[Vampyr]

Well, OK, but the BB isn't distributed in print form, so additional examples could be hyperlinked, so people could just read what applied to them,

I thought that the introduction of the Tangerine Book was a great opportunity to lengthen the Orange Book, so that people could choose the level of detail they were interested in.

[barmar]

fromageGB, on 2015-August-10, 07:27, said:

It seems wrong, too, that you should be required to learn the intricacies of a system/method you don't play so that you can alert anything which is not in accordance with that.

Unless you're a traveler visiting an area with different "standard" bidding than you're used to, it seems like you can hardly avoid learning that system, simply because you encounter it all the time in your opponents' bidding. The differences between your agreements and what most people expect will be fairly obvious.

[StevenG]

The vast majority of players will never look at the Blue Book. Of the rest, I would assume that most are like me - we look at it for clarification on specific points. It seems strange to remove the detail on an issue because someone who is not interested in that detail will probably never read it.

[nige1]

aguahombre, on 2015-August-09, 23:06, said:

Stayman and takeout Doubles of opening suit bids would be exemptions; they are the examples people so proudly bring up to ridicule the concept. But, like I said...this approach will never happen in my lifetime. Heck, we can't even get them to agree that there is any other kind of double than takeout.

Announcements might be better but simplicity should be paramount. What's the harm in insisting that T/O doubles and Stayman be alertable? The trend, however, is towards more complex and incomprehensible Bridge rules.

[campboy]

nige1, on 2015-August-24, 02:18, said:

Announcements might be better but simplicity should be paramount. What's the harm in insisting that T/O doubles and Stayman be alertable?

The harm is that when Stayman was alertable people didn't bother to ask about an alerted 2♣, because it was virtually always Stayman. This caused a problem on the rare occasions it was actually Keri.

[pran]

nige1, on 2015-August-24, 02:18, said:

Announcements might be better but simplicity should be paramount. What's the harm in insisting that T/O doubles and Stayman be alertable? The trend, however, is towards more complex and incomprehensible Bridge rules.

campboy, on 2015-August-24, 02:33, said:

The harm is that when Stayman was alertable people didn't bother to ask about an alerted 2♣, because it was virtually always Stayman. This caused a problem on the rare occasions it was actually Keri.

You cannot both eat your cake and have it!

Seriously: What is Keri, I never heard of it.

Now there must be unambiguous and consistent rules for alerting shall it be of any value.

So if alerting is to be used at all then a call must be alerted unless it is .........?
"Natural" is a universal term.
"Unexpected" presupposes that everybody has the same understanding of the alerted call (which is superfluous unless this understanding is different from natural)
What else?

[RMB1]

pran, on 2015-August-24, 04:59, said:

Seriously: What is Keri, I never heard of it.

and therefore it does not exist!?

[Vampyr]

pran, on 2015-August-24, 04:59, said:

So if alerting is to be used at all then a call must be alerted unless it is .........?
"Natural" is a universal term.
"Unexpected" presupposes that everybody has the same understanding of the alerted call (which is superfluous unless this understanding is different from natural)
What else?

"Unexpected" is a relative term. If the two most common meanings are equally expected, one and only one of them has to be not alertable or the procedure is meaningless. Also, after the unalertable meaning is established, usage may change and, sometimes, the alertable meaning becomes more common and expected. But changing the alert procedure piecemeal when this happens is not very sensible. Better to have a more extensive regulation change more rarely.

[pran]

Vampyr, on 2015-August-24, 07:16, said:

"Unexpected" is a relative term. If the two most common meanings are equally expected, one and only one of them has to be not alertable or the procedure is meaningless. Also, after the unalertable meaning is established, usage may change and, sometimes, the alertable meaning becomes more common and expected. But changing the alert procedure piecemeal when this happens is not very sensible. Better to have a more extensive regulation change more rarely.

Which IMHO calls for alerts (subject to other regulations) to be compulsory on any call defined in the laws as "Artificial" (see "Definitions").

[barmar]

pran, on 2015-August-24, 04:59, said:

"Unexpected" presupposes that everybody has the same understanding of the alerted call (which is superfluous unless this understanding is different from natural)

If you play regularly in any area, it's hard to avoid learning what is normal there, and therefore what aspects of your system are significantly different. So "unexpected" is generally only a problem for the occasional visitor from afar -- most players have no problem knowing what it includes.

[Vampyr]

pran, on 2015-August-24, 09:45, said:

Which IMHO calls for alerts (subject to other regulations) to be compulsory on any call defined in the laws as "Artificial" (see "Definitions").

Not entirely, eg takeout doubles as mentioned above.

[nige1]

nige1, on 2015-August-24, 02:18, said:

Announcements might be better but simplicity should be paramount. What's the harm in insisting that T/O doubles and Stayman be alertable? The trend, however, is towards more complex and incomprehensible Bridge rules.

campboy, on 2015-August-24, 02:33, said:

The harm is that when Stayman was alertable people didn't bother to ask about an alerted 2♣, because it was virtually always Stayman. This caused a problem on the rare occasions it was actually Keri.

That is why an announcement (perhaps by pointing to the meaning on a card) might be better.

barmar, on 2015-August-24, 10:03, said:

If you play regularly in any area, it's hard to avoid learning what is normal there, and therefore what aspects of your system are significantly different. So "unexpected" is generally only a problem for the occasional visitor from afar -- most players have no problem knowing what it includes.

Disclosure rules should cater for experienced local players but should also protect beginners, strangers, and foreigners. As barmar points out, the latter might understand the concept of "artificiality" but are likely to be unfamiliar with local "expectations".

[akwoo]

1) Generally speaking, beginners don't care what their opponents' bids mean, because they aren't able to process the information and act on it.

2) Beginners are bad at answering questions about their bids, because they can't imagine what information opponents would be interested in. Also, they tend to have very nebulous agreements that are impossible to disclose. (I have certainly played with partners whose 1N openings would best be described as "somewhere between 14 and 24 hcp, usually no singleton but sometimes a singleton A or K at the higher end of that range, stopper in every suit, if they haven't forgotten the 1N opening is available and open 1 of a suit instead")

3) Beginners have a hard enough time following suit and counting to 13 that it is just cruel to make them remember additional rules that they have to follow.

Therefore, the ideal disclosure system is the one that beginners can simply ignore the existence of.

Making standard artificial bids (such as Stayman) alertable or announceable violates this principle. Actually, I think these days in the ACBL, any strong NT range and transfers shouldn't be announceable, but in the absence of an announcement either way on a possible transfer, a question should be presumed not to generate UI. This is already de facto standard practice in many clubs. (I can't imagine the difference between 14-16 and 16-18 making much of a difference in the bidding, though I automatically ask before the opening lead if the NT bidder is declarer.)

[helene_t]

barmar, on 2015-August-24, 10:03, said:

If you play regularly in any area, it's hard to avoid learning what is normal there, and therefore what aspects of your system are significantly different. So "unexpected" is generally only a problem for the occasional visitor from afar -- most players have no problem knowing what it includes.

I have to disagree with this. Opps will not expect unalerted calls to have the most common meaning. They will expect it to have the meaning that is most common among the subset of local pairs who don't alert that specific call. So you need to know the alert rules. And preferably you also know which aspects of the alert rules are frequently misunderstood.

[barmar]

helene_t, on 2015-August-26, 04:30, said:

I have to disagree with this. Opps will not expect unalerted calls to have the most common meaning. They will expect it to have the meaning that is most common among the subset of local pairs who don't alert that specific call. So you need to know the alert rules.

The alert rules are generally based on what the common meanings are, so that's usually close to the same thing. And of course, when the alert rules specifically say "alert unexpected meanings", they're defined to be the equivalent.

[fromageGB]

barmar, on 2015-August-26, 08:12, said:

The alert rules are generally based on what the common meanings are, so that's usually close to the same thing. And of course, when the alert rules specifically say "alert unexpected meanings", they're defined to be the equivalent.

But it is the expression "unexpected meanings (or strength)" that causes the problem. Partner makes a natural jump shift - I alert because I don't know what strength my particular opponents expect from that. Is partner's unexpected or not? Partner makes a natural 2♣ bid after my 1NT rebid. I alert this because I don't know whether my opponents expect it to be artificial. The whole idea of "unexpected" is crazy.

[barmar]

fromageGB, on 2015-August-27, 05:40, said:

But it is the expression "unexpected meanings (or strength)" that causes the problem. Partner makes a natural jump shift - I alert because I don't know what strength my particular opponents expect from that. Is partner's unexpected or not? Partner makes a natural 2♣ bid after my 1NT rebid. I alert this because I don't know whether my opponents expect it to be artificial. The whole idea of "unexpected" is crazy.

No it isn't. Unless you're a foreigner, you know what's normal in your jurisdiction, and what's normal is expected. Stayman is practically universal, everyone knows it's normal, and a natural 2♣ response to 1NT is about as unexpected as things get.

Like I said earlier, you're not expected to know what your particular opponents expect. The alert regulations are based on typical players, not specific players. Alert regulations that catered to beginners, foreigners, and experienced local players, giving each of them just what they needed, would be too complicated to be workable.

Like many things in life, it's a compromise, not a perfect system. We want to balance the useful information provided to opponents with the bother of having to alert too frequently. As EBU discovered, alerting Stayman was counter-productive -- hardly anyone ever asked, so in the rare case that someone was playing non-Stayman, the opponents didn't realize they should ask.

[pran]

barmar, on 2015-August-27, 09:43, said:

No it isn't. Unless you're a foreigner, you know what's normal in your jurisdiction, and what's normal is expected. Stayman is practically universal, everyone knows it's normal, and a natural 2♣ response to 1NT is about as unexpected as things get.

Like I said earlier, you're not expected to know what your particular opponents expect. The alert regulations are based on typical players, not specific players. Alert regulations that catered to beginners, foreigners, and experienced local players, giving each of them just what they needed, would be too complicated to be workable.

Like many things in life, it's a compromise, not a perfect system. We want to balance the useful information provided to opponents with the bother of having to alert too frequently. As EBU discovered, alerting Stayman was counter-productive -- hardly anyone ever asked, so in the rare case that someone was playing non-Stayman, the opponents didn't realize they should ask.

I wonder:
Do you vary your alert routines when you meet an opponent whom you do not know?
You are aware I presume that "Stayman" is not a single universal convention but includes several different variants, so what is expected by one opponent can be completely unexpected by another?

The alert regulations are there for one single purpose: To protect your opponents from agreements which to them may appear as a concealed partnership understanding, and it is for this purpose completely immaterial whether your opponents in a particular situation are "typical" or "particulars".

So indeed: Unless you know your opponents in a particular situation well enough to be sure of their expectations the whole idea of "unexpected" is crazy.

[Vampyr]

pran, on 2015-August-27, 13:08, said:

I wonder:
Do you vary your alert routines when you meet an opponent whom you do not know?
You are aware I presume that "Stayman" is not a single universal convention but includes several different variants, so what is expected by one opponent can be completely unexpected by another?

In the EBU any 2♣ response which asks partner to rebid 4-card majors is announced. Any other variant would be alerts.

Quote

The alert regulations are there for one single purpose: To protect your opponents from agreements which to them may appear as a concealed partnership understanding, and it is for this purpose completely immaterial whether your opponents in a particular situation are "typical" or "particulars".

I am not sure what you are trying to say. Alert regulations are there to let the opponents know what is going on,

Quote

So indeed: Unless you know your opponents in a particular situation well enough to be sure of their expectations the whole idea of "unexpected" is crazy.

Not a problem in real life. People who have decided to,play weak jump shifts or negative free bids have made a conscious decision to do that. Sure, there might be people who learned to play that way and don't know that it is non-standard; but they will be in a tiny minority, and the regulations are made instead for the vast majority.

[aguahombre]

Vampyr, on 2015-August-27, 15:43, said:

Not a problem in real life. People who have decided to,play weak jump shifts or negative free bids have made a conscious decision to do that. Sure, there might be people who learned to play that way and don't know that it is non-standard; but they will be in a tiny minority, and the regulations are made instead for the vast majority.

It is precisely a problem in real life that the regulations are made for the alleged majority and we expect the minority to know they are a minority in the region or level they are participating.

You can say it is not a problem; Barry can say it isn't a problem. But, it is a problem. "Expected" is a problem.