[nige1]

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 02:54 PM, said:

Chip & Lew did succeed in getting a number after one of the ferts, and our team out-played the English team, so the US won the Bermuda Bowl. But to suggest that a strong pass creates only "a few problems" is really a huge underbid.

Cascade, on Dec 3 2008, 09:37 PM, said:

Isn't that one of the aims of bridge - to create problems for your opponents.

Jan writes that, in 1987, with scant warning, the American team had to piece together the British FP system from hand-records, rather than simply consult a system-card. They overcame that enormous handicap, to win the match and the Bermuda Bowl. A Heroic effort!

Nowadays, HUM partnerships supply system cards and approved defences that opponents may consult at the table; that seems to be a fair test of methods and skills.

At lower levels, the unfamiliarity argument may have more force. Ages ago, my sister and I played in a pairs tournament, sponsored by a French Club. We called the director to complain that all our opponents appeared to employ Canapé but forgot to alert. The director amazed us by

• Informing us that in France (and America), players open an artificial minor with only three cards in the suit
  
• Admonishing us for failing to alert our natural four-card major and weak no-trump openings.

[hrothgar]

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 10:21 AM, said:

awm, on Dec 4 2008, 01:07 AM, said:

(2) When ACBL organizers banned transfer openings except for long team events, they were probably not in line with the will of the bridge playing population.

Transfer openings aren't banned; they are midchart but no one has presented an adequate defense for them. Just like 2♦ showing both Majors (sorry, I know that is completely off topic, but it happens to be my personal pet peeve that none of the people who play that have bothered to submit a defense and then they complain that they aren't allowed to play it, or just play it anyway). I know a lot of you think that the nefarious convention approval committee has insidiously refused to approve a defense to transfer openings, but actually, no defense has been submitted, at least recently. Now that the committee has the option of approving something for a stated number of boards, I would be very surprised if they wouldn't approve a reasonable defense to transfer openings, at least for 6+ boards or something like that.

I wanted to point out the following late edit that TimG made to one of his posts:

(Given the speed at which this thread is progressing, I thought it important that this didn't get buried:

Quote

Edit: This thread prompted me to inquire as to the status of my requests. I just received this response:

"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

Here's the complete posting

Quote

QUOTE (JanM @ Dec 4 2008, 02:21 AM)
Transfer openings aren't banned; they are midchart but no one has presented an adequate defense for them.


Jan,

There is an approved defense for a "1H Opening Transfer to 1S" in the defense database (available at the ACBL website). It was approved in March of 2005 which was before the new boards-per-segment divisions were created. When the mid-chart was published with the boards-per-segment restrictions, the 1H transfer opening was restricted to 12+ board segments.

In April of 2008, I wrote to ACBL with two requests:

1) That a defense to a 1D transfer opening be approved. I submitted a defense that was identical to the 1H transfer opening defense (except for adding a meaning for the additional one-level overcall available over the 1D transfer opening).

2) That the committee reconsider the 12+ board segment restriction.

The responses (from Rick Beye) were:

1) "I will forward this submission to the committee for their review. The time frame is indeterminate."

2) "Actually the committee was unanimous on the 12 board issue. I will point out your request."

That was nearly 8 months ago and I have heard nothing further from ACBL (or the committee) regarding these matters.


QUOTE 
Now that the committee has the option of approving something for a stated number of boards, I would be very surprised if they wouldn't approve a reasonable defense to transfer openings, at least for 6+ boards or something like that.



Not only has a reasonable defense been submitted (reasonable in that the committee already approved one for a 1H transfer opening), but a specific request to reconsider the 12+ board restriction has also been submitted.

Tim

Edit: This thread prompted me to inquire as to the status of my requests. I just received this response:

"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

[TimG]

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 12:25 PM, said:

I did say that nothing had been submitted recently - if you were to dig out those old emails, I'll bet you'd find they were several years old. And whether the committee would have approved a reasonable defense back then if it had been presented at the start instead of only after much back and forth and a lot of work by the committee members on inadequate defenses, I don't know.

Jan,

A few days after submitting the defense to the 1H transfer opening, I received this message from one of the committee members:

Quote

I think that this is a very simple method to play against and easy to defend I am in favor of allowing.

A couple of weeks later from another committee member:

Quote

This one is not difficult and is ok. However if we allow this it will lead to other requests for transfer openings such as the mosquito system from down under. This system we don't want in acbl.

I would approve this but warn all of the looming danger.

There was a bit of back and forth with Chip before he wrote:

Quote

The defense is reasonable, if not ideal.

Then, six months passed before I received this message from ACBL:

Quote

Your defense submission for transfer opening bids has been approved for competitions (segments) of 12 boards or longer.

The initial reaction was that the methods were "very simple" and "not difficult" to defend against. The back and forth (and minor changes to the defense) came after the warning of the "looming danger". And, it was six months (and no changes that I recall) between the defense being called "reasonable" and the approval.

Now, even this "reasonable" and approved defense to a method which two committee members felt was simple to defend against has been rejected for a virtually identical method.

Surely you can understand our suspicion that something is going on that hasn't been fully disclosed. There was no explanation given with the recent rejection of my submission, only a note from Rick Beye:

Quote

I can tell you that there is zero support among the committee members for adding this to the Mid Chart. In my view it will remain a Super Chart convention.

Quite a change from "a very simple method to play against and easy to defend". (The committee member who wrote that 4 years ago is no longer a member of the committee.)

Tim

[blackshoe]

TimG, on Dec 4 2008, 03:23 PM, said:

Edit: This thread prompted me to inquire as to the status of my requests.  I just received this response:

"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

From whom did you receive this? Was it a member of the committee, or Rick again?

I've just looked at the web site. The link on the Administration page under "Competiton and Conventions Committee" is Meeting agendas and minutes, yet on that page the only thing about agendas is a short list of "Current Discussion Items" which consists of

• Convention Chart Revisions
  
• NABC+ Start Times

There are no minutes at all. IIRC there used to be, but some time ago (perhaps a year or so) I pointed out that they were not current, and the response to that was to remove the ones that were there. This is not the way such a committee should behave, IMO. Perhaps we need to lobby for a "sunshine law" provision in the ACBL Constitution and Bylaws.

[Cascade]

TimG, on Dec 5 2008, 08:23 AM, said:

"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

Am I missing something or is this as perverse as it seems.

You can play 1♥ showing spades but not other transfers.

How on earth are you supposed to graft on other bids to make a comprehensive system out of that?

[nige1]

hrothgar, on Dec 4 2008, 04:41 PM, said:

I just received this response:
"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

What do you expect? If the committee allowed everything, its members would be out of a job and players would be free to enjoy playing any method that they liked

Seriously, some players would like system freedom; but many fear the unfamiliar. Is a compromise possible that would satisfy most players without fragmenting the game by pandering to each faction's system preferences? I hope for 2-tier system regulation:

• Standard system Identical methods for all competitors.
  
• Anything goes HUMs and BSCs welcome.

[TimG]

blackshoe, on Dec 4 2008, 05:35 PM, said:

TimG, on Dec 4 2008, 03:23 PM, said:

Edit: This thread prompted me to inquire as to the status of my requests.  I just received this response:

"These items were discussed in Boston. The committee will not approved your request for transfer opening bids, beyond that one call already approved. The committee will not reduce the board / segment indicator on this call."

From whom did you receive this? Was it a member of the committee, or Rick again?

Rick. I have had no communication with any committee member regarding my April submission.

I asked Rick for an update today and he provided it. It is quite possible that someone from the committee (or someone else at ACBL) has it on their to-do list to make official notification with explanation and that Rick was kind enough to reply to my inquiry before the official notification.

[rbforster]

Cascade, on Dec 4 2008, 05:38 PM, said:

Am I missing something or is this as perverse as it seems.

You can play 1♥ showing spades but not other transfers.

How on earth are you supposed to graft on other bids to make a comprehensive system out of that?

Simple - you aren't, and stop bothering the Committee about it.

[JanM]

OK, I'll try to find out what's going on about the 1♦ transfer. And the board requirement, although I have a feeling if they've talked about that they're not going to change their minds.

As far as minutes, I suspect that the reason there aren't any published minutes is because no one is doing them. It's not as easy as it seems to do minutes and if the committee doesn't happen to have someone who's good at it, they just don't get done.

Quote

What do you expect? If the committee allowed everything, its members would be out of a job and players would be free to enjoy playing any method that they liked

I am confident that all of the members of the committee (whether you mean C&C or the Conventions Approval Committee) would be very happy to be out of that particular job - it's no fun, believe me. All of the committee members (and their spouses) would much prefer to sleep another couple of hours in the morning at NABCs than to get up to go to committee meetings.

[mycroft]

Jan, you knew I wasn't going to keep silent on this one, neh? I'm summarizing - please let me know if I have changed the sense of your words or even misintentioned them in my summary.

First, you point out that originally the C&C committee were responsible for creating defences for defence-worthy Mid-Chart conventions. You pointed out (and probably rightly) that since this is work they had to do volunteer, with minimal usefulness compared to the rest of their workload (professional and otherwise) that the defences weren't always that good. So C&C said, "this isn't working, let people who want to play these do the defence work."

So far, all well and good (and end of summary). But the (inferior) C&C defences were still out there, and they were, and are, the only evidence of what constitutes an acceptable defence (there was, and is, no guidelines on what needs to be covered, or what constitutes a "too complicated" defence, for instance). Is anyone surprised that the quality of the defences submitted, and the range of calls that they covered, were the level of the examples -- and therefore, almost by definition, inferior?

And that when told that, people tried a couple of times to tighten them up to acceptability, and when they got to the point where their defence to their call was easily more thorough than their, or any of their peers', defence to a standard 1H opener (for instance, or a standard 2H opener, even), and it was still "not complete enough" or "too complicated, even for a written defence", that they gave it up for a lost cause (with a side helping of "what have they got against me? This defence is clearly better than <approved one>")?

Or that having seen the Defence database stagnate for 10 years, with no new defences approved (and the odd one pulled), and the ones there pushed to Swiss/KO only by no understandable or explained logic, and *still* no guidelines to creation of an acceptable defence (not even, "AT MINIMUM, the defence has to:... [and] Because of the unique nature of each Mid-Chart convention, the defence may have to allow for other things at the request of the C&C committee") and hearing the stories above from the veterans of the process, that nobody bothers anymore?

Note that I haven't yet mentioned Richard's "accidental emails" stories. However they, no matter their veracity, only reinforce the above. Oh, they do also trigger the "alternative explanation" hypothesis -- which unfortunately when tested, is not falsified on the evidence, and becomes more plausible the more data one hears.

Somewhat offtopic, I know of a pair who "everyone" believes is unethical. I don't - I know more of their history than most and have seen and remember the hands where everything went wrong, unlike those who have decided. However, the pair do nothing to alleviate the suspicions, and in fact seem to go out of their way to do things to encourage them. Why? No idea - bullheadedness, a "they've already made up their mind, so %$#* 'em" philosophy, an enjoyment of the game-playing and politics, a victim complex? Strangely enough, the number of "everyone" doesn't go down, and every time a new person tells a bad beat story with that pair as the opposition, someone says "Yeah, that's <them>. They cheat." and "everyone" gains another member.

I think the parallel is obvious - and that given that, if the C&C feel that either the situation or the impression they're giving need to be changed, they have some work to do - and not primarily on defences.

[NickRW]

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 11:08 PM, said:

As far as minutes, I suspect that the reason there aren't any published minutes is because no one is doing them. It's not as easy as it seems to do minutes and if the committee doesn't happen to have someone who's good at it, they just don't get done.

What?!

My other hobby is breeding and showing guinea pigs. To say that club secretaries are often older men in cloth caps with an agricultural background is, perhaps, going in a little far in characterisation, but not that far. They manage to produce minutes for last years AGM without problem. Top bridge players are usually intelligent people often with some sort of professional background and you're asking us to believe that no-one from a committee of such persons finds it easy enough to do minutes. Pull the other one.

If "they just don't get done" then it is because the committee is plain lazy or not interested in transparency.

Nick

[akhare]

Cascade, on Dec 4 2008, 02:03 PM, said:

JanM, on Dec 5 2008, 06:25 AM, said:

... and other more complex methods that needed long enough advance discussion to be reasonable only in longer events (such as multi).

I can't help but think that the ACBL does a disservice to its members, especially those who sometimes play in other jurisdictions by severely restricting a method that is commonly played at all levels in most of the rest of the world.

Yup -- I am becoming increasingly ambivalent about my renewing my ACBL membership, thanks to the draconian system regulations.

On one hand, I would like to support them for obvious reasons, but the absurd convention card regulations have really been bothering me...

[fred]

NickRW, on Dec 5 2008, 12:07 AM, said:

JanM, on Dec 4 2008, 11:08 PM, said:

As far as minutes, I suspect that the reason there aren't any published minutes is because no one is doing them. It's not as easy as it seems to do minutes and if the committee doesn't happen to have someone who's good at it, they just don't get done.

What?!

My other hobby is breeding and showing guinea pigs. To say that club secretaries are often older men in cloth caps with an agricultural background is, perhaps, going in a little far in characterisation, but not that far. They manage to produce minutes for last years AGM without problem. Top bridge players are usually intelligent people often with some sort of professional background and you're asking us to believe that no-one from a committee of such persons finds it easy enough to do minutes. Pull the other one.

If "they just don't get done" then it is because the committee is plain lazy or not interested in transparency.

Nick

Sorry to pick on you, Nick, but I am getting really sick of people (not only you) making implications about the character and motivation of the people who serve on these committees.

For one thing, you clearly don't get it as far as taking notes is concerned. I have demonstrated at least a reasonable degree of competency in terms of playing bridge, writing about bridge, writing software, and starting (and sometimes running) 2 successful businesses. But I happen to know that I would be COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of being the designated note-taker/minutes-producer for the ACBL C&C Committee (or even their guinea pig appreciation committee for that matter).

It turns out that I have served on this particular committee before and I am good friends with most of the others who have been involved over the years. It would not surprise me in the least if most/all of them, similar to me, were completely lacking in skills in this area.

Fortunately, the people in the group I am referring to happen to be highly-skilled in some other areas that are rather important given the (thankless) jobs they have volunteered for. For example, I would happily sit down with any of them for the first time and play SAYC against you and the partner of your choice playing forcing pass (or whatever system you want) for a nice game of (very) high stakes rubber bridge.

Are you interested?

This may be hard for you to imagine, but the fact that you apparently consider such tasks as note-taking to be trivial does not imply that everyone feels the same way. The fact that some very talented people happen to suck when it comes to doing things that may seem easy to you makes them neither lazy nor corrupt.

Given that you don't even play in ACBL tournaments or know the people whose characters you seem to delight in assassinating, your comments are particularly ignorant in my view.

As I said, not only was I one of these people, but I know the rest of them well. Perhaps you find it hard to believe, but these people have no personal stake at all in what goes on in mid-chart games. In general, they don't even play in or care about tournaments where the mid-chart is in use. If they do play, they are so much better than the rest of the field that they should comfortably expect to slaughter everyone, regardess of what methods are allowed.

These people serve on these committees because they genuinely and sincerely care about the good of the game. They want to give something back. As a result, they are willing to wake up early in the morning in the middle of events they do care about in order to make rules pertaining to events that they don't care about. The meetings they have to attend and many of the people they have to deal with at these meetings tend to be beyond annoying. They are better people than me - I could only deal with this for a couple of years before I felt I had to quit while some of the others have served for many years.

It is fine to say you think they are doing a poor job or that you disagree with their judgment, but if you insist on insulting those of our leading players (who also happen to be fine human beings) who are willing to devote their time and energy to make bridge better for the masses, then please find another place to spout your bile.

I won't put up with it here.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mycroft]

On the original topic, the problem is that if I'm playing against "standard", even if something else is done with 13+ and the 1 bids are 8-12 and defined, there's only one call to handle the 0-7 hands - Pass. I have a defence to that - it's probably not much different from my defence to a standard Pass.

If I'm playing against FP, however, I have to defend against 6 (in practise only 3) "passes" - 1C->2C. And they really are different to defend against, each and every one.

A 1C fert has a trivial (if not optimal, it does get you back to average) defence: X=1C, otherwise System On. If you want to play FP with a 1C Fert (0-7 any, 8-9 with primary minor) and all other bids natural (maybe 1D "Precision, 0+", but that's GCC if 10+) I think that's equivalent to a 1C 13+ any system and should be legal anywhere that is.

A 1D fert not so much, but you still have "penalty interest or minor/minors", 1H NAT, 1S NAT available. Now you need to tweak more than just "should we go after the fert or play Nuttin' to save on memory load"; you have to untangle your minors as well. At this point, you pretty much need a worked defence.

A 1H fert, now you've lost a "real suit", and also it's getting to the point where it's worth trying to get them when they're wrong, as their best landing spot is half the time at the 2 level. That makes building a defence that will almost have to multiplex hand types to resolve everything (lebensohl, anyone?), plus probably a "redouble double" on defence-oriented hands. But you do get both 1S and 1NT as relay starters, so you have 3 ways to make each 2 bid (4 if you use double).

A 1S fert is like the 1H fert, but even more so. You have more interest in punishing them (as they pretty much have to play at the 2 level), AND you've lost one of your 1-level multiplexers.

I can see, even without the (natural) 8-12s (and I've played 8-14 in GCC (well Midchart; but this part was natural and standard) and it does require some different thinking, but since it is GCC legal, it's "different thinking" that is already required for a GCC-legal (if unusual) system) where now to defend against forcing pass, I need to have at least 4 defences to break even: the one against the forcing pass itself, and the ones against 1D, 1H, or 1S ferts, only one of which I'm going to use against this pair.

I don't know about the 1979 English, but the 1981 Walpurgis Diamond(Hackett-Collins?) used a medium pass and a 0-7 or various strong hands 1D. That's another defensive conundrum altogether.

[the hog]

"There is lightyear of difference between Polish/Fantunes and a fert bid. In one case the defense fit in 1 page in the FP it take at least 10 pages of agreements."

Ben you crack me up - a 10 page defence to a fert. I can supply an extremely effective one in half a page. It is crap like this that shows some people don't know what they are talking about.

[Rossoneri]

Sorry Fred, I can't agree with you on this, if there is no proper note-taking, then how is the transparency of the committee going to be upheld?

Maybe Nick was going a bit overboard by calling them lazy and competent, but to an outsider, having no minutes for committee minutes just seems to be unprofessional.

[cherdano]

Fred, you make it sound as there was no serious event (as in taken seriously by Chip Martel or Meckstroth) that uses midchart. Well, of course all the big pair events use midchart (multi is not allowed in any of these), and of course they often play these.

[TimG]

fred, on Dec 4 2008, 07:44 PM, said:

In general, they don't even play in or care about tournaments where the mid-chart is in use.

Perhaps the committee charged with the responsibility of making rules for an event should be made up of people who do care about the event.

[fred]

cherdano, on Dec 5 2008, 01:16 AM, said:

Fred, you make it sound as there was no serious event (as in taken seriously by Chip Martel or Meckstroth) that uses midchart. Well, of course all the big pair events use midchart (multi is not allowed in any of these), and of course they often play these.

Assuming you are right then I stand corrected. I care about those events too.

Regardless, I still think it is completely inappropriate to suggest that these fine people serve on these committees in order to give themselves some kind of edge in such events. Believe me, the extra few hours of sleep instead of having to be awake at multi-hour horrible meetings, would provide a much bigger edge than they could ever hope to gain by restricting systems.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[JanM]

I now have a new understanding of one reason why transfer 1-bids shouldn't be allowed in 2 board rounds, one I hadn't thought of for myself but that indeed makes sense. The transfer 1-bids are very high frequency bids - look over any hand record and you'll see at least 10 times as many 1 of a Major opening bids as 2 of a Major openings (probably even more than that). So if the transfer 1-bids are allowed, they'll come up a lot. And each time they come up it is going to take time for the opponents to comprehend the meaning of the bid, review the defense and then try to figure out what to do. As a result, it's pretty likely that the table at which the transfer players are playing will get behind, not once, not twice, but several times during a session. That will make the session of bridge less enjoyable for all the other players, especially the poor pair who happen to be following them. The more boards there are per round, the less overall delay there will be - people will only have to go through the comprehension process the first time the bid is used, and there will be "fast" hands on which the table will catch up.