Self-alerting Bids above 3NT
This has come up twice in the last week.
Should conventional/artificial bids above 3NT (in latter stages of bidding) be self-alerted?
I assume so, as there is no potential UI to partner.
But at least one player didn't self-alert on the grounds the bid wouldn't be alerted F2F.
Comments
Well, as I am quick at typing, I tend to alert and put in a note on as mush as possible - 4D '1 or 4 key cards' or something like this
I have also been known to alert, then without being asked type out a more complete description to the ops only. I think this was where there was no agreement - I alerted and added a note - no agreement. Then chatted privately to both ops with a more complete description - could be x or y in other similar situations...
I am big on full disclosure, so I have been doing this for years on BBO, long before lockdown.
I have just checked and according to the sky blue book, these should be alerted:
From 1.2.1 Sky Blue Book (https://www.ebu.co.uk/documents/laws-and-ethics/skyblue-book-2020.pdf)
Above 3NT, the rules in BB 4.B.4 do not apply for alerting bids and passes: bids and passes
above 3NT should continue to be alerted if artificial or unexpected. However, doubles and
redoubles above 3NT should be alerted if required by BB 4.B.4 (c) + (d).
So, from this, it is clear that your player trying to follow F2F rules, is incorrect in doing so.
OOoops!
Who hadn't downloaded the updated SkyBlue Book!?
To be fair, this was only added to latest update to the Sky-Blue Book in time for the Online Summer Meeting.
And the right regulation for alerting/explaining doubles above 3NT has as yet eluded us.
For online play, I can't see any reason not to simply rule "all doubles should be self-alerted". I've considered for a while that perhaps "takeout" and "penalty" announcements is the best way to handle alerting of doubles, and when self-alerting online, there is no potential UI drawback to doing so (in fact there's a UI advantage, because it takes longer to click the alert button and type "penalty" than it does to just make an unalerted takeout double, making a tempo difference that partner may be able to pick up on).
The higher the level, the less complete or accurate descriptions are the terms "takeout" or "penalty" likely to be.
I agree, but with a caveat: the higher the level of the contract, the less likely a partnership is to have firm agreements about what exactly a double shows. In many cases the partnership agreement will be "penalty" or "takeout", and yet the two sorts of hands will look much the same. (There are some exceptions, e.g. in my main partnership a double of 4!s or higher is by agreement almost impossible to pull unless you know you're pulling to a making contract, and so it's very clearly and accurately described as "penalty" or "to play". But in most cases, the meanings of "penalty" and "takeout" somewhat blur at high levels.)
I guess this all comes back to the old question of "if your partnership agreement wasn't discussed in detail, how do you explain your bidding to the opponents?", which I'm not sure has ever satisfactorily been resolved.
I was, however, primarily thinking in terms of lower-level bidding when suggesting that doubles should always be announced online. "Penalty" vs. "takeout" is a much clearer distinction there.
Well, all doubles of suits that are not takeout are indeed meant to be alerted at lower levels, so that has the effect you want, doesn't it?
In a bidding sequence like this:
{b1sxr2hp3cx}
the final double is, in practice, highly likely to not be alerted. In theory, that should mean that it's takeout. In practice, players are generally ignorant of the fact that it's alertable, and even players who know it's alertable will assume that it's penalty and the doubler simply forgot to alert.
This in turn means that if E/W are playing an unusual system in which the final double is in fact takeout, then they have no sensible way to disclose it; legally speaking it shouldn't be alerted, but that means that the opponents will assume penalty.
In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a penalty level at the 3 level alerted in practice (except when it was me doing the alerting), even when the player in a position to alert was a Director. This means that the lack of alert does nothing to indicate the bid as takeout.
Announcements would avoid this problem, because it's always clear when an announcement is missing. There may be some UI-related drawbacks to doing this in face-to-face play, but I can't see any drawbacks when playing online ("penalty" isn't noticeably faster to type than "takeout" is).
I can see no reason why it should not be standard that every double made in an online game is announced. Even if you have no agreement about a position you can say "not agreed but these usually suggest defending/bidding or whatever". Announcements allow you to answer the opponents' question before they ask it (with doubles there is always doubt), and it's the only way to satisfy the requirement for full disclosure. We need to take full advantage of being able to play bridge more correctly when we are online, and not get hung up on face-to-face alerting regulations.
So on RealBridge where we are back to alerting partners bids do we treat all alerting and announcing rules as in F2F bridge or does the Sky Blue Book take precedence because it's online ?
On RealBridge the player making the bid cannot see the alert (made by their partner). So the alert itself cannot wake up the bidder - but any subseqeunt/question will. We will make a decision the Autumn Congress but there is a case for alerting bids above 3NT but pointing out that asking questions before the end of the auction may be 'unnecessary'.
Questons can be asked at the end of the auction - but we also need a protocol for 'face down opening leads' and creating a clarificaiton period.
A mea culpa here: in the RealBridge practice session this morning, I failed to alert West's penalty double in the following sequence, and didn't realise until just now:
{b1dx1h1nppx2cx/}
(The first double was takeout, the other two were penalty.)
It's easy to lose concentration and forget that in an entirely natural bidding sequence (as the above was), a call that is both natural, and has its normal meaning, can nonetheless be alertable if it happens to be a penalty double.
"On RealBridge the player making the bid cannot see the alert (made by their partner)."
I assume this is true because you have written it here. But when I played on the (beta) version of RB, you could see whether or not partner had alerted.