[gnasher]

Going back to the ACBL's rather draconian regulation, as I understand it the pair is penalised for every board that they play with the ACBL-issued SAYC card rather than their own card.

If they take the SAYC card and write their names at the top, are they now in possession of a "properly prepared" convention card, and therefore no longer subject to penalty?

[blackshoe]

 gnasher, on 2013-October-03, 13:36, said:

When you said, one of your posts, "What alternative would you like?" I thought you were inviting us to offer improvements on the ACBL's approach, but I expect I misunderstood.

Ah. No, that's fine, I just didn't realize that's what you were doing.

[jillybean]

Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks of the regulation, it was not enforced and imagine it rarely is.
I have never seen a pair given a SAYC card and required to play it, or penalized for not having a completed CC.

Has anyone any experience of this regulation being enforced?

I think I will start keeping my CC under my seat.

[barmar]

 jillybean, on 2013-October-03, 22:17, said:

Has anyone any experience of this regulation being enforced?

It's kind of like seatbelt laws, which in many places is a "secondary offense" -- you can't be pulled over specifically for violating it, but if you're breaking some other law they can cite you for it as well.

The CC regulation isn't officially a secondary offense, because ACBL doesn't have such a notion explicitly. But they don't go around checking for CCs, and opponents rarely notice or complain (we don't have the tradition of trading CCs at the beginning of the round). But if there's a misbid-vs-MI issue, and you don't have a CC, it makes resolving it harder -- I can imagine them using this regulation as part of the rectification.

[Vampyr]

 barmar, on 2013-October-04, 09:58, said:

But if there's a misbid-vs-MI issue, and you don't have a CC, it makes resolving it harder -- I can imagine them using this regulation as part of the rectification.

Is MI not assumed in the absence of a CC?

[blackshoe]

 barmar, on 2013-October-04, 09:58, said:

It's kind of like seatbelt laws, which in many places is a "secondary offense" -- you can't be pulled over specifically for violating it, but if you're breaking some other law they can cite you for it as well.

The CC regulation isn't officially a secondary offense, because ACBL doesn't have such a notion explicitly. But they don't go around checking for CCs, and opponents rarely notice or complain (we don't have the tradition of trading CCs at the beginning of the round). But if there's a misbid-vs-MI issue, and you don't have a CC, it makes resolving it harder -- I can imagine them using this regulation as part of the rectification.

Perhaps people don't complain because they've learned by experience that when you do you get "rulings" like this one. As for using the rectification for this infraction to resolve an MI/misbid case, that's not what the law requires.

 Vampyr, on 2013-October-04, 10:11, said:

Is MI not assumed in the absence of a CC?

No. Nor should it be. Unless of course neither player of the offending side testifies that their agreements would make it a misbid.

[blackshoe]

 gnasher, on 2013-October-03, 13:45, said:

If they take the SAYC card and write their names at the top, are they now in possession of a "properly prepared" convention card…

Yes.

 gnasher, on 2013-October-03, 13:45, said:

…and therefore no longer subject to penalty?

No. Not unless they decide they're playing SAYC strictly according to the card for the rest of the session.

BTW, if this regulation is "draconian" I imagine it is deliberately so — the idea being to convince people to comply with the requirement for two SCs. Of course, if that's the case, the implementation is severely flawed, as what happened to Jilly demonstrates.

[jillybean]

 barmar, on 2013-October-04, 09:58, said:

It's kind of like seatbelt laws, which in many places is a "secondary offense" -- you can't be pulled over specifically for violating it, but if you're breaking some other law they can cite you for it as well.

The CC regulation isn't officially a secondary offense, because ACBL doesn't have such a notion explicitly. But they don't go around checking for CCs, and opponents rarely notice or complain (we don't have the tradition of trading CCs at the beginning of the round). But if there's a misbid-vs-MI issue, and you don't have a CC, it makes resolving it harder -- I can imagine them using this regulation as part of the rectification.

It would be a good thing if ACBL players did have the tradition of trading CC's at the beginning of the round. Let's start doing that.

[blackshoe]

Be careful with that. You're likely to get your head bit off.

[ggwhiz]

Hehe. Reminds me of going to dinner between sessions when one guy told us that in the previous match his opponents arrived 5 minutes late, listened to their pre-alerts, discussed defences and said by the way, we play this and put 2 laminated copies in front of them full of weirdness with no time for them to discuss the merits of the suggested defences.

He then said "They'll be playing the yellow card next match" and produced all their copies which he had scooped including duplicates they had in their binders.

[gnasher]

 blackshoe, on 2013-October-05, 01:24, said:

No. Not unless they decide they're playing SAYC strictly according to the card for the rest of the session.

Why for the rest of the session? Can't they write their names on the SAYC cards (to avoid the penalties), play SAYC for the next few rounds whilst they fill in a card describing what they actually want to play, and then switch back to their preferred methods?

[ddrankin]

 gnasher, on 2013-October-05, 10:48, said:

Why for the rest of the session? Can't they write their names on the SAYC cards (to avoid the penalties), play SAYC for the next few rounds whilst they fill in a card describing what they actually want to play, and then switch back to their preferred methods?

Not in the ACBL, unless the director allows it (and I would not). One of the elections made by the ACBL is:

"4. Law 40B2(a): Both members of a partnership must employ the same system that appears on the
convention card.
a. During a session of play, a system may not be varied, except with permission of the tournament
Director. (A Director might allow a pair to change a convention but would not allow a pair to change its basic system.)"

Once they choose to use the SAYC, they are stuck with it, IMO.

[blackshoe]

 ddrankin, on 2013-October-05, 14:47, said:

Not in the ACBL, unless the director allows it (and I would not). One of the elections made by the ACBL is:

"4. Law 40B2(a): Both members of a partnership must employ the same system that appears on the
convention card.
a. During a session of play, a system may not be varied, except with permission of the tournament
Director. (A Director might allow a pair to change a convention but would not allow a pair to change its basic system.)"

Once they choose to use the SAYC, they are stuck with it, IMO.

Mine as well.

[akwoo]

Re: trading convention cards at the beginning of a round

1) I usually ask, nicely, for a look at their convention card at the beginning of a round. This is particularly easy in a team game where we have to make the boards ourselves, because we have to spend a minute shuffling cards anyway and it costs no time at all.

2) Back when this was true, I usually started every round with "We play a 12-14 1N opening. You might want to discuss your defenses to that before we get started. Is there anything special you play that we should know about?" I don't think I've ever had a pair fail to tell me about a non-standard system they were playing at that point.

3) You will find that less than 10% of players play something other than Standard American or 2/1 with varying minor pieces of gadgetry. At my last Sectional Swiss, between us and our teammates, it was 1 out of 14. In some parts of the country, a Sectional will have literally every person in the room playing Standard American or 2/1, at which point trading convention cards seems silly.

[blackshoe]

When I was in England in the early 90s, I learned to exchange cards with opps at the beginning of every round. It was required by regulation. Often, a look at their card didn't tell me anything earthshattering, or even mildly unsettling. Still, I learned to do it. When I got back to the States, I tried to do it here too. Reactions ranged from confusion, to resistance, to "get that thing out of my face!" Nobody simply cooperated with the idea. Bottom line: it would take major retraining — and probably a (badly needed in any case, IMO) redesign of the card — to get North American bridge players to exchange cards and allow their opponents to keep the card through the round.

[gnasher]

 ddrankin, on 2013-October-05, 14:47, said:

Not in the ACBL, unless the director allows it (and I would not). One of the elections made by the ACBL is:

"4. Law 40B2(a): Both members of a partnership must employ the same system that appears on the
convention card.
a. During a session of play, a system may not be varied, except with permission of the tournament
Director. (A Director might allow a pair to change a convention but would not allow a pair to change its basic system.)"

Once they choose to use the SAYC, they are stuck with it, IMO.

In that case writing the names on the top of the SAYC card and playing it for the rest of the session also wouldn't work. They can't change their agreed system from whatever iit was to SAYC.

This is another rather extreme regulation. Suppose I arrive two minutes before starting play with a new partner. We agree "2/1, standard carding, and wing it" for the first round. Finishing the first round early, we now want to add a defence to 1NT. Do we realy have to get the director's permission before we do so?

[gnasher]

 akwoo, on 2013-October-05, 19:31, said:

In some parts of the country, a Sectional will have literally every person in the room playing Standard American or 2/1, at which point trading convention cards seems silly.

It's not silly to want unfettered access to the opponents' card. I often glance at my opponents' convention card to find out some piece of information not directly related to the actual auction - notrump range when they opened a suit, defence to 1NT when they didn't bid over 1NT, two-bids when they didn't open a suit. If I have the card in front of me, I can look at it probably without anyone knowing I'm doing so, and certainly without them knowing what I'm looking at.

If I have to ask for the card, it tells everyone that I want to see it, and they are then more likely to observe which part of the card I'm looking at. That gives partner UI, and the opponents information which I don't want them to have.

[ddrankin]

 gnasher, on 2013-October-05, 23:43, said:

In that case writing the names on the top of the SAYC card and playing it for the rest of the session also wouldn't work. They can't change their agreed system from whatever iit was to SAYC.

I would think that when the TD hands you a SAYC card and tells you to play it, you have his permission to play it. I would not then bar a pair from deciding to play it for the rest of the session if that is what they choose to do.

[akwoo]

 gnasher, on 2013-October-05, 23:56, said:

It's not silly to want unfettered access to the opponents' card. I often glance at my opponents' convention card to find out some piece of information not directly related to the actual auction - notrump range when they opened a suit, defence to 1NT when they didn't bid over 1NT, two-bids when they didn't open a suit. If I have the card in front of me, I can look at it probably without anyone knowing I'm doing so, and certainly without them knowing what I'm looking at.

If I have to ask for the card, it tells everyone that I want to see it, and they are then more likely to observe which part of the card I'm looking at. That gives partner UI, and the opponents information which I don't want them to have.

What I'm saying is that there will be Sectional events in the US where the answers are universally:

1) 15-17
2) Either Cappelleti or natural
3) Weak, 5-10/11

and indeed half the pairs would be bewildered that anyone would want to deviate from the ONE TRUE SYSTEM.

I actually think trading convention cards makes a good deal of sense. But when everyone plays the same system, and everyone knows everyone plays the same system, it becomes a lot less worth it.

Also, there are a lot of players out there who simply don't want to know about the opponents' bidding and carding system. They have enough trouble keeping track of their own cards that trying to draw inferences from opponents' bidding and carding would just confuse them. Many of these players simply don't understand why anyone would want to look at their convention card (especially since there is nothing on them to see).

[gnasher]

 ddrankin, on 2013-October-06, 10:18, said:

I would think that when the TD hands you a SAYC card and tells you to play it, you have his permission to play it. I would not then bar a pair from deciding to play it for the rest of the session if that is what they choose to do.

But he's not granting you permission to change systems for the duration of the event. He is requiring you to play SAYC temporarily until you have properly documented your original system.

A pair which brought two convention cards is obliged to play the same system for the entire session, so why should a pair which has already broken the rules be exempt from this requirement?