From: varvel@cs.utexas.edu (Donald A. Varvel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.bridge
Subject: Re: Restricting Conventions
Date: 29 Sep 1992 21:40:09 -0500
Organization: U Texas Dept of Computer Sciences, Austin TX
NNTP-Posting-Host: levelland.cs.utexas.edu

In article <17675@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> martel@spider.cs.ucdavis.edu (Chip Martel) writes:

>This post is a followup to several articles which have discussed
>(usually by criticizing) various restrictions on allowed conventions.
>As someone who has been very much involved in this both as a player
>on the world level, and as a member of the World Bridge Federation
>Systems committee I would like give my views on this.

I will take my potshots from a less exalted level.

>First of all, the laws allow restrictions on conventions and very weak
>natural bids so it Legal to have some restrictions. As to whether this
>is wise, I suggest the following principle: it is wrong for a pair to
>gain a substantial advantage by playing a convention due to its SURPRISE 
>EFFECT.  The surprise effect is the gain which comes purely because the 
>opponents have not had a reasonable chance to prepare to play against 
>the convention.

>Note that the surprise effect is most serious when a bid is weak. An 
>extreme example of this occured in 1982 when a Dutch pair Mass-Rabatu played
>a system in the world pairs where an opening pass showed a normal 1S opening
>and a 1S opeing showed a normal pass. The opponents had no advance notice of
>this, and since only three boards per round were played, there was no
>realistic time to prepare much of a defense (also at this time, such a system
>was much rarer, so there was much less known about how to defend against
>this). I doubt they thought their system had any theoretical merit, but the
>surprise factor gave them a big edge.

I was involved in something like this years ago.  Without any announcement
I was aware of, the local club had a game where unlimited conventions
were allowed.  Only one pair came prepared.  They used a forcing pass
system, although it wasn't much of a system.  My partner and I weren't
sure what our own bids meant in that context and had two bad results.
Our opponents laughed, thinking it funny that we lost to such a silly
system.  I think you *do* have to give people a chance to prepare against
primarily destructive methods.

>In order to prevent the surprise effect it is quite reasonable
>to take several things into account: the more boards being played, the more
>time opponents will have to prepare; the more sophisticated the opponents,
>the more likely they can prepare a defense; the more common a convention is
>the more likely it is that the opponents will be prepared.

>Based on these factors the  ACBL has made some good decisions as well as 
>some poor ones:
> starting with the second round of the bidding, you can play
>anything you want. This is quite reasonable since this will almost always
>be a constructive auction where the surprise effect will be small.
>  On the first round of bidding, only approved conventions can be played
>in most events (with the approved list more stringent in limited events).
>This is quite appropriate as a general concept: you avoid the surprise effect
>by knowing you must prepare for a limited set of early round conventions.
>However, I will admit that the decision of what should be on this list is
>at times questionable. Many of the decisions seem quite arbitrary, and are
>not consistent with the notion that a convention should only be kept off the
>list if it is rarely used and hard to defend against.

To me it seems a pretty clear case of the rich and the powerful get
what they want.  A system like Romex with many relay auctions starting
on the second round if bidding is legal, but relay systems that start
a round earlier are explicitly banned.  I believe the explanation lies
in the person of George Rosenkranz.  Similarly, nearly any system of
responses is allowed after a forcing club opening (unless you start
your relays too early) but not after a nonforcing club opening.  Do
I see the ghost of C.C. Wei?  The "second round" rule can perhaps be
justified, but the "forcing club" one seems awfully arbitrary.

Just what does it *take* to get something accepted?  Transfer responses
to 1C are not popular because they are not allowed.  Bidding 4-card
majors with a longer diamond suit in a hand not worth a game force is
popular only in the U.S.  Transfer responses make sense only in that
context (I think).  We can't even say, as we can with Multi, that the
rest of the world seems to have learned to live with it.

>  In National events almost anything goes. This in my opinion goes too far.
>In a national pair event, there is not enough time to prepare if your 
>opponents are doing something very odd. In the team events written descriptions
>of unusual methods should be available in advance.

>Notice that it is not simply that the ACBL is too restrictive, but it is more
>that they have not always made the right distinctions about what should and
>should not be allowed.

Will they listen if *you* speak to them?  Alan Jaffray's letter seems
not to have had any noticable effect, other than provoking the wrath 
of the clergy.

>Finally, let me make a pitch for restricting conventions which have too high
>a surprise effect. If you allow all conventions without advance disclosure
>(or in pair events where you may be overwhelmed by too many odd conventions),
>then you create a setting where there is a competition to find methods with
>the greatest surprise effect, often without any real bridge merit. In 
>particular, it encourages pairs to play one method until it becomes a bit
>familiar, and then move onto something different. A few may find this a
>good game, but the vast majority do not. It also is likely to create a
>climate for poor ethics. Somehow most pairs playing very odd
>systems are not very forthcoming in their system descriptions.

I think this is the heart of the matter.  There are some interesting
ideas out there that should be tried, but there have been some shady
characters involved with them in the past.  Relays have a bad name in
this country, I think, because of a pair of French internationals in
the '60's who took excessive amounts of time for each bid in their
convoluted auctions.  I have to say that the recent discussion of the
Meckstroth-Rodwell club system makes me uneasy -- they reportedly do
not plan to publish their system notes because they would just as soon
people didn't know too much about their methods.  *I* certainly don't
want to have all 800 pages dropped on me just before a match.

Books on bidding have started including a properly marked convention
card and noting which calls are alertable.  I think they should go one
step further and explain how to give a good explanation, and what sort
of explanation to expect.

"Suggested defense" is an underused concept in this country.  With one
partner I play a forcing but usually natural club, something that has
never been in fashion in this country but is common in Eastern Europe
and parts of Asia.  Nobody has ever asked me for a suggested defense.
One pair used CRASH, which I think is silly.  I would suggest treating
it as natural.  As we play it, it *averages* more clubs than the club
openings in the rest of the room.

I think the "competition to find methods with the greatest surprise
effect, often without any real bridge merit" must be avoided.  That
isn't bridge.  I think the "climate for poor ethics" is another matter.
Pairs with poor ethics should be identified and dealt with on that
issue.  There's a line from the movie "Tom Jones" that comes to mind:
"It has been said that too much wine dulls a man's desire.  And so it 
does, in a dull man."

-- Don Varvel (varvel@cs.utexas.edu)