In the past, it was permitted to request one's opponents not to alert. The EBU (and others) have removed this option and from time to time people ask why. David Burn gave a long answer to "why" on RGB which I have pointed to in subsequent threads. It always takes a long time to track down the original posting, so I am copying it here (without permission).
Prologue
David Burn wrote in message news:38C7B408.92CA38A3@btinternet.com: Since I actually do know the answer to the question of why the L&E Committee of the EBU decided that players should not be given the option to ask opponents not to alert, I am prepared to tell anyone who may still be interested.
Ian Payn wrote: Go on, then...
Don Varvel wrote in message news:38C9E205.BBFA1314@ihome.com: I'm still reading too, and curious.
Alerting mania
Newsgroups: rec.games.bridge From: "David Burn" Date: 2000/03/11 Subject: Re: alerting mania
What follows is long and not especially interesting. However, since various people have expressed an interest in it anyway, I will summarise the thinking which led the L&E Committee of the EBU to remove from players the right (which they had previously enjoyed) to request that the opponents not alert conventional calls that would otherwise require an alert. I will also attempt to show some of the reasons why EBU alerting regulations are as they are.
What is the purpose of an alert? It is to make the opponents aware that what they might expect a call to mean is not what it in fact means. To let the opponents know what your auction means is a requirement of the Laws:
Law 40B
A player may not make a call or play based on a special partnership understanding unless an opposing pair may reasonably be expected to understand its meaning, or unless his side discloses the use of such call or play in accordance with the regulations of the sponsoring organisation.
and the alert procedure in its various forms is the almost universal way of implementing the required disclosure. One could argue, in fact, that if I make a call whose meaning I believe that you, my opponent, may not reasonably be expected to understand, it would be *illegal* for our side not to alert. Therefore, you could not require our side not to alert since you cannot require us to break the Laws. However, it would be possible for the SO to incorporate in its regulations a clause saying that you do have the right to forbid alerts. The question is: why has the EBU not done this?
Now, whereas it would be theoretically possible to have a "free-wheeling" procedure under which players use their judgement about what opponents might reasonably expect a call to mean, such a procedure would not be at all satisfactory for a number of what I hope are obvious reasons. Therefore, the great majority of SOs make regulations as to what does and does not require an alert, without reference to what the opponents may reasonably be expected to understand. The approaches adopted vary from SO to SO. In England, we have a relatively simple rule that you alert anything which is not natural [for example, Stayman], and anything which though natural is "unexpectedly" forcing or not forcing as the case may be [for example, 1H (1S) 2D non-forcing]. You also alert anything which, though natural, is affected by other parts of your methods in a way that the opponents might not expect [for example, if you play that double of a 4C splinter requests a heart lead, then you should alert a pass of a 4C splinter].
This, of course, leads to some anomalies - the requirement to alert Stayman is the subject of frequent and not unjustified ridicule. However, it has long been the L&E's policy that the great majority of tournament players know the current rules (which partially cover three sides of A5 paper) and, though they may grumble about some of them, by now even the "irrational" rules have become firmly-ingrained habits which it would be folly to ask players to break. It would be possible to create exceptions to the basic rules in order to conform more closely to the intent of Law 40B - to ensure, in other words, that only genuinely unexpected calls were alertable - but this would require a far more complex and far more volatile set of regulations (such as presently exist in the ACBL, for example). It is our experience that the vast majority of players do not care what the rules actually are, as long as they are comprehensible and they don't change.
Contributors to this list and to this thread are, of course, not among that "vast majority of players", a fact which some of them would do well to bear in mind. There is a view that in certain positions, alerts do not work for the benefit of the opponents (who do not care what the auction means while it's happening, because they have no intention of bidding anyway and can find out at the end), but do work to the benefit of the alerting side (because they help to avert possible misunderstandings). Now, unlike previous defenders of the EBU position, I am not going to pretend that this is not true in a small minority of cases. Of course, there are people who will think for some time about partner's bid of 4NT and then alert it, in order to make sure that partner knows that the forthcoming bid relates to the number of aces in the hand and not the number of cards in the suit bid. Of course, there are practitioners of relay systems who ensure that their auctions stay on the straight and narrow by alerting anything to which they are going to give a conventional response and - worse - not alerting anything over which they want to bid the final contract. Such people are cheating; they are intentionally breaking the Laws:
Law 73A1
Communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of the calls and plays themselves.
Law 73B1
Partners shall not communicate through the manner in which calls or plays are made, through extraneous remarks or gestures, through questions asked or not asked of the opponents or through alerts and explanations given or not given to them.
If you suspect that your opponents are going to indulge in such practices, does it not make sense that you should be able to remove the illegal means by which they communicate, through asking them not to use it? No, it does not. You are at the bridge table to abide by the Laws, but that is the extent of your concern - the actions and the consciences of your opponents have nothing to do with you. You are not at the bridge table to enforce the Laws. That is the responsibility of the tournament director, to whose attention you should draw any irregularity that you think has been committed, and let him deal with it.
Nor are you at the bridge table to call your opponents cheats. The only reason you could have for asking the opponents not to alert is that you suspect they will use their alerts to their benefit. A lot of the "experience" to which David Stevenson alluded was of precisely that nature; this exchange used to happen with some regularity:
| G: | "Don't bother to alert your bids." |
| H: | "Why not? Are you suggesting...?" |
Of course, G was indeed suggesting that H and his partner might be a pair of cheats, but since he could not say this, he would bluster something nonsensical and the game would invariably begin in a spirit of acrimony.
This, however, was not the main difficulty. The fact of the matter is that the great majority of pairs are not cheats. Players who use complex methods that require frequent alerts are, by and large, aware of their ethical responsibilities and take care not to use information from partner's alerts. Auctions in which such information may be made available and used are in any case uncommon.
But the average player has a lot to contend with in terms of the alerting regulations anyway. Though they are, as I have said, relatively simple, they are not trivial. It is enough to expect players to know *what* they should alert. It is too much to expect players to remember *whether* they should alert at all because five minutes ago this particular opponent asked them not to. Another part of our "experience" was this common scenario:
| G: | "Don't bother to alert" |
| (never, incidentally, "Please do not alert", for the point is to instil a sense of inferiority and trepidation). | |
| H: | "OK then". |
One the second board of the match, H would forget and alert Stayman, or something else innocuous. G would sigh, roll his eyes to the heavens, and say in a long-suffering tone: "We did ask you...". H would be discomfited, and for the rest of the match he would be concentrating hard on breaking the habits of alerting that are second nature to the way he normally plays. This, of course, would impair his concentration on the bridge itself, with the inevitable consequences.
The simple fact of the matter was that the "Do not alert" gambit was not itself free from taint. Most of the time, its effect was not to prevent illegal communication but to intimidate - and that, in a number of cases, was precisely what its practitioners intended. Whereas the chance that illegal communication will occur is small on any given deal, the chance that a player will find himself disadvantaged by having his habitual practices disrupted - practices normally required by the Laws - is not inconsiderable.
Another part of our experience was this:
| G: | "Don't bother to alert." |
| H: | "OK then. Three hearts." |
Three hearts showed a spade pre-empt. Now, the only way for G and his partner to discover this would be to look at the convention card (or ask H's partner) - but they would have to do this even when it showed a heart pre-empt, so that vast amounts of time were being wasted while "don't alert" pairs found out that their opponents were conducting an entirely natural auction. Moreover, you would be surprised - for all of you are pure in heart - at the number of ways there are to look at an opponent's convention card in order to ensure that your partner will know that your three spades overcall is for takeout on *this* occasion. More time had to be wasted at the end of just about every auction while the "don't alert" pair found out what it meant. And, of course, the "don't alert" pair were at a considerable disadvantage when it came to avoiding the transmission of unauthorised information in a number of quite simple positions. Suppose you had:
xx AKJ10x xxx Axx
and RHO responded 2D to LHO's 1NT. Now, if that were natural and non-forcing you'd want to bid 2H, but if it were a transfer that's the last thing you'd want to do. So you'd ask, be told it was a transfer, and pass it. Now everyone at the table would know you had hearts - partner could not act on this information (though that did not usually stop him), but the opponents could. You may say that the "don't alert" pair had only themselves to blame for this, and I may agree with you - but part of our responsibility as a governing body is to prevent people from breaking the Laws if we can.
In summary, the main reasons why we do not permit pairs to prevent their opponents from alerting are:
- To avoid the unpleasantness inherent in any such request by people who see it as a slur on their integrity (which, of course, it is);
- To avoid players being placed in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar position through having to change firmly-ingrained habits of alerting;
- To prevent the waste of time that happens when auctions have to be rehashed at the end of every hand; and
- To prevent the transmission of unauthorised information that will inevitably occur during some unalerted auctions.
These reasons are not arbitrary; they are (as David Stevenson suggested) based on the considerable experience of members of the then L&E Committee, all seasoned tournament players though possessing varying levels of expertise.
We acknowledge that information may be illegally transmitted through alerts, but we do not believe that it is for the players to attempt to prevent this, any more than it is for the players to attempt to prevent any other breach of Law by their opponents. If players have reason to believe that a breach of Law has occurred, their proper course is to summon the tournament director and seek the protection that the Laws afford them.
I hope that this has been helpful. I am of course prepared to discuss the question further should this be thought of interest. I should say in conclusion that I am a member (and former Chairman) of the L&E Committee, but that although I have attempted to represent its position as fairly as I am able, none of the above should in any sense be considered an official opinion.
David Burn London, England
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