TaBR4: Three Answers to Every Question

This post is about the regulations concerning disclosure of agreements - both alerting and answering questions.

Given the limitless variety of treatments and conventions that can be played, the rules about disclosure can never be totally precise. As a result, two very common questions are "Should this call be alerted?" and "How should this call be described?" When answering these questions, it is important to realise that the "best" answer may depend on who is asking. Our three different points of view are:

• The player who is trying to describe his partner's call.
• The opponents who are receiving this description.
• The TD, who may have to decide whether the description is adequate.

Let's concentrate on the question of whether a call should be alerted. Nearly always (at least if we're talking about bids) this question arises when someone has made a bid which is essentially natural but has some additional information attached to it. We have to decide whether that information is enough to require an alert. Say someone asks you for advice on this. The sort of answer you give may well depend on who is asking. If a TD needs an answer, you have to look for exactly where the dividing line is between alertable and non-alertable. If you are lucky the situation may be covered explicitly in the regulations, but otherwise you have to try and work out what the requirements are by comparing to similar situations and coming up with the most sensible interpretation. Whereas to answer the question from a player's point of view, you can point to specific rules if there are any, but otherwise it is best to err on the side of caution.

So, what does that mean? Suppose it is unclear whether a particular bid is technically alertable. Then if you are the player who is doing the alerting, the best plan is always to alert it. That ensures that you always help the opponents when they need it. You could ask a TD for his opinion on whether an alert is required, but there isn't necessarily any guarantee that a different TD would agree. Unless you are able to find a definitive answer somewhere, the safest and most helpful policy is to alert every time. This is summarized in a well-known slogan,

When in doubt, alert.

Similarly, if your opponents have made a bid and you are unsure exactly what you can expect from it, the best way to find out is to ask. The ACBL has another slogan for this:

Ask, do not assume.

But for the TD, there are no such nice general principles. A TD cannot hedge his bets: he must rule one way or the other. That comes down to working out exactly what the regulations mean. The TD's question is undoubtedly the hardest of the three.

What's the point of all this? There are three things I want to say here. First of all, when someone does ask one of these questions, it's obviously important to know which point of view they are thinking of. From the various discussions I've participated in, it seems to me that it's all too easy to talk at cross purposes. You can be trying to decide how a TD should rule, and then someone comes along and says, "If you're not sure, just alert it. What's the problem?" Or, just as bad, a player who wants practical advice can end up being given a detailed technical analysis. This sort of thing can become very irritating. You really have to make sure you know which of the three answers is required.

Secondly, the phrase "when in doubt, alert" is certainly a useful piece of advice for players. But it is not, and never can be, the basis for a regulation. It is not something that can be applied by the TD. A TD has no alternative to looking closely at the definitions to see what the requirements really are. And I know that "when in doubt, alert" is written into the ACBL regulations, but it would mean nothing if it was not backed up by a proper definition and examples of what actually makes a call alertable.

Finally, I believe there are implications for what makes a good regulation. Players do not necessarily need to know all the details of the regulations in order to disclose their methods (and understand opponents') correctly. We may have different standards for the regulations that players do need to know, compared to those that will only ever be applied by TDs. More on this to come.

TaBR3: Who Makes the Rules? (part 2)

In the previous post I argued that a TD should follow the regulations of his club (or tournament, or NBO), even if they contradict the Laws of bridge. That raises the question (as put by Nigel K in a comment to that post) - if a regulation is illegal, what can be done about it?

One possibility is to go through the usual process for changing a regulation. That means persuading the committee responsible for the regulation that they should change it. Very rarely, a committee might be overriden by a general meeting, or something like that.

But that doesn't sound very satisfactory. Surely if a regulation is illegal, it ought to be possible to require it to be put right.

Well, personally I don't think it's possible. Or, if it is possible, I think the cure would be worse than the disease. Let's consider the alternatives.

As mentioned in the previous post, there is a sort of chain of authority for making regulations, with the WBF at the top and TDs at the bottom. So, let's suppose that we have a club which has made an illegal regulation. Now, the WBF is the ultimate authority for deciding what is or is not legal, but there is no direct link between the WBF and an individual club, so the WBF can't do anything about it. So authority is passed down to the next link in the chain - the national organization. There is a link between a club and its NBO - clubs are members of the NBO - so, in principle at least, a NBO can require a club to bring its regulations into line with the Laws. In a similar way, everyone answers to the organization immediately above them in the chain: TDs work for their clubs (as per my previous post) and NBOs answer to the WBF.

Well, that's the principle. Is it going to work? In order to force a club's regulation to be changed (for example), three things will have to happen:

1. The NBO has to hear about it.
2. The NBO has to have the time to tell the club that they should change what they are doing.
   
3. The NBO has to be prepared to follow it through and take action if the club fails to put things right.

The first of these things doesn't happen very often: it requires someone to care enough about the situation to make a complaint. The second step is even less likely: NBOs are very busy, and most of them don't even get round to fixing their own rules, let alone worrying about what their clubs might be doing. Even in a reasonably pro-active NBO like our EBU, I'm sure they would prefer not to have to interfere.

Then we get to the last step. What can an NBO actually do to force a club to comply? Most likely, adhering to the Laws is a condition of membership. So they can threaten to withdraw affiliation (or "masterpoints", from the members' point of view). But now that's getting pretty serious. And the NBO doesn't want to lose a club. If too much pressure is put on them then they will just walk away. The NBO really doesn't want to take action over what is a relatively trivial matter. So it is very, very unlikely that this will happen.

One level further up, it's even less likely. If a NBO has an illegal regulation, then the WBF can in theory tell them to change; but in practice the WBF can't afford to lose an NBO - indeed there's no way they can take any meaningful action against them at all, over something as minor as this. You can't punish the players for actions taken by a committee.

And so the authority passes down to the next link in the chain.

You know what that means - it means that the people who get to decide whether the regulations are illegal are the same people who wrote the regulations.

Now, you know how easy it is to twist the wording of the Laws to make them say pretty much anything you want. Any regulating authority worth its salt will be able to come up with some justification for the rules it wants to make. And you may think that this supposed justification is poor to non-existent; but it makes no difference, because the regulating authority itself is the judge. Particularly for an NBO - if they say their regulations are legal, then they are legal, almost by defintion.

Now, personally I have more faith in my NBO than I do in the WBF, so this doesn't particularly bother me. But if you feel there is something that needs to be changed, clearly this situation is problematic.

The final possibility is to use whatever power you have to defy the regulating authority. I explained in my last post why I feel the TD should not do this. But similar arguments apply to other groups. Nigel mentioned appeals committees. Technically an AC doesn't have the authority to overrule a TD on a matter of Law; but even leaving that aside, I think it would be a bad idea. Basically I have three concerns; these all apply to TDs as well though I didn't really spell them out in my last post:

• Not the right time and place. Regulations are usually decided in elected committees. This may not always produce the best results, but it's the best process we have. In particular, it takes time to properly evaluate a regulation, and it really demands hearing a variety of opinions. If a committee has been through this process, and has come up with a regulation, they really shouldn't be overruled by a different group who haven't had the time for proper consideration. And, though I'm not the world's greatest believer in democracy, I still don't think it's right to have an unelected committee thinking they can overrule an elected one, particularly if (when we're talking about NBO regulations) a committee was elected to carry out specifically this function.
• Consistency. Players really deserve to know, before they start playing, what the regulations are. If you set aside a regulation then you are changing the rules.
• Power struggles. It's not good to have two groups both thinking they have the right to make a particular decision. The poor players and TDs won't know who to believe. And it leads to bad feeling and ever more entrenched positions. It's much easier to change things for the better when there is only one committee involved, even if they are sometimes misguided.

TaBR2: Who Makes the Rules?

When a ruling is needed, there are at least four different places the relevant rules might come from:

1. The WBF produces the Laws of bridge;
2. National bridge organizations have further sets of regulations;
3. Individual clubs (or tournament organizers) may have their own regulations;
4. Finally, the TD may have to decide some things for himself.

These form a nice hierarchy: decisions made by the WBF are binding on the NBOs; NBOs in turn have some control over their clubs and tournaments; and TDs should follow the rules they have been given.

This is all well and good when the rules are clear and uncontradictory. But inevitably, that isn't always the case. There are a number of things that can go wrong, and this post is about just one of those things.

It has been known for authorities to make regulations which are illegal according to the Laws of bridge. You might see a "club rule" that allows redealing of boards, or bans psyches. (Some psyches can be regulated according to the Laws, but not all.) Higher up the chain, there has been a bit of controversy recently because the ACBL has changed the wording of Law 12C1(e) in its publications, significantly altering the meaning from the WBF's version.

So the TD can be faced with a Law that says one thing, and a regulation which says something different and contradictory. What is he to do?

In my view, a TD's responsibility is to his club or tournament. If you have agreed to direct at a club, then you must uphold that club's regulations, irrespective of whether they are good, bad or downright illegal. Similarly, if there is conflict between a NBO and the WBF, a TD should always follow the regulations of his NBO.

Why should this be so? Partly because it's the only reasonable way to structure these things: a more specific regulation always overrides a general one. (Indeed, if you try to read the Laws of bridge without this principle in mind, you will get nowhere.) I would also point to the lack of a direct link between a TD and his NBO. A NBO can require that its clubs follow certain rules, but it has no say over who they ask to direct. So a TD does not have to answer to anybody apart from his club. That makes it pretty ridiculous to defy the club's regulations.

But perhaps the main point is that there are much better ways to address any conflict in the regulations. These things should be sorted out at the appropriate level, and at the appropriate time. If a TD refuses to apply a regulation which he thinks is illegal then he is effectively claiming that he has the right to adjudicate in a dispute between his club and his NBO (or NBO and WBF, or whatever). No, it is not his place to do that. If a bridge organization cares enough about something to make a regulation - particularly one that might be illegal - then they will not have done so lightly. It means they believe that is what is best for their players. Maybe they are wrong, but they have a right to expect that they will not be undermined by their TDs.

Now, this all seems pretty obvious to me. But I've seen too many people claiming that certain regulations are illegal and that this means those regulations can be ignored. Too often it is a way to try to get around a regulation that people don't like. I don't think this is a proper way to go about things. If you don't like a regulation, then you should try to get it changed. (Indeed the EBU recently did remove a regulation which I (and many others) thought was illegal. The main reason to remove it was that it was a bad regulation, but the question over its legality was a good weapon to use against it.)

Incidentally, what do we feel about authorities who make these illegal regulations (or regulations that are only legal with a very creative interpretation of the Laws)? Personally it doesn't really bother me that much. As I said above, organizations are just trying to do what is best for their players. If they think the Laws are so badly wrong that they have to make an illegal regulation, then they must feel pretty strongly that that is what is best for their players. I find it difficult to be too critical of that. And certainly in the case of Law 12 mentioned above I think the ACBL is totally right about what the Law should say, as the WBF's version is utterly perverse.

(To be continued.)

Thoughts about Bridge Regulations: Introduction

This is the start of a series of posts about bridge laws and regulations. This series is about what makes a good regulation: what should be prioritized, and what should not be. It's also about the processes involved in writing, interpreting and applying these regulations. That is, I'm going to be talking about general philosophy, not about the specifics of what individual regulations mean.

Now, I always worry when talking about this stuff. Firstly, do people really care? I imagine that to most people, the idea of discussing this sort of philosophy would seem very boring, if not rather pretentious. And secondly, I've never had to take responsibility for producing regulations - so it's easy for me to talk, and a bit unfair on the people who actually have to do it. They get enough stick already.

But people really do care about the end product - they care about which systems are legal, and which calls have to be alerted. We see more than enough arguments about these things. And often those arguments can be boiled down to a question of philosophy. I think at some point we have to put aside the specifics and talk about what's going on underneath. And, sad as it may seem, I find this stuff interesting. So, here is a place to discuss that philosophy.

I should point out that this series is going to be a bit different to my series on bidding theory: that had a nice sense of direction to it, with each post building on the ones before. This new series is just a collection of thoughts, in no particular order. (And you shouldn't expect two posts a week, either!)

Don't Hesitate!

This post is about the laws on Unauthorised Information, and in particular the definition of a logical alternative (Law 16B1(b)).

Here in England, we used to have a "70% rule" for logical alternatives - that is, if a particular action would be chosen by more than 70% of a player's peers, then we would say that there were no logical alternatives to that action.

The "70% rule" no longer applies: it has been superseded by the definition provided by the new (2007) Laws. That is,

A logical alternative action is one that, among the class of players in question and using the methods of the partnership, would be given serious consideration by a significant proportion of such players, of whom it is judged some might select it.

Since this is now part of the Laws the EBU is obliged to go along with it, though there is still room for interpretation - particularly in terms of quantifying what is meant by "a significant proportion" and "some". The EBU suggests "a significant proportion" is something in excess of 20%. I'd have to say that to me the term "significant proportion" sounds more like 30-40%. But that's not the main point here. Whatever the details are, it is clear that this definition is going to result in there being many more LAs than there were under the 70% rule (since "some" is a lot less than 30%). To put it another way, the Laws are now much more restrictive in terms of which actions you can take when in possession of UI.

What are we to make of this? If we look at it from a TD's point of view, we just have a different test to apply. That's not so hard. But how about from a player's point of view?

It seems to me that we will have to start looking at UI situations in a different way. And particularly if we are talking about UI from hesitations.

It is often said that inadvertently transmitting UI is not an infraction: the infraction is if you make use of information from partner. It is advisable not to hesitate as this may put partner in a difficult position, but if you find that you have to think then you should not worry too much, because if partner has a clear-cut action then he will still be able to make it.

Now, in theory this position has not changed under the new Laws: it is not an infraction to transmit UI. However, I believe that this is no longer the right way to think about it. In my opinion, the effect of the new definition of a LA is that there is now a penalty for hesitating. Not the automatic penalty advocated by Bobby Wolff, but a randomly-applied penalty that depends on the other hands at the table.

The thing is, the definition of a LA is now so weak that there are all sorts of rubbish actions that have become LAs. It's no longer good enough for you to have a clear-cut action, it has to be very very clear-cut: it has to be obvious to all those idiots that the TD believes are your peers (though of course you are really a much better player than they are). Think about all the silly bids made each day: it doesn't take much for there to be "some" people selecting an action.

So, if you hesitate in a tempo-sensitive situation, there is a fair chance that the TD will have to impose some daft action on your partner. It's no good blaming the TD for this, since he has to follow the Laws. And you certainly can't blame partner. No, it's your fault for hesitating.

Like I said, I view this as a change. With the 70% rule it was best to avoid hesitating, but even if the TD did have to adjust the score you could be assured the result would be fair: you would not be given a silly result. This is no longer true. There is a penalty for hesitating, and depending on the hand that penalty may well seem very arbitrary to you - it is quite possible that you would genuinely never have had that result with or without UI. So, you must not put yourself in the position where that penalty can be applied.

If you hesitate and it happens to make no difference, then you are lucky. If you hesitate and find that the TD has to adjust to some silly result, that's your penalty for hesitating. So don't hesitate. Or at least, if you hesitate, then be prepared to accept your penalty.

L&E Minutes for June 2008

Apologies for the excessive amount of EBU stuff on my blog, but we live in interesting times ...

6.2.1. New permitted agrements at Level 4.

So we have some new "toys" at Level 4. They are all pretty harmless, being things that it makes sense to allow given what is already permitted. For example, in the rule for "Either-Or Club" both the strong option and the weak option now correspond properly to what is allowed at lower levels.

6.2.2. 2C Fert.

This is the evil convention from Brighton where 2C shows 0-5 points with either 4+ spades or 4+ hearts or 4+ diamonds. The L&E decided that they didn't like the way this could be opened on a two-suiter with longer clubs. So they've banned this.

I'm not sure this makes a whole lot of difference. This change doesn't really affect the defenders' options. And there are other hands with longish clubs that could still be included by modifying the definition slightly - for example it seems a pair could still play 2C as "any hand except for a two-suiter with clubs as the longest suit".

The problem is these ferts should never have been allowed in the first place - not when Level 4 is to be used for nearly all EBU events. The pre-2006 rules defined the permitted methods in terms of one-suiters, two-suiters and three-suiters. This might have looked a little clumsy but it did at least mean you ended up with bids that actually had a definition. With the 2006 rules, if you want to get around the requirement not to include the suit bid in the "specification", you can do this simply by not specifying anything much at all! These things should not be allowed: the EBU should be requiring a minimum amount of "specification" like the pre-2006 rules did. This would still be considerably more permissive than, say, the WBF "Brown Sticker" regulations.

6.2.3. Alerting of doubles.

Good news here: the L&E discussed three decent options, and decided to go with this one:

Alert strange doubles only at any level. Any double that is takeout, penalties or somewhere between the two is not alerted.

In my opinion this is not only the best of the three options discussed, but indeed an excellent solution to the problem. Finally, after about three years of discussing this, the L&E has found something which will actually work. I'd really prefer there to be an exception for doubles of natural opening bids (a double of a suit opening is expected to be for take-out) but that is a relatively minor niggle.

The bad news is that this now has to be approved by a new committee of the EBU, the "Club Committee". Now don't get me wrong - I think it is perfectly right that clubs should have an input into this process. But now is not the right time. The views of clubs should have been sought during the initial period of consultation - in fact they were, I believe, though if the EBU's committee had already been set up at that point then perhaps the consulation could have been done more effectively through them. But when it comes to a final decision, that ought to be solely the job of the L&E. The L&E is perfectly capable of taking into account the needs of its club players when making its decisions; in fact, while I can't speak for the committee, I am quite sure that this has always been their number one consideration.

Instead, having already put up with the awful 2006 rules for two years, the implementation of the new rules is being delayed by at least another few months, despite the fact that we already know what they should be. And this is all assuming that the Club Committee actually approves of the idea. The real reason why you shouldn't have two committees looking at the final proposal is what happens if they come to different conclusions? Then the L&E would be faced with either not being able to implement what they know is right, or pushing it through and having it look like they aren't listening. It's just not good political sense to put yourself in this position.

But no complaints with our elected members here, since it was evidently not their decision.

6.2.4. Rewording of OB 3E.

This is the section on how asking questions can transmit unauthorised information. England has a reputation for being much harder on this than other countries. The new wording doesn't do much to change this, except in the case of asking about doubles:

3 E 2 Questions asked during the auction about the meaning of an opponent's double shall usually not be considered to pass Unauthorised Information, nor to have the potential to mislead declarer about the questioner's shape or values. However, the TD may still use his discretion to give an adjusted score if the nature of the questioning clearly provides partner with unauthorised information.

Presumably this is linked to the proposed change to alerting (it wouldn't make much sense with the current rules). I am very happy with this new wording. But it does seem oddly inconsistent with the rules for other situations. Why say this about doubles but not about alerted bids, or bids above 3NT? I think there is a better case for saying "questions about alerted calls are usually not considered to pass UI" than there is for saying the same thing about doubles.

L&E Minutes for Feb 2008

So, this post is the second instalment of my not-so-regular feature discussing what's going on with our L&E. The latest meeting is particularly interesting for me because the main thing they discussed was the issue I've ranted about more than anything else on this blog. (You know what I mean.) The minutes are on the EBU's website here.

There were some other things of interest. In particular, there is the very important job of explaining to the EBU membership what the changes are in the new Lawbook. The job has been given to DWS and Mike Amos. This is promising. I wish them luck!

It also looks like there may be some new stuff allowed at Level 4.

But let's cut to the chase.

It's fantastic that they are now discussing the problems with alerting of doubles. There seems to be a genuine enthusiasm to do something about it. Even though they failed to make significant progress at the meeting, it seems that the issue is still very much on the agenda.

The concern now is that, while they have spent plenty of time discussing what to do, they haven't yet come up with a viable, specific proposal. And there really isn't much time left if they are trying to do this by August 1st (given that it would have to be properly advertised).

But what was really disappointing - and the reason I actually felt the need to post about this - was what happened to the idea of alerting only "highly unusual" doubles. This idea is probably not optimal, but it would be workable if done properly, and it's surely miles better than what we have at the moment. And yet it was sabotaged.

David Burn had produded a paper on this idea. And the paper was pretty good. I agreed with more or less all of the points he made, and in a couple of places I felt he really hit the proverbial nail on the head. The problem was, the paper was manifestly not about alerting only highly unusual doubles. And I don't mean just in the wording - he changed from defining "unusual" to defining "expected", which ought to end up with much the same thing - I mean that the effect of his suggestions didn't have anything to do with alerting only unusual doubles.

He gives as an example:

1D : (Pass) : 1H : (1S) , Double.

which he defines as "expected" to be penalties - thus a take-out double would be alertable. The problem is, a take-out double is not unexpected. If a pair plays this double as take-out they will not believe they are doing anything "highly unusual" - because they aren't. The whole point of the idea of alerting only highly unusual doubles is that it will only affect the (minority of) players who play weird methods. Once you start defining perfectly normal methods to be alertable this is no longer the case. Mr Burn writes, "The idea is that players will alert the doubles their opponents need to know about without actually having to read the list at all, let alone memorise it." I couldn't agree more with that philosophy. But you can't achieve this if you arbitrarily define some perfectly normal agreements as being alertable.

It seems that Mr Burn fell into the trap of wanting just one agreement to be "expected" in any given situation. But in examples like the one above, a double might be take-out or penalty or value-showing: none of these things would be unexpected. So if you were actually going to base your rules on the idea of only alerting very unusual doubles, none of those things would be alertable. Indeed I would say that trying to have just one expected agreement is the mistake which causes all the problems in the current rules. This is precisely what we need to get rid of!

My point is that alerting only highly unusual doubles is a workable approach, but it isn't what the L&E was presented with. So they may have dismissed the idea of alerting highly unusual doubles on the basis of a paper which had nothing to do with alerting only highly unusual doubles. That would be a pity.

I'm certainly not saying that this would have been the best approach. There are two alternative approaches that I think are better: the first is the one on my webpage, and the second was actually mentioned at the meeting, attributed to Sally Bugden:

Mrs Bugden suggested that a possible way forward would be to not alert take out or penalty doubles ...

This really would be an excellent basis for a regulation. The problem is that it is not a "finished product", so my fear is that it could go the same way as the idea of alerting only highly unusual doubles. The main issue to be sorted out is that sometimes a take-out or penalty double can be extremely unusual. This doesn't invalidate the general rule; it just means you need to consider whether it is worth having a very small number of specific exceptions (like we have for alerting above 3NT at the moment). For example, a double of a natural suit opening bid is expected to be for take-out: in this situation a penalty double might catch people out if it was not alerted. A complete proposal would have this as an exception. It would also need to sort out what happened for doubles of artificial bids, and other techincal points. My worry is that without a complete proposal, people would see issues like this and dismiss the idea.

The Monkey Option

Congratulations to the 94 EBU members who managed to vote for

"2-level suit openings should all be alerted"

in the EBU's online survey.

I would like to think that they were making some ironic statement about the deficiencies in the EBU's polling methods.

Latest Developments in EBUland

For the bidding theorists amongst us, this minute from the latest meeting of the Tournament Committee is of interest:

The committee considered a letter from Bob Rowlands, addressed to various parties, including the Laws & Ethics Committee. The issue raised was the use of a system of transfer openings and responses [presumably moscito or something similar - DC] by a pair competing in the National Pairs Final. The pair was also the subject of previous similar correspondence regarding the National Inter-Club Knockout.

Mr Rowlands felt it was totally inappropriate that such a system should be allowed in events involving short rounds, when opponents have little chance to prepare themselves, and also in events such as the NICKO, which should be used to encourage club players to participate in national tournaments. If the EBU should stand by its decision to run all events at level 4, then this system should not be allowed at that level.

The committee unanimously agreed with Mr Rowlands’ sentiments, and wished to strongly recommend to the L&E that they reconsider their stance.

Despite playing a Level 4 system myself, I have to agree with this - in fact I said so in an earlier post. It just reinforces my belief that the "correct" level for general tournament play is somewhere "between" Level 3 and Level 4. It will be interesting to see what the L&E has to say about this, since they previously decided that it was "a Tournament Committee matter" ...

Doubles Webpage

I've created a new page to explain why I believe the EBU rules need to be changed.

Alerting of Doubles

Hopefully this means I'll be able to avoid cluttering up this blog with further rants on the subject. :)

What does "Natural" mean?

Most bridge players understand roughly what to expect from a "natural" bid, but it's quite a difficult term to define precisely. This is unfortunate because, as well as being a useful word for describing what a bid means, it's also often used in system regulations and alerting regulations, where you really need a good definition.

The meaning also varies slightly depending on where you live. Let's look just at suit bids. In America, most people seem to consider a suit bid to be natural if it promises length in that suit, even if there is some additional information given. For example, a Muiderberg 2S opening (showing 5 spades and 4+ cards in a minor) would be described as natural. They would say it is "natural but conventional". The WBF, on the other hand, defines "natural" to be the opposite of "conventional". Of course, "conventional" is another term which is extremely difficult to define, but it is clear that the Muiderberg 2S is conventional, and so is not natural according to the WBF's definition.

In England our understanding is somewhere in between. The old Orange Book (pre-2006) summed it up quite well: a natural suit bid was

a bid of a suit which shows that suit and says nothing about any other suit. ...

So a Muiderberg 2S opening is not natural, because it shows length in another suit (even though that suit is unspecified). But, unlike with the WBF's definition, it is still possible for a natural bid to be conventional. We would say that the opposite of natural is artificial. An example of a bid which is conventional but not artificial is a 1D opening which promises an unbalanced hand. This certainly shows diamonds, and says nothing about any other suit, but there is an additional agreement about the hand as a whole which makes it conventional.

Because I learnt my bridge in England, this is the definition which feels most right to me (and not just because I'm an avid reader of Orange Books! - this really is what people mean by "natural" in England, give or take some of the details). Unfortunately, both of the conditions in that old OB definition are slightly faulty.

First of all, what does it mean to "show that suit"? The old OB definition continued:

The suit shown will be at least four cards before opener rebids but may be three cards from then on; exceptionally a bid of 2C in a 3=4=3=3 hand precisely in response to 1S is considered natural.

This definition appears to make bids such as 1H (pass) 2H artificial if they could be made on three cards. In practice, this oversight was just ignored - no-one was suggesting that these bids should be alerted - but it did look a bit silly. It was corrected in the new version of the OB, where the definition of a natural suit bid is:

A bid of a suit which shows that suit and does not show any other suit; the suit shown will be at least three cards long except that preference bids and raises may be on shorter suits. Note that in earlier rounds of bidding a natural suit bid usually shows at least four cards.

This is a much better definition of what it means to "show" the suit bid. It's also an improvement for the bids which show only three cards suit. According to the old OB defintion, a 3-card 1H opening was alertable because it was not considered to be "natural". But this doesn't seem right - it surely is a natural bid, but ought to be alerted because it is unexpected.

The second part of the definition is much harder to get right, and neither of the two EBU versions really works properly. According to the old regulation, a natural bid should "say nothing about any other suit". Presumably this was discarded when it was realised that nearly every natural bid shows something about the other suits, even if this is only from the negative inference that some other natural bid could have been made instead. And, for example, a pre-emptive opening bid which is played as denying a side 4-card major should still be considered to be natural. But the new version goes too far in the other direction, so that (for example) a 3H bid which shows heart length and club shortage is considered natural. This isn't a problem for the alerting regulations because club shortage is still unexpected, and therefore alertable, but it doesn't correspond to what we really think of as being "natural". I think the old definition is closer to the truth here, and they just needed to make an exception so that a bid could still be natural if it denied a certain amount of length in another suit (or suits).

Still, there isn't really any obvious way to define it perfectly, and it's interesting to see how various different authorities try (and fail) to do it. And that's without even considering what a "natural" no-trump bid should mean.

Announcements: More! More! More!

If my blog posts so far have been pretty esoteric, I suppose this is the one where I completely lose touch with reality. Yep, this is about how we should have more announcements. Never mind the fact that the ones we have already are so controversial that it would be suicidal for the L&E to try and impose any more - this one is straight out of the "If I Ruled the World" folder.

But I don't want you to think that I believe every situation can be dealt with using announcements. Far from it. The consequences of having too many announcements are much worse than those from having too few. We got along well enough without any announcements before last August. Announcements are only of use in a very limited set of circumstances. Let's start by listing three conditions that are absolutely necessary for announcements to work:

• The rule must be easy to understand and remember.
• Announcements must only apply in situations where players can be expected to know exactly what their agreements are.
• The announcements must actually have a purpose - they must be justified by one or both of the reasons I gave in the previous post. (That is, avoiding alerts for common artificial bids, or avoiding unauthorised information from asking questions.)

These are absolutely non-negotiable. To give an example, it was once suggested that all take-out doubles should be announced as "take-out" and all penalty doubles should be announced as "penalties". This scores well in terms of being easy to understand, and does solve disclosure problems, but it still would be an awful regulation because of the second condition: in complicated auctions, no-one has firm agreements about the meanings of doubles (though they might have general agreements which are relevant), so they can't be expected to make an announcement.

In addition to the above points, there are two other things that would be helpful:

• Ideally, new announcements should only affect pairs playing unusual methods.
• Announcements work best when the agreement can be described easily and effectively in a short phrase rather than with a long explanation.

However, these are not as essential as the three main conditions above, and indeed these two things tend to work in opposite directions: unusual methods will generally be more difficult to describe.

Given these conditions, there are only a very restricted number of situations where announcements might usefully apply. Two in particular stand out, and I would like to talk about those.

1. "Negative" Doubles

This forms part of my wider ideas on the alerting of doubles. In contrast to the proposal mentioned above where all penalty and take-out doubles would be announced, which I think is a terrible idea, there is one particular situation where announcing doubles might well be useful. This is when there has been an opening bid, followed by a natural suit overcall from opener's LHO (below 3NT) and a double from opener's partner. Ignore for the moment the importance of making the rules in this situation consistent with the rules for doubles in general. What would be the best rule in an auction such as 1S : (3D) : Dbl ? My suggestion is this:

• If the double is for penalties, then do not alert or announce;
• If the double is for take-out, then announce as "negative";
• If the double has some other meaning, then alert.

This would solve two problems that we currently have in this situation: firstly that some players who play double as penalties don't realise they have to alert, and secondly that when a double is not alerted, some opponents feel the need to check that it really is a take-out double as it is supposed to be.

But perhaps the best thing about this rule is that it also works when the opening bid was at the 2-level, or was in NT. In the auction 1NT : (2H) : Dbl , for example, the traditional and most popular meaning is penalties: so again the current rule means we have problems with people not alerting penalty doubles, but here it's worse because opponents might get the wrong idea even if it is disclosed correctly. And in the auction 2S : (3C) : Dbl , I've seen people very angry to find out that they were supposed to have alerted a penalty double. The EBU's current rule (an unalerted double is take-out) does well in minimizing alerts when the opening bid was a natural 1-of-a-suit, but people find it terribly confusing in the other situations.

Of course, my suggested rule wouldn't fit in with the rules we have at the moment about alerting for doubles in other situations. It is designed to be part of a system where, with the one exception for negative doubles, only very unusual doubles are alertable. In fact my specific suggestion was that apart from the negative double situation, no doubles would be alertable except:

• Doubles of natural opening bids. (Below 3NT, a double of a natural suit opening is expected to be for take-out; a double of a natural no-trump opening is expected to be for penalties);
• Certain very specific unusual doubles. (Perhaps just anti-lead-directing doubles.)

So really while the rules for the specific negative double auction may appear slightly more complicated than the current ones, the scheme as a whole is much simpler.

[Incidentally, I could do with some help in lobbying about this, so if you think this is a good idea, or even if you just agree with the basic principle that neither take-out nor penalty doubles should be alertable in auctions more complicated than the "negative double" auction, please grab your nearest L&E member or other influential person and tell them.]

2. Opening bids which are currently alertable

This is an obvious candidate for announcements because opponents will very often want to know the meaning of such a bid. As with a natural 1NT opening, the problem is opponents asking questions. For example, after a 1C opening it is easy for an opponent to ask a question in such a way that he reveals that he has clubs himself. While we could say that opponents should be able to find out the meaning by looking at the convention card, experience suggests that even when a convention card is available, opponents still like to ask directly.

In theory, all opening bids which are currently alerted could be announced instead. That would certainly be a simple enough rule to understand. But it might be wise to look at narrower categories of opening bids.

• Two-level suit opening bids. Currently all two-level opening bids are either alerted or announced. If the alertable bids were announced instead, then that would make the rule for such bids very simple: they would all be annouced. This makes a lot of sense, particularly when the opening bid is 2 of a major, since the introduction of announcements means that an alerted 2H or 2S bid is now quite surprising, so opponents will very often ask anyway.
• "Short" 1C and 1D opening bids. An announcement for these would be useful in order to distinguish them from the "genuinely" artificial minor-suit openings which are currently alerted. The same goes for a natural opening bid which is alertable because of some unexpected agreement (e.g. 1D "natural but could have longer clubs"). This would also have useful consequences for the alerting of doubles under the current rules - a double of a natural or short minor is expected to be take-out whereas a double of an artificial bid is expected to show the suit bid.

So there are particularly good arguments for those opening bids to be announced. Note that this wouldn't make the rules much more complicated, since "announce natural 2-of-a-suit bids" becomes "announce all 2-of-a-suit bids" and the "short" 1C/1D is an unusual method which most players would not need to worry about. Having said that, I think there is still a good case for all alertable opening bids to become announcements instead.

But there is one difficulty which I've avoided talking about so far. That is, there is such a wide variety of possible meanings for these bids, it would be impossible to define "official" wordings for announcements for them all. I used to think that this made the idea of announcements for these bids a non-starter, but now I don't believe it would be a serious problem at all. The solution is to allow players to word their annoucements in whatever way they think best, but to have a list of recommended announcements for the more common methods. (These recommended announcements would include the short ones we already have for natural two-level suit bids.) Add to this a little bit of common sense - for example if a relatively long explanation is given the first time a bid comes up, a shorter form would be acceptable if it comes up again against the same opponents - and I think it would be fine.

Announcements in the EBU

Eight months on from the big changes to our alerting regulations, announcements are still a very controversial topic. It's difficult to tell exactly what the level of opposition is, because inevitably it's the people with the strongest opinions whose voices are heard, but it's certainly clear that a significant number of people don't like announcements. One interesting feature of the debate is that there is an apparent distinction between "club players" and "tournament players", with a common perception amongst the club players being that the EBU's rules are there to cater for the tournament players, at the expense of the "ordinary" club players. While the EBU might disagree, it is difficult to shake off this criticim, since it is genuinely difficult to cater for everyone at once, and there is no doubt that announcements work best in more serious events. But in spite of all the criticism, I still believe that announcements are a good thing. I'd like to explain why I think it is that despite announcements being good for the game, there are so many people who are unconvinced.

First of all, we need to understand what the point of announcements is. I feel that the EBU did not do a good job of explaining this, which was a big mistake. The most common short explanation was, "It gives the opponents information immediately, without them having to ask for it." But that's nothing more than a restatement of what an announcement is, it doesn't explain why we should have them. In fact there are two distinct reasons why we have announcements:

1. Avoiding alerts for very common artificial bids.

This is the reason why we announce Stayman and transfers. The "basic" rules for alerting in the EBU say that artificial bids should be alerted. If this rule applied here (as it did before 1st August 2006) then Stayman and transfers would be alertable. However, this would mean that when the auction went 1NT : 2C / 2D / 2H, this would nearly always be alerted. This in itself would not be a problem: the problem comes when a pair turns up who don't play normal Stayman or transfers, but play some more unusual convention instead. The danger is that their opponents will see the alert and assume it was Stayman or a transfer since that is nearly always the reason for the alert. I used to play "Keri" over 1NT where the 2C response forced partner to bid 2D: many opponents went wrong because they had assumed it was Stayman, and occasionally some of them got very upset about it, even though we had done all we were required to do. The announcement of Stayman and transfers solves this problem, because now if such a bid is alerted opponents will know that it is something unusual. (Or of course it could be a Stayman bidder who has simply forgotten the regulations, but this will be clarified easily enough.)

2. Avoiding unauthorised information from asking questions.

This is the reason why we announce the range of 1NT openings. The point is that opponents will very often want to know what the range is. But asking about the range can lead to problems - particularly if opener's left-hand opponent asks and then passes. Asking tends to suggest that the player was interested in bidding, and now the Laws say that the player's partner must "carefully avoid taking advantage" of that information. Sometimes this is not a problem, but on other occasions a director may have to be called to sort things out. Or perhaps even a director should be called, but the players don't like calling the director. Either way, it would be so much better if the unauthorised information had not been passed in the first place: then this problem would not arise. This is why we announce 1NT openings: it gives the opponents the information they need, without them having to ask a question which might give their partner ethical problems.

For the other type of announcement that we have - natural two-level suit openings - both of the above reasons apply. (Before the announcement was brought in, an alerted 2H or 2S opening was nearly always a natural "weak two". And, like with a 1NT opening, opponents will very often need to know the meaning of a 2-level suit opening.)

As I said, I do not think that the EBU did a good job of explaining these things. So it is no wonder that so many people thought the announcements were pointless. The way the announcements were presented made them seem very arbitrary - just rules for rules' sake. Even if you ignore the attempts at explaining why we should have announcements and just look at the explanations of the rules themselves, there was a lot that could have been improved. The completely unreadable "easy guide" that the EBU produced is one of the most hopeless attempts at an explaining something that I have ever seen.

But of course it can't all be blamed on the publicity. Even if the L&E had handled that as well as possible, announcements were always going to be controversial. The fundamental problem is that the two reasons for having announcements aren't really things you'd expect a club player to be interested in. Let's look at those two reasons again:

1. Avoiding alerts for very common artificial bids. The announcement is designed to make opponents aware when a pair is playing an unusal method (ie. one which is alertable but is not Stayman or a transfer). However, these unusual methods are so rare at club level that club players will hardly ever come across them. So there is little need for them to be protected by annoucements.

2. Avoiding unauthorised information from asking questions. Most club players aren't interested in subtle Laws issues like this. Some people won't understand what the problems are in the first place, while others that do have some idea of the Laws are happy to ignore any problems that come up, since they don't like calling the director anyway. In a "friendly" game where people don't mind little bits of unauthorised information occurring, there seems little need to use announcements to prevent it.

Notice that the underlying problems - unsual systems and ethical issues - are not just specific to announcements, but cause a variety of difficulties in trying to apply the Laws of bridge to non-serious events. People who enjoy themselves playing in a club where everyone plays the same system and the director is hardly ever called about unauthorised information are not going to appreciate rules which are designed for unusual systems and scrupulous adherence to the Laws.

But to a "serious" bridge player, this looks so wrong. Announcements do genuinely solve the problems with unusual systems and unauthorised information that I have mentioned. And they come at little cost since once you've got used to them an announcement is no more difficult than an alert. But how do we sell this to our club players - do we tell them they're wrong not to care about these things? I think that is pretty much what we're saying. So while we may believe that announements improve the game for every type of player, it's no wonder that so many club players think that the rules are not designed with them in mind.

L&E Minutes for March 2007

The minutes for the meetings of the EBU's various committees are published on their website. I always take a particular interest in what the L&E are doing. Here are some thoughts on the latest set.

2.2.3. Use of the term "self-serving".

In the previous minutes, the comments of a player who was deemed to have fielded a psyche were called "self-serving" by a committee member. That was completely inappropriate. I don't like the term at the best of times, but its usual meaning is for a statement a player makes about their own methods or style or thought processes which would help their case if true but is not backed up by evidence, and so tends to be ignored by a TD or AC unless it is particularly credible. This instance was completely different, since it was a player's honest attempt to put his side of the case on the basis of agreed facts. It is totally out of order to dismiss this as "self-serving" - how can you have a problem with someone arguing their case like that?

The committee added a new comment to say that they didn't find the arguments convincing - fine, I agree with that - but the original comment still sickens me.

3.2. Announcements for "Acol Two"-like openings which fail to meet the definition of "strong".

This has been a known problem since before the new rules were introduced - I certainly asked about it, and I can't believe I was the only one. The problem is that neither "strong" nor "intermediate" really describes the agreement accurately - it falls between the two. I like the approach that the committee decided upon, announcing as "strong or intermediate", but there remains the question of whether the regulation is actually going to be changed to put this right. Or, more generally, what should happen to two-level openings which do not fall neatly into any of the announcement categories. It seems like they've ducked the issue a bit.

[Update 17/7/07: I should have had more faith: it has now been revealed that they actually went ahead and made a change to the OB, coming into force this summer, to address this point. So in fact this is another job well done in my opinion.]

3.5. Correspondence on announcements and alerts in general

Yes, the introduction of announcements has been a PR disaster. The committee really needs to realise that it's not just enough to make the right decision, you also have to communicate it properly to the players. I'm really disappointed in the way it's been handled. A belated consultation about it seems like a reasonable start in trying to put this right, trying to get back the support of the membership. The problem is that this consultation has to offer (or at least appear to offer) the possibility of discarding announcements completely, which would be a huge step backwards of course. All in all, very depressing that it has come to this, though we can hope that the results will be positive.

3.6. Minimum strength for "strong" openings

Brilliant work from the committee here, in the most important decision of the year so far. It's such a difficult subject - some definition of "strong" is essential, but it's so hard to express precisely where the line should be drawn. There was no doubt that the committee had previously got it wrong, making the requirements too restrictive and disallowing many hands which are normal strong openings for many players. The new definition is not exactly a thing of beauty, and people might complain that it is too complicated, but it seems to come pretty close to allowing the right things.

Perhaps even more encouraging than the decision itself was the fact that they've clearly listened to the complaints, sat down and thought about how to do better, and come up with something. You'd think that was an obvious thing to do, but it seems that very often known issues are just ignored because no-one wants to think about what to do about it, or to listen to people that have thought about it. But this time they have. (Eventually.) More of the same please.

The only slight disappointment was the decision to wait until August 1st to implement the new rule. Once you've admitted you're wrong, why let people continue to suffer? In my opinion, the right time for the change is as soon as it can be published in English Bridge (I suppose April would be unrealistic, but how about June?). We saw this with announcements - they were publicised nearly two months before the rules actually changed, and that was too much time for people to remember and keep up their initial "enthusiasm". Particularly for a relatively minor change like this, it should be immediate as soon as it is publicised. Note that the announcement of the change went up on the website immediately and people would be entitled to ask why they should have to wait another five months.

3.12. Moscito

Evidently the L&E has received some complaints that Moscito is allowed in the NICKO (since this competition is now level 4). Well, I agree with the complainants. As I've said before, I feel the standard level for tournament play should be somewhere between levels 3 and 4, and Moscito is just the sort of thing I would leave out. I've played it myself, and I know the amount of disruption it causes. The whole of level 4 would be appropriate for most team events, but the NICKO is intended to be accessible to non-experts and so I do not feel that this is appropriate.

Now, the L&E has decided that "it was a Tournament Committee matter". Very amusing. While this is strictly true, it is the L&E which has caused the problem by getting the "levels" wrong and by recommending that EBU events should be run at level 4. To be fair, there's not much they can do about it now, but it would be nice if they admitted responsibility.

System Regulations

As you can see from this blog, I am fascinated by bidding theory. However, when it comes to actually sitting down at the table and playing the game, I do not believe that people should be allowed to experiment with unusual methods without restriction. System regulations are a necessary part of the game.

In an ideal world, two things would happen:

• People would be allowed to play whatever methods they thought were best; and also
• People would have the opportunity to come up with the best defences to all of their opponents' methods.

However, in practice these two things are incompatible. In most events, players do not find out what their opponents' methods are until just before they begin to play, and if these methods are sufficiently unusual there is not enough time to discuss an adequate defence.

So if the two objectives are incompatible, what do we do? The anti-regulation lobby would have us believe that freedom to choose our methods is the most important principle, and that opponents should try to cope with this as best as they can. I do not agree with this: if forced to choose, I think the right to be prepared for opponents' agreements is the more important. This may well involve "generic" defences which work against a variety of possible conventions. However, it is not reasonable to expect people to have generic defences for everything the opponents might want to throw at them.

Fortunately, system regulations offer a compromise. The people whose methods are disallowed might not see it as a compromise, but really it is:

• Players may only play methods which are permitted by the system regulations; but
• Players must be prepared to defend against all the permitted agreements.

From this we get the important principle of what the convention regulations should be:

The permitted methods should be precisely those things which it is reasonable to expect pairs to be prepared to defend against, given the amount of time available for discussion.

So for example, in a duplicate pairs event, there is virtually no time for discussion at all, so the permitted methods should only be those things which players are expected to already know their defences to. Whereas, in a knock-out teams event where players can find out their opponents' systems in advance, there can be a much wider range of agreements allowed. Of course it also depends a lot on how good the players involved are: there can be much greater expectations on players in a top-level event than those in a club event. So the principle of having multiple "levels" of system regulations, depending on the event, is a good one.

So, I am very much in favour of restrictions, provided that they are for the right reasons. The right reason for disallowing a convention is if it is considered to be so unusual that players would not know how to defend against it. Note that the important question is whether the opponents would know what their bids meant. There are some conventions which make life difficult for the opponents simply because they are obstructive - this should not be a matter for system regulations: provided that the opponents can understand the methods, they should be allowed. What really annoys me is when there is a convention which is not difficult to defend against (in terms of the opponents having agreements about what their bids mean), but which is disallowed for some other reason. This should not happen.

The other big problem with convention regulations is when they are poorly written. It is very important that the regulations are clear and consistently applied, since players must be able to know whether their conventions are allowed before turning up at the event. The worst possible thing is when different TDs have different views on what the regulations say. Fortunately, apart from a couple of well-known issues, the system regulations here in the EBU are largely free of serious problems, though there are a few little corners that I wish the L&E would get round to tidying up.

The EBU's system regulations are unusual in that they are extremely detailed. But in terms of how much is permitted, we seem to be fairly near the average. (North America, in particular, is much more conservative, whereas countries like Australia are more permissive.) In fact I would say that the EBU has got the level almost exactly right. If anything, the recent decision to use Level 4 in the EBU's competitions seems to me to allow a bit too much for duplicate events. I think it would be better for the game if the standard level for tournament play was somwhere between level 3 and level 4; the rest of level 4 would be allowed in teams events provided that those conventions were disclosed in advance.

At the very highest level, such as the world championships, I do think that agreements should be unrestricted. My argument here is simply that these events are planned so long in advance that players would have enough time to prepare for all of the opponents' systems. In other words, the "ideal world" scenario really ought to be achievable here. Some players might still complain that even with all the time available it is still not possible to develop defences which they consider to be good enough, but I think there comes a point where the organisers have to say: perfection might not be achievable, but there is enough time to be adequately prepared.

Alerting of Doubles

Bridge regulations vary from country to country. Here in England our Laws and Ethics Committee is particularly keen on coming up with regulations, and as a result we seem to have far more regulations than anywhere else. Fortunately the vast majority of these regulations are very sensible. But inevitably the L&E occasionally makes a mistake. I'd like to talk about what I think is the worst mistake the L&E has made recently.

The rules for alerting of doubles changed in August 2006. The main change was for doubles of natural suit bids: we now must alert these doubles unless they are for take-out. (Before August, the expected meaning of a double was penalties if partner had already made a bid.) I feel that these new rules are a disaster. Admittedly they're not much worse than the old rules - and many players might actually find them better - but the problem is that the old rules were awful as well. And now that we've had to change from one to the other, it's become apparent just how awful both sets of rules are.

The problem is that the EBU rules are primarily designed for simple auctions. Suppose we take a simple sequence like 1S : (2D) : Dbl. You will almost certainly find that:
(i) Everyone knows what their agreements are in this sequence; and
(ii) Everyone knows whether their agreements are alertable.
And so here the alerting regulations work quite well. But in more complicated auctions, both of these things might no longer be true.

People hardly ever have explicit agreements about doubles in complicated auctions. They therefore have to work out the meaning of a double from general principles or from previous experience of similar situations. This causes problems in trying to alert correctly. For instance, what do you do if you're not completely sure what partner's double means? Note that this is much less of a problem for alerting of bids, since even if you're not sure what the bid means, it's usually fairly clear whether the bid is natural or not. Deciding between take-out and non-take-out doubles is much harder.

The other problem is that even if you know what the double means, it's easy to get the alerting wrong. For a start there are some counter-intuitive positions. For example, a double of a natural suit bid is not alertable if it's for take-out, but it's easy to miss the fact that this does not apply to an auction like (1NT) : p : (2C) : p , (2D) : p : (p) : Dbl (because although you are making a take-out double of diamonds, the 2D bid was actually artificial). Also many people forget to alert doubles which are "obviously" penalties, such as (1NT) : Dbl : (2D) : Dbl or 1H : (1S) : 2H : (2S) , 3D : (3S) : Dbl. And the EBU rules make a fine distinction between "take-out" (usually not alertable) and "competitive" (alertable), which many people do not understand.

Admittedly, getting the alerting wrong does not always lead to problems with misinformation or unauthorised information. But it would still be much better if the rules were easier to get right.

Some other countries have the rule that no doubles are to be alerted. This is obviously much better from the point of view of understanding what the rule is. But it means that opponents are not warned about unexpected agreements.

So is there a better way? I think there is.

The point is that the unexpected agreements for which alerts are useful nearly all come in very simple auctions - and these are the simple auctions in which the current EBU rules work well. Whereas, in more complicated auctions there are hardly any agreements which are sufficiently unexpected that an alert is really necessary. So the plan is to use something like the current EBU rules for simple auctions, and change to the "no alert" rule for more complicated auctions. The difficulty is defining what "simple" means in a way that people would understand.

Fortunately, the simple agreements that we're interested in are really simple. In fact they can be limited to just four or five specific auctions. So what we can do is replace the four general rules in the current Orange Book with a similar number of rules each dealing with a specific sequence. Note that it's much easier to learn a rule about a specific sequence than a general rule covering lots of sequences. For example, while most people don't understand all the implications of the current rule about alerting doubles of natural suit bids, they do generally remember that negative doubles are no longer alertable.

The situations where I would have alerting are:

(i) Doubles of natural suit opening bids below 3NT. [Rule: Alert if the double is not for take-out.]

(ii) Doubles of natural 1NT or 2NT opening bids. [Rule: Alert if the double is not for penalties.]

(iii) After an opening bid and a natural suit overcall from opener's LHO below 3NT, a double by opener's partner. [Rule: Announce as "negative" if the double is for take-out; do not alert or announce if the double is for penalties; alert any other meaning.]

(iv) After an opening bid at the 1-level and a pass from opener's LHO, the double of a natural suit response (or raise) below 3NT. [Rule: Alert if the double is not for take-out.]

Note that in (i), (ii) and (iv), nearly everyone plays the non-alertable meaning for the bid, so most players would not even need to know these rules. The important rule to know would be number (iii).

[I would also have to make an exception for "anti-lead-directing" doubles (which are currently alertable even above 3NT) because these are particularly unexpected. But this is probably the only exception which is necessary.]

This was the specific suggestion that I sent in to the EBU. But what is more important than the specific suggestion is the general idea that in most auctions, only very unusual doubles should be alertable. Any regulation which did this would be an improvement on the EBU's ideas. The ACBL regulations do in fact work this way: in some sense my suggestion is simply a more precise version of the ACBL's rules.

I'm still hoping the L&E will concede that they got it wrong.