[Vampyr]

 barmar, on 2015-April-03, 09:37, said:

While that may be "simple", it's practically impossible to implement and enforce because it's too vague.

And what it necessarily leads to is situations in which all meanings must be alerted, making the alert information-free. Amond other things this puts the opponents in UI trouble if they don't ask every single time.

As Helene noted above, the EBU is probably the only jurisdiction which has put serious thought into the alerting of doubles, which is probably the trickiest part. Some jurisdictions have just given up and said not to alert any doubles. Now, of course, we are in alert-every-time (and prove it) territory. Also a byproduct of this type of regulation is practice such as: After 1m-(1♥), double normally shows 4 spades around here, so I will play it as denying 4 spades. Or event: on alternate days I will play it as a transfer so opponents will probably guess wrong even if they have asked me before.

Is this a good thing?

[mike777]

btw Baseball plays with different rules in MLB
Nat league has one set of rules, American league another set. They even have a history of different size strike zones.

[axman]

 Vampyr, on 2015-March-25, 21:03, said:

Nigel's opinion below is not new to anyone:



I am curious whether anyone shares this opinion. Lots of non-EBU members dislike the EBU alert regulations, lots of non-ACBL members would not enjoy playing under the ACBL's systems restrictions, and I'm sure that there are loads of other regulations that would be found unsuitable for a group of players that aren't the group who play under them at present. So I don't see why regulations should be standardised instead of suited to the players affected.

Also, given that the ACBL gets actual Laws written to suit them, there is little question that the global regulations would be the ACBL's. It really seems to me that if other NBOs wanted to use the ACBL's regulations, they would already be using them. The EBU's regulations are readily available in the internet. Why aren't loads of other countries using them? Because they don't want to.

I have played bridge in about a dozen different countries, and have never had the problems Nigel seems to have experienced. You do have to learn things like that when you tell Eastern or Central European players that your leads are "second and fourth", they will assume that means low from a doubleton. In some places a weak NT has to be alerted. Things like this are not very serious and unlikely to cause harm if you get it wrong the first time, and anyway people who are motivated enough to go to a foreign country to play bridge will care enough to find out about the regulations there.

Also, I think that the majority of duplicate bridge players rarely play outside their own country; actually, the majority probably don't venture further than their local club. Why should these people have to use systems and alert regulations that are not designed for their own bridge culture and prevailing bidding systems?

Finally, it takes time for regulations to change as the bridge culture changes. It is was only a few years ago that eg Stayman and Weak Twos became announceable instead of alertable in the EBU. If all of the NBOs (or, LOL, the WBFLC Drafting Committee) had to get together to agree a change in regulations it would never happen. What would probably happen is that individual NBOs would start writing supplemental regulations to graft onto a frame that few (or no) people liked in the first place. Or maybe this wouldn't be permitted and the regulations would become more and more unsuitable.

The most important question is: who would benefit? I can't think of anyone.

I have theorized that there is a set of rules that can't be improved; with the corollary that it is possible to arrive at a set of rules (that is close enough) where changes which are improvements would be immaterial. In that regard, I believe that uniform rules are a good thing.

However, in regard to WBF2008 the laws do not approach being workable in that sense.

[mycroft]

The issue is that in order to show that a set of rules can't be improved, there must be agreement on what constitutes "improvement"; that is, what is the ideal state to aim for. And there are clearly multiple ideal states in mind by different organizations (and I really don't think, given the state of play, that this can be resolved, only changed to a different set of multiple ideal states).

Given that case, there will *almost certainly* be an improvement to a set of rules that will improve them to one ideal and be a detriment to another - and then, of course, the opposite change will be an improvement (to the other ideal).