The Laws and Ethics Committee met recently to consider player reaction following changes made and published in the new Orange Book in 2006.

Reactions to such changes as less alerting at high levels and announcements has been mixed and the committee decided to revisit these topics at its next meeting in May to see if adjustments will bring a better experience for players.

It will also be undertaking a consultation exercise on these issues amongst a small number of clubs and then the wider membership which will be completed by September 2007.

A large and mostly unfavourable correspondence has been received on the topic of what the minimum values are for an artificial two level opening and it was decided to make some changes to this area to assist those players who are finding that they can’t open 2C or 2D on distributional hands that they consider strong. The case for restricting what can be opened as an artificial two is the difficulty of defending against it when you don’t know the suit. If relatively weak hands in term of high card points are allowed then it is more likely that the opposition will want to intervene. Most players confronted with, say,  a natural strong 2H opener who have 15+ points with short hearts will make a take out double but it is a lot less clear as to what to do if the opening bid is 2C. Some protection for players is considered necessary by the L&E but there was also acceptance that the minimum opening level for a two level opener may not have been set correctly
The revised rule will apply to artificial two level openings and strong one level openers such as a Precision Club.
To open an artificial bid of this sort you will need to satisfy ONE of the conditions that follows:

• A minimum of 16 high card points or
• A hand which conforms to the rule of 25 (you add your high card points to your two longest suits to see if you satisfy this condition) or
• The hand contains as a minimum the normal high card strength associated with a one level opening bid and has a minimum of eight clear-cut tricks.

This change will come into force on August 1st. The reason for the timing is to address the fact that many players do not like frequent change to regulations so the L&E have committed to only introduce changes to the Orange Book on an annual basis.