[mycroft]

But remember, Pran, that Nigel believes that is the fundamental problem. We should not be granting these rights and responsibilities to RAs. Which would mean a change to the Laws, which means talking to the people who can make *that* change, an even harder task than talking to the SBU... In this case, using "the Law says" as an argument gets you "well, the Law is an ass". While I (massively) disagree with his opinion, it is a valid argument to have, and answering "it shouldn't aughta be that way" with "but that's the way it is" won't solve anything.

The failure mode of Nigel's thinking, which has been pointed out before, is that everybody would love to have the same regulations the world over, from the novice game to the world championship - as long as it's the ones they are used to (with the fixes to them that *they* consider important). Which isn't something that *any* sport has done (although chess has come close). There's a reason for that - the flexibility is required to have any hope of a good environment for all (or even most).

Does that mean that I don't think we should look at unifying some of these things that currently are regulated 100 different ways by 100 different RAs? No, we definitely should look. But be prepared for the answer to be "no" or "it won't work" on *a lot of* them.

[PeterAlan]

jillybean, on 2021-August-12, 13:23, said:

Where does the ACBL, and other RA specify this?

RAs publish their regulations, typically always on their websites (I haven't made any sort of comprehensive check to validate this assertion, but every time I've had occasion to look a website search has worked), and frequently as printable PDF version.

Here in EBU's jurisdiction, for example, the regulations that players need to be aware of are in the Blue Book, now supplemented for online play by the SkyBlue Book.

There is also a simple Announcing and Alerting Summary and the Best Behaviour code, both of which many clubs will have on display.

These cover all that players normally need. Further comprehensive guidance for TDs, and some more specialised material such as the screen regulations, are published in the White Book. There are also some other special regulations, for example regarding matches played privately, and other supplementary material: a full list is here.

[pran]

jillybean, on 2021-August-12, 13:23, said:

Where does the ACBL, and other RA specify this?

Silly question.
In their publications of course - where else?

[pran]

mycroft, on 2021-August-12, 13:29, said:

But remember, Pran, that Nigel believes that is the fundamental problem. We should not be granting these rights and responsibilities to RAs. Which would mean a change to the Laws, which means talking to the people who can make *that* change, an even harder task than talking to the SBU... In this case, using "the Law says" as an argument gets you "well, the Law is an ass". While I (massively) disagree with his opinion, it is a valid argument to have, and answering "it shouldn't aughta be that way" with "but that's the way it is" won't solve anything.

The failure mode of Nigel's thinking, which has been pointed out before, is that everybody would love to have the same regulations the world over, from the novice game to the world championship - as long as it's the ones they are used to (with the fixes to them that *they* consider important). Which isn't something that *any* sport has done (although chess has come close). There's a reason for that - the flexibility is required to have any hope of a good environment for all (or even most).

Does that mean that I don't think we should look at unifying some of these things that currently are regulated 100 different ways by 100 different RAs? No, we definitely should look. But be prepared for the answer to be "no" or "it won't work" on *a lot of* them.

I cannot see any reason whatsoever why a Regulating Authority or Tournament Organizer should be deprived of their privileges as given in Laws 80 and 81?

There are probably sensible reasons if 100 different RAs have adopted 100 different regulations, none of which is in conflict with the laws, and who could be in a position to convince any RA that it is wrong?

[jillybean]

Peter Alan, thank you! I have had a quick browse through these publications. The Blue Book appears to be full of useful information, written for players, the Alert Chart Summary is 2, well laid out and comprehensible pages, and I'm sure perfectly adequate for any regular player. The EBU have obviously done a commendable job on writing this material.


Pran, not so helpful. I believe I am actually trying to do the right thing here. My original question was to clarify which bid I should alert, my subsequent comments about Convention Cards were in response to a reply

axman, on 2021-August-09, 10:41, said:

Aren't these situations that CCs **address. ** #@?%^##ought to/#!%$@

.

And now I am hoping to understand how RA's can change the CC requirements, and where I find details of RA specifications. How, as a player, do I know what the RA have specified under Law 40A1(b) ?

[Cascade]

blackshoe, on 2021-August-11, 14:43, said:

Are you referring to this bit: "sometimes even courageous directors need firmer regulations or at least sure support of the regulatory body and organisation"? If so, I'd agree that it's probably a valid complaint. A RA that won't back its directors is not good for the game.

A RA that does back its directors even when they are outside the laws or other powers given to them is also not good for the game.

[Cascade]

jillybean, on 2021-August-08, 14:36, said:

ACBL and NZ Bridge

Playing 4 way transfers after a 1nt opening, the balanced invitation goes via 2C stayman.

1NT 2C* Stayman or general invite
2x 2NT Invitational, may or may not have 4cM

Which bid should be alerted? 2C or 2NT

My understanding in NZ (and Australia as they have similar if not identical regulations on this point) is that the 2♣ bid needs an alert. Certainly, that has been my practice for many years and I believe the practice of most tournament players that play those methods.

There is confusion when the regulations refer to "simple Stayman" but do not define that term. I do not even know what the intended boundary is between "simple" and "non-simple" Stayman but I believe that then intent is that a non-promisory Stayman is not simple. However, I do not know, for example, if Stayman promises a major but can be garbage whether that is "simple Stayman" or indeed whether if your Stayman cannot be garbage whether that is "simple".

A finer and related point, given that 2♣ is alerted, assuming my interpretation and experience to be accurate, I think that an artificial 2♦ rebid by opener denying a major should also be alerted if not playing "simple Stayman". Otherwise when the bidding goes 1NT 2♣-alert; 2♦ ... the non-alert makes it look like 2♦ is natural. Whereas 1NT 2♣-no-alert 2♦ looks like a normal response to the "simple Stayman" 2♣ enquiry.

[mycroft]

Things are in fact getting better.

I have pointed the thread at the NZB Manual earlier. The ACBL has a "charts and regulations" page (plus the codification, which is frequently more political than technical, but does have current bylaws including the technical ones). The EBU has a "laws and ethics" page with all the documents.

So now we have got to the point where "the info is there". The next task is "the info is available in a way that your average member would find it, and written in a way that said member will understand that they've found what they need". We're getting there, as well, but it takes time. This is actually a very hard thing to do, because "it's obvious where this is" after having read it 100 times and found it 30.

And pran, I can't see any reason why a lot of the scope for RA regulation needs to be there instead of in the hands of the WBF. Not saying it's wrong for it to *be* in the RA's hands, but a lot of it wouldn't matter one way or the other.

As I said last time, I don't agree with Nigel about how far to go - do remember that with the current rules for WBF committee membership, it is very likely that if there is going to be a single regulation, it will be the ACBL's current one. So if he likes his EBU 20B or SBU cards, or opening Multi in his National Pairs Championship, he probably wants to keep this in the hands of the RA :-). But he's not wrong that some of this should be looked at. Especially with the ability to play events "in other countries" opened up to non-world-travellers by the world being online these days, having fewer surprises waiting for people wouldn't be a bad thing.

[pran]

mycroft, on 2021-August-13, 09:18, said:

..........
And pran, I can't see any reason why a lot of the scope for RA regulation needs to be there instead of in the hands of the WBF. Not saying it's wrong for it to *be* in the RA's hands, but a lot of it wouldn't matter one way or the other.
..........

Until a signifant majority of RAs agree upon a unified and universal set of regulations without reservations from the rest of RAs I believe they will want Laws 80 and 81 to remain as they are today. I, for one, have not noticed any serious complaints against RAs exercising the power given to them in these laws.

Experience tells us that these laws work well within the World Bridge Federation as a whole.

[blackshoe]

jillybean, on 2021-August-12, 13:23, said:

Where does the ACBL, and other RA specify this?

In system regulations, alert regulations, and conditions of contest regulations.

[nige1]

mycroft, on 2021-August-13, 09:18, said:

As I said last time, I don't agree with Nigel about how far to go - do remember that with the current rules for WBF committee membership, it is very likely that if there is going to be a single regulation, it will be the ACBL's current one. So if he likes his EBU 20B or SBU cards, or opening Multi in his National Pairs Championship, he probably wants to keep this in the hands of the RA :-). But he's not wrong that some of this should be looked at. Especially with the ability to play events "in other countries" opened up to non-world-travellers by the world being online these days, having fewer surprises waiting for people wouldn't be a bad thing.

Mycroft is right that few players like ACBL regulations.
The ACBL isn't even an NBO.
IMO, however, most players would prefer almost any set of simple, clear, complete, consistent rules, to the current confusing Tower of Babel

[mycroft]

I didn't say that - I said *you* wouldn't want the ACBL regulations. I can pretty much guarantee that 100 000 players "like" the ACBL regulations - if the alternative was the EBU ones, or the Aussies'.

Sure the ACBL isn't an NBO - it's less of a "dessert topping and a floor wax" than it was, but it's still an octopus - and it's still an RA, and it still gets five seats on the WBF board.

As mentioned a number of times, "simple, clear, complete, consistent" suffers the same fate as "good, fast, cheap" - pick two, you can't get all three (four in your case).

[blackshoe]

mycroft, on 2021-August-14, 08:56, said:

Sure the ACBL isn't an NBO - it's less of a "dessert topping and a floor wax" than it was, but it's still an octopus - and it's still an RA, and it still gets five seats on the WBF board.

The ACBL is not, de jure, an RA. In practice, who's gonna tell 'em to pound sand on that score?

mycroft, on 2021-August-14, 08:56, said:

As mentioned a number of times, "simple, clear, complete, consistent" suffers the same fate as "good, fast, cheap" - pick two, you can't get all three (four in your case).

Can't disagree with this.

[mycroft]

The ACBL hosts tournaments, and sponsors clubs, and makes the rules on how that works. That makes them a Regulating Authority for those games (much of which they delegate to said clubs for their games). May not be in the actual Laws, but that's what it is. I'm the RA for my Crazy Bridge game (having said that, at least some of the regulations I make definitely violate my rights in Laws 80 and 81, if not all of them).

The interesting thing here is that ACBL tournaments and club events aren't under the auspices of any NBO, they're under the ACBL. The Laws don't deal well with this (at least partly because of the "ZA *and* NBO (in fact, 4 NBOs)" game the ACBL played forever.

The ABA also does this, and it doesn't have any tie into international bridge at all. It's still an RA, and nobody's going to fight that.

[jillybean]

pran, on 2021-August-12, 13:01, said:

I believe it is high time to realize that this discussion is not about the laws of bridge, instead:
(My enhancement)
Law 40A1(b) said:

Each partnership has a duty to make its partnership understandings available to its
opponents. The Regulating Authority specifies the manner in which this is done.
(My enhancement)

and:
Law 40B2(a) said:

The Regulating Authority:
(i) is empowered without restriction to allow, disallow, or allow conditionally, any
special partnership understanding.
(ii) may prescribe a System Card, with or without supplementary sheets, for the prior
listing of a partnership’s understandings, and regulate its use.
(iii) may prescribe alerting procedures and/or other methods of disclosure of a
partnership’s methods.
(iv) may disallow prior agreement by a partnership to vary its understandings during the
auction or play following an irregularity committed by the opponents.
(v) may restrict the use of psychic artificial calls.

jillybean, on 2021-August-12, 13:23, said:

Where does the ACBL, and other RA specify this?

pran, on 2021-August-13, 00:31, said:

Silly question.
In their publications of course - where else?

nige1, on 2021-August-14, 08:04, said:

IMO, however, most players would prefer almost any set of simple, clear, complete, consistent rules, to the current confusing Tower of Babel

Oh, for simple, clear, complete and consistent rules!

I still do not know where I would find details of RA prescribing the use of a System Card as Pran is suggesting under 40B2(a)(ii) I have not seen, nor heard of anything like this.

In recent years there have been a number of top level, high profile bridge players caught cheating. After one of these cases, Giannarigo Rigo, President of the WBF said "Bridge is a game of rules, if you don't follow the rules, you're out". It is unfathomable that we are supposedly playing under the same set of laws as Fantoni, Nunes, Fisher, Schwartz (and others) but allow individual interpretation and enforcement of the laws. It's high time that there was a simplified set of clear rules that club and tournament players, "who just want to play bridge", could follow, thus leaving the Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge to the top A-level events.

pran, on 2021-August-11, 23:07, said:

I don't see lack of valid cards to be any real problem in the top A-level (say) 10% of all bridge arrangements.

But what do you prefer for the less formal events where players assemble just to play bridge for the fun of the game?
Participation generally reduced by 90% because you will lose all those players who do not bother too much about their declaration cards? (They just want to play bridge)

[PeterAlan]

jillybean, on 2021-August-14, 12:04, said:

I still do not know where I would find details of RA prescribing the use of a System Card as Pran is suggesting under 40B2(a)(ii) I have not seen, nor heard of anything like this.

In the example of EBU that I gave you earlier they're to be found at the start of section 3 on page 10 of the Blue Book that I linked then.

EBU publishes both blank system cards of their approved form and some sample cards pre-filled with some common basic systems here.

[blackshoe]

mycroft, on 2021-August-14, 11:19, said:

The ACBL hosts tournaments, and sponsors clubs, and makes the rules on how that works. That makes them a Regulating Authority for those games (much of which they delegate to said clubs for their games). May not be in the actual Laws, but that's what it is. I'm the RA for my Crazy Bridge game (having said that, at least some of the regulations I make definitely violate my rights in Laws 80 and 81, if not all of them).

The interesting thing here is that ACBL tournaments and club events aren't under the auspices of any NBO, they're under the ACBL. The Laws don't deal well with this (at least partly because of the "ZA *and* NBO (in fact, 4 NBOs)" game the ACBL played forever.

The ABA also does this, and it doesn't have any tie into international bridge at all. It's still an RA, and nobody's going to fight that.

I did a little research earlier today. Part from memory, and part from checking the WBF "statutes" and bylaws, and part from checking the Olympic Charter. As I recall it the Olympic Charter used to specify that a "National Sports Organization" was the sole national level body in a country as far as the Olympic Committee is concerned. That's no longer true (and the Charter is a lot harder to parse now than it used to be — I guess the lawyers got at it). The current Charter doesn't speak of "National Sports Organizations" but rather of "National Olympic Committees". It is unclear, at least to me, how bridge fits into this. So forget the Olympics. Is "NBO" defined by the WBF? Nope. Clearly each country has an NBO that is a member of the WBF. What's unclear is whether the WBF recognizes that there may be other bridge organizations, national or otherwise, that are not members of the WBF. Law 80A1{c} says that the RA "for any other tournament or event, {is} the National Bridge Organization under whose auspices the tournament takes place." If "National Bridge Organization" in this law is not limited to members of the WBF, then the ABA is certainly an RA under the laws of duplicate bridge. The ACBL, however, is still an international organization, so "National Bridge Organization" doesn't fit.

You assert that because the ACBL does the things a RA does, it's a RA. And I'm sure the ACBL would be happy with that interpretation. But... a while back, a bunch of people blocked off a part of the city of Portland, Oregon and in effect said "we're in charge here, all you cops and other "government" types, stay the hell out". Did that make them a government? I suppose it might, under the same theory that may pretty soon make the Taliban the "legitimate" government of Afghanistan. But while it looks like at least some other governments may "recognize" a Taliban government, that looks more to me like "politics as usual" than "doing the right thing". IAC this isn't the place to argue about that. Suffice it to say that if the ACBL wants to call itself a RA — or you want to call yourself one — nobody's gonna send a SWAT team to tell you to knock it off. So call it whatever you like. For myself, I remember what Abe Lincoln said: "Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one".

[jillybean]

PeterAlan, on 2021-August-14, 18:52, said:

In the example of EBU that I gave you earlier they're to be found at the start of section 3 on page 10 of the Blue Book that I linked then.

EBU publishes both blank system cards of their approved form and some sample cards pre-filled with some common basic systems here.

Thanks Peter, the EBU material is very clear. What I remain unclear on, is that if an ACBL RA can prescribe a CC or remove the requirement for a CC, as Pran seems to suggest, where are these changes published?

[sfi]

Cascade, on 2021-August-13, 03:33, said:

My understanding in NZ (and Australia as they have similar if not identical regulations on this point) is that the 2♣ bid needs an alert. Certainly, that has been my practice for many years and I believe the practice of most tournament players that play those methods.

This is one of the (very few) areas in the alert regs where NZ and Australia diverge. Here 2C in response to 1NT never needs an alert - it's "self alerting". 2D in 1NT-2C; 2D needs an alert unless it shows diamonds.

The full section is:

Quote

4.1 Stayman 2C in response to partner’s 1NT

This bid is self-alerting because it is almost universally used. The conventional responses to Stayman
are alertable, as are natural responses which convey a message about strength or special distribution.

I don't think 2NT in the original auction is alertable - presence or absence of a four-card major probably doesn't count as "special distribution" - but it's not clear. Certainly people ask and/or explain frequently. I'm certain you wouldn't get much joy from a director if you claimed damage in this situation.

[blackshoe]

jillybean, on 2021-August-14, 19:41, said:

What I remain unclear on, is that if an ACBL RA can prescribe a CC or remove the requirement for a CC, as Pran seems to suggest, where are these changes published?

Changes? Not sure what you're asking, but perhaps it's "where are the ACBL's system card regulations in the vast body of disorganized material the ACBL has published?" If that's the case, look here. It's Items 4 and 5 under "Conventions and Convention Cards". Of course, this doesn't tell how to fill out the card. That's not in a regulation, it's in a series of articles in the ACBL Bulletin, which series is now obsolete but is or will be rewritten "soon", i.e., sometime this century.

Most relevant ACBL regulatory material can be found via this page. Be advised this is a starting place. Actually finding what you're looking for may take a while.

BTW, I'm also about confused by your phrase "an ACBL RA". There's only one, unless you're thinking of clubs.