[BudH]

I am the head (game) director at an ACBL club in northern Indiana. Recently, we are having a serious problem which threatens to reduce the enjoyment of many of the players at the club.

Many of you will read the reason and scoff and think it not a big deal. But it has the potential to be a very big deal and we are losing members due to this issue and our table count is down significantly the last few months. Plus, when we have a novice/intermediate game scheduled but only two or three pairs show up, they do not want to play in our open game, often because of the reason I am about to describe.

So what is this issue?

A small minority of players whose bidding is highly unusual (very/extremely light or bidding suits with much less than expected length) which is making many of our members very unhappy - including some no longer playing at our club.

Two frequent examples:

1. Opening the bidding with 8 or 9 HCP in first or second seat with no redeeming feature to the hand, e.g., I've seen 5-3-3-2 average looking hands opened 1S with 8 or 9 HCP as dealer. (We are not talking about two-suiters with great spot cards and playing strength.) It's as if this player, who has more than 4,000 masterpoints, says to herself "I paid my $7 so I'm going to bid and who cares what happens." This doesn't happen on all hands of this type. But often enough that our members are complaining about it. And it sometimes turns the game into a crapshoot depending on which hands she decides to do this, since her partner has to guess whether this is the time not to force to game if this player opened ultra light.

2. Opening weak 2-bids and 3-bids, or making weak jump overcalls, with extremely weak hands and shorter than expected suit lengths. For example, 2-level bids with very poor 5-card suits, 3-level bids with very poor 6-card suits (and sometimes 5-card suits when non-vulnerable). Again, we have been seeing more and more complaints about this, also.

There is also a belief that both members in a partnership cannot have significantly different styles. And even if this is an allowed practice, how are the opponents reasonably informed one and only one opponent bids very light (or lighter)?

1. CAN TWO MEMBERS OF A PARTNERSHIP HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT STYLES? IF SO, WHAT MUST THE PARTNERSHIP DO? (I believe this is generally allowed, and needs to be pre-alerted before each round. Besides, weren't Bergen-Cohen in the late 1980s a good example of this?)

2. CAN AN ACBL CLUB VARY THE INFORMATION I HAVE QUOTED BELOW IN DUPLICATE DECISIONS? (Example: Can the "8 HCP rule" for opening bids mentioned be changed to a 10 HCP rule by club policy?

Please also realize that to stop or limit these players, I will need to produce in writing everything needed to prove the club can limit their very (extremely) light actions.

Relevant quotes from the Laws and ACBL's Duplicate Decisions below.

Bud Hinckley

------------

From the Laws of Duplicate Bridge:

The Regulating Authority may prescribe alerting procedures and/or other methods of disclosure of a partnership’s methods. It may vary the general requirement that the meaning of a call or play shall not alter by reference to the member of the partnership by whom it is made. Such a regulation must not restrict style and judgment, only method.

From ACBL Duplicate Decisions (2008):

ACBL has established for all sanctioned events:
b. regulations for the use of the [convention/system] card, including the requirement that both partners use identical method. This requirement does not extend to style and judgment.
c. a regulation that both members of a partnership must have the same point limits for an opening bid of 1NT. (NOTE: One partner could play that he never opens 1NT holding a five-card major. Since this is style, the sponsoring organization has no control over this under the Law.)
d. a regulation barring opening one bids which may, by agreement, be made on fewer than 8 HCP (not applicable to a psych).
f. a regulation barring conventional responses or rebids of any kind when the agreed range of a weak two-bid is greater than 7 HCP or the suit could contain fewer than five cards.

Both members of a partnership must use the same system. They must use identical methods. Style may be different and, of course, judgment may vary.

Deviation … a bid in which the strength of the hand is within a queen of the agreed or announced strength, and the bid is of a suit of ample length or of notrump… the length of the suit varies by no more than one card from the agreed or announced length and the hand contains ample high-card values for the bid in the system being played. If either of these situations occurs, it is easy to see by repeating the definition of a psych (a deliberate and gross misstatement of honor strength or suit length) that a deviation is NOT a PSYCH. However, frequent deviations may indicate that the pair has an undisclosed implied agreement acquired through experience.

END OF QUOTES

[hrothgar]

This isn't an issue for the director.

In the ACBL, the owner / manager of a club can do whatever they damn well please so long as they keep paying their sanction fees.
If the club owner decides that its a good business decision to bar a pair for being disruptive they are fully empowered to do so.

From what I can tell, this is a political / business decision.

I think that it is a mistake to muddy the waters by trying to invent some bridge related justification for a business decision.
Moreover, I think that you as a director are far better served by keeping as far away from this pissing match as possible.

Me, I'd throw the issue back to the club owner / management and tell them to keep their own house in order.

If you really decided that you want to step into the *****, I suggest using the Endicott Fudge.

The sponsoring organization's ability to regulate conventions is absolute.
Ban the pair from using any conventions EVER
They'll get the message...

[Vampyr]

It would surprise me if ACBL clubs weren't permitted to issue their own systems regulations.

[billw55]

Generally agree with horthgar. Business decision.

From the club owner/manager standpoint, it sounds like a decision between barring individual players, or adopting hard rules about opening bids. Be aware that the latter is something of a rabbit hole: it would effectively disallow/penalize psyches by other players, and the club might find that they have to regulate all sorts of bids (one over one with 2 points ... etc).

As a compromise, perhaps offer one game a week where these bids are allowed.

[Vampyr]

If more than one pair is causing the problem, banning them will not work.

I don't think that establishing, say, rule of 19 as a minimum permitted opening bid will lead to penalties for players who psyche. Of course all you can regulate is agreements, which can get tricky when one partner is doing something their partner has not agreed to, and perhaps even disapproves of. But if you can keep track of these openings, and if they occur more than once every 2, 5,10, or whatever number you choose sessions, then you could deem them to be psyching the same kind of bid too frequently. I am not sure how you enforce this though; perhaps rule every future occurrence as red.

Often the concern with frequent deviations or psyches is that there is an implicit CPU. I have always felt that protecting the opponents is as important or more.

[helene_t]

You don't have to apply GCC. You can require rule of 19 or w/e for 1st/second seat openings and require a jump overcall or weak two opening to show at least six cards or five to three honours. And if people deviate from their agreements, record it and penalize them if they do it often enough to establish an implicit agreement.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2017-January-27, 02:54, said:

It would surprise me if ACBL clubs weren't permitted to issue their own systems regulations.

They are. For the purposes of applying the Laws, the club is the Regulating Authority, except for special games that are played across multiple clubs (e.g. inter-club championships, STACs, Worldwide Pairs).

Most clubs adopt GCC and ACBL Alert Procedures for simplicity, but they're free to come up with their own regulations, or supplement those regulations.

[weejonnie]

barmar, on 2017-January-27, 10:30, said:

They are. For the purposes of applying the Laws, the club is the Regulating Authority, except for special games that are played across multiple clubs (e.g. inter-club championships, STACs, Worldwide Pairs).

Most clubs adopt GCC and ACBL Alert Procedures for simplicity, but they're free to come up with their own regulations, or supplement those regulations.

Subject to the proviso, of course, that the regulations cannot breach the laws of bridge e.g. psychs. But if they want to allow players to open at the 1 level with 5 HCP then that's fine. In England, a club could, for instance, ask that only a 1NT call NOT of strength 12 - 14 be announced.

[mycroft]

I refer you to my previous comment on what I asssume is the same player. Also note the ACBL statement on psychic bidding. Please note that Duplicate Decisions is a *rewording and guide*, not in fact regulations.

Note that any attempt to quantify a Deviation (at least, what gross is) founders. Opening a 12-21 1♥ call on a spectacular 10? Yeah, so? Opening a 12-14 1NT with an average 10? That's gross. Opening Flannery on a 4-4 12-count that isn't 8542 AKQT? That's also gross, because of why you bid Flannery.

But this is not a psychic, it's a partnership understanding gained through experience, and as such is disclosable. If the club and its players are okay with playing against it if it's properly Pre-Alerted (and they're not doing things like playing "8-21 against weak players, 12-21 against players who can defend"), then fine. If it's the actions that are the problem (or the player, especially his behaviour when one of his adventures works), then here we go.

As everyone is saying, it's a business decision. If this person's actions are hurting business, and the person will not accede to the club's requests to not do this in this game, then the club's ultimate response is to trade his money for the money of the people who aren't coming. "I paid my $7, I get to bid what I want"? Okay, "Sorry, I'm not allowed to accept your money. Please come back in March and you and the club can have a discussion about what circumstances you will be welcome here again." As I said last time, ensure that the club has all their ducks in a row, because you will have a fight, but:

Quote

No open club may bar an ACBL member or members as a class, based upon the player’s race, creed, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation, national origin, and physical handicap or on his proficiency at bridge.
[...]
Except as detailed [...], a club may bar an ACBL member for whatever reason it deems proper and consistent with ACBL Rules and Regulations and the Laws of Duplicate Bridge. An obnoxious or incompatible partnership may be barred as a pair, but each may be permitted to play with other partners.

Now, say you do not wish to go that ultimate route. As an ACBL club, you have delegated RA powers. You can choose, provided it's clearly posted, to play your open games under any system regulations you see fit. With the rise of "RA can regulate special partnership understandings", you can choose to prohibit "any agreement that would be Pre-Alertable per the Alert Procedure" or anything that sees fit; and while the occasional psychic is allowed, repeated deviations (or psychics) in the same manner will develop an implicit partnership understanding, and if that understanding is not permitted at this club, then they're playing an illegal agreement. There are issues with this, as well - not least what I said last time about "what happens when your protected club pairs go to tournaments and people play these 'illegal' systems against them". Note that if you do this, you can not institute it for just one player - all players who violate *your club's* regulation must be treated equally.

You can bring it down to "If this is not your agreement, then partner *may not* compensate for the 'psychic'. If she does - anything that attempts to cater for a psychic, like 'guessing' not to GF on a GF hand - then *that* is an illegal agreement and you will be punished. If this *is* your agreement, you must Pre-Alert it, every round, every partner, and if it doesn't happen all the time, you must be able to explain what circumstances such a call is likely. If you can not do that to a reasonable specification, again, you may not have this agreement."

I'm guessing the likeliest thing is to have a discussion with club management, explain the situation, and get permission to tell this player that he either shapes up and quits screwing around (or does it consistently and with clear agreements), or he will earn himself an "invitation to the world" for a month or two. AND THEN DO IT, if the behaviour continues, or it will just get worse. If he's in with the club management, well, then you have a problem, and you're going to have to present a *very good* case, or watch the game die.

[barmar]

The ACBL Alert Procedure says that if you play aggressive actions like this, you're required to pre-alert them. But I can easily imagine that this wouldn't really appease the other players. Their problem isn't not knowing that it might happen (they know -- that's why they've stopped coming), it's that they don't know how to deal with it when they have to play against this pair, and it makes the game less fun for them.

It's not unlike the feeling that many players have about players who psych frequently. This month's ACBL Bulletin has a letter to the editor from a flight C player asking about psychs. He was playing in a stratified game at a regional, and ran into a flight A pair who "stole" a board from them by psyching in their 2♣ auction. He asked a TD for rectification, and was told that the fact that they didn't have methods to deal with opponents psyching was just tough luck. Isn't that a bit disingenuous?

The letter ended with a suggestion that psychs should only be allowed in open, not stratified, events (and presumably also in novice events). It's not clear to me that even this would be very helpful. How many pairs actually have discussed methods to expose psychic bidding by their opponents? For all but the top echelon of players, just having good agreements in ordinary constructive and competitive auctions is a challenge. Where would someone even learn how to deal with psychs? I don't think I've ever seen an article in the Bulletin or Bridge World about it.

I think the feeling many players have about this is that if they wanted to play a game where you have to guess if the opponents have what their actions imply, they'd be playing poker, not bridge.

[Phil]

BudH, on 2017-January-26, 19:28, said:

I am the head (game) director at an ACBL club in northern Indiana. Recently, we are having a serious problem which threatens to reduce the enjoyment of many of the players at the club.

I know, the man with the orange face got elected and we're all pretty sad about it too. Wait for four years or impeachment.

[barmar]

Phil, on 2017-January-27, 18:08, said:

I know, the man with the orange face got elected and we're all pretty sad about it too. Wait for four years or impeachment.

Many of us go to the bridge club to forget about things like this for a few hours.

[blackshoe]

Folks, this is not going to turn into a political discussion.

[jeffford76]

blackshoe, on 2017-January-28, 15:56, said:

Folks, this is not going to turn into a political discussion.

Apparently it's not going to turn into a discussion at all.