Full Disclosure
Colin and I play a weird system by North American standards. We play a strong forcing club which eliminates most players. We play canape with four card majors. An opening bid of one diamond suggests that we do not have even a four card major. That is really very strange to most players. We also play Multi, 11-3 notrump not vulnerable and 14-16 vulnerable and our major suit two bids show a major and a minor weak. Even our responses to one of a major are odd with transfer responses and two clubs as a game force requesting opener to describe their shape. We usually tell some of this to players who have not seen us play before we start and we do self alert on BBO but perhaps not as much as we should.
Yesterday I was startled by a complain by an opponent. It didn’t really affect the actual auction but he felt we should have alerted. It started 1NT 14-16 which was alerted and the two clubs Stayman which was not alerted. We do play forcing and nonforcing Stayman so when we bid two clubs it does suggest that we have an invitational hand (less frequently a weaker hand). But that was not the complaint exactly. I responded two diamonds, no major and Colin bid two spades which has to be a five card suit or longer in any system and normally invitational. That is what they complained about. They felt Colin should alert two spades and say it was five or longer and invitational. Oddly enough they had a very similiar auction later which they did not alert and which had the same meaning. (Being me, I did point it out to them).
They asked that since it was a system with “screens” that we alert everything. So I did. 1H, four plus hearts, could have a longer minor, could have four spades, 11-16 HCP, generally unbalanced unless it is in our notrump range.
Every bid and every response carries a lot of meaning and it did take forever to type it all (not to mention that it is error prone).
I think there is a lot of validity in their comments and having the behind screen self alert on BBO is nice. Colin used to have the convention card set up so it did some of this automatically. I will ask him to do it again.
Still alerting normal Stayman auctions (other than saying nonforcing Stayman perhaps) seems a bit much.
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In the UK I would expect the most common meaning for 1NT-2C-2D-2S to be weak with 5 spades and 4 hearts. Unless 2C had been alerted as inv+ then we would not expect 2S to be invitational.
However we also would be unlikely to complain, especially as it is unclear that it is alertable, and hard to see how much damage could be done.
Your system would not raise too many eyebrows here either 🙂
All power to you for your system – my system du jour with two partners is big club, 4cM, possible canape (but with a symmetric relay system tacked on). Maybe we should compare notes one day. But this is the antipodes not the ACBL, so no one much cares when we sit down and go through our pre-alerts.
Onto the subject of on-line alerts – I go out of my way to alert (privately, of course) anything and everything, as I would if I was behind screens. But I am in such a small minority that I sometimes feel like a geek and wonder why I bother. Actually I bother because I (WE) play a game based on full disclosure. To be sure it a pain in the bum to actually have to TYPE and mouseclick when I’m playing, but I guess I care more than most.
nick
sydney
I agree with you both but I don’t really want to have to type a lot just as I am making my bid and everyone is waiting. Maybe I could put up the alert button and type in the details while the opponents start to bid. If they need the information first they have an easy way to ask me.
For online alerts I now tend to alert and bid, without typing in the explanation. Like Linda I am alerting a lot, but they can ask if they really need to know and it does not slow down the game.
If particularly unusual I will add a brief explanation afterwards.