[coyot]

bearmum, on Jul 31 2005, 09:48 PM, said:

Actually what I should have said was that on BBO your bid should not be registered if you press "alert" and do not give explaination == however I do realise that would mean Fred and his team would have extra programming to do (sorry Fred )

I would not agree with that.

Do not enforce information on those who do not seek it. If my profile says sa2/1 and partner's profile says sa2/1, I alert 1♣ or transfers just for the good manners. Of course, I could agree with partner to play some strange system and then "lure" opponents into thinking that we play better minor and sayc - but this could happen in a f2f game as well .

I think the solution should lie in enforcing players to "agree" on a system when sitting at the table. I'm not sure how this should be implemented exactly. Suppose something like:

In your profile, you would have an extra page with checkboxes, describing major bidding systems (SAYC, SA2/1, ACOL, Precision, WJ, MOSCITO, VIKING, you name it), possibly ordered by preference.

When you sit at a table, the system looks for matches and makes a choice, either the first match or the match with the total highest preference (for both partners summed).

Both partners are notified about that and may manually change the preferred system or specify "other".

This will allow the opponents to "know" the system of this partnership - and it will also enforce some grounds for TD rulings. If you didn't want to play SAYC, you should have chosen "other" and informed your opponents about it.

[barmar]

Walddk, on Jul 27 2005, 02:05 AM, said:

You don't seem to see the danger if you must alert a natural as well as an artificial 2♠. Say you alert 2♠ because it's natural. What do you think LHO will assume? That it's a transfer to clubs or MSS and that he will get one more chance.

Much to his surprise the auction is over after pass, pass, pass. Who do you think has been damaged now? Did the alert of the natural 2♠ help him? No, on the contrary!

This is indeed a problem in f2f bridge. But in online bridge you can supply an explanation along with your alert, so there's no confusion.

[mycroft]

to WaldDK (and other "it's natural, why should I alert?" people): do you think any of the following should need an alert:

1) 2H opening showing GF hand with long hearts
2) 2H opening showing 8-8.5 tricks, long hearts, maybe another suit
3) 2H opening showing 13-16 points, 5+hearts
4) 2H opening showing a standard weak 2
5) 2H opening showing an EHAA weak 2 (could be 87532, could be AKQ9xxxx with an outside Qxx, could be anything in between. Could be 5332, could be 6610, could be 8311, could be anything in between).
6) 1H-3H raise showing a)GF, b ) Limit, c ) garbage strength
7) 2C opening intermediate with clubs
8) 2C opening natural weak 2
9) 1H opening promising either 4 or 6+ hearts (never 5)
10) natural, weak 2C response to 1NT opening
11) natural 2H overcall of 1H opening

I'm sure you can think of others. If the answer to all of those is "no", are you prepared to ask - every time, of every opponent - or take your lumps when you guess wrong?

The ACBL Alert Procedure, I will be the first to say is a mess. Nobody can remember it all, and in the process of "simplifying" it they have made it subject to judgement and still requiring our just-out-of-lessons players to know expert-level systems so that they can Alert that part of it that they don't play. But even the old EBU scheme still has three parts:

1) Alert conventional bids
2) Alert natural bids that are forcing or non-forcing in a way the opponents will not expect
3) Alert natural bids that are so uncommon as to be totally unexpected.

And even that has problems (1NT-2C is always alertable, no matter what is means being the canonical example). So they're "complicating it" slightly soon.

As for 1NT-2S to play, colour me ACBL-ish, but that's one of the ones I think where the lack of Alert should be a warning. But I still bid it 2 "to play" ♠ on BBO. May not need an Alert, but the opponents will be better off if they know up top.

Michael.

[Walddk]

As far as I'm concerned they can dump all alerts. If I'm interested, I will ask, and if I'm not I will wait until the auction is over and when I'm on lead. Even then I may not be interested.

In f2f bridge I often ask non experienced partnerships to skip the alerts altogether. The alerts help them more than they help us.

Having said all this, however, I obviously respect local alert procedure no matter where in the world I am. There is no standard procedure, so it's a good idea to become familiar with the one in force where you play at any given time.

Roland

[helene_t]

mycroft, on Aug 4 2005, 07:31 PM, said:

to WaldDK (and other "it's natural, why should I alert?" people): do you think any of the following should need an alert:

1) 2H opening showing GF hand with long hearts
2) 2H opening showing 8-8.5 tricks, long hearts, maybe another suit
3) 2H opening showing 13-16 points, 5+hearts
4) 2H opening showing a standard weak 2
[.....]
If the answer to all of those is "no", are you prepared to ask - every time, of every opponent - or take your lumps when you guess wrong?

Yes. It makes no sense to require an alert of a 2♥ opening which does not show "standard" strength, since nobody knows what "standard" strength is. This is the way it works in the Netherlands: you are not supposed to alert jump raises, jump overcalls, two openings etc. whether weak, strong or intermediate.

Of course, it's possible that opps find it obvious that a non-alerted call in a certain stuation promises between X and Y HCPs, so I would have to alert a call that might be based on less than X or more than Y points. Since I have no idea what X and Y is in opps culture, all calls must be alerted.

Then I prefer to pre-alert the general approach. If your general approach is unfamiliar to the opps, they will know that an unalerted 2♥ openig shows 0-37 points, 4+ hearts. In many cases that is sufficient. What they need to know is that it's natural so 3♥ by them will be a cuebid and double tends to show support for ♠♦♣.

It's possible that many of us could live with either a strict scheme (alert everything that is different in some standard systems, say 4-card major openings) or a soft scheme (alert everything that is different in all standard systems, say 6-9 notrump openings) but do you expect a beginner from, say, Acol-land or WJ-land who has no experience with SEF, SA etc. to know which of their natural calls might be non-standard in other countries? Using the ACBL scheme (as I understand it, which I don't really, but anyway), a beginner from Poland is supposed to alert his natural 2♣ opening, but not (I think) his less natural 1♦ opening. Also, he is expected to make the inference that opps un-alerted 1NT opening is appr. 15-17 points, but not to make the inference that opp's un-alerted 1♦-response to 1♣ denies 7+ HCPs with 4-4 reds. So the alert scheme becomes meaningsless and I can understand if many players from a particular country don't bother to alert.