[helene_t]

The_Hog, on Aug 9 2005, 09:03 AM, said:

Most of the time it denies a 4 card M. If I have an awful 4 card M or if I am 4333 shape with points in the other suits I would probably bid 1NT. This does not need alerts, I would regard it as just common sense.

I'm not sure if I would call it "common sense" but anyway, you're right, judgement is not alertable.

Maybe if you play Acol, in which case a minor suit opening is less likely to contain a 4-card major than in SA, you should alert a 1NT response that can conceal a 4-card hearts since it is based on the idea that if partner has hearts he is unballanced so opps have a spades fit and are able to outbid us. This is a kind of judgement that you can make only due to system. On the other hand, if you play some system that is foreign to opps, all your calls cary unexpected negative inference but it's impractical to alert everything. Basically I agree with Frances but I'm not sure excactly where to draw the line.

Also, if you announce to play SAYC but have some partnership understandings that deviate from SAYC (Walsh, intermediate jump overcalls, negative freebids) you should alert it.

[Brandal]

pbleighton, on Aug 3 2005, 10:43 AM, said:

"My crude and basic understanding of the "laws" is that special understandings between partners ARE alertable - and as such, full disclosure applies."

True, but it is not that simple.

What are "special understandings"?  Norms vary from country to country.

Peter

Some play 1N rebid as "may conceal spade suit when balanced"

Some play 1N rebid as "never conceal spade suit when balanced"



Very strange to me if neither is alertable.

[coyot]

Agree with Brandal. It is better to use full disclosure principle and alert opponents whenever you have a partnership understanding than to rely on opponents to be able to use the same judgement your partnership uses.

And certainly it is better to alert and explain than to make your opponents ask about everything everytime.

Example: Image you're a beginner whose system says to rebid with one spade whenever you have the 4card. You sit at the table with some pair you don't know that plays a system that happens to have a name quite similar to yours. They don't alert the 1NT rebid. You make (from your point of view) perfectly correct assumption that the opener does not have 4 spades. You get a bad result for leading a spade just because you've never before seen anyone conceal 4 spades and therefore ruled this out as a possibility (or more likely, it never occured to you that this could happen).

Do you think you deserved that bad result? I don't find it fair.

Therefore I always alert all bids that carry hidden information - and I don't care whether it is the common treatment or not. I'm not going to replace clearly stated bridge rules by some common sense or common treatment, especially when there is no guarantee that your common is the same common as my common

[DrTodd13]

On the practical side, I can't blame each country for requiring alerts on bids that deviate from the agreement used by most of the people in the country. Such alerts are a moving target as people change their methods over time and what was odd now is normal and what was normal now is odd. This style upsets people because they constantly have to keep up-to-date with change in the alert rules.

The alternative is to have a simple rule. Alert all non-natural bids. In this view, neither 1N possibly containing a 4cM nor 1M possibly containing a balanced hand would be alertable because they are both natural bids. If you get burned by assuming one way or the other then you've learned something and you'll learn to ask from now on when it matters what opps style is in this regard. I really believe that neither of these should be alertable.

It is perfectly fair for a new pair to get burned by their lack of experience. It is normal and healthy for them to get burned! It is more than fair, it is educational. Moreover, they may learn that people have a different style in this situation by having better players ask them what their style is. From this, they will learn that people play it differently and they may never get a bad result from this particular issue.

[luke warm]

Brandal, on Aug 10 2005, 09:11 AM, said:

Some play 1N rebid as "may conceal spade suit when balanced"

Some play 1N rebid as "never conceal spade suit when balanced"



Very strange to me if neither is alertable.

yes, and whatever the agreement is (may conceal or never conceals) needs to be made clear to the opponents.. but alertable? i'm not sure but i *think* the 'may conceal' one is alertable, but if i played that way i'd alert it anyway for reasons already stated

[david_c]

coyot, on Aug 10 2005, 10:51 PM, said:

Example: Image you're a beginner whose system says to rebid with one spade whenever you have the 4card. You sit at the table with some pair you don't know that plays a system that happens to have a name quite similar to yours. They don't alert the 1NT rebid. You make (from your point of view) perfectly correct assumption that the opener does not have 4 spades. You get a bad result for leading a spade just because you've never before seen anyone conceal 4 spades and therefore ruled this out as a possibility (or more likely, it never occured to you that this could happen).

Do you think you deserved that bad result?

Yes. It's an unfortunate situation, but people have to learn that not everyone plays the same system as they do.

But it's not clearcut. You could write alerting regulations which said explicitly that 1♦:1♥,1NT was alertable if it could conceal 4 spades. That would be fine, as long as people played in your games regularly enough to learn the procedure. But for online play, that is never going to happen: players come and go, and the new players won't bother to read the alerting regulations.

Now, even if the regulations don't say so explicitly, you might still feel that you have a duty to alert your opponents when such a sequence comes up. So, that's fine, you go on alerting. The problem comes when you expect other people to do the same. The vast majority of players will not believe that their 1NT rebid is alertable, whichever way they play it. So it's no good trying to enforce alerting here. We're left with the alternative, which is that if you want to know, you have to ask. People will eventually come to realise that this is the case, and so full disclosure is achieved after all.

[coyot]

DrTodd13, on Aug 10 2005, 05:46 PM, said:

The alternative is to have a simple rule. Alert all non-natural bids. In this view, neither 1N possibly containing a 4cM nor 1M possibly containing a balanced hand would be alertable because they are both natural bids. If you get burned by assuming one way or the other then you've learned something and you'll learn to ask from now on when it matters what opps style is in this regard. I really believe that neither of these should be alertable.

This basically says that whenever a bid is "natural", it does not need to be alerted no matter what understandings you have.

Therefore, 1♠-1NT will not need to be alerted when it will guarantee 4card support without shortness?

No, this is not the way to go. You don't want to have to ask about every non-alerted bid, exploring whether the partners are sharing extra information. The rules say that you shall alert every bid that carries explicit or implicit agreements or partnership experience! The goal of bridge game is to give everyone the same chances, not to burn beginner players by their lack of experience and lack of awareness of other bidding styles.

Every bidding system I know has some general guidelines. Most natural systems are based on "majors first, notrump later, minors last". Then there are systems that focus on point strength or shape, then there are relay systems that describe only one hand.

In a natural system, any call that deviates from the above priorities or carries extra information that can not be deduced from the priorities should be alerted. If your system prioritizes spade rebid above notrump rebid, it is natural. If it goes the other way, it is not natural. If the spade rebid denies balanced hand and your partner knows it, opps are entitled to know it as well.

You should also bear in mind that using those alerts, you protect also your side! You prevent opponents from passing UI and acting upon it. Imagine, in a matchpoint event, a pair that investigates opps' bids of the above type if they're interested in overcalling and does not investigate with a bad hand. They might not realize they're breaking the rules - and no one else would notice, as well.
(The same goes for weak NT opening - I am glad when people alert it because then I do not need to shut my mind from the fact that partner asked what is their notrump range before passing. I learned to ask about the NT range every time and my partners know that I ask even with a totally useless hand - but there are lots of pairs that don't bother about active ethics and they're almost impossible to blame and punish...)