As a 'frequent' psycher myself, I think it's an insane idea.
First of all, you should know the
purpose of an alert. It's used to get opps attention that
our pair knows something they might not know. Simple example, you open 1
♣ with 15+HCP any hand, you alert (partner knows this already). In other words, we make sure the
entire table knows what we have. So if you start alerting psychic bids and explain them as such, we only give opps the advantage, and partner still doesn't know what's going on. Fair you tell me? I don't think so!
Second, psyching is NOT a conventional or artificial bid. It's a bid which deliberatly describes your hand completely different than it is. Say you overcall in 3rd hand 1NT with xxx-x-Axxxxx-xxx after a 1
♣ opening. Really awsome hand to do that btw, but what will partner usually do? Considering it like a normal 1NT opening, so not as an artificial bid! It's not conventional as well, because partner again won't treat it as such.
Third, the only thing this 'rule' would do is protecting players from psychic bids. It seems like you had some bad experience with them, and you want to protect yourself against them with this idea. The only thing that happens when this idea would be used, is that a psycher will ALWAYS get the bottoms. Now, if you psych, you take a chance yourself: it can go extremely wrong (you can find some posts on this forum with downscores like hell), it can go normal and it can go extremely good. If you take all doubt away, what purpose does a psychic bid have left? Nothing! Say the bidding goes 1
♥-Dbl-1
♠-... and you have to alert 1
♠ as psychic, why would you EVER do that?? You just give away their 4
♠ contract, and if you'd bid 4
♥ they'll also just bid 4
♠.
Fourth, it's not because online bridge uses self-alerts, that you can do several new things with alert rules. Self-alerts are the only reasonable way to let opps know enough. The online bridge rules try to be like f2f bridge, so don't turn it around.
As for The_Hog's first point (

), I totally agree! If you can't use psychs the way they should be used, you're not playing bridge. It's like making a falsecard and telling to opps you did that. It's wacko
"It may be rude to leave to go to the bathroom, but it's downright stupid to sit there and piss yourself" - blackshoe