alert. soapbox.
About that 2D, Jon asked:
If you upped the range by a point to 8-11, isn’t it legal? (It’s almost Flannery, no?)
I could tweak it a little here and there, sure. If we adjusted the agreement very slightly, simply require 5H, then it would be legal. Ralph Katz has told us several times that requiring 5H is the most sensible treatment, and that’s how he and George play it.
The one thing I really don’t care to do at this time is tweak 2D to guarantee more points or 5H. It’s probably foolish and I may look like an idiot, but for now those are chances I’m willing to take.
There are a couple of things I really like about the gadget as it is. First and foremost, it’s very high frequency: it happens that we hold 9 major suit cards a couple of times each session and with the gadget I can cover the entire range of “playable” major suit hands. Shannon and I once had a pair tell us they play this very gadget but that we shouldn’t worry about it “because it never comes up.” (Came up on the very first board, in fact.)
The other thing I like about the gadget is that it’s pretty high value. When we first picked it up, 2D was just sexy. Exciting. It won us IMPS when opponents missed games and got to the wrong games as often as it lost us IMPS when we played doubled partscores with xxx opposite JTxx while our opponents cheerfully beat 3NT at the other table. When we settled into one of those chief requirements — stuff in your suits, what had been (self) destructive became merely preemptive.
Perhaps I’m too new to bridge to have strong opinions, but at this moment in my career I object very strongly to the arbitrary limiting of allowed conventions. I understand that Bob Hamman has led the charge for gadget-free bridge because (among other things) conventions make the game too hard for spectators, but I think that’s bunk.
We took my mother and stepfather to the Olympiad in Maastricht to help look after our then only child. Larry had never seen bridge played, didn’t come from a card- or game-playing family, etc. He sat in the English VuGraph and was utterly fascinated from board 1. By the time we flew home, Larry had some strong opinions about what conventions made sense and which were the best pairs in the world.
I imagine that once upon a time, there were great men of bridge who objected strenuously to Weak 2 bids. Said, perhaps, that it just isn’t bridge to open the bidding with weak, semi-balanced hands. Some of those great men of bridge still don’t play Weak 2 bids.
When I say “the arbitrary limiting of allowed conventions,” here’s what I mean: in order for a gadget to be ACBL-legal, there must be a written defense, approved by a panel of experts. George submitted a defense to this 2D gadget two years ago and has never heard back. As I understand the situation, there are no plans to approve the gadget in any format. None at all.
I believe the organization should, at the very least, review the submitted paperwork and respond to it publicly. Either approve the convention & defense or reject them for a specified cause. The decisions of other bridge-related committees are made public, and I believe this committee should behave similarly.
For all my strong opinions about the process, I’m relatively happy to go along on this specific convention. Can’t play 2D (the defense to which fits on a the back of a traveling score ticket) in the Round Robin phase because opponents don’t have sufficient time to adjust to the treatment. Can play it in the much-longer KO phase, when folks have time to get better acquainted. I’ll keep the 2D score tickets in the back pocket of my jeans during the short matches, and pull out the stapled pages of defense bearing the ACBL seal of approval.
May 27th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
A few thoughts:
I’ve found ACBL to be a very responsive organization on most issues. I’ve had occasion to bring a couple of issues to the attention of the head honchos there and was thoroughly satisfied with the outcome on both occasions.
I agree with bans on Brown Sticker conventions (mostly weak bids that don’t show a known suit, Multi being the allowable exception.)
Now that I’ve gotten those 2 caveats out of the way, it’s absurd that Multi and Ekrens aren’t GCC. Multi is common throughout the world and it’s time for North Americans to join the party. Ekrens is a relatively benign method that shows 2 KNOWN suits. Obstructive? Yes. Effective? Sure, on occasion. But it’s not a destructive or overly complicated convention. That it’s not even permitted at the highest levels to those competing for a spot to represent the United States against international competition is embarrassing.
If it were me, I wouldn’t be happy to go along at all. If we want to field the best teams in the future, they need the opportunity to face the toughest tests here at home.
May 27th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I’m curious about why Multi is always the allowable exception. More than that, I’m curious about the system divide. Is it generational?
There is much talk about disallowing Multi in pair games. I can see the rationale for that — the ACBL approved defenses are great big cumbersome things, difficult to decipher and time consuming to apply.
Outlawing the convention isn’t the answer; better to write an easier defense. Alfredo refused to look at the ACBL’s Multi defenses. Said he wanted to handle Multi 2D as if they’d opened a weak 2 in spades, so that’s what he and George did successfully for years. Much easier to remember than the Complex defense or the more difficult Simple defense.
Oh, the time I could waste…. back to redoing the system notes.