[barmar]

Agreed. For instance, when I'm playing online, I always alert my RKCB responses.

[mikestar]

"The first round" is a misnomer in the ACBL--the delayed alert procedure applies to bids above 3NT beginning with opener's rebid, which could be as late as the last call of the second round (opener was fourth hand).

[pigpenz]

inquiry, on Mar 6 2006, 08:32 AM, said:

Miron, on Mar 6 2006, 07:35 AM, said:

Would you alert 1♠-2♠?

Well, yes, sometimes 1♠-2♠ requires an alert.

Let me start by if you play inverted minors where 1♦-2♦ is "forcing" and can be extremely strong, do you alert that? The answer is yes.

So let's return to 1♠-2♠, as a rule do you alert that? The answer is generally no. But some people play 1♠-2♠ as "constructive" showing good 8 to bad 11 points. These people should alert. I on the other hand frequently play 1♠-2♠ as three card support (specifically) and 0 to 7 hcp. And yes, when I play this style raise I alert it.

Not because it is natural, but because I have a specific agreement (can be very light and is never good hand) that my partner is aware of and my opponents might not be aware of.

yes 1♠ pass 2♠ is alertable when contructive showing 8-10hcp now if you were to alert it when raising to 2♠ on 5hcp LOL there would be some trouble.

but having played against preciscion people for 30yrs i have never seen anyone alert 1♠ pass 4♠....except Justin

[joshs]

In the US, 1M-4M is an alert if it can be based on a non-traditional hand type. The traditional hand type (since the forcing raise was invented) is a semi-pre-empt, typically 5 card support and less than 10 HCP (sometimes 4 card support and extra shape like a void or a side 6 card suit).

In general when bids can be (systematically) made on hands that are very different in shape or in high cards than the usual meaning for the bid, its an alert. Now, you do need to know what the usual meaning is to have any hope working out if your agreement is alertable...

[EricK]

Personally I think that bidding 4S on a hand like this is fine even if you are not playing a strong club system. You have a balanced, aceless 12 count. How often is there going to be a slam? You will always bid game and any other approach runs the risk of directing the defense.

[luis]

Assuming you play a strong club system
Then once you alert 1♠ as "11-15" limited with 5+ spades
I think there is no reason to then alert 4♠ since the meaning of 4♠ is "I want to play 4♠" If you are asked you can say that the 4♠ bid can be based in strength or length or several thingsd but you don't have an agreement about 4♠ that you have to alert you bid 4♠ when you think 4♠ is a good bid facing a 1♠ opening.
Or is there something wrong with my reasoning?

Luis

[Sigi_BC84]

Echognome, on Mar 6 2006, 01:48 PM, said:

The alerting rules for bids above 3NT must surely be for your 2nd bid onwards. I mean I'm asking this rather than asserting it, but would you have to alert, for example:

In my association nothing above 3NT is to be alerted, except if it's an unusual opening bid. So you'd have to alert 4♣ Namyats but not 4♣ splinter response.

I don't think this is very sensible either, but there are not many jumps into the 4 level anyway in first round, and most of the time they are splinters and oppos can always ask. So I don't think it hurts that much that you cannot alert these calls.

--Sigi

[Sigi_BC84]

cardsharp, on Mar 6 2006, 02:07 PM, said:

In England all alerts are given whether the auction is above, below or at 3NT. This will change in August when I believe we move to:

No calls above 3NT are to be alerted except for:
(1) Artificial opening bids.
(2) Lead-directing passes, and
(3) Lead-directing doubles and redoubles that ask for the lead of a suit other than the suit doubled or redoubled..

This is different to the WBF rules which say:

If screens are not in use, do NOT alert the following:

1. All doubles.
2. Any no-trump bid which suggests a balanced or semi-balanced hand, or suggests a no-trump contract.
3. Any call at the four level or higher, with the exception of conventional calls on the first round of the auction.

I'd really love to have a combination of the English rules 1-3 with WBF rule 3. This would make a lot more sense that what we have at the moment in Germany.

The German bridge authorities apparently tried to adapt the WBF regulations and failed due to incredible sloppiness (that's my impression when comparing the two).

I think it makes a lot of sense having to alert lead-directing non-doubles, as these are usually missed by the opps if they are not prepared to ask for them (or know about them anyway).

--Sigi

[joshs]

Sigi_BC84, on Mar 8 2006, 11:21 AM, said:

cardsharp, on Mar 6 2006, 02:07 PM, said:

In England all alerts are given whether the auction is above, below or at 3NT. This will change in August when I believe we move to:

No calls above 3NT are to be alerted except for:
(1) Artificial opening bids.
(2) Lead-directing passes, and
(3) Lead-directing doubles and redoubles that ask for the lead of a suit other than the suit doubled or redoubled..

This is different to the WBF rules which say:

If screens are not in use, do NOT alert the following:

  1. All doubles.
  2. Any no-trump bid which suggests a balanced or semi-balanced hand, or suggests a no-trump contract.
  3. Any call at the four level or higher, with the exception of conventional calls on the first round of the auction.

I'd really love to have a combination of the English rules 1-3 with WBF rule 3. This would make a lot more sense that what we have at the moment in Germany.

The German bridge authorities apparently tried to adapt the WBF regulations and failed due to incredible sloppiness (that's my impression when comparing the two).

I think it makes a lot of sense having to alert lead-directing non-doubles, as these are usually missed by the opps if they are not prepared to ask for them (or know about them anyway).

--Sigi

What you suggest is basically the US rules, except some non-artifical calls might be alertable if there is something unusual about them that the opps might not realize (for isntance 4M opening when a 4m would have shown a better hand).

All "supressed" ALERTs have to be expalined at the end of the auction if your side is declaring. These are all called delayed alerts.

E.G.
1C-P-1S-P
4D(Delayed ALERT: Splinter-X(Immediate ALERT: Don't Lead a Heart)-4S-All Pass
After the auction and before the lead 4D is alerted and explained.

In this auction if Pass meant "Lead A heart" then its an immediate alert. If its non-comittal, but you usually expect a heart lead, its not an alert.

[hrothgar]

I think that folks are making much ado about nothing.

First and foremost, lets differentiate between alerts and announcments.

Announcements are a verbal (or written) description of a bid.
Alerts are a binary flag that says "Wake up". This could be important


Lets make the assumption (radical that it is) that bother partnerships are using convention cards. Furthermore, lets make the assumption that these convention cards are actually Full Disclosure files of the sort recently implemented on Bridge Base Online. This isn't true today. it won't be true tomorrow. It will (hopefully) be true someday.

Why not permit individual users to customize the alerting regime that they wish to use?

This is a dreadful over-simplification, but most alerting regimes can be collapsed into one of two general cases (with a few exceptions thrown in for good measure)

1. Alert all bids that are not "natural"
2. Alert all bids that are not "standard"
2.a. "Standard" bids are defined by the sponsoring organization
2.b. "Standard" bids are defined as what my partnership plays

Suppose that partner and I sit down to play an opposing pair in a tournament. It so happens that we are playing MOSCITO and "they" are playing some version of "Standard American". I happen to know SAYC pretty well. My only really concern is understanding where their bids happen to deviate from a BBO Standard. So I go and select a configuration box that indicates that the FD application should compare the opponent's card with BBO standard and generate an alert if/when for those bids where they announcements don't match. My partner, on the other hand, happens to be from Britain. He very much prefers an alert regime in which all artifical bids are alerted. Accordingly, he configures the application to alert artificial bids. As for the opponents: All they know is they system that they happen to play. They configure the system to alert any time that our card differs from their own.

In short, we have the option of customizing the alerting rules to whatever method we are most comfortable with.


This would seem to solve the whole problem rather nicely. I readily admit that this creates new and different problems. But it does solve the old boring ones.

For what its worth, the main "flaw" with this system is that it requires that players adopt a standardized vocabularly to describe common bids. The FD application is very dumb. if its differencing between text strings, it will have no way to understand that "Strong Notrump" and "Strong NT" means the same thing.