Announcing / Alerting
I Direct my local small Club which has always been keen to adhere to the line in the front page of the web site which states that we are a Friendly Club which means the Club wants a ‘relaxed’ playing atmosphere.
One of the features of this relaxed atmosphere is that nobody competes and ‘Systems Card’ and that’s OK because it’s 99% standard acol and 99% of the players know the other 99%.
The problem with this is when someone is playing something slightly different and their ops complain that they should have announced it. The EBU produces a summary of what must be 'Announced / Alerted' . . . taking aside all the specific calls specified that must be 'announced / alerted my question is this . . . . . when a pair do not have a Systems Card on the table do the rules require that they 'Announce' their system before play or is it a matter for the opposition to ask?
Looking for answers in ‘the book’
LAW 40 - PARTNERSHIP UNDERSTANDINGS A. Players’ Systemic Agreements
1. (a) Partnership understandings . . (b) Each partnership has a duty to make its partnership understandings available to its opponents. The Regulating Authority specifies the manner in which this is done. 2.
The R_**egulating Authority specifies the manner in which this is done. **_. . . . . What / how does the EBU specify be done and what if it is not done?
Comments
I would say that as a friendly club, it is at least courteous for a pair playing a 'non-standard' system to announce it at the start of every round, and I think you should ask them to do so.
The EBU rule (Blue Book 3 A 1) is that players should have a fully completed system card, and exchange these with their opponents at the start of every round. I believe that the EBU insists on this at every tournament that they run.
I used to play against 2 ladies who played Precision club (with 5 card majors), which they announced at the start of each round. After many years, they moved back to Acol (with 4 card majors), and always announced that, as everyone still 'remembered' that they were the Precision pair. It's all about treating your opponents with respect.
Nice typo - it fooled me for a minute! :)
Anyway, as a club, you can have a regulation that players are not required to complete system cards. It is the only regulation that my club has that is different from EBU Regulations, even though we do encourage their use.
I think that all bridge clubs try to promote themselves as "friendly". You just have to get a balance so that your pairs who play a less common system perceive the club to be as friendly as those who play the most popular system.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
It seems to have become almost universal practice online for players to announce the basics of their system at the start of a round (typically at least the 1-level structure (4-card majors, better minor, short club, artificial strong club + nebulous diamond, etc.), which weak two-level calls are in use, and the 1NT range, plus lead/carding agreements). This is required in EBU events but seems to have spread to online club events too – I'm very much in favour of this, and hope that it ends up spreading to in-person events as well. (You did get occasional system pre-announcements at clubs, pre-Covid, but it wasn't particularly common or universal.)
A good compromise may be to tell the players "if you don't have a system card, tell your opponents which system you're playing at the start of each round" – if the pair is playing a system that's almost universal at the club, this will only take a few seconds ("we're playing the usual" or whatever). If the pair is playing something out of the ordinary, this might encourage them to get a system card in order to save time repeating the same announcement every round!
If the club does have a standard system that's played by the majority of players, it might also be helpful to have a small supply of system cards for that system available, as a reference for visitors (so that they know what their opponents are likely to be playing) – this would also be useful if you ever decide to run an individual tournament.
As I said it’s a small Club and the most exotic system played is 5 card majors. Over the past couple of weeks I have overheard some Committee members rebuking learner players for not following the Rules and often giving a wrong rendition of a Rule. In this instance the member, at her turn to bid, asked her ops if they were playing 5 Card Majors and the told them that the Rules required them to announce that each time they played a round i.e. if you are not playing standard 4CM just must states “Playing 5CM”. Whereas that is not the Law but may be polite to do so my problem is that every acol player plays 5CM ion so far as some significant feature of acol is that some bids deny a 5CM AND THE significant feature of playing 5CM is not that an opening bid of 5H contains 5H but that an opening bid of a minor is a false bid and it is that that need the explanation. It would be fairer for them to announce that they play better minor or phoney club rather than we play 5CM.
The EBU Blue Book (and bits of the White Book) specifies how alert/announcing and system card are done.
The EBU is the Regulating Authority for its events. Clubs and Counties are their own regulating authorities. If clubs do not think the EBU regulations are appropriate for the atmosphere at their club, they can have their own regulations. In the absence of system cards, a club may want a regulation about pre-alerting unusual systems at the start of a round.
Blue Book announcements do not require announcing 5 card majors, but do require announcements for short clubs.
Simple question - I am aware that transfer completions in reply to 1N should not be alerted, but does this apply to any auction where a player believes he is making a transfer completion ?
According to Blue Book 4C1a, transfer completions are treated as natural for the purpose of alertability (so they're alerted only if they have an unexpected meaning, e.g. showing some specific holding in the suit transferred to). The rules aren't any different between announced transfers and alerted transfers.
This rule has a few other consequences, e.g. the nonalertable meaning of 1NT, 2H=S; 2S, (X) is "takeout of spades" because the 2S bid is considered to be natural. (If 2S were considered to be artificial but not alertable, the nonalertable meaning of the double would be "spades", which would surprise a lot of players and thus wouldn't make for a great alerting system.)
So online with no alerts, it went 1C - 1S - 1N - 2D - 2H etc The 2H bidder believed he was completing a transfer .
The pair reached 3N and defence never got round to cashing its six heart tricks believing declarer had 4 hearts.
So there's no misinformation?
In this case, the opponents are entitled to an alert/explanation of 2D as "no agreement: natural or transfer to hearts - we don't agree" - the 2D bidder can't give this explanation but that lack of agreement is alertable, and the opponents have been misinfromed without such an alert/explanation.