[blml] L9A vs L73B1

[Alain Gottcheiner]

At 12:17 5/03/2007 +0100, Herman De Wael wrote:

> > Is south allowed to ask the meaning, or draw attention to the
> > alertability of 1C?

He just needs to ask. Alerts are for letting know ; questions too. The 
question solves what the failure to alert entangled. When it appears that 
the bid should have been alerted, every player's duty is to call for the TD 
; most wouldn't care about that as there was no damage, but that's another 
story. The overcaller isn't more bound to do it than other players at the 
table.

Yas, "failure to protect oneself" might be argued in such an obvious case.

I've about the same problem, except that the distinction is between forcing 
or not. In cases of doubt, I ask 'forcing or not ?' and that's that. This 
is one problem that may prove harder to solve *with* screens, as a case in 
Belgian championship has shown : when the explanation is slightly different 
on both sides of the screen, a complete SNAFU may ensue.

>Herman : BTW2, I find it stupid that the NBB make such a distinction, and I
>find players even more stupid that insist on playing diamonds 4, when
>they know that over their 1Cl they can expect anything.
>But then I'm only Belgian. ;)

FWIW, I'm Belgian too, and I like to play against players who use transfer 
overcalls ; this gives us so much space !
I even play 5-card diamonds with some partners, and have scored heavily 
against pairs that were willing to treat our 1C as conventional.

Best regards

    Alain