David Stevenson
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1) No, a weak jump overcall is natural and not unusual enough for an alert. There are very few announcements and none of them are by the defenders.
2) Yes, it is a conventional bid and all conventional calls are alertable, except those which require an announcement. The same applies to conventional rebids.I do. I suppose you could play 3D as signoff to cover the possibility that responder is 3=3=4=3 or similar if you don’t, but that still does not make 3D forcing!
With the original hand after 1D-2C-3C what is wrong with 3S?
I play 1D – 2C – 3C – 3D as a game try, not searching for an alternative strain. On B7 I would pass 3C.
I worry about misuse of convention names because it misleads opponents. Stayman is a 2C bid over a 1N opening. Some people play it over a 1N overcall or even after 1C – 1D – 1N where 1C is strong Club and 1D is a negative response. But it is never Stayman after responder has bid a new suit and opener has rebid 1N. You can play 2C there how you like but do not call it Stayman because it is not and will mislead.
It is nothing to do with standard bridge. Announcements are made when the EBU say they should be made and the announcements are for any natural 1N or two level opening, or any Stayman or Transfer response to 1N or 2N, or any short club or diamond opening. So natural three level openings require no alert or announcement.
The simple answer is No, because there is no damage. E/W have reached a making 4S, so 5Dx-1 is an improvement so there is no damage.
More interesting is quite how the director should approach this if there had been potential damage. What is the pair’s agreement? In theory West should have alerted 1H and said “We have agreed to play transfers over 1C but we did not agree whether or not they apply in competition”. That would be the correct statement of their agreement and then it is up to N/S to bid as best they can with that information. Since he did not say that the director would look to see if there was a suitable adjustment based on that being the correct agreement.One of the reasons for the rarity of GSF nowadays is the use of Roman Key Card Blackwood which includes finding out about the king and queen of trumps. GSF was more important and more used before RKCB was common.
The responses to 5N after Blackwood are, as you say (a) number of kings (b) specific kings (c) show either a king or the other two. Not only is (c) more complicated but it does not work very well when asker wants one particular king. Let me explain my preferred (b) a little further.
Responder bids his lowest king. Now asker should bid the next suit in which he wants responder to bid the grand with that king. If responder does not have that king but has the next king he bids it While this works perfectly there is often not the room to bid it and I am not suggesting playing it except for the most experienced partnerships.Whatever your views on tempo on Smith Peters, the idea that it is similar to discarding systems seems unfair. It is normal to think some time before making your first discard and this applies whether you play DODDS, Italian, Revolving, Lavinthal (aka McKenney), Standard or Reverse. While it is true that some players do not think routinely before making their first discard so clearly have doubt when they take some time, this applies whichever discarding system they play.
What I do not understand is the suggestion that people play unethically in discarding when playing the named discarding systems but not standard discards. People play ethically or unethically (not necessarily intentionally) whatever discarding system they play.
The solution playing Smith Peters is similar: ethical players stop to think before playing the first card of a Smith Peter whether they have an easy decision or not.
Acol is correct. It is not an acronym (or even an initialism for the pedantic!). There is a village in Kent called Acol. There is a road in North London called Acol Road named after the village in Kent. There was a bridge club in Acol Road in the 1930s called the Acol BC after the road. Skid Simon, Jack Marx and others developed a system in the 1930s and named it Acol after the bridge club. This system has changed a lot over the years but is still the most common system in the British Isles even though the use of the systems called Five card majors, SAYC and 2/1 is growing. Benjaminised Acol, often shortened to Benji Acol, is just Acol with Benjamin Twos or Benji Twos.
The simple answer is that it is legal and it is not alertable.
I get many queries both here and in my former column for Mr Bridge in BRIDGE along the lines that people do not bid the same way as everyone else. Judgement in the bidding is a major part of this game and perfectly legal. I do not think that Weak even means 6-10: to me Weak means not strong enough for an opening bid, and if you judge this is a 3H opener rather than a 1H opener so be it. When you are taught then you are taught bidding with simple rules but experience leads you to move away from the simplest rules and towards using your judgement. Of course you will sometimes play against people who think oyu have to bid their way but that is not true.
Acol (not ACOL, please!) is not a closely specified system and most people will play it with some changes from what they were originally taught.
It is important that you do not mislead opponents when describing your methods. The Jacoby 2N response to a major by an unpassed hand is always forcing to game.
Do not some people play a 2N response to a major as showing a raise to 3S or better, thus allowing an immediate 3S response to be somewhat pre-emptive? Yes, in fact my regular partner and I do, but that is not Jacoby and if you play it you must not call it Jacoby because that will mislead opponents.
I have thought for a long time that the term Laws and Ethics is a misnomer. Many years ago they used to refer to Rules and Ethics and I think that is preferable. What is the difference? Rules refers to the Laws of the game and the Regulations laid down by the EBU and other organisations. Under lockdown it is my impression that Regulations are not being as well followed as they were previously. This is strange because it is easier to alert and explain nevertheless it is not being done very well. Even the simplest Regulations, announcing short clubs, 1N openings and two level natural openings, and alerting doubles, are not being followed as well as they were two years ago. So I suggest for a future topic Rules and Ethics, or even just a topic Regulations.
Law 67B1. It is quite a horrible law because the director has to find out which trick has too few cards and then follow the law. Amongst laws that do not involve judgement it is probably the most difficult law for a director to deal with.
Since we know perfectly well it was not a psyche (sic) it would be treated as an illegal agreement. There is an unfortunate but somewhat common occurrence in club bridge to have an irrational fear of opening at the one level with distributional hands with a lot of playing tricks and we know perfectly well that the players who open these type of hands 2C do so because of this and believe it is the correct way to show the hand. That means they are playing an illegal agreement.
