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.

Busy Week

It certainly has been a busy week. First of all for me personally: in a few days' time I'm going back home for my dad's birthday, and before I leave I really need to have finished a draft of the main section of my thesis. So, as you can imagine, I've been working pretty hard. On a similar note, congratulations to my friend David Hodge who submitted his own thesis down in Cambridge on Monday.

In the bridge world, there was the vote on the EBU's strategy proposals at Wednesday's EGM. The proposals were voted through, with 52 in favour and 31 against, meaning that Pay-to-Play is to begin in 2010. As you know, I think this is misguided. But I'd like to echo what Jeff Smith said at our county's AGM which took place the following day: now that the proposals are a reality, it's important that everyone helps to make it as successful as possible. If the proposals are implemented well, then it may be unpopular but the EBU will survive. But if mistakes are made there is the potential for disaster. I would have to say that in the past the EBU has been very bad at communicating its ideas, even the good ones. This can't be allowed to happen for something as important as these changes. The number of clubs that have said they would disaffiliate is really quite shocking, particularly here in Manchester and in my home county of Hampshire. I hope that many of these clubs can be persuaded that they should remain a part of our NBO. I'm sure that some of the objections are things that could be overcome by better understanding.

Thursday was the first time I'd been to my county's AGM. It took three-and-a-half hours, but actually I was quite impressed by the relatively small amount of pointless argument. My contribution was to suggest that, in order to try to reduce the number of teams who withdraw from the first round of the cup without playing their scheduled match, teams should not be allowed to enter the plate unless they actually played their first-round cup match. (Teams do have the option of entering straight into the plate, if they do not want to play in the cup.) Apart from this I managed to keep quiet, and avoided being given any jobs to do (having the excuse that I may be leaving the county at the end of the summer).

Also on Thursday was a meeting of the L&E. It appears that they have made a decision concerning the alerting of doubles, but details have not been made public yet. Mr Stevenson said that before being adopted it would have to be looked at by the new "Club Committee" of the EBU. That's slightly scary since I get the feeling a widely held "club" view is that everything the L&E tries to do is wrong; but perhaps we can hope that an official committee would be more constructive. Anyway, it looks like some progress has been made.

Why I Oppose the EBU's Strategy Proposals

The EBU exists to promote and organise the game of bridge in England. It is the "promotion" part that we are interested in here. Bridge is a great game: the more people that play it the better. If the EBU can do something to increase the number of people playing then they can rightly say that they are a successful organisation. In fact it seems that the number of people playing bridge is declining; the EBU is understandably worried about this and is trying to do something about it.

But let's be clear about this - what we care about is the total number of people playing the game, whether or not they are members of the EBU. The success of the EBU is not defined by the number of people they have on their membership list, but by the total amount of bridge being played in the country. That's what it really means to promote the game.

The core idea of the EBU's strategy proposals is for "universal membership" - that is, all members of EBU-affiliated clubs would automatically be members of the EBU. Even if a large proportion of clubs decide to disaffiliate, this proposal will still surely increase the number of EBU members. But will it actually do anything to stop the decline in the number of people playing the game?

The most controversial aspect of the proposals is that they would change the way the EBU is funded. Rather than having an annual subscription, the proposal is to charge players a certain amount for each session of bridge that they play, taken out of the table money. The intention is for the scheme to raise the same amount of money as the current scheme does; however, if you consider individual players, there will inevitably be some players for whom bridge becomes more expensive to play, and some for whom bridge becomes less expensive.

The way things are at the moment, with the annual subscription, means that the EBU membership contains a disproportionately large number of tournament players and other keen players, compared to the bridge-playing population as a whole. So, in effect, the tournament players are subsidising the rest of the bridge-playing population. Under the proposed Pay-to-Play scheme everyone would be contributing. The net effect is to make bridge more expensive for the casual player; their money goes to make bridge less expensive for the serious players. Isn't this a bad thing if we want to promote the game? The keen players are going to continue playing whatever happens. We want to get more people playing the game, but the newcomers are the people who are worst off under the proposed scheme, since at the moment they would tend not to join the EBU until they are more experienced.

My opinion is that the keen players should subsidise the promotion of the game, like they do at the moment. Because I enjoy playing the game, I am keen to see other people learning to play, and I am very happy for my money to be used to get them started. Under the EBU proposals you would instead be taking disproportionately large amounts money from the very people who you are trying to promote the game to. Admittedly the amounts of money involved are quite small, but one of the attractions of the game is that it ought to be a relatively inexpensive hobby. When the table money is typically £1.50, an increase of 30p or so is noticeable.

There is a strange imbalance in the EBU's proposals: having scrapped the annual subscription, they intend to make up for this almost entirely with Pay-to-Play fees from club games. But, as I said, most of the people playing annual subscriptions at the moment do so because they play in county or EBU events. So surely a sizeable proportion of the new Pay-to-Play fees should be coming from tournaments. But for some reason they are not doing this. Instead it is the casual player who pays more. I don't understand this at all.

But really it is not so much about the money anyway. People have strong feelings about the element of compulsion. If people currently are not members of the EBU, that's because they don't want to be members. If you force people to join an organisation that they don't wish to belong to, then that is surely going to be very unpopular. The fact that they have to pay for the privilege just makes things worse.

Let's face it - very little of what the EBU does actually benefits its members directly. You don't need the EBU in order to have a game at the club. But as a national bridge organisation, the EBU has some important obligations. The obvious example, and the most expensive, is sending teams to (and occasionally hosting) international events. Money is also needed to promote the game. These are good causes, and I have chosen to help fund these things through my subscription. But other people might not value these things so highly. That's unfortunate, but it should be their choice to make.

The EBU already tends to get a rather bad press. There is a significant group of players, including both members and non-members, who are distrustful of the EBU, generally feeling that it interferes with the game without giving them anything of value. Some feel that the EBU concentrates too much on serious players at the expense of the ordinary club player. Issues such as the introduction of announcements in 2006 proved to be very divisive. Generally I do not think the EBU deserves the criticism it gets, but I worry that the introduction of compulsory membership for players at EBU-affiliated clubs will only add to the antipathy that already exists. The critics will see it as just another way in which the EBU is trying to impose its influence on people who do not want anything to do with it.

While the details of the proposal have been well publicised, it has been quite difficult to find out why they want universal membership. The reasons that have been given seem mostly spurious. I went along to a discussion at the Brighton congress to hear what they had to say. Mr Capal pointed out the fact that the EBU membership was made up of disproportionately large numbers of serious players, and that universal membership would make the EBU more representative. This is absolutely true, as I have already said above. But Mr Capal's suggestion was that the EBU would not be able to address the needs of the casual club players unless they were members. This is utter nonsense. Of course the EBU should be listening to the club players; they should find out what these players want from their NBO and make sure that the EBU works for the benefit of everyone. But this has absolutely nothing to do with whether those players are members. The EBU should be working for all the bridge players in England, whether they are members or not. If the EBU has in the past ignored the large body of bridge players who are non-members, then that is a terrible failing. But it is something that can be put right. And it certainly has nothing to do with the way the EBU is funded.

I was particularly unimpressed by the long list of things that the EBU would provide for its clubs. Perhaps the most interesting idea was the proposed new "ranking" scheme, but there were also more mundane things like free software. Now, there was nothing wrong with any of the things on that list. But again, the problem is these services have nothing to do with the way the EBU is funded. The EBU should always be seeking to improve its services to clubs, but you don't need to impose universal membership in order to do this.

Finally, and only quite recently, the EBU did present one valid reason for universal membership. If the EBU has more members, then it can potentially get more money from sponsorship and advertising (particularly from the members' magazine), and could have more influence as a political force. It's quite depressing to think that what is basically an accounting trick ("in order to get more members, we'll just redefine who is a member") could actually make a difference to the influence the EBU has. Perhaps this is how the world works. But personally, I do not believe that this advantage is enough to make it worth alienating all the bridge players who do not want to be members of the EBU. I don't think the EBU is a popular enough organisation to get away with forcing people to join. Even the EBU itself is anticipating a mass of disaffiliations if the proposal goes ahead.

The final vote on the proposals is taking place in three weeks' time. It will not be the end of the world if the proposals are voted through. But if the EBU really wants to get more people playing bridge, there are plenty of things it could be doing to help achieve that - and these things have nothing to do with universal membership or Pay-to-Play. And for an organisation which already has trouble with public relations, the proposed strategy will only make things worse.

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. :)

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.

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.