Advice on style for contributions to rec.games.bridge
David Stevenson
Advice on style for contributions to rec.games.bridge
*****************************************************
Last modified: 2010-06-21
GENERAL
The quality of a newsgroup will benefit if its community adheres to
certain conventions in presentation and style. In this posting we
provide some suggestions concerning contributions to rec.games.bridge.
We claim no authority, but hope that contributors to RGB will be able
to use these suggestions to their advantage.
RGB is a *text* group. Like chess, RGB has some particular problems
due to presenting hands and auctions. It is all too easy to make your
article difficult to read on other members' computers. However using
the formatting tips given herein will avoid such problems and keep
discussion flowing smoothly. There are a few things in particular that
recur and should be avoided:
1) Do not use tabs in formatting as this in particular can ruin hand
records with certain news readers.
2) Do not use proportional fonts for the same reason. (If your reader
is presently set to proportional the example deals below will not align
correctly).
3) State where you are posting from as the answers to many laws and
bidding questions will depend on this.
4) Include the form of scoring and vulnerability if asking how to
bid/play a hand.
5) Post using a text format. No binaries, no HTML, no attachments, no
files, no pictures, no music, no MIME documents.
6) When posting complete hands, check and recheck that they have exactly
thirteen cards, and that no cards are duplicated between two or more
hands.
7) Do not use hands from online bridge games before they have been
retired by that game.
These are discussed in more detail below.
Richard Pavlicek has also written a Bridge Writing Style Guide with
much good advice. It may be seen at http://www.rpbridge.net/7z69.htm.
Alternatively you can download a PDF version at
http://www.rpbridge.net/p/7z69.pdf.
INFORMATION ON THE WEB
This posting is not the rgb.FAQ, which was a separate document for the
group containing 'frequently asked questions' (FAQ), but is no longer
available. Here is a quick to various online information:
The Laws of Bridge : http://blakjak.org/lws_lnks.htm
International Appeals : http://home.worldcom.ch/~fsb/appealse.html
ACBL home page : http://www.acbl.org
Great Bridge Links : http://www.greatbridgelinks.com
Bridge Newsgroups : http://blakjak.org/br_ngrps.htm
Online Bridge : http://www.greatbridgelinks.com/gblPLAY/
National organisations : http://blakjak.org/brg_lnkn.htm
Rulings forums : http://blakjak.org/iblf.htm
NETIQUETTE
The newsgroup news.announce.newusers regularly provides an
introduction to the general rules and etiquette of net use. You will
find there much commonsense advice: your postings reflect upon you,
compose your text carefully, be brief, use a descriptive subject header,
summarize previous posts to which you are responding, don't quote more
material than is necessary, restrict your lines to 72 characters, sign
your articles. You will find there also a discussion of the disease of
mushrooming meta-discussions, suggestions about when to use private
email rather than the net, suggestions about ignoring or dealing with
postings that are deemed inappropriate, obnoxious or silly, advice about
proper procedure in quoting previous posts and private email, and much
else.
It is important that you use a text format and a Fixed Font: details
of how to do this with Outlook Express may be found at
http://blakjak.org/out_exp.htm. Do not use HTML or post MIME documents,
and do not include any attachments, so no binaries, no files, no
pictures, no music.
RGB is an international group, and it helps particularly to identify
your country in postings, as many issues may be specific to it. It is
polite to give your real name, and Town/City. A short sigfile such as:
--
John B Doe - Cambridge Mass. USA
... will make replies to your query or point much more meaningful.
General Netiquette asks you to restrict sigs to maximum 4 text lines.
The special "-- " (3 character line) prefix [called a "sig separator"]
allows good news programs to snip out the sig automatically when others
reply. Unfortunately some Microsoft products [eg Hotmail via a web
browser] will forcibly change a "-- " line in a posting into "--",
making the sig separator ineffective.
When responding to a post you should include enough of the question so
that people know to what you are replying but delete enough [called
"snipping"] so that people do not have to read large chunks they have
already read earlier. Such editing can be quite an art. Look over
other postings to see what is excessive editing, or clutter from too
much repetition. You should nearly always edit out sigfiles if your
reader does not do this.
Try to snip in such a way as not to misattribute quotations, and
especially when quoting someone in order to disagree with them, try not
to distort their position through careless cutting.
SUBJECTS
Some people put problems in the subject lines. For example, the
subject might read "What do you bid with AKQx Jxx xxx xxx?".
If you do this, it is important to repeat the content in the body of
the article. If a hand is included then it is important that is
repeated in a way that is easily readable - see next
section.
HAND DIAGRAMS
It is helpful to your readers if you follow a minimal standard format
when posting a hand or a deal. Count the cards! Check there are no
duplications! List the suits in the order S, H, D, C. In a diagram of
four hands, place South at the bottom and rearrange the directions to
make South declarer unless there is a special reason not to. Do not use
the tab key to compose a diagram, as the diagram may become misaligned
on other people's screens and is very likely to become misaligned if
your text is quoted and indented. If only two hands are shown it may be
better to place them side by side as West and East, and a single hand
can be specified inline. Please do not use proportional fonts: this is
also important.
The exact distribution of small cards is often relevant for signalling
and for communication between the hands, so please do not use xx's to
represent small cards when discussing a play problem, and in a bidding
problem use xx's only when they may truly be understood to represent the
smallest cards in the suit. If you are posting a deal from actual play
and you've forgotten all the small cards, then it may be best to make
them up in some way so that this newsgroup has a precisely specified
problem to consider.
There are some defensive problems where one wants to "filter out"
signalling issues, emphasizing inferences from bidding and declarer's
play. In such cases, use of xx's may avoid peripheral concerns.
Here are some minor points to improve readability. The symbol "T" for
10 is common and its use is recommended, particularly if you don't use
spaces between cards. In the auction, use P or Pass and X or Dbl rather
than PASS and DBL. A vertical layout for the suits in the North and
South hands is difficult to read, please don't use that format. Cards
are always specified suit first and bids level first (so D2 is a card
and 2D is a bid or contract). Please capitalize the symbols AKQJT and
use lower-case "x" for the unspecified small cards.
When recapping the auction, make sure that East's bids are to the
right of West's, else readers may associate the bids with the wrong
hand. The recommended format is to list the bids in four columns in the
order W-N-E-S. Note all alertable bids and explain the bid in context.
Do not explain a bid by convention name if it is not one of the standard
bids or if you play some variation that is not standard. You can avoid
confusion by describing a bid rather than naming it.
Some people have small screens, and it is helpful if they do not have
to continually scroll up and down to read a hand. Thus a helpful
diagram is quite small. Height tends to be more of a problem than width
and the example below (in a 72 character width) will be legible almost
anywhere. Note that if its columns don't line up then your news program
needs setting to fixed font!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brd: 1 S KT83 Pairs | W N E S
Dlr: N H A5 | 1C(1) P 1H(2)
Vul: NS D AJ62 | P P P
C J73 |
S A97 S J652 |
H T832 H K7 |
D KT75 D 943 | (1) alerted, explained only as
C 98 C KQ65 | "could be short"
S Q4 |
Opening H QJ964 Result: | (2) less than 10 points,
lead: D5 D Q8 +140 NS | non-forcing, not alerted
C AT42 |
N/S are playing a system where you need a five card suit to open 1D,
1H or 1S. 1C is marked as forcing, 13-15 if balanced.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Play problems where only two hands are shown are easier to read if
declarer is shown as West and dummy as East. For example:
A97 J652 | West deals and opens 1NT.
AT32 K7 | Everyone passes and North leads
KT75 943 | H5. How do you play?
J8 KQ65 |
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
When you post a bidding problem, supply the method of scoring, the
vulnerability and the position of the dealer. Do this even if you think
the information is superfluous; it seldom is, and takes up very little
space.
When you post a play problem, always state the contract, lead, and who
is declarer. Even if it is obvious [for example if the bidding is
given] this aids clarity. The declarer is especially important if you
have been unable to rotate it to make South declarer [or West if only
two hands are shown].
When you post a play problem, also, as a matter of routine, mention
the method of scoring and the vulnerability. It is normally right to
provide the bidding too. Whenever possible, please give the level of
the event. Also specify the type of defensive carding that is being
used if relevant.
When asking for a director's ruling on a particular deal, describe the
level of the event and any relevant circumstances, specify all four
hands, and describe the bidding and play completely. (In cases
involving unauthorized information you can alternatively provide only
the authorized information and ask what are the logical options.)
It is also *extremely* important when asking for a Director's ruling
to quote where the event is, what jurisdiction, and what level of event.
You may often get a quite different decision depending on local rules
or the standard of play involved.
STYLE
Many postings on RGB are in the "What went wrong?" category. A good
original posting of that type describes a deal and bidding or play that
is, in the poster's humble opinion, reasonable and without obvious
error, but that has led to an unsatisfactory result. The poster asks
whether some particular action is to blame or whether the result is just
unfortunate. Deals in which the poster already recognizes that some
error has been committed normally do not provide good material for
discussion. Please do not pose problems of which one component is
partnership misunderstanding, partnership mistrust, or flouting of
partnership agreements. The net can't help with those problems except
by impressing upon you that partnership understanding and partnership
trust are preconditions for a good game of bridge.
In consideration of your worldwide audience, please avoid bridge
slang: "a hook", "to tap", or "red on white" may not be as clear to
everyone as "a finesse", "force to ruff", or "vul v not". Note
especially that the terms "red", "white" and "green" for
vulnerabilities have different meanings for different people. Also
remember that what is a standard bid to you may mean something else on
another part of the globe. In particular, remember that 1NT may be
12-14 and 1H may not promise 5 cards.
RESPONSES
It is not normally correct to solicit email replies because there are
always some other members of the newsgroup who are interested in replies
to any problem. It is satisfactory to ask for email replies as well as
posts.
If you are taking a poll or compiling a list, an alternative to
consider is to request replies by email and then post a summary of the
results. You should make clear that you are doing this since it is
rarely done. If someone does send you email, it is polite to respond
with at least a brief acknowledgement. Please remember to post the
summary you promise! If people have gone to the trouble of replying,
they are likely to be interested in the results.
Before posting a reply to a problem, think it through. Read all the
other postings in the same thread; maybe somebody else has already said
what you were going to say. Reply only if you believe you are qualified
and have an informed opinion, and compose your answer carefully - the
time spent on doing so will save your readers much more time in the
aggregate. Remember that it is only the careful reasoning that you
supply that makes your answer of any interest to the RGB readers. If
you are addressing a bidding problem, explain why your chosen bid is
superior to the likely alternatives. If it is a play problem, try to
provide percentages. If it is a director's problem, state the legal
basis for your ruling. Please appreciate that a question that appears
trivial to you was not trivial to the original poster and may not be
trivial to many other readers. Be polite, succinct and to the point.
Quote from the original posting no more than is needed to make your
answer clear; attribute your quote properly, but never quote a
signature.
It is not normally a good idea to make successive postings referring
to the same problem or issue, although a discussion may introduce a new
topic that merits a second contribution. If you decide you've not made
yourself clear in your first contribution, resolve to do better when you
comment on another problem. If you decide that your original answer to
a problem was wrong and meanwhile someone else has posted a better
answer, don't feel that you now must post a correction to your previous
answer. Perhaps you should not have replied in the first place, and
anyway, the correction has already appeared. Forget about it and
resolve to do better the next time. If you've posted an answer to a
problem and you read a subsequent answer by someone else that you think
is wrong, don't reiterate what you've said before. You've made your
point and the readers can make up their own mind.
If you see a posting that is rude or inappropriate, an email message
should be preferred to replying over the net; replying by follow-up on
the net tends to generate flame wars instead of discussion. If you post
a hand on this newsgroup you should be willing to accept that some
players will strongly disagree with your bidding or play. Please
understand that the nature of a public electronic network does not allow
you the same degree of social control that you may have in your local
bridge club; for that very practical reason you should try hard not to
let a style of posting of which you disapprove interfere with your
enjoyment of this newsgroup.
OTHER INFORMATION
The rec.games.bridge FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and related
archive material, including a variety of Bridge software, was maintained
by Markus Buchhorn (mar...@octavia.anu.edu.au) but is no longer
available.
For links there are various places, including Great Bridge Links at
http://www.greatbridgelinks.com and David Stevenson's Links at
http://blakjak.org/brg_lnks.htm.
Most national organisations have their own sites which will include
local links. A reasonably comprehensive list of national sites can be
found at http://blakjak.org/brg_lnkn.htm.
Various servers allow people to play and watch bridge over the
Internet. Details may be found at
http://www.greatbridgelinks.com/gblPLAY/. Please don't post hands from
these servers until they are no longer current; the same hand may be
played by many other RGB readers.
Thanks to Ted Ying, Paul Jackson, Paul Barden, Mark Lehto, Mark
Brader, Jim Loy, Hans van Staveren, Geoff Hopcraft, Franco Baseggio,
Doug Newlands, David Grabiner, David desJardins, Dave Flower, Chris
Ryall, Charles Blair, Brian Clausing, Bharat Rao, Barry Rigal, Andy
Bowles, Alvin Bluthman, Adam Wildavsky and Adam Beneschan for their
contributions to this style guide, and Jude Goodwin-Hanson for help in
promulgating it.
This guide will be available at the following addresses. It will also
be posted to RGB three times a year, usually in mid-January, mid-May and
mid-September.
http://www.greatbridgelinks.com/gblRSC/rgb_stg.htm
http://blakjak.org/rgb_stg.htm
David Stevenson <webj...@googlemail.com> [for comments]
Steve Willner <swil...@cfa.harvard.edu>
Bas Braams <bra...@courant.nyu.edu>
--
David Stevenson Bridge RTFLB Cats Railways
Liverpool, England, UK bluejak on BBO Mbl: +44 7778 409 955
<webj...@googlemail.com> EBL TD Tel: +44 151 677 7412
bluejak666 on Skype Bridgepage: http://blakjak.org/brg_menu.htm
boblipton
wrote:
> Advice on style for contributions to rec.games.bridge
SNIP
Thank you for posting this, David.
Bob
David Stevenson
Andrew
asswipe, assclown distinction discussed in a recent thread.
Andrew
David Stevenson
>asswipe, assclown distinction discussed in a recent thread.
this or any other rules.