[jillybean]

barmar, on 2025-February-27, 16:45, said:

The impression I get is that the ACBL regulators believe that American players don't want comprehensive, detailed regulations like the colored books. They probably consider them too overwhelming and no one will read them.

ACBL regulations have generally been based more on establishing some general principles, and then applying them to specific cases. The problem has been that these principles are sometimes too vague; they made some improvements in the revisions of the convention charts and alert procedures a few years ago. But the general idea of keeping them short and general instead of long and detailed is still there.

I'm not sure they're wrong about what the majority of ACBL members want.

Can you please provide a link to the ACBL Regulations you are referring to.
In my experience, locating and understanding ACBL regulations is considerably more difficult than accessing similar information in EBU's Blue Book.

"I'm not sure they're wrong about what the majority of ACBL members want" in what regards; convention charts, alert procedures, Laws?

[mycroft]

Johnu: So, like the 4 pages of examples at the end of the convention charts, and the 7 at the end of the Alert Procedure?

Jillybean: I think I'd like to know what you can find easily in the Blue Book that you can't find easily in the Alert Procedure or Convention chart. Chapter 2 excepted, I do wish we had a "player's guide" like that as I said above.

Could the ACBL web site be better organized? Could we have more documents available without hunting for them, or not in "resources for tournament directors" (although I will admit most of those are *definitely* not for players, or even club directors. If you think the Convention Charts are hard to understand...)? Sure.

But the Alert Procedures and the Convention Charts and other relevant regulations (I ignore the screen regulations, because another thing the ACBL is great at is running games with screens at anything but the highest level) are on the tournament page, under (strangely enough) "Charts, Rules, and Regulations".

[jillybean]

mycroft, on 2025-February-27, 20:51, said:

Jillybean: I think I'd like to know what you can find easily in the Blue Book that you can't find easily in the Alert Procedure or Convention chart. Chapter 2 excepted, I do wish we had a "player's guide" like that as I said above.

IMO, The EBU Blue book is an exceptional resource for Bridge Players. It provides a well laid out, well indexed reference that all Bridge Players will be able to comprehend.
https://www.ebu.co.u...k/blue-book.pdf

Knowing about, and finding the ACBL Alert Procedures or Convention Chart is the first challenge players face. When I joined the ACBL I was given no handbook, and a google search takes me to this 14 page document.
https://web2.acbl.or...-Procedures.pdf

The EBU has managed to condense this to a 5 page guide.

The EBU does not include anything resembling the ACBL Convention Chart in the Blue Book. Instead they provide a section on Partnership Understandings, including a basic description of a players responsibility and a general guideline followed by rules for partnership understandings at various levels of play. Levels 2,4,5 and 6.

I imagine most ACBL players would find what they need in level 2 or 4 (what happened to level 3?).

Players needing more definition or clarification are provided with a link to the WBF Systems Policy and all readers are invited to send questions to the EBU Laws and Ethics Committee.

Bravo, EBU.