> After all, who wants to allow beginners and novices to spoil our
> bridge game, right?
Since nothing so far has mentioned beginners and novices, I infer that
your mention of these folks is intended to suggest that acting on my
concerns would impact them especially. OK, let's go there. I
certainly do not want discourage such players -- just the opposite --
which is why I sup****t the notion of the Laws' allowing relaxed rules
in some club games. But novices are already are told, or should be,
not to use tools they aren't ready for; going another step and saying
that (for example) if your auction goes off the rails because you
don't know your agreements, you cannot get more than A- on the board,
merely underlines this lesson. This can scare off only people who
were very fragile to begin with, and in my experience, any newbie who
survives the first couple of weeks in the (to him) totally foreign
duplicate environment after some years of social bridge is not
fragile, or at least not *that* fragile.
If there is a practical reason why this cannot be done, let's talk
about that, but the general idea that the outcome of a bridge game
should reflect skill as much as possible and random events as little
as possible -- the more so the higher the level -- is something I hope
we are all agreed on. If we are discussing what is and what is not
reasonable along those lines, fine.
David
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