[xarlos]

After having been here a while, I became aware of something yesterday that both surprised and disturbed me.

When bidding, there is an opportunity to enter an "Alert." This alert then shows up in the bid box as bidding progresses. Yesterday. I learned that the "Alert" is not visible to the alerter's partner! It is visible to everyone else - the alerter AND the opposition. This is just a little disconcerting. I would think that the first person you would want to alert is your partner. If an alert box shows yellow to everyone else, why not to the alerter's partner?

I emailed support with this. The response I got back was:

"The BBO software is designed so that players alert their own bids. This is called "self-alerting" and it is opposite to the
approach that is used in live bridge clubs and tournaments."

What sense is this supposed to make?

TIA

X

[mgoetze]

Bridge is a game for partnerships. Part of the game, as originally designed, is being able to remember your agreements with your partner. You are not supposed to remind him of them, he is supposed to know anyway.

Your opponents, on the other hand, are not expected to know your agreements. Rather, you are expected to explain your agreements to them, in as much detail as desired, and you are expected to make them aware of situations where they are likely to require an explanation. That is what alerting is for.

In offline bridge, your alerts are unauthorized information for your partner. If you alert when your partner was not expecting you too, he is not allowed to rethink what his bid might have meant given the alert. Rather, he must continue as if he had not seen your alert.

Those are the rules of the game, and BBO implements them very well in this regard. However, this game is not particularly suitable for 4 people who have never seen each other before and are not willing to say more than "hi".

[xarlos]

Partnerships require time and agreement. On BBO, there is little of either. In "live" bridge, there are subtle verbal nuances or facial language (eyebrows) partners can give that are in-and-of themselves tacitly agreed to such as "short" ♣ (a player might bid "a ♣" rather than 1 ♣) or a "take-out double". This is impossible online. This makes the alerts all the more important to partners, particularly when opening 2 in a suit and having to let your partner know whether it is strong if it is ♦, ♥ or ♠. If a player alerts and a partner is unable to see, it is the original player who is handicapped if the partner fails to get the nuance.

[nige1]

xarlos, on 2010-December-01, 15:43, said:

Partnerships require time and agreement. On BBO, there is little of either. In "live" bridge, there are subtle verbal nuances or facial language (eyebrows) partners can give that are in-and-of themselves tacitly agreed to such as "short" ♣ (a player might bid "a ♣" rather than 1 ♣) or a "take-out double". This is impossible online. This makes the alerts all the more important to partners, particularly when opening 2 in a suit and having to let your partner know whether it is strong if it is ♦, ♥ or ♠. If a player alerts and a partner is unable to see, it is the original player who is handicapped if the partner fails to get the nuance.

A disadvantage of on-line play compared to face-to-face.

Seriously. It might be a good idea for BBO to provide an explanation-matrix: a table of common explanations, on which you could click appropriate boxes ("pre-emptive", "sign-off", "limit", "forcing", "game-forcing", "trial", "cue", "relay", "puppet", "ask", transfer", "negative", "lead-directing", and so on).

Although insisting that everybody use something like full-disclosure would be even better -- each table could be pre-loaded with a default sayc or 2/1 full-disclosure card. You could replace that with a default card for other common systems. Or you could define your own system.

[mgoetze]

xarlos, on 2010-December-01, 15:43, said:

In "live" bridge, there are subtle verbal nuances or facial language (eyebrows) partners can give that are in-and-of themselves tacitly agreed to such as "short" ♣ (a player might bid "a ♣" rather than 1 ♣) or a "take-out double".

LOL, your quote marks hit the wrong word, surely you meant 'live "bridge"' rather than '"live" bridge'. In any case, what you are describing is a very different game from the one I play. Have you ever heard of "screens"?