Ambiguous BBO Explanation
In one of our recent BBO tournaments, I was alerted to a board where the bidding started 1NT (x) 2H*. 2H was alerted as a "nt transfer". One of the opponents proceeded to assume it was a normal transfer to spades while the other assumed it meant "not transfer". As far as I can tell the new Sky-Blue book doesn't clarify ambiguities like these that would obviously never arise in face-to-face bridge; A similar problem is when the announcement box has insufficient space for a complete explanation.
My decision at the time was that they should have asked if it wasn't clear (they both argued it was clear that their perceived explanation was correct). At any rate you would expect it to mean a transfer, and the fact it was self-announced also suggests it's an unnatural bid, so assuming it means "not transfer" is a bit of a jump from that. I could see how certain more complex bids could pose more of a problem though (e.g. specific Multi opens etc.), especially in the absence of normal convention cards.
If anyone has any thoughts on the particular situation I would be very interested to hear them, or similarly on this wider potential problem.
Comments
If an explanation is ambiguous, I think you have to click on it and wait for it to be corrected. If that doesn't seem to help, send a private message to the player who made the bid and ask a specific question.
One of the big problems with the BBO interface is that it doesn't let you indicate what your question about a bid is. On one recent hand in an EBU tournament, the bidding started 1C, (1S), P, (2D). I asked about 2D and (unsurprisingly) got the response "natural". That was obvious; what I was really interested in was how forcing 2D was / how much strength it showed (which affected my next call), and so I had to private RHO in order to ask a question. (Incidentally, the BBO system card design, which is almost identical to the ACBL system card design, has a space designed explicitly for listing the strength of a new-suit advance to an overcall, but of course the opponents hadn't filled a system card out so I couldn't check that way. There isn't a corresponding space on an EBU system card.)
Yes, very true. Admittedly with the new rules in the Sky-Blue Book, asking in the table chat isn't a problem since both players are technically permitted to look at their convention card (although in non-EBU events I suspect people will refrain from doing so to keep as many similarities to f2f bridge as possible).
In the specific instance I referred to, neither player believed the explanation to be ambiguous, and hence did not click on it for it to be corrected (believing their own interpretation to be the only one). Again, referring to your first point, it's also not always clear what additional information players want.