[tgphelps]

I'm coming back to bridge after 20 years away. I have questions about the convention card. Now, I know what the convention IS. I filled out many of them Way Back Then. My questions have to do with how they are USED these days in face-to-face games. Specifically:

1. What do The ACBL Rules say about convention cards? If it's a long answer, I'm happy to get a link to The Rules and a hint on where to look.

2. What are the polite and ethical ways of using my opponents convention card? (Things not covered by The Rules.)
a. When I sit down, can/should I pick up one of them and give it a quick read-over?
b. Should I offer the opponets my card?
c. Can I pick up an opponent's card during the bidding or play of the hand and look at it?

In short, what do I need to do and avoid doing to have a friendly game with no director calls?

[DavidKok]

I am not sure what the ACBL rules for this are, but this is my personal experience in the Netherlands:

• See above. As far as I know you need to have two identical copies filled out, and having agreements that deviate from what is listed on your CC may constitute inaccurate or incomplete disclosure. At the club level I expect many pairs to not have filled out CCs and people don't really care as long as you alert and explain your agreements while playing.
  
• • Yes, you can and really should. The most important information tends to be their lead and carding agreements. The WBF CC folds in a way so that the front has an 'unusual agreements that may require defense' box on the front, and I like presenting that side to the opponents. I don't think the standard ACBL CC has this feature though.
    
  • Yes, when moving between tables you place your two copies of the card on the table for the opponents to read.
    
  • Yes, and in fact this is sometimes preferred to asking questions as it somewhat conceals your question and motivation for needing extra information. That being said, if you are looking for something somewhat obscure (agreements about later rounds of the bidding, for example) or specific (clarification on the range of a response or artificial bid) it tends to be more practical to just ask when it is your turn to bid, the correct question being "Could I get an explanation of the auction please?".

I expect you won't run into trouble with the director over a CC, but perhaps I am playing in a friendly field. I have on occasion played with hand written CCs which were little more than a sheet of paper with some hastily scribbled notes. In my experience the most pertinent information is the leads and carding, followed perhaps by any unusual openings you play (e.g. artificial preempts or a funky 1NT range). I recommend filling one out digitally with your partner, which incidentally is a good way to review your agreements in full, and then printing two copies. Keep in mind a convention card is a more convenient means of disclosing your agreements to your opponents, so you need to make it as easy as possible for them to understand the essentials of your agreements. This means using the locally standard layout and presenting two copies, one to each opponent, so that they know where to look.

[jillybean]

tgphelps, on 2024-January-17, 09:20, said:

I'm coming back to bridge after 20 years away. I have questions about the convention card. Now, I know what the convention IS. I filled out many of them Way Back Then. My questions have to do with how they are USED these days in face-to-face games. Specifically:

1. What do The ACBL Rules say about convention cards? If it's a long answer, I'm happy to get a link to The Rules and a hint on where to look.

2. What are the polite and ethical ways of using my opponents convention card? (Things not covered by The Rules.)
a. When I sit down, can/should I pick up one of them and give it a quick read-over?
b. Should I offer the opponets my card?
c. Can I pick up an opponent's card during the bidding or play of the hand and look at it?

In short, what do I need to do and avoid doing to have a friendly game with no director calls?

If you are playing in ACBL land.

1. ACBL says that the partnership must have a fully completed convention card. Just one card is sufficient but two is best.


2. a Yes
b If you like but you are likely to get a startled response
c Yes you can refer to their card at anytime, but it would be better if you can, just glance at their card to minimize any unauthorized information given to your partner.

However, in reality not many players have a completed convention card, they sit on it, or they have convention cards for other partnerships, it's one of the laws that is not followed or enforced at all.
I've been playing for the last several years in clubs and tournaments without a CC on the table.

I applaud your questions and your obvious desire to do it right and as to your last question, friendly games should always call the Director when something is amiss.

[mycroft]

Jillybean has it almost exactly right (including the difference between regulation and practise).

Do get in the habit of having a card, having it correct to what you play (as best you can - get help the first time. You'll almost certainly get a few questions from the "helper" that resolve issues with your system you didn't know you had, too!) and having it available. I slip mine under my bidding box, aimed at my RHO, for their convenience.

Do get used to (or resigned to, I guess) most of your opponents not doing all of that. Do get used to (or resigned to) the median number of times opponents look at your card during a session being zero. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. If you're correct, you're not adding to the problem, at least.

The one exception: her 2c. You are always entitled to look at their convention card before or after the hand, or *at your turn to call or play* (and yes, if you can be inobtrusive, that helps. If not, very minor issue). Explicitly you are not entitled to look at their card at your *partner's* turn to call or play; that is so that you don't give any information to your partner ("Oh, that's interesting given my hand", "I want to know what this means - and So Do You", ...) In particular, looking at their card when you're dummy is very likely to "assist declarer" in thinking they should check what you're checking (and what that is is almost always obvious), which is not legal.

[mycroft]

Oh, and a small note on #1: the ACBL requires for events it runs "two, identical, complete convention cards with the names of both players at the top" - one is acceptable, but as a path to getting the second one. Read the caveat to my and jillybean's statement of the regulation, but that is the regulation.

However, the ACBL allows clubs to do whatever they want in many regulation matters, including this one. They "recommend" that clubs follow the same convention card (*) procedures as in tournaments - mostly so that the club players aren't unpleasantly surprised when required to follow tournament procedures. But if the club is happy with "yeah, if you play basically normal, if you don't have a card, that's fine" then so be it, that's their decision to make.

Frankly, if the British Expatriates Club in DC allows (or even requires) the EBU 20B card instead of the ACBL convention card, or the "Bracket 1 IMP League" that contains at least two teams that have played for Canada wants to allow the WBF card, that's also their decision to make, and they're probably not wrong.

(*) And other procedural regulations, like "pick the relevant convention chart for your game from the 4 we use", "have the same Alerting regulations we use", "use the same Bidding Box regulations",... They're all recommendations (and several clubs do do "this, but"), but they're good ones, provided the club players ever play in other clubs or tournaments. Every club I've directed in follows those recommendations; every club I've played in as far as I know does (with some minor exceptions that are "never" relevant).

[blackshoe]

A little story: The US Navy sent me to England for my final tour before retiring. This was in the early 1990s. While there I got back into bridge and into duplicate bridge. One English Bridge Union regulation held (and still holds) that you should exchange System Cards with your opponent at the beginning of a match or round, and not get it back until the match or round is over. So after three years of doing that, I came back to the States and tried to exchange cards. I got reactions ranging from "what are you doing?" to "GET THAT OUT OF MY FACE!" So I gave up. Some people, if you ask to see their card at the beginning of the round/match, will either balk, or give it to you and then 3.4 seconds later demand it back.

Another little story: once, playing at a club with a novice partner, it became clear (to me at least) after four repetitions of essentially the same question, that my partner did not know the answer. So I said to the opp "the answer you're looking for is on the card". I got a very supercilious "I don't look at convention cards. I ask questions." So I called the director, who was completely unhelpful. This incident was one of the nails in the coffin of my partner's bridge playing -- she gave up soon after.

[mycroft]

You know, I've read both those stories a number of times. That's not a criticism - I have my own, that I'm sure others are tired of "hearing", too.

But I still wish we had that "give them the CC" style of the EBU. I think the biggest thing stopping it is "hey, my *scores* are on the other side!" Which is a Massive Flaw with our CC pattern, and in fact was my #1 issue when the new CC was proposed (that and the fact that "if it's two-sided, you can make it a lot more understandable and not so 'need a magnifying glass'"). And the #1 response from the committee was effectively "but that would invalidate everybody's convention card holders" (okay, that's snarky. But it definitely was (still paraphrased) "yes, we decided early that we are keeping the 8-inch-square, one-sided form factor". And that decision happened before the redesign (never mind before "asking BW"), so they didn't even play with 2-sided cards.)

Re: the "I ask questions" - I am really frustrated by that. I mean, "Okay. [Player], please leave the table for a minute. Blackshoe, please explain your agreement. [Player], please come back." seems bloody obvious. But maybe it isn't - maybe it's just all the experience I have and all the lessons I learned watching people with even more experience. But it's still frustrating.

But I had the opposite at one of the Toronto NABCs: World-Champion and "pickup" partner were playing in a side game. When asked for a card, they said "we don't have one, but we'll answer questions." And I'm quite certain that they would have, carefully and completely, and without using the information they were passing to each other. I reiterate, I believe they were 100.00% ethical players. But this player didn't learn from "asking questions", they did it from reading the card. And the regs were there. And that's how I gave [World Champion] a SAYC card (Note, by the time I got it and came back, they did have enough of a card that I could say "that's okay. Finish filling it out when you can, and get a copy." so I didn't actually require them to *play* SAYC).

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2024-January-17, 10:04, said:

Just one card is sufficient but two is best.

Most RAs insist on two cards but at club level even one is often ignored, as has been said.
A practical compromise is to print two cards but put them both inside a single transparent plastic sleeve, so that you only have one thing to carry around during the tournament. If the opponents show any interest then extract the second card.

[jillybean]

mycroft, on 2024-January-18, 11:32, said:

And the #1 response from the committee was effectively "but that would invalidate everybody's convention card holders"

Oh, the convention card holders! The CC holders that people cover with the highly prized, more prized than Master Points, stickers so that the opponents can't read the pairs system agreements.
I remember the horror on an opponent's face when I tried to peel back a sticker so that I could read part of the card. That was back in the days when I cared about CC, I'm a lot more friendly and chill now.

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2024-January-18, 12:03, said:

Most RAs insist on two cards but at club level even one is often ignored, as has been said.
A practical compromise is to print two cards but put them both inside a single transparent plastic sleeve, so that you only have one thing to carry around during the tournament. If the opponents show any interest then extract the second card.

In my experience, you can carry another pair's CC around with you, or a blank one, only to record your scores. A CC is not required at the tournament level in North America
Seriously, only a very few Secretary Birds will get upset if you don't have a properly completed CC

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2024-January-18, 15:08, said:

In my experience, you can carry another pair's CC around with you, or a blank one, only to record your scores. A CC is not required at the tournament level in North America
Seriously, only a very few Secretary Birds will get upset if you don't have a properly completed CC

I encounter very few opponents who will read my CC, almost always young and competent (the minority we should really care about).
No SBs, unless you consider hostile TDs in that category, but a certain number of experienced players who will ignore it not wanting to be bound by actually knowing our agreements.
I carry the thing around nonetheless, just as I would carry around screens if I could.
Without the two it's not a very good game, as DB would say.

[jdiana]

I haven't played in a tournament in years but here's my two cents:

While it's true that almost nobody will ever ask to see your convention card, my partner and I were actually scolded at our very first sectional for only having one (poorly completed, I'll also admit) CC.

The ACBL General Conditions of Contest do technically require both partners to have an identical, properly completed, CC. https://web2.acbl.or.../AllGeneral.pdf

It's not that big of a deal to have two properly completed cards and place them on the corner of the table where the opponents can read them if they like. Even if nobody else does it, I think you should. I have had some players look at mine (often the more advanced players) and I think it's a good idea to quickly scan the opponent's card when you (or they) first sit down, after saying hello of course.

I commend you for asking about the right way to do things. I also sense some understandable apprehension about playing in a tournament but, while I may disagree with some of what jillybean says about convention cards , I agree with what she said in your other thread - find a local sectional tournament, play in the limited section, and have fun. They will be thrilled to see you! Trust me, you won't be the only new players. (As I recall, we got to play for free our first time because we had fewer than 5 master points. Maybe that's still a thing.)

[blackshoe]

jillybean, on 2024-January-18, 15:01, said:

Oh, the convention card holders! The CC holders that people cover with the highly prized, more prized than Master Points, stickers so that the opponents can't read the pairs system agreements.
I remember the horror on an opponent's face when I tried to peel back a sticker so that I could read part of the card. That was back in the days when I cared about CC, I'm a lot more friendly and chill now.

Take the card out of the holder, read it, and then crumple it up and throw it on the floor. :-)