[blml] Alerting Rules [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Guthrie]

[Eric Landau]
In order to properly meet their L40B full disclosure
obligation under Nigel's "standard system" proposal,
99.99% of partnerships would need to achieve a mastery
of the details of that system at a level well beyond
their understanding of the system they have chosen to
play.

[James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, page 183]
"Berkeley political scientist Chandra Nemeth has shown
in a host of studies of mock juries that the presence
of a minority viewpoint, all by itself, makes a group's
decisions more nuanced and its decision-making process
more rigorous.  This is true even when the minority
viewpoint turns out to be ill-conceived."

[Richard Hills]
So the ill-conceived bee-in-bonnet hobby-horse views of
Nigel Guthrie (and Herman De Wael) have caused postings
by other blmlers to be more nuanced and rigorous, such
as the excellently nuanced point propounded by Eric
Landau (with John Probst concurring).

  :-)

Furthermore, it is not always the case that Nigel's
minority viewpoints are ill-conceived.  For example,
Nigel validly buzzes with his bee-in-bonnet assertion
that the 1997 version of Law 76 could be substantially
improved in the next edition of the Lawbook.

[nige1]
I don't fully accept Eric Landau' criticism.

I concede that disclosure from a standard system is unlikely to 
completely satisfy L40B obligations.

All that I claim is that current disclosure regulations are a greater 
memory burden and perform worse in that area.

The disclosure rules that I advocate do have drawbacks but they are 
still better conceived than current disclosure laws and regulations.

If your opponents are acquaintances or friends then their methods are 
likely to be familiar. Hence disclosure is no a great problem.

Efficient disclosure is most important when your opponents are 
strangers or foreigners. Now, what is perfectly natural to you may 
seem bizarre to them. And vice versa.

Currently, each local legislature has different disclosure 
regulations. Implicit in each, is an enormous set of local norms from 
which you disclose departures.

Hence, effectively, these regulations define an unplayable mishmash of 
local systems. You must learn a different set of arbitrary regulations 
for each country in which you play bridge.

Well, that is not quite true. Fortunately, on-line bridge is rapidly 
evolving simpler legislation. On multi-national Bridge web-sites, 
almost everybody *can* play a coherent basic system (based on strong 
notrump, Stayman, transfers, five card majors, weak twos in three 
suits, weak jump overcalls and so on). Hence you are expected to 
disclose departures from that standard.

It seems to work OK, in practice.  There is less to learn and 
consequently fewer mistakes than with (say) EBU alerting regulations.

Whatever system a player normally employs, the standard system is a 
boon for beginners, pick-up partnerships, individual tournaments (and 
international competitions staged for PR and a wide audience).

Richard is right that: like Herman, I find it strange that most 
BLMLers see no merit in my arguments on this issue (although I am 
grateful to receive supportive private correspondence).

As current internet trends continue, however, and the merits of 
simpler disclosure practices become apparent to more players, this 
debate may well become academic.