[morecharac]

barmar, on 2020-December-09, 17:02, said:

Sorry, but you're the one with the non-standard terminology.

There's no such thing as "Reverse". It's not a well known convention name.

25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know, Seagram & Smith, Master Point Press, 1999, Chapter 5, p. 50, disagrees with you. As does Wikipedia. I'm sure I could find more citations without significant effort.

Seagram & Smith require at least 5-4 and 16 HCP. Wikipedia allows 5 LTC in common North American usage though it may vary by system.

And every addict of the bloody things I've ever dealt with insists that they meet both criteria although some require an actual jump bid in the sequence.

So, yeah, a fairly standard terminology. One that dates back to Goren days.

[morecharac]

barmar, on 2020-December-09, 16:45, said:

I'm not sure what you expected ACBL to do if you'd run the draft past you. Do you really think they need to tailor the alert procedure based on the abilities of the poorest players? So if your partner doesn't know enough to alert something, your opponents are not entitled to the information?

I'm thinking they needed to run it past lower-echelon players to catch what are ambiguities and blank-stare-inducing wording.

And I agree that opponents should be entitled to know that my partner doesn't understand something; what seems to be lost despite me saying it repeatedly is that the ACBL Rulings people explicitly forbade Pre-Alerting something that we don't play because my partner cannot understand it and thus cannot recognise it and required my partner to Alert when the possibility occurred during the auction.

[morecharac]

morecharac, on 2020-December-09, 23:24, said:

25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know, Seagram & Smith, Master Point Press, 1999, Chapter 5, p. 50, disagrees with you. As does Wikipedia. I'm sure I could find more citations without significant effort.

Seagram & Smith require at least 5-4 and 16 HCP. Wikipedia allows 5 LTC in common North American usage though it may vary by system.

And every addict of the bloody things I've ever dealt with insists that they meet both criteria although some require an actual jump bid in the sequence.

So, yeah, a fairly standard terminology. One that dates back to Goren days.

When I speak of Reverses, I refer to 1♣-1♠-2♥ (unopposed auction) requiring 5C, 4H, and 16+ HCP being repeatedly thrown at me as what's expected by people who play it and people who tried to force me to. We don't play this. This is what ACBL said we could not Pre-Alert but had to wait until the appearance of it occurred.

The same sequence for us promises nothing beyond an opener, four hearts, and an implication of less than three spades. No extra strength, no five-card club suit. Yet we're supposed to Alert that this natural bidding sequence is not a Reverse.

Some would require the opener's rebid to be 3H for it to be a Reverse with the same requirements in distribution and HCP. For us this would be a strong Jump Shift and would not guarantee a five-card club suit. (A tortured and unlikely auction, I know. Used here for illustrative purposes only)

So please, anyone, no more "it neither quacks nor waddles but is avian in shape so it's still a duck" definitions of Reverses as something I've never seen or heard outside this forum.

It requires a misunderstanding of the subject raised and is not helpful in any way.

[morecharac]

Waded through old e-mails for the two rulings on Reverses. Relevant portions pasted below:

-----
My partner and I play Standard American but do not play reverses. We've run into the occasional person who insists that reverses are a required part of the system. I've read ACBL's own description of the system as "nebulous".

The Alert Chart appears to be silent on the subject. I believe we're in the right, but want a definitive answer that I can refer to.

Do we need to Pre-Alert or Alert the fact that we do not play reverses?

RE: Reverses
Rulings <Rulings@acbl.org>
Tue 2018-07-03 11:04 AM

Playing reverses is a matter of partnership agreement. Law has nothing to do with that choice. It is between you and your partner. Even if others insist that “you have to,” it is your system, and it is your choice.

The part where the law does come in is keeping the opponents informed. Because you are not playing reverses, sequences that sound like reverses (to others) could be much weaker than they might expect. Yours is a natural treatment. Alert Procedures (http://web2.acbl.org...tProcedures.pdf) says:
“Treatments that show unusual strength or shape should be Alerted.”

The phrase, “unusual strength,” includes hands that are stronger or weaker than would normally be expected. When one of these bids comes up, alert it and if asked, explain that it is not a reverse and does not show any extra values. This is not a huge variation from Standard American, so there is no need to pre-alert.

Regards,
Tom Ciacio
Tournament Director and Rulings Box Associate

-----
Third Question

Is it okay to Pre-Alert a procedure that doesn't fall under the normal Pre-Alert requirements?

I recently asked about the need to alert the fact that we don't play reverses - the ruling was that it wasn't unusual enough to require a Pre-Alert but did require an Alert when a bid looks like a reverse. My partner has trouble understanding what bids are reverses and I tend to forget about them while bidding because I don't play them - blame a previous partner who was addicted to using them. Pre-Alerting our lack of reverses would prevent problems and avoid the appearance of UI from our inconsistency in remembering to Alert.

Re: Three Alert questions
Rulings <Rulings@acbl.org>
Tue 2018-08-21 12:20 AM

3. Your intentions are good, but you should not Pre-Alert an understanding that does not require a Pre-Alert. (Though this would not be your intent, in other situations this could "remind" the partner of a Pre-Alerter what their agreement is, which would be Unauthorized Information). Simply alerting your partner's bid when she makes what to most would look like a reverse is sufficient. If your partner does not Alert your non-reverse call, do call the Director at the end of the auction if you are the declaring side, or at the end of the play of the hand if you are defending so the Director can make an adjustment to the result if your opponents were harmed by the failure to Alert.

Lynn Yokel
Tournament Director and Rulings Box Associate

-----

So, extra strength is considered standard, rulings were moot on distribution requirements.

[blackshoe]

I don't know where you're getting your "standard definition" for a reverse. It's not in the ACBL convention or alert regulations (at least not in the new alert reg which goes into effect in three weeks). AFAIK it's not in any other ACBL regulation. It's not in the law book. So I would look to the Bridge World Dictionary, which defines a reverse thusly:

Quote

reverse
(1) (noun) a non-jump bid in a new suit that bypasses a bid in a lower-ranking suit already bid by the same player. [North one club, South one spade, North two hearts is a reverse (bypasses two clubs). But North one club, South one heart, North one spade is not (no bypass).]

Note that there is nothing in there about strength, only about the order in which you bid your suits. In fact, it is called a reverse because that order is the reverse of the normal (higher ranking first) order. Bottom line: if you ever make a simple bid in a second suit which is higher ranking than your first suit, you have reversed. So "we don't play reverses" is nonsense.

The requirement for reverses to have extra strength is a logical consequence of the fact that a reverse is usually made after a response at the one level, or a response at the two level which is no more than invitational. It has nothing to do with the definition of the term "reverse". In fact, if you play a system (e.g. 2/1) in which a simple two level response to a one level suit opening is game forcing, a reverse is still a reverse, but because the auction is already forcing to game, it need not have extra values.

If your reverses do not have extra values when the auction is not (or not yet) game forcing, the new alert regulations I think say that an alert is not required. However "we don't play reverses" is not an adequate explanation if you're asked (and I would suggest that if opener reverses, defenders should always ask for an explanation of the entire auction to date (see Law 20F1).

[blackshoe]

morecharac, on 2020-December-09, 23:34, said:

…the ACBL Rulings people explicitly forbade Pre-Alerting something that we don't play because my partner cannot understand it and thus cannot recognise it and required my partner to Alert when the possibility occurred during the auction.

If they did that, which I doubt, they exceeded their authority. The "ACBL Rulings people" don't make the rules and they are not when answering queries to that email address directing in a game in which you are playing.

[blackshoe]

If you alert opener's second bid, I ask, and you explain it as "not a reverse" when it clearly is a reverse, I will say "I do not understand, please explain further". If I find your further explanation inadequate, I will call the director. If it turns out to be alertable and you do not alert, and I find out later that your first suit is not longer than your second suit or that you do not have extra strength when bridge logic requires it, and I believe we may have been damaged, I will call the director. If it's not alertable, well, I think everyone should be asking what the bid means when it is made.

[Chas_P]

https://www.bridgeba...everse-bidding/

[AL78]

Surely from a logical perspective you alert any bid where the partnership understanding will deviate from what most, if not all, will assume it to be. Thus 1♦ - 1♠ - 2♥ where 2♥ doesn't show extra strength should be alerted, because it is the standard meaning that it should show extra values. Similarly I alert 1♠ - 3♠ if it is a pre-emptive, rather than a constructive raise, because the former is not standard in the UK and the opponents are entitled to know our agreements.

[pescetom]

morecharac, on 2020-December-09, 23:24, said:

25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know, Seagram & Smith, Master Point Press, 1999, Chapter 5, p. 50, disagrees with you. As does Wikipedia. I'm sure I could find more citations without significant effort.

You are to my surprise right that Wikipedia disagrees. The introduction of the page says :

Wikipedia said:

A reverse, in the card game contract bridge, is a bidding sequence designed to show additional strength without the need to make a jump bid; specifically two suits are bid in the reverse order to that expected by the basic bidding system. Precise methods and definitions vary with country, bidding system and partnership agreements.

And yet the definitions that it lists immediately below give no support to that wild and illogical assertion:

Wikipedia said:

Standard American
In Standard American a reverse is defined by William S. Root[1] as "... a nonjump bid at the two-level in a new suit that ranks higher than the suit you bid first", and by Bridge World.[2] as "a non-jump bid in a new suit that bypasses a bid in a lower-ranking suit already bid by the same player".

Acol
The Acol definition is somewhat wider and includes any bid of a new suit by opener higher than two of their first suit.[3]

Somebody should edit the introduction to reflect the definitions and explain why it is implicitly associated with strength in a natural system.

[Douglas43]

Just for interest, this is what the EBU does. However, procedures are slightly different even between the countries in the UK. I suppose one day all the governing bodies will agree a uniform set of procedures for alerts and announcements.

Bid (ebu.co.uk)

[blackshoe]

I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, Douglas. :-)