mycroft, on 2021-December-26, 16:58, said:
Per the Laws, "unexpected" is a very key word. Expected Alerts or failures to Alert are not "extraneous information" between partners, or the game would be unplayable ("Oh, no, partner told me he thinks I have 15-17 balanced. I mean, I do, but how do I carefully avoid using that information?")
Mycroft>> Expected Alerts or failures to Alert are not "extraneous information" between partners,
Not so. Sometimes language needs to be adequately scrutinized:
16B1: 1. Any extraneous information from partner that might suggest a call or play is
unauthorized. This includes remarks,
The law identified 'remarks' as extraneous information. that leads to the answer to the query, 'are f2f alerts remarks?' Which is yes. So called 'unexpected' are merely a subset.
Well the law could go (which would be a misnomer) 1984 and proclaim lie is truth.
Mycroft>> or the game would be unplayable
Which is so.
The truth is that tournament players (myself not among them) not only want to cheat they are proud of it. It is how they were trained. They can't get along without alerts. That they exist suggests that Vanderbilt got something wrong nearly a century ago. That it is still wrong attests to the genius of how great his ideas
were are.
And as Holmes said, Eliminate the impossible (alerts) and what remains is the truth.
Since 2015 a great number of forests have been clearcut in an uproar over cheating. My observation is that the answer to date has been to decapitate cheaters rather than deal with the cause of cheating. To me it makes sense that the outcome of players cheating is to be expected when everybody is trained to cheat (alerts); and thus it makes sense that alerts must go.
To understand, it is a good idea to review where alerts came from. Ostensibly, alerts came about because of Vanderbilt's unfair scoring: easy to bid contracts (majors) were outlandishly rewarded while difficult to bid contracts (minors) were heavily punished. A cursory inspection makes it clear that Vanderbilt scoring has more bidding steps to find easy to make contracts and fewer bidding steps to find difficult to make contracts. In other words ignore minors creates extra bidding steps to optimize majors. This fact makes complex artificial systems not merely worthwhile but considerably so. Hence the disclosure problem that brought alerts to the surface and proliferate (and became themselves impossibly complex, unworkable systems of communication- errrr disclosure).
This alone suggests that if unfortunate Vanderbilt scoring cause alerts (that must go) then Vanderbilt scoring must go. Which begs the question, if VS goes can its substitution solve the disclosure problem. I suggest that majors =20 and minors=30 and NT=40 and clubs outrank NT (7S is highest contract) will align difficulty with reward and make it the player's interest to have mostly natural system (with fewer complex conventions) to disclose/ learn.
For they who want the cheating problem fixed here is something to chew on. For they who want the disclosure problem fixed here is something to chew on. Me, I'm worn out.