[suprgrover]

blackshoe, on 2011-February-04, 14:50, said:

One thing seems clear: the ACBL needs to clean up their site, and not have stuff that is no longer applicable mixed in with stuff that is. The former should rather be put somewhere and clearly marked "historical" or some such. Either that, or get it off the site altogether — but I get the impression the ACBL doesn't want to do that.

I pointed out over two years ago to the ACBL Webmaster that the very helpful HTML-formatted laws were the 1997 laws and ought to be replaced or at least relegated. The reply informed me that the ACBL had no intention of replacing them. They're still there, and they still have a very high Google search ranking.

[mrdct]

mycroft, on 2011-February-03, 19:38, said:

They don't have to know my defence to Flannery, or have access to it, or my defence to a strong Club; provided I can give full disclosure when it happens.

You have to give full disclosure about your system, including defences to conventions and other treatments, whenever your opponents want and in many case before they even ask and well before it actually comes up. If your defence to strong club is something about which your opponents might need to discuss the implications (such as twerb) you would be cheating if you didn't pre-alert. Yes - cheating.

[Vampyr]

mrdct, on 2011-February-05, 19:57, said:

If your defence to strong club is something about which your opponents might need to discuss the implications (such as twerb) you would be cheating if you didn't pre-alert. Yes - cheating.

Is this in the ACBL? Is there really all this pre-alerting going on? Is there time to play cards?

[blackshoe]

ACBL avoids many problems with pre-alerts by simply not having many games in which the Mid-chart is allowed. It varies by region, of course, but I'd have to go pretty far from here to find a game where Mid-chart can be played. Of course, there may be some situations where even under the GCC a pre-alert would be required, but that's pretty rare too. I did have one club owner here tell me I could play Dynamic Notrump (a GCC legal convention) if I treated it as mid-chart (pre-alert and provide a written defense). Another club director told me I couldn't play it at all — and that in the middle of a session, after my partner and I had actually been playing it for about three months (it rarely came up).

[blackshoe]

blackshoe, on 2011-February-05, 23:45, said:

ACBL avoids many problems with pre-alerts by simply not having many games in which the Mid-chart is allowed. It varies by region, of course, but I'd have to go pretty far from here to find a game where Mid-chart can be played. Of course, there may be some situations where even under the GCC a pre-alert would be required, but that's pretty rare too. I did have one club owner here tell me I could play Dynamic Notrump (a GCC legal convention) if I treated it as mid-chart (pre-alert and provide a written defense). Another club director told me I couldn't play it at all — and that in the middle of a session, after my partner and I had actually been playing it for about three months (it rarely came up).

As for time to play cards, I find it amusing to recall that when I first started playing here, one of our local directors used to vociferously complain about slow players - when she allowed players the "standard" 7.5 minutes per board. Now that we have a round timer, and in an effort to cram more boards into a three hour session, she's allowing somewhere between 6 and 6.5 minutes per board, and still complaining about slow players. Still, we manage to get through the day.

[mycroft]

In the ACBL:

1) PreAlerts are required for four classes of calls: non-GCC conventions, "Two-System" methods (explicitly not including variable NT ranges - we're talking "2/1 when you're NV, Precision when you are", or "K/S in 1 and 2, sound opening 2/1 in 3/4"), Very Light openings or preempts (VLP going away soon, replaced by Alert at time of call), and "systems fundamentally unfamiliar to the opponents" (i.e. canape, strong diamond, truly unfamiliar stuff). There is also one PreAlertable defensive agreement; leading small from xx.

2) Defences are explicitly Not Required for GCC-legal conventions. If the system or convention is fundamentally unfamiliar, then the PreAlert will allow the opponents to discuss a defence; but even then a defence need not be provided.

Having played a strong Club in the ACBL for years, I can guarantee that any legal defence to strong 1C is not considered "fundamentally unfamiliar" and does not require a PreAlert (hard to do so, anyway, after all, as the Strong Club is itself not PreAlertable). There's a reason my "defence to defences" notes are almost as long as my "first round responses" notes after 1C.

mrdct, you are correct that if they fail to PreAlert something PreAlertable, and as a result we are not allowed to create/use a defence, then they're cheating. You are not correct, however, at least in the ACBL, about what classifies as PreAlertable, nor about what is considered "you should know your defence to this."

[blackshoe]

I would define cheating as "deliberately violating the rules in search of an advantage". By that definition, it's not cheating if they're not aware they're supposed to pre-alert.

I wonder if Romex is pre-alertable. It's certainly GCC legal, and

Quote

Players are expected to be prepared for the vast majority of systems that they may encounter at the bridge table.

OTOH, the only one I've seen play Romex around here is me - with a partner who is no longer with us.

Of course, given clubs can do what they like, we have two (so far as I know) rules here wrt Romex: one club flat out bans it, another requires the Dynamic NT opening to be treated as if it were a mid-chart convention, pre-alerted and a defense provided. Neither, of course, follows the ACBL regulations.