David Stevenson
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My guess is that it is a misclick, and if it was not it was certainly alertable and required an explanation. If it is their agreement on what to open I doubt that it is legal but I would have to check with the pair. I would have just asked the director to look at it.
It never hurts to explain more than is required on BBO since partner cannot see your explanation. So if you like to put 3+ in the Explain box when you open 1C, and 5+ when you open 1H, this can only help. What I was doing was giving the rules for what is required.
When playing a tournament you are asked to give brief details of your system at the start of each round. Saying “5cM, 3cm” would be a good idea.
Despite a lot of people talking about alerting it is actually a method of explaining your calls. You should explain any call that you would alert or announce normally, plus it helps to explain no-trump ranges in other situations. You also add an alert if necessary.
So, for example, suppose you are about to open the following:
(A) 1NT. First you write the range in the Explain box, then you bid 1NT.
(B) 2C. First you describe it in the Explain box, eg “Acol” or “Benjamin” or similar, then you press the alert button, then you bid 2C.
(C) 1C. You open 1C on three card suits from time to time. This is not alertable, so you do not need to explain it.
Other examples:
(D) You are going to respond with 2C Stayman. First you write “Stayman” in the Explain box, then you press the alert button, then you bid 2C.
(E) You open 1C, partner bids 1S, you rebid 1NT. In traditional Acol this showed 15-16, the modern style is more to use 15-17, with Crowhurst it is 12-16 or 13-17, and there are other possibilities. There is no need for opponents to guess or ask, just write the range in the Explain box before you rebid 1NT.
It is still correct to follow the laws of bridge. If you have an implicit understanding based on your agreements you are required to alert when required and in BBO explain when required. If your total agreements are “Acol” there are, as explained before, some implicit understandings in that. Your opponents might not be Acol players.
If I was playing with anyone but my regular partner I would not know for certain what 4♦️ meant. Would you? So “no agreement” seems perfectly valid.
On BBO you explain before making the call and also alert if necessary, so there is no effective difference between the two. There is no need to use private chat.
I still have no idea how to find the hand to which you refer. Could you not just tell me the sequence?
You will have to judge whether it is clear what partner will understand by your call. If you feel from his profile it is clear then explain. If you feel it is a guess what partner will take your call as then you have no implicit agreement and you do not need to explain
Certainly you should explain before you call. Using private chat instead of the excellent explaining system on BBO seems an unnecessary complication.
Note that I refer to explaining. Alerts in live bridge suggest asking a question. When you explain on BBO the reason for alert has gone away. While it is still correct to alert if you believe a call to be artificial the importance of alerting is far reduced and it is explaining that is important. Alerting without explaining is unhelpful.
I do not know the auction to which you refer but these are judgement decisions if you do not know your partner well and become less important at later rounds of the auction.
The rules for alerting and explaining are anything that you have agreed with your partner, explicitly or implicitly. Obviously if you have had a discussion with partner and agreed Jacoby, when Jacoby turns up you explain it and alert it. That is an explicit agreement.
However implicit agreements are not always clear. If you agree to play Acol, weak NT, Benjamin and Roman Key Card Blackwood, but nothing else what do you do in the following situations:
A 1NT – 2C ?
B 1S (2S) ?
C 1C – 1D – 1S – 2H ?
In A it is a reasonable presumption that you have agreed Stayman when you agreed Acol, weak NT, so you should alert it and explain Stayman. Similarly in C I think Fourth Suit Forcing is part of most people’s understanding of Acol so you should alert it and explain Fourth Suit Forcing. But in C I do not think there is any presumption that Acol players play Michaels or artificial game force or Ghestem or KaT (ok, you do not remember KaT, but I do ???? ) so I think you should alert it and explain no agreement. Why alert it then? Because whatever you and your partner might think it means you can be sure neither of you plays it as natural. So you have an implicit understanding in A and C but not in B.
Basically if you are reasonably confident that you and your partner are likely to understand something the same because of what discussion you have had or your experience then you have an implicit understanding which needs to be disclosed. If you are just picking a call out of the air in the hopes that partner might guess it right, you have no agreement.
Someone asked me why Ogust is called Ogust. It is named after Harold A Ogust of the USA who invented it, well, it was also invented by Pietro Forquet and Benito Garozzo of Italy as part of the Blue Club. I would not like to say who was first.
They were called Blue Club responses before the name Ogust came along. Probably Ogust is North American and Blue Club responses is European.
Certainly it would be unauthorised information in your hypothetical situation as is every explanation, alert or announcement given by a player. Partner just had to avoid using it. But giving misinformation to opponents is illegal, giving unauthorised information to partner is not illegal. If he uses it (or even does not try hard not to use it) that is illegal.
Two other points. I think some people have got the idea that Ogust is an acronym so they spell it OGUST. It is not, it is Ogust. The most common mistake of this sort is that some people believe the system is called ACOL: the name is Acol, which was a village in Kent which led to a road in North London which led to a bridge club there which led to a system invented by Jack Marx and others~! 🙂
I am a bit worried by the assertion “If the opponents ask, you should not describe the bid as “OGUST” or “Feature Ask” since these tell partner how you will interpret the response.” This is a common misapprehension based on some players’ misunderstanding of the laws. They think you should reply when asked about 4NT “asking for key cards” and not “Blackwood” or “RKCB” or whatever. The opponents have an absolute right to your agreements and that includes what sort of ask.
You certainly need to alert Ogust as with all artificial calls below 4C with very very rare exceptions.
The best explanation if asked, or of playing on BBO you explain anyway, is “Ogust, game try, asking” or similar. “Describe a feature” is misleading and suggests oyu are playing Feature ask not Ogust. One of the advantages of using the name Ogust is that a lot of people do understand it. If someone does not understand they are unlikely to ask further whatever you say and you cannot really go into much more detail than what I have put.
Of course all the replies to Ogust are artificial and thus alertable, and must be explained if asked or if playing on BBO.
‘Feature ask’ is the main alternative to Ogust and is similarly alertable, must be explained, and the responses similar.
You are right in one way! I have got so used when directing, playing and answering questions to everything being online where announcements and alerts are basically the same I may have erred slightly. For those who do not play on BBO, people explain any call that might need an explanation before making it and partner cannot see it, so alerted calls and announcements are treated the same way.
However, there is no consensus on whether the completion of a transfer requires an alert and very very few people do. So when a player does not alert a bid that may or may not be the completion of a transfer that provides no unauthorised information to partner.
There seems to have been some slight problem: I have only seen this once, and for the first time three days late! 🙁 No matter, I have seen it now.
The answer to your basic question is yes, alerts and lack of alerts provide unauthorised information to partner. However what should happen on your example hand is far from clear.
The big problem is that in normal club bridge “everyone” knows that when the bidding goes 1NT – 2H – 2S opener has taken 2H as a transfer. There is little doubt that they did realise that there was a bidding misunderstanding but how much of that was illegal? What of the failure to alert 2S? The trouble is that a completion of a transfer is not alertable so North has no unauthorised information and can do his best legally to get out of trouble. So the only questionable bid is 3H.
The answer to the actual hand is that I would disallow 3H and rule it back to 2NT. However I would have sympathy for a ruling of result stands since I am not sure that the unauthorised information really caused the result as against general club level bridge knowledge.
The problem with this extra explanation as suggested is that people do not really play weak to intermediate in third, they play weak but stretch it to include the hand they see. If you want a point range, weak to intermediate is normally 8 to 13, weak is normally 5 to 9. But in third hand weak is generally 5 to 10, but could be three or twelve. A description such as weak to intermediate suggest a different hand. Perhaps one might add something like “but might be out of range”. The truth is that the alleged misinformation really causes little or no damage because while afterwards a player might say it affected him there is not really much chance that he did, unless he is a good enough player to count points, and players of that calibre know that preempts in third hand vary.
This is nothing like “Multi-Landy” which is an inadequate explanation.
