[jillybean]

barmar, on 2025-February-27, 16:45, said:

The impression I get is that the ACBL regulators believe that American players don't want comprehensive, detailed regulations like the colored books. They probably consider them too overwhelming and no one will read them.

ACBL regulations have generally been based more on establishing some general principles, and then applying them to specific cases. The problem has been that these principles are sometimes too vague; they made some improvements in the revisions of the convention charts and alert procedures a few years ago. But the general idea of keeping them short and general instead of long and detailed is still there.

I'm not sure they're wrong about what the majority of ACBL members want.

Can you please provide a link to the ACBL Regulations you are referring to.
In my experience, locating and understanding ACBL regulations is considerably more difficult than accessing similar information in EBU's Blue Book.

"I'm not sure they're wrong about what the majority of ACBL members want" in what regards; convention charts, alert procedures, Laws?

[mycroft]

Johnu: So, like the 4 pages of examples at the end of the convention charts, and the 7 at the end of the Alert Procedure?

Jillybean: I think I'd like to know what you can find easily in the Blue Book that you can't find easily in the Alert Procedure or Convention chart. Chapter 2 excepted, I do wish we had a "player's guide" like that as I said above.

Could the ACBL web site be better organized? Could we have more documents available without hunting for them, or not in "resources for tournament directors" (although I will admit most of those are *definitely* not for players, or even club directors. If you think the Convention Charts are hard to understand...)? Sure.

But the Alert Procedures and the Convention Charts and other relevant regulations (I ignore the screen regulations, because another thing the ACBL is great at is running games with screens at anything but the highest level) are on the tournament page, under (strangely enough) "Charts, Rules, and Regulations".

[jillybean]

mycroft, on 2025-February-27, 20:51, said:

Jillybean: I think I'd like to know what you can find easily in the Blue Book that you can't find easily in the Alert Procedure or Convention chart. Chapter 2 excepted, I do wish we had a "player's guide" like that as I said above.

IMO, The EBU Blue book is an exceptional resource for Bridge Players. It provides a well laid out, well indexed reference that all Bridge Players will be able to comprehend.
https://www.ebu.co.u...k/blue-book.pdf

Knowing about, and finding the ACBL Alert Procedures or Convention Chart is the first challenge players face. When I joined the ACBL I was given no handbook, and a google search takes me to this 14 page document.
https://web2.acbl.or...-Procedures.pdf

The EBU has managed to condense this to a 5 page guide.

The EBU does not include anything resembling the ACBL Convention Chart in the Blue Book. Instead they provide a section on Partnership Understandings, including a basic description of a players responsibility and a general guideline followed by rules for partnership understandings at various levels of play. Levels 2,4,5 and 6.

I imagine most ACBL players would find what they need in level 2 or 4 (what happened to level 3?).

Players needing more definition or clarification are provided with a link to the WBF Systems Policy and all readers are invited to send questions to the EBU Laws and Ethics Committee.

Bravo, EBU.

[barmar]

jillybean, on 2025-February-27, 19:08, said:

Can you please provide a link to the ACBL Regulations you are referring to.

Alert Procedures
Convention Charts

Quote

"I'm not sure they're wrong about what the majority of ACBL members want" in what regards; convention charts, alert procedures, Laws?

All of them.

Haven't you ever seen a player's head spin when an opponent makes an opening lead out of turn, and the TD recites the 5 options they have? Or even the 3 options when there's a penalty card.

High level players like clear, detailed regulations. But typical club players like simplicity.

[jillybean]

barmar, on 2025-February-28, 16:36, said:

Alert Procedures
Convention Charts

All of them.

Haven't you ever seen a player's head spin when an opponent makes an opening lead out of turn, and the TD recites the 5 options they have? Or even the 3 options when there's a penalty card.

High level players like clear, detailed regulations. But typical club players like simplicity.

You are absolutely correct , the options after a LOOT make your head spin the first time you hear the Law read. Hopefully after the first LOOT call, players will be motivated to read up on their options and consider the consequences. If not, they can choose 1 of the 5 by whim, colour of the card, automatically accept any lead or use whatever method they fancy.
If typical club players, playing ACBL sanctioned games want simplicity, should the ACBL use a different set of Laws for club games?
And keep Club PLayers out of the Tournaments.

[bluenikki]

akwoo, on 2025-February-25, 20:14, said:

There is a committee, the Competition and Conventions Committee, that makes recommendations that are approved by the Board of Directors. Its membership is public information.

IMHO, one of the weaknesses of this committee is that none of its members are social bridge players. They are all pretty much guessing at what weaker players want, although some of the members do talk to weaker players on occasion, and some of the members are pros who sometimes play with weaker clients.

Also IMHO, conventions are banned basically based on what pros don't want their clients to have to face.

Edgar Kaplan hated the rule against psyching a strong artificial opening. He claimed it came about this way: Player A psyched a 2♣ opening against Player B with devastating results. A gloated about it publicly. B was influential and pushed the prohibition through without consulting anyone.

(EK also hated the notion of a hcp range for a weak two. But he noted that there were no rules about psyching a natural strong two. So for a while he played strong twos (frequently psyched) with Herbert negatives. In effect, then, a 2♦ opening was either a strong hand with diamonds or a weak hand with hearts.)

[jillybean]

Good story. What are Herbert negatives?
Was this the birth of Multi?

[bluenikki]

jillybean, on 2025-March-01, 11:45, said:

Good story. What are Herbert negatives?
Was this the birth of Multi?

Next suit negative. So 2♠ was opened with a sound weak 2 in clubs. What he did after a positive response, he didn't say.

Not Multi. But Ira Rubin used this method in several world championships. Not necessarily learned from Kaplan.

[DavidKok]

jillybean, on 2025-March-01, 11:45, said:

What are Herbert negatives?

It's a method where, in response to partner's forcing (opening) bid, the cheapest response shows a weak hand looking for the best partscore, while other bids show extra strength. It's used somewhat in combination with canapé openings, nebulous openings or can-be-short openings so that opener can scramble to their longest suit. Arguably 2♣ 'weak two in diamonds or strong any' might also classify.

[mike777]

 DavidKok, on 2025-March-01, 13:53, said:

It's a method where, in response to partner's forcing (opening) bid, the cheapest response shows a weak hand looking for the best partscore, while other bids show extra strength. It's used somewhat in combination with canapé openings, nebulous openings or can-be-short openings so that opener can scramble to their longest suit. Arguably 2♣ 'weak two in diamonds or strong any' might also classify.

Yes I learned Herbert playing canape system
0-10 Hcp, often may only have a doubleton in relay suit
Probe for openers longer suit
In canape you often open the shorter suit.

[bluenikki]

mike777, on 2025-March-01, 16:28, said:

Yes I learned Herbert playing canape system
0-10 Hcp, often may only have a doubleton in relay suit
Probe for openers second longer suit

In the 70s, one of the conventions barred by ACBL under any circumstances was Herbert negative to takeout doubles. Along with the Roman Club.

[mike777]

 bluenikki, on 2025-March-01, 16:36, said:

In the 70s, one of the conventions barred by ACBL under any circumstances was Herbert negative to takeout doubles. Along with the Roman Club.

Correct, there were work arounds back then to make it legal.

I add there are several fascinating books out there that detail how Belladonna and Avarelli In world championships deviated from their own system.

[mycroft]

jillybean, on 2025-February-28, 11:11, said:

IMO, The EBU Blue book is an exceptional resource for Bridge Players. It provides a well laid out, well indexed reference that all Bridge Players will be able to comprehend.
https://www.ebu.co.u...k/blue-book.pdf

I agree. However, that doesn't answer the question.

Quote

Knowing about, and finding the ACBL Alert Procedures or Convention Chart is the first challenge players face.

And...finding the Blue Book? I even told you how to find them: ACBL.org, Tournaments (oddly enough), "Charts, Rules and Regulations" - also, oddly enough.

Quote

When I joined the ACBL I was given no handbook, and a google search takes me to this 14 page document.
https://web2.acbl.or...-Procedures.pdf

The EBU, if you wanted to find it without googling, you would go to "Information and Resources"/Laws and Ethics/Publications - as opposed to, say, trying to find it in Competitions/Rules and Regulations, which seems a more normal place to go looking. Oh, and as mentioned to JohnU, the last 5 pages are *examples*, to explain the ruling; and the first page is a prologue, explaining the intent of Alerting.

Quote

The EBU has managed to condense this to a 5 page guide.

Well, yes. Several times it has been mentioned that there are two philosophies when it comes to Alerting:

• Alert "anything" Artificial, and "nothing" Natural (with minor exceptions, because "never" never means "NEVER" in Bridge), or
  
• Alert what is unusual, do not Alert what is common.

The benefit of style 1 is that the document is (relatively) short, at the cost of a lot of "we all know that" Alerts, which are both irritating, ignored, and can conceal a "real" Alert(*).

The benefit of style 2 is that Alerts tend to actually mean something. The cost - and I agree it's a big cost - is that you effectively have to memorize which of your agreements are Alertable and which are "common enough to be expected, even though Artificial" or "unusual enough as Natural to be Alerted".

Quote

The EBU does not include anything resembling the ACBL Convention Chart in the Blue Book. Instead they provide ... rules for partnership understandings at various levels of play. Levels 2,4,5 and 6.

Do you see what you just did there? What if I changed the names on the ACBL Convention charts to:

• Basic chart = Level 2
  
• Basic+ chart = Level 4
  
• Open chart = Level 5
  
• Open+ chart = Level 6

(with a note that *really*, Basic+ is level 2, Open is level 4, and Open+ is level 5. But still)?

Quote

I imagine most ACBL players would find what they need in level 2 or 4 (what happened to level 3?).

See previous parenthetical. You can read about the death of Levels 1 and 3 in the history of these forums - it just turned out that events that ran under those convention charts levels became rare enough to be ignored.

Quote

Players needing more definition or clarification are provided with a link to the WBF Systems Policy and all readers are invited to send questions to the EBU Laws and Ethics Committee.

I'm sure that the ACBL C&CC would be happy to receive questions about their charts and regulations. I know that JeffFord (spelling intended) frequently replies to questions (which are usually criticisms or "really?" comments, that site being what it is) on that Other Site.

Again, I ask: what, specifically, is hard to find on the ACBL regulations that is easy in the Blue Book? (I will grant you "harder to understand", because as we have said, the new Convention Charts and Alert Procedures are written like contracts. As opposed to written so vaguely that nobody knew for a fact what was correct in (the many) edge cases, and in fact some of those edge cases were ruled differently in different parts of North America. I do think the EBU has done a *very* good job of walking that balance.)

(*)They've cleaned this one up, but there was a time that after a natural 1NT, 2♣ by responder was *always Alerted* in the EBU. If it was Stayman, it was Artificial, so it was Alerted. If it were Keri (for instance), it was Artificial, so it was Alerted. If it was Natural, however, it was so uncommon ... that it was Alertable.

There's nothing (to my knowledge) quite that bad in the current regulations, but there are a lot more Alerts for "obvious", but artificial calls.

There's also more Announcements, almost all of which (IMO) would be Very Welcome here.

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2025-February-27, 16:45, said:

The impression I get is that the ACBL regulators believe that American players don't want comprehensive, detailed regulations like the colored books. They probably consider them too overwhelming and no one will read them.

I don't know what ACBL regulators believe or what ACBL players want. I do know that players don't read the regulations the ACBL provides. I suspect they wouldn't read them however they were presented - and however simple or complicated they might be.

[jillybean]

mycroft, on 2025-March-01, 16:51, said:

[*]Basic+ chart = Level 4
[*]Open chart = Level 5
[*]Open+ chart = Level 6[/list](with a note that *really*, Basic+ is level 2, Open is level 4, and Open+ is level 5. But still)?

ACBL Convention Charts Yes, the charts correspond, I didn't intend to suggest otherwise and the most recent ACBL CC are much improved.
I find the EBU content easier to read and understand. The difference could be that it is written in English rather than American.


EBU also have basic system card. Designed for "Individuals" but what a fabulous resource for newer players, who often arrive at a game without a partner, or have seen an ACBL Convention Card and quickly discounted it as too complicated.
https://www.ebu.co.u...system-card.pdf

I vaguely remember seeing a simplified "SAYC" convention card many years ago.

[mycroft]

There are Yellow Cards - our club still has (for reasons I don't understand) several thousand of them. The Yellow Card, however, is a silly system built by committee and definitely not for novices (even though that's how it's used - but of course they actually play *almost* Yellow Card, except for the stuff they don't know or the stuff that is - silly).

There is a Blue card we also have that is "simpler" but still in the (old) style.

I do agree that the EBU card (full, 20B, or basic) is much cleaner and clearer than the ACBL's. But of course, it takes more than 2 minutes to fill out, because it's not just check off boxes until you get tired of doing it and stop, so would it ever be used here? Never mind NIH and "it's different so it sucks". Oh, and "but if the card is two-sided, where do we write in our scores?"

But again, play the system you play; write out a card that matches some time; go through the Alert Procedure and find out what of what you play is Alertable; and ignore the rest unless you want to play something weird, or you're a legal wonk or a director. You don't need to know what's Alertable; just what *you play* that's Alertable (of course, it might help if you knew what of what they commonly play against what you play is Alertable too. But that's definitely a Next Step Up).