick wall.

>Do you want to see all the crap that your husband contributed to the process? (it sure doesn't make him look good)


One can always count on Richard to make a well thought out response, that is sure to sway peoples minds.   

Jan's posting touched on two different themes:

Theme 1: The posting could be viewed as some kind of back communiqué from the Conventions Committee indicating that they are willing to consider licensing new defenses. More specifically, that they might agree to license some defense to MOSCITO style transfer openings.

If this were the primary intention, I consider this to be great news.

No, I'm not trying to communicate via some back door what isn't coming out the front door. I don't have much inside information on this, although I suppose I hear a little more than you. I was and am actually only saying what I think is the case based on what I've seen over the years and recently. I haven't seen the correspondence to which you refer - I know it was several years ago. And I know that whenever I ask Chip about some specific bid (usually it's 2♦ majors because for some reason that keeps coming up when I'm a Vugraph operator) he says that no one has submitted a defense.

Quote

Theme 2::  Is best described by the following quote from Jan

Quote

I know a lot of you think that the nefarious convention approval committee has insidiously refused to approve a defense to transfer openings, but actually, no defense has been submitted, at least recently

The Conventions Committee wasted enormous amounts of my time playing passive aggressive little games. They never had the balls to openly admit that they would never approve any defense. Instead, they preferred to create ever more ridiculous hoops for me to jump through while privately agreeing that they were never going to approve any defense.

I think that in this case as in most where there are two sides with strongly divergent views, both sides are right and both are wrong. The people who want to play a method aren't trying to submit a bad defense, but they haven't played against the method so they really don't know what problems will arise. Those who have to review the defenses don't have hidden motives, but they're busy and if it doesn't make sense to them, they're not going to spend extra time figuring it out. You weren't trying to waste the committee's time with bad defenses; they weren't trying to waste your time trying to get you to fill in the blanks. But that's how it looked to them and to you.

Quote

I could have potentially been more polite and indicated that Jan was engaging in historical revisionism.  However, I tend to prefer to cut to the chase and lay all the cards out on the table.  (It saves a lot of time)

The convention approval process has developed over a long period of time. First there was a time when the C&C committee was responsible for creating defenses for methods they approved - that's why we have the really inadequate defenses to multi by the way. With that burden on them, of course the committee didn't want to approve much - it's hard to create an adequate defense and then write it in a way that is comprehensible to someone who hasn't been part of the creation process.

The committee then realized that it wasn't making sense for them to do defenses, so they put the burden on the people who proposed a method. They got a lot of badly thought-out and incomplete defenses. Shockingly , this made them unhappy and perhaps they did come across as having hidden agendas and never going to approve something when in fact they were tired of reviewing the 23rd defense that didn't include any continuations or didn't make any sense (I remember seeing one defense to a weak opening that provided no way to penalize the opening side) or wasn't clearly written.

After a long time and a lot of experience with how the whole midchart has worked, the committee decided to put a major effort into something they hoped would work better - separating out those methods that are sufficiently easy to understand and combat to be reasonable in events with 2 boards per round (such as 2M showing a weak hand with 5 cards in that major and a second 4+ card suit - both the meaning of the bid and the defense can be explained in about one sentence) and other more complex methods that needed long enough advance discussion to be reasonable only in longer events (such as multi). Individual people may disagree with how some bids have been classified, but it is now clear what is allowed when.

Quote

a tacit admission that the Conventions Committee was never going to approve any kind of a defense back in the bad old days when there was no option to differentiate between 2 board pair events that used the Midchart and 7+ board Team events that use the Midchart.

I did say that nothing had been submitted recently - if you were to dig out those old emails, I'll bet you'd find they were several years old. And whether the committee would have approved a reasonable defense back then if it had been presented at the start instead of only after much back and forth and a lot of work by the committee members on inadequate defenses, I don't know. I do know that the general attitude of people playing that particular method (transfer 1 bids) was less than wonderful - I remember one event where a pair arrived at my table and told me they were playing transfer 1 bids. I called the director who told them the bids weren't legal. They argued, appealed to higher authority and eventually didn't play them against me, but then I happened to overhear them when they arrived at the next table: "we play transfer 1 bids." That sort of attitude perhaps contributed to the response you received (I am not suggesting that you did that, just that it might have affected the committee's attitude).

Quote

Now that this has been rectified, the Conventions Committee might deign to approve a defense.

This whole process would have gone a lot smoother if the Conventions Committee had acted in a open and honest manner.

Reading that, can you see that it isn't the right way to approach a committee? Can you see that that "deign to approve" tends to make people angry? Can you even consider that just as you were not deliberately presenting an inadequate and unclear defense in order to gain an advantage when you played this unfamiliar method, the committee wasn't acting in a closed and dishonest manner, they were just learning what was and was not possible and have now changed the rules to try to make things better?

[JanM]

brianshark, on Dec 4 2008, 08:19 AM, said:

I don't see a strong pass as being that special. It doesn't seem that much more strange to us than a strong or artificial club system is strange to people who are not used to it and play "standard" all the time.
...
I also don't believe it's a destructive system. Random openings that show or deny a suit are destructive. Methods where you overcall 1S over a strong club no matter what your hand are destructive. EHAA is a mildly destructive system. Strong pass is just a strange system to us who aren't used to it, but no less purposeful than strong club or fantunes or other "strange" existing systems.

It isn't the opening Pass that's destructive or difficult to deal with, it's the opening bids that show all the hands you and I would pass with - hands too weak to open the bidding, with no long suit so they are appropriate for a preempt. Usually that's all the bids at the 1-level. They show different varieties of bad hands. Those are the bids that are difficult to defend against and those are (usually) the bids that are inadequately described, not in terms of the opening bid itself, but in terms of what responder will do in (& sometimes out of) competition.

Strong club pairs open 1x with the same hands as you and I - they've just removed some strong hands from the opening 1 bids. That's really nothing like, for instance, opening 1♠ with 0-7 and any shape - but not really any shape because some of the 0-7 hands are opened something else.

[uday]

Language, people ( well, just you, RW). If you like, I'll move this to the Watercooler.

[RichMor]

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 12:31 PM, said:

brianshark, on Dec 4 2008, 08:19 AM, said:

I don't see a strong pass as being that special. It doesn't seem that much more strange to us than a strong or artificial club system is strange to people who are not used to it and play "standard" all the time.
...
I also don't believe it's a destructive system. Random openings that show or deny a suit are destructive. Methods where you overcall 1S over a strong club no matter what your hand are destructive. EHAA is a mildly destructive system. Strong pass is just a strange system to us who aren't used to it, but no less purposeful than strong club or fantunes or other "strange" existing systems.

It isn't the opening Pass that's destructive or difficult to deal with, it's the opening bids that show all the hands you and I would pass with - hands too weak to open the bidding, with no long suit so they are appropriate for a preempt. Usually that's all the bids at the 1-level. They show different varieties of bad hands. Those are the bids that are difficult to defend against and those are (usually) the bids that are inadequately described, not in terms of the opening bid itself, but in terms of what responder will do in (& sometimes out of) competition.

Strong club pairs open 1x with the same hands as you and I - they've just removed some strong hands from the opening 1 bids. That's really nothing like, for instance, opening 1♠ with 0-7 and any shape - but not really any shape because some of the 0-7 hands are opened something else.

This is an excellent post, short and yet complete. I don't have anything significant to add, but will anyway.

If my opponents are playing a highly artificial big club relay system that won't give me any unusual problems in a contested auction.

If the opps are aggressive bidders that will give me (and them) some problems.

If the opps are playing a complex system and bidding aggressively, then they are probably named Jeff and Eric.

But it is much different when the opponents are playing a system that uses artificial weak openings. Unless the opps are bad players and forgetful, they will have an advantage solely from their experience with their methods.

[DrTodd13]

From what I have heard about the committee, my perception is that the level of goodness required for a defense to be approved by them is much much too high. It seems like they want perfection. Jan complained about how insufficient the two approved multi defenses are. To me, the purpose of an approved defense should be to allow play to continue in some reasonable way the vast majority of the time. For most people, even the simple multi approved defense is sufficient for this purpose. Sure, it isn't perfect but people should be rewarded for figuring out a better defense just as people should be rewarded for figuring out a better convention.

[uday]

Someone (Cascade?) said

"
The objectives are to ensure that WBF Championships can be properly operated and adequately administered, with a fair and equal chance for all competitors
"

is that a quote from the WBF conditions of contest?

imo,imo,imo,imo,etc

I certainly don't have a "fair and equal chance" against Meckstroth. It isnt "fair" that an amateur pair is pitted against a professional pair. It isn't "fair" that a partnership with limited shared experience is pitted against a pair with 30 years of experience. ( i'll ignore the skill/talent level difference for now).

Of course, this just asks what the original quote meant by "fair" and "equal" and "chance"

We wouldn't pit a 100 lb boxer against a 200lb boxer.

Perhaps we could consider whether HUMs and even not-so-HUM that are illegal in ACBL and other places could be used to level the playing field, allowing a lightweight to contend against a heavyweight.

It is easy to see why a HUM-like approach might be unpalatable to someone who has invested years to cater to non-HUM scenarios.

It is easy to guess that the mainstream population just doesn't care. In the ACBL nationals, for instance, we might see 30 teams enter the team trials (to pick the US team for international play) or 100 enter the Vanderbilt/Spingold ( two of the big US national IMP team events ). Meanwhile, many times as many players are probably entering the side games, the KOs, the pairs, the swiss, whatever.

I will guess that the average ACBL member could not care less about what happens in top flight events at a system level.

I will guess that even supposedly-non-hum methods ( watch meckwell bid after a strong club opener) are barely more comprehensible than a HUM might be ( again, to the mainstream population).

Blocking HUMS ( and anything not on the various allowable-systems charts ) has the effect of damping down volatility and increasing everyone's comfort levels.

This might be a good thing in the kitchen, at the club, on BBO, even in a regional or a pair game at a national.

I question whether this is a good thing at the very highest levels. I would claim that my only chance to win in such events is by increasing the volatility and relying on luck rather than "skill." I'm not permitted to do this today. Perhaps that isn't fair Perhaps the sponsoring organization should encourage methods like this on that basis alone.


Anyway, that was too long, but it was a nice break from staring at code.

[jdonn]

I certainly don't have the amount of experience with the committee that Richard has had, but I have twice before attempted to email them and never gotten a reply. So why would I even bother continuing to try to submit a defense to anything?

[cherdano]

Jan, I think Richard's claim was a bit more specific than what you are responding to. He claimed that the C&C committee was

• (1) asking him for improvements on his defense, while
  
  
• (2) at the same time discussing internally that they wouldn't want transfer opening approved anyway, since they don't want to get into allowing Moscito etc.

If this is true (if!), then that is a little disingenuous no matter how much valid reasons there were for (1).

Anyway, I would be happy to see transfer openings approved for Midchart. (I don't understand the need to restrict it to 6+ rounds given the provided written defenses.)

[TimG]

jdonn, on Dec 3 2008, 10:50 PM, said:

- They may be so downright complicated that it would take years of experience to master the information they convey.

Couldn't this be said of 2/1 as played my most experts?

[Cascade]

brianshark, on Dec 5 2008, 02:19 AM, said:

Random openings that show or deny a suit are destructive.

I disagree.

Well except I am not really sure what you mean by "Random openings".

Certainly bids like a Suspensor 1S 0-2 spades OR 6+ spades (with some range) are not designed to be destructive.

[Cascade]

cherdano, on Dec 5 2008, 03:02 AM, said:

If a huge majority of serious bridge players thinks that bridge is a more interesting game without ferts, then outlawing them in most competitions is the right thing to do.

This poll is currently showing :

10/63 want to ban Ferts.

Further 39/63 want a more permissive regulation (allow at 8+ boards or all at Pairs) than is currently available in world championships.

A bigger proportion 16/63 want FP allowed at Pairs than want it banned completely.

[Cascade]

JanM, on Dec 5 2008, 06:25 AM, said:

... and other more complex methods that needed long enough advance discussion to be reasonable only in longer events (such as multi).

I can't help but think that the ACBL does a disservice to its members, especially those who sometimes play in other jurisdictions by severely restricting a method that is commonly played at all levels in most of the rest of the world.

[TimG]

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 02:21 AM, said:

Transfer openings aren't banned; they are midchart but no one has presented an adequate defense for them.

Jan,

There is an approved defense for a "1H Opening Transfer to 1S" in the defense database (available at the ACBL website). It was approved in March of 2005 which was before the new boards-per-segment divisions were created. When the mid-chart was published with the boards-per-segment restrictions, the 1H transfer opening was restricted to 12+ board segments.

In April of 2008, I wrote to ACBL with two requests:

1) That a defense to a 1D transfer opening be approved. I submitted a defense that was identical to the 1H transfer opening defense (except for adding a meaning for the additional one-level overcall available over the 1D transfer opening).

2) That the committee reconsider the 12+ board segment restriction.

The responses (from Rick Beye) were:

1) "I will forward this submission to the committee for their review. The time frame is indeterminate."

2) "Actually the committee was unanimous on the 12 board issue. I will point out your request."

That was nearly 8 months ago and I have heard nothing further from ACBL (or the committee) regarding these matters.

Quote

Now that the committee has the option of approving something for a stated number of boards, I would be very surprised if they wouldn't approve a reasonable defense to transfer openings, at least for 6+ boards or something like that.

Not only has a reasonable defense been submitted (reasonable in that the committee already approved one for a 1H transfer opening), but a specific request to reconsider the 12+ board restriction has also been submitted.

Tim

Edit: This thread prompted me to inquire as to the status of my requests. I just received this response:

"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

Edit: At the Summer 2009 meetings, the C&C Committee voted to remove the 1H transfer opening and defense from the mid-chart/defense database.

[Cascade]

JanM, on Dec 5 2008, 06:31 AM, said:

It isn't the opening Pass that's destructive or difficult to deal with, it's the opening bids that show all the hands you and I would pass with - hands too weak to open the bidding, with no long suit so they are appropriate for a preempt. Usually that's all the bids at the 1-level. They show different varieties of bad hands. Those are the bids that are difficult to defend against and those are (usually) the bids that are inadequately described, not in terms of the opening bid itself, but in terms of what responder will do in (& sometimes out of) competition.

This is not an objective view of what I know of as a forcing pass system.

In any forcing pass system that I have seen most of the one-level bids are 'opening hands'. The just happen to be a slightly different range than what occurs in Precision - Although in New Zealand there are several pairs playing a mini-Precision - 1C = 13+ - in which the limited openings are similar or the same as those in a forcing pass system.

The range 8-12 or similar is not because these hands are too weak to open but precisely because the system designer believes that it is a good strategy to open these high frequency hands. After all if it is constructive for Fantunes to open these hands at the two-level then it is even more constructive to open them at the one-level giving your side more bidding space.

In a Forcing Pass system the one-level bids are usually made up of:

2 bids to show the majors with a high frequency range;

1 bid as a catch-all minor hand with a high frequency range;

1 normal or semi-normal NT hand - almost always 1NT;

1 FERT - although I have seen a system where the FERT was at the two-level (2♣).

Only the FERT is likely to cause technical problems in devising a defense that many players are not used to.

With few modifications you can play your normal defense to the major openings (even if they are transfers), your normal defense to 1NT and something similar to what you do over a SA short 1♣ or a Precision 1♦ over the catch-all bid.

As I have argued elsewhere defending against a FERT causes similar problems but usually at a lower level to defending against a 1NT opening. Nevertheless the difficulties are usually theoretical and perceived since as far as I am aware FP proponents will tell you that their FERT is in fact a loser in their system - the gains are in the more well defined and frequent other bids.

There are other varieties of Forcing Pass systems e.g. Suspensor where the major openings are not standard showing length (6+) or shortage (0-2) in the suit bid. I have played around with this system a little - just bidding a few hands to see how it works - but I have not taken the time to devise a defense against it. No doubt it would create some unusual problems but I doubt that they would be inheritently more difficult than other defenses. In this system the FERT is 1♦ giving the opposing side plenty of room to untangle their fits.

Inadequate description is a completely different problem and isn't something that Forcing Pass pairs have a monopoly on. In fact my experience is quite the opposite in that the more complex systems are usually better described than the general level of disclosure in more standard systems.

[Cascade]

uday, on Dec 5 2008, 07:14 AM, said:

Someone (Cascade?) said

"
The objectives are to ensure that WBF Championships can be properly operated and adequately administered, with a fair and equal chance for all competitors
"

This is a direct quote from the WBF Systems policy "1. Objectives". It is the opening sentance.