[Cascade]

JanM, on Sep 22 2010, 08:24 AM, said:

Cascade, on Sep 21 2010, 12:09 PM, said:

1. The Opening Post made it clear that the WBF secretariat has provided information that an unnatural 1♣ opening makes your system RED.

I don't think it does - it says that a 2 card 1♣ opening bid is artificial, but falls into the same trap that many of the people posting to this thread do of thinking that an artificial BID = an artificial SYSTEM.

The quote is:

"You will see there that a 1C opener that can be two cards is artificial. Artificial systems are Red category."

This seems perfectly clear to me. The writer is 1. emphasing that a 1C opener that can be two is artificial. And I would suggest by the juxtaposition of the next sentence in the same paragraph is indicating that such systems are in fact RED. I would be very surprised to learn that something different was intended by this construction.

It really seems that you and others do not want to know that your favourite system is in fact artificial and are wanting to circumvent the regulations.

Indeed you have said that it is "sensible" to do so.

[Cascade]

JanM, on Sep 22 2010, 08:24 AM, said:

Of course it would be better if the filing requirements were described better.

"It is a requirement that Red Sticker systems are pre-registered by email with
the WBF Systems Administrator for any event in which these are to be used
no later than 10th September 2010; "

Which part of this regulation is not well described?

It seems perfectly clear.

What you are doing is deliberately breaching the regulations.

[helene_t]

Wayne, you are being pedantic.

Of course a system in which a 1♣ opening can be as short as two and does not promise a strong hand is red. But it is obviously not the intention of the regulation that such vanilla systems have to be filed. No, I am not going to provide a formal definition of "vanilla". I suppose you know what I mean.

Is there a problem? Has anyone playing a system against which opps would need a special defense failed to file it?

[mrdct]

Cascade, on Sep 22 2010, 06:31 AM, said:

JanM, on Sep 22 2010, 08:24 AM, said:

Cascade, on Sep 21 2010, 12:09 PM, said:

1. The Opening Post made it clear that the WBF secretariat has provided information that an unnatural 1♣ opening makes your system RED.

I don't think it does - it says that a 2 card 1♣ opening bid is artificial, but falls into the same trap that many of the people posting to this thread do of thinking that an artificial BID = an artificial SYSTEM.

The quote is:

"You will see there that a 1C opener that can be two cards is artificial. Artificial systems are Red category."

This seems perfectly clear to me.

It's not clear to me for several reasons:

1. We have no idea who the author of the sentence is and, in particular, whether the sentence represents an official WBF position.

2. If the author had intended to convey the concept that a system with an artificial bid in it is an artificial system, he could quite easily have just said so, but he deliberately chose to separate the bid and system categorisations into two sentences.

3. The authoritative WBF System Policy has a convoluted example of what would qualify as a red system which only captures variable methods and systems employing multi-meaning bids in contestable auctions. If the intent had been to capture a short 1♣ opening, it surely would have said so. Accordingly, by omission it seems reasonable to assume that having a short 1♣ does not of itself make your system red.

[paulg]

mrdct, on Sep 21 2010, 10:28 PM, said:

Cascade, on Sep 22 2010, 06:31 AM, said:

JanM, on Sep 22 2010, 08:24 AM, said:

Cascade, on Sep 21 2010, 12:09 PM, said:

1. The Opening Post made it clear that the WBF secretariat has provided information that an unnatural 1♣ opening makes your system RED.

I don't think it does - it says that a 2 card 1♣ opening bid is artificial, but falls into the same trap that many of the people posting to this thread do of thinking that an artificial BID = an artificial SYSTEM.

The quote is:

"You will see there that a 1C opener that can be two cards is artificial. Artificial systems are Red category."

This seems perfectly clear to me.

It's not clear to me for several reasons:

1. We have no idea who the author of the sentence is and, in particular, whether the sentence represents an official WBF position.

2. If the author had intended to convey the concept that a system with an artificial bid in it is an artificial system, he could quite easily have just said so, but he deliberately chose to separate the bid and system categorisations into two sentences.

3. The authoritative WBF System Policy has a convoluted example of what would qualify as a red system which only captures variable methods and systems employing multi-meaning bids in contestable auctions. If the intent had been to capture a short 1♣ opening, it surely would have said so. Accordingly, by omission it seems reasonable to assume that having a short 1♣ does not of itself make your system red.

Having spent eight months repeatedly asking the WBF Systems Committee and then Anna Gudge the same question, this was the response that I finally received. It is disappointing that it came through the WBF Secretariat rather than directly from the Systems Committee, but I can only treat it as an official WBF position.

Given the fuss made in Shanghai over this issue, it would be easy to believe that the Systems Committee does not wish to establish a definitive position and is happy with the status quo that seems to exist.

Clearly if it were as obvious as Wayne believes, they could have answered the question directly in ten seconds.

[Cascade]

helene_t, on Sep 22 2010, 09:26 AM, said:

Wayne, you are being pedantic.

Of course a system in which a 1♣ opening can be as short as two and does not promise a strong hand is red. But it is obviously not the intention of the regulation that such vanilla systems have to be filed. No, I am not going to provide a formal definition of "vanilla". I suppose you know what I mean.

Is there a problem? Has anyone playing a system against which opps would need a special defense failed to file it?

I do not know how this is obvious.

To me it would be obvious for all systems were treated the same. However give there is a system classification and RED systems have been singled out at least all RED systems should be treated the same.

Those playing your so called vanilla (but I think it is a poor choice of words as vanilla is a rich flavour) methods have often worked hard to get a regulated advantage. In the past short club has been decreed "natural" after the fact simple to prevent otherwise legal artificial defenses being played against it.

Jan advocates that ignoring the regulations is "sensible". This is a position that I find particularly offensive and odious. Essentially it is deliberately encouraging players to break the rules or at least supporting them in doing so.

I do not comprehend the phrase "would need a special defense". Who needs a special defense? There is nothing inherent in any system that says that an opponent will need a special defense. The boundaries between RED and GREEN and RED and YELLOW and around BLUE are arbitary. The regulations do not mention "special defense" they define system types and restrictions or requirements are placed on different categories. In a broad category like RED one person may think that some particular system requires a special defense whilst another does not. That does not alter the regulation. Perhaps someone "needs" a special defense against "short club". If they turn up without their special defense prepared how will they be compensated when someone is allowed to play this unregistered RED system? "We did not prepare our superduper defense against "short club" because we noted that noone had registered such a system".

Its obvious to me that the value of registering systems is that everyone is on an even ground and will know in advance that the systems they play against will be "natural" or "artificial" and of a type that they have been forewarned about.

If one pair registers a particular type of system I may think we will get by with our generic defense but if 100s of pair register a different sort of system then it is known that a defense to that system will be beneficial.

[nigel_k]

Cascade, on Sep 22 2010, 11:47 AM, said:

Jan advocates that ignoring the regulations is "sensible". This is a position that I find particularly offensive and odious. Essentially it is deliberately encouraging players to break the rules or at least supporting them in doing so.

I don't know Jan's exact position on this but surely there are situations where the correct interpretation of a set of rules is different from the literal interpretation. This is not a problem in logic or mathematics, it is about the efficient running of a bridge contest.

IMO this appears to be such a situation. Preferring an interpretation of the regulations other than the literal one is not the same as ignoring the regulations.

[mrdct]

Cascade, on Sep 22 2010, 08:47 AM, said:

Jan advocates that ignoring the regulations is "sensible". This is a position that I find particularly offensive and odious. Essentially it is deliberately encouraging players to break the rules or at least supporting them in doing so.

I think you are both misquoting Jan and taking her seriously out of context. Jan's original comment from which the "sensible" approach has been taken was:

Quote

I guess the problem is that Red was supposed to be somewhere in between Green ("natural") and Yellow ("Highly Unusual"), but that's a lot of territory and players have (sensibly) decided that the part of that territory that's pretty close to Green shouldn't be treated in the same way as the part that's close to Yellow. My 1♣ opening can be a 2 card suit with a balanced hand; it didn't even occur to me to file my convention card in advance. I looked at the 6 cards that have been filed and none of them seemed to me to be systems that needed any advance preparation.

Without wanting to put words into Jan's mouth, I think she is quite rightly observing that there is a huge grey area between Green and Yellow which requires interpretation and judgement on the part of players to decide how to classify their systems. My interpretation of Jan's comment is that she considers it "sensible" to treat a system which isn't overtly Red and is pretty close to Green as Green.

Discounting the non-authoritative email sent to Paul, which doesn't directly say that having a short club makes your system Red anyway, one only needs to look at the WBF System Policy and its tie-in to the Law 40B1(a) concept of "may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament" to conclude that having a short club does not of itself make a system Red.

[qwery_hi]

mrdct, on Sep 21 2010, 08:33 PM, said:

Cascade, on Sep 22 2010, 08:47 AM, said:

Jan advocates that ignoring the regulations is "sensible". This is a position that I find particularly offensive and odious. Essentially it is deliberately encouraging players to break the rules or at least supporting them in doing so.

I think you are both misquoting Jan and taking her seriously out of context. Jan's original comment from which the "sensible" approach has been taken was:

Quote

I guess the problem is that Red was supposed to be somewhere in between Green ("natural") and Yellow ("Highly Unusual"), but that's a lot of territory and players have (sensibly) decided that the part of that territory that's pretty close to Green shouldn't be treated in the same way as the part that's close to Yellow. My 1♣ opening can be a 2 card suit with a balanced hand; it didn't even occur to me to file my convention card in advance. I looked at the 6 cards that have been filed and none of them seemed to me to be systems that needed any advance preparation.

Without wanting to put words into Jan's mouth, I think she is quite rightly observing that there is a huge grey area between Green and Yellow which requires interpretation and judgement on the part of players to decide how to classify their systems. My interpretation of Jan's comment is that she considers it "sensible" to treat a system which isn't overtly Red and is pretty close to Green as Green.

Discounting the non-authoritative email sent to Paul, which doesn't directly say that having a short club makes your system Red anyway, one only needs to look at the WBF System Policy and its tie-in to the Law 40B1(a) concept of "may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament" to conclude that having a short club does not of itself make a system Red.

From this thread, the only person who has made a good faith effort to determine whether a short club system is RED or GREEN by asking the WBF is paul, and disregarding his communications with the WBF is the height of hubris. Its a shame that the WBF is not interested in issuing an authoritative statement regarding this.

[gordontd]

helene_t, on Sep 21 2010, 10:26 PM, said:

Wayne, you are being pedantic.

Bears in the woods come to mind

[helene_t]

nigel_k, on Sep 21 2010, 11:58 PM, said:

This is not a problem in logic or mathematics, it is about the efficient running of a bridge contest.

This.

[mgoetze]

mrdct, on Sep 21 2010, 07:35 AM, said:

The WBF SYSTEMS POLICY 2002 (Adopted December 1994; amended October 1996, January 2000, August 2002, October 2007, October 2008 & September 2009) defines "natural" as:

Quote

a call or play that is not a convention [“special partnership understanding” as defined in Law 40B1(a)]

Law 40B1(a) defines "special partnership understanding" as:

Quote

A special partnership understanding is one whose meaning, in the opinion of the Regulating Authority, may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament.

Wow, I didn't know that Multi 2♦ is actually a natural bid!

Seriously, this whole area of offline bridge is patently ridiculous. The regulations refer to the "opinion of the Regulating Authority"? Really? So if the Regulating Authority happens to change its opinion your system may suddenly become illegal mid-tournament? Why bother to write down whether an ace or a king is higher, we could shorten that law to "the card which, in the opinion of the Regulating Authority, is highest, wins the trick". People would still go on playing as if aces were always higher than kings, etc. - but if the president of the Bridge Federation happened to lose a finesse he could temporarily change his "opinion" to win it after all. Sound good?

[jdonn]

Cascade, on Sep 21 2010, 05:47 PM, said:

helene_t, on Sep 22 2010, 09:26 AM, said:

Wayne, you are being pedantic.

Of course a system in which a 1♣ opening can be as short as two and does not promise a strong hand is red. But it is obviously not the intention of the regulation that such vanilla systems have to be filed. No, I am not going to provide a formal definition of "vanilla". I suppose you know what I mean.

Is there a problem? Has anyone playing a system against which opps would need a special defense failed to file it?

I do not know how this is obvious.

I implied before you weren't being open minded, but actually I'm not so sure this is true (actually I still think it is but that's not what I mean to discuss at length in this post.) I think the problem in your case is that unless things are spelled out for you in 100% black and white you often don't see how things are obvious, even when they are obvious to virtually the rest of the world. I mean, you admitted that you don't see why it's ridiculous to claim that systems such as 1♥ showing clubs, or some bid showing no length in any particular suit, are "fairly natural". I would truly be embarassed to admit in a public forum failing to realize such a thing! If you can not see things that are as obvious as that, then I don't think any regulation will ever be spelled out specifically enough for you to be satisfied as to how everyone else is interpreting it.

[nige1]

cardsharp, on Sep 20 2010, 02:59 AM, said:

WBF, on 19 May 2010, said:

"I am told to ask you to have a look at the Systems Policy, a copy of which is attached, Paul.
"You will see there that a 1C opener that can be two cards is artificial. Artificial systems are Red category."

IMO Systems-policy is nonsensical e.g.

• Allowing you to consult an unofficial home-grown written-defence to multi, during the hand!
  
• Classifying your system as red because you bid 1♣ on a doubleton!

I have some sympathy for law-makers because it is hard to formulate sensible systems-regulations. But not much sympathy because there are simple remedies e.g. Replace all the regulations with a a simple two-tier scheme:

• Standard system.
  
• Anything goes.

More pathetic is why we bridge-players put up with such daft regulations for so long. The reason seems to be that

• We are happy to defend a systems-regulation that coincides with our xenophobic interests.
  
• We only start wingeing when it cramps our own style.

IMO, players should present a united front against daft rules.

However, until the rules are changed, we must abide by them. We must not demean ourselves by trying to weasel out e.g. by claiming that the law-makers intend something different from what they write.

[the hog]

Nigel, that is one of the most sensible posts that I have read on systems and systems regulations. I really wish that everyone was logical enough to see things in those terms.

As far as "anything goes" is concerned, I have frequently advocated a two tier approach. Unfortunately even some professional players are against this. If you are getting paid to play bridge, you should be prepared to put in the hard yards to discuss defences to previously submitted conventions. After all, it is your occupation. No one restricts the amount of work people in other areas of work have to do, so why here? It seems that some want to have their cake and eat it as well.

[gerry]

helene_t, on Sep 21 2010, 04:26 PM, said:

Of course a system in which a 1♣ opening can be as short as two and does not promise a strong hand is red. But it is obviously not the intention of the regulation that such vanilla systems have to be filed. No, I am not going to provide a formal definition of "vanilla". I suppose you know what I mean.

Is there a problem? Has anyone playing a system against which opps would need a special defense failed to file it?

I am the leading (only) member of a new school that maintains as its guiding precept that majors are over-rated and we should focus on the minors.

Consequently the system we teach to juniors is based on 5 card minors better major. Everything else is vanilla. We actually prefer 5 card minors short spade but have run afoul of local system regulations.

Is it too late for my team to enter for Philly and demonstrate the superiority of 'minors first' at the table?

[Cascade]

gerry, on Oct 5 2010, 10:54 AM, said:

helene_t, on Sep 21 2010, 04:26 PM, said:

Of course a system in which a 1♣ opening can be as short as two and does not promise a strong hand is red. But it is obviously not the intention of the regulation that such vanilla systems have to be filed. No, I am not going to provide a formal definition of "vanilla". I suppose you know what I mean.

Is there a problem? Has anyone playing a system against which opps would need a special defense failed to file it?

I am the leading (only) member of a new school that maintains as its guiding precept that majors are over-rated and we should focus on the minors.

Consequently the system we teach to juniors is based on 5 card minors better major. Everything else is vanilla. We actually prefer 5 card minors short spade but have run afoul of local system regulations.

Is it too late for my team to enter for Philly and demonstrate the superiority of 'minors first' at the table?

Seems "fairly natural" to me.

I mean can anyone really argue that "short spade" is less natural than "short club"?

[the hog]

Cascade, on Oct 5 2010, 01:03 PM, said:

gerry, on Oct 5 2010, 10:54 AM, said:

helene_t, on Sep 21 2010, 04:26 PM, said:

Of course a system in which a 1♣ opening can be as short as two and does not promise a strong hand is red. But it is obviously not the intention of the regulation that such vanilla systems have to be filed. No, I am not going to provide a formal definition of "vanilla". I suppose you know what I mean.

Is there a problem? Has anyone playing a system against which opps would need a special defense failed to file it?

I am the leading (only) member of a new school that maintains as its guiding precept that majors are over-rated and we should focus on the minors.

Consequently the system we teach to juniors is based on 5 card minors better major. Everything else is vanilla. We actually prefer 5 card minors short spade but have run afoul of local system regulations.

Is it too late for my team to enter for Philly and demonstrate the superiority of 'minors first' at the table?

Seems "fairly natural" to me.

I mean can anyone really argue that "short spade" is less natural than "short club"?

No.

[blackshoe]

But no doubt someone will. Probably a TD or AC member somewhere.

[mrdct]

Cascade, on Oct 5 2010, 04:03 PM, said:

I mean can anyone really argue that "short spade" is less natural than "short club"?

Yes one can.

In an event played pursuant to the WBF System Policy, a "short spade" system would almost certainly be caught by the concept of "may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament".

Every man and his dog would readily understand, anticipate and expect to play against "short club" systems, but the same could not be said about "short spade". As far as I can recall, I've never seen anyone playing a "short spade" system with the possible exception of an alcohol-fueled late-night speedball.