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Simplest bidding system for introduction into bridge
What is the best bidding system which can be used for teaching beginners (who never played bridge before)?
I suspect that showing any complicated system, or asking to learn some long manual would burn all "initial interest". I think it is better to start with real game, and after playing some time (if interest would not be extinguished), having real game experience, beginners would feel natural need by themselfs to improve bidding system.
I can develop some very simple system, but I am curious if there is any standard simple system for learning?
EDIT: After several answers I have to put additional emphasize on what I am trying to achieve. This question is not about mastering Bridge skill from very novice to beginner, but it is about introduction for players who never played bridge (though played some simpler trick-taking games).
I cannot imagine how I supposed to teach beginners rules, game mechanics + material of "first 10 chapters in Commonsense Bidding" or Stayman and Blackwood within 20 minutes just to have first time game. That would take hours without any gaming, and it would become boring and would kill any "initial interest".
Just imagine: "- Guys, let's play Bridge, it is fun and interesting game. But before playing you have to sit down and listen two hours lecture."
What I need is very simple (extremly simple) bidding system, where everything is natural, without any artifical bids. Again, I can develop some very simple system, but I am curious if there is any such standard simple system for learning game play first time?

Is the goal for the system for the players to optimize for making the best bid, or for communicating to their partners? The latter is where most of the complexity of bidding systems comes into play, and probably isn't something you should be even trying for with novices.

2 sections to my answer:

How to get up and running in 20 minutes
Next steps to progress from the 20 minute version to solid Bridge beginner

How to get up and running in 20 minutes
It's simply not possible to play the full game of bridge itself after 20 minutes in a way that satisfies or even makes any sense. However, one can make use of a Gateway game which is similar to bridge to get such a quick start.
Spades is a terrific gateway to bridge. Apart from lack of dummy, trick taking play is identical to bridge. No Trump is not an option There is only one possible trump suit: spades. Eliminating choice in suits vastly simplifies bidding - you simply call out the number of tricks you think you can take. To make it feel closer to bridge, you could eliminate the "nil" bid and sandbags. Or you could keep them in as they keep the game more interesting.
Regardless of which spades rules you use, the play of the hand feels similar to bridge (though not identical due to no dummy, different scoring incentives, and much less information exchanged during bidding).
I taught my son to play Spades when he was 5, and a few months later taught him beginner level bridge, as follows:
Next steps to progress from the 20 minute version to solid Bridge beginner
Now that you've played a number of spades hands, you now have a good introductory feel for the play of Bridge hands. It's time to move on to the more time-consuming part for beginners: bidding.
I believe it's simplest to learn the most popular system in your area, for the following reasons:

There will be ample learning materials.
Learning materials will have different levels and you can start at the beginner level.
Most bridge players will know it even if they don't play it - so you can play other players in your area and they will usually by happy to help you learn.
You will be able to understand a substantial portion of the bidding of bridge players in your area.
Bridge learning software tends to do a good job of giving you practice hands for the most popular systems.

In USA, the most popular system is currently Standard American (5-card majors). It is so popular and well known in USA that at tournaments there is something called "Standard American Yellow Card" which is often used when two strangers are paired with each other.
I quite liked the pair of books I used to learn Standard American, 5-card majors, and the other most common techniques and conventions associated with it:

Commonsense Bidding by William S. Root
Modern Bridge Conventions by William S. Root & Richard Pavlicek

A real strength of this pair of books is how well structured it is for beginners. You can start by trying to master the first 10 chapters in Commonsense Bidding (and chapter 17) and that would be a very reasonable place to stop to enjoy a beginner level of bridge. This is exactly what I taught to my son when he was 5 (he did not read the books - I explained everything to him over the course of a few weeks while we played at least a few minutes every day). If you want to gradually learn more you can continue progressing through that book and then start on the 2nd book.
A real key to learning bidding that I wish I had known when I started is to start with just a very small number of the most common bidding techniques and conventions that will cover perhaps 60% or 70% of hands and concentrate on learning those well before going on to techniques and conventions that cover less common hands.

+1 just for that last sentence alone. I might add that the negative inferences available at the bridge table (from plays and calls not made) are far more numerous, and informative, then the positive inferences from plays and calls actually made. Learning to read those is the true essence of good bridge.

Thanks, your answer is informative but on slightly different topic. Please, see my Q edit.

I extensively revised my answer to better answer your question now that you clarified - note that this revised answer is exactly how I taught my son to play when he was 5.

Thank you, but sorry, I still have to say that it is still not the answer to my Q. I already mentioned that my partners know some simpler trick-taking games - so that part is not in the question (though your hints still can be helpfull for others). In my Q I interested in very narrow aspect: bidding system. Definitely very simple bidding system can be taught in about 10-15mins, I am looking for some standard one (with name, ready pretty-looking convention diagrams, etc). Something close to this, but I expecting even simpler and more importantly widespread used.

A system is proper use of conventions.  Genuine beginners don't need any conventions, so  don't worry about what system to use. Just start with "If you have 13 points, bid your longest suit, or the stronger of 2 equal" and a few similar rules. (As Joe implied, use the weak or strong no-trump that is common in your area; neither is intrinsically more natural). After a while, the better pupils will start to ask questions like "Is it better to bid 1NT or 1 Spade with a four-card suit?" (cue explanation of the difference between Standard American and other systems) or perhaps a slam hand will come up so you can demonstrate why it is important to know how many aces your partner has.  Most people learn better when they can see the reason for the lesson;  this goes double for using a convention (or discarding it; half the people at my club think Jacoby transfers are a waste of bidding space, but still understand what is meant when opponents use them).

"Just start with" - yes, that path I am thinking about - most likely I should go this way. I was just curious if there is ready widely used such oversimplified system (with name, ready pretty-looking convention diagrams, etc). "the better pupils will start to ask questions like" - yes, this is exactly my aim - people should feel natural need (after having game experience) for more complex conventions first, before study them.

MiniBridge
Perhaps I should start without any bidding at all, with gateway game like Joe Golton suggested. I have found game MiniBridge - it is literarly "Bridge without bidding".
There is a lot of READY material for MiniBridge - for example look at links on wiki, or at this booklet or interactive description.

First I've heard of MiniBridge but seems like a great Gateway Game to Bridge. Having had a number of negative and positive experiences trying to learn bridge, and then to teach people bridge, I'm of the mind that bidding is very hard for a beginner no matter how much you try to simplify - and quite a bit harder if the student doesn't yet understand much strategy for how to play hands. With Gateway games such as MiniBridge or Spades, you can at least learn hand play without the distraction of trying to learn a bidding system as well.

Standard English Acol (pdf) is the system commonly used to teach beginners in the UK. Most bids are natural, it's got 4-card majors and strong 2 bids. To start with, you could ignore any conventions like Stayman or Blackwood and treat 2 clubs as a natural strong 2. These elements can be introduced at a later date.
Getting up and running within 20 minutes is ambitious (you could easily spend that long explaining the rules and the scoring), but might be do-able if you're teaching people who are experienced with other whist-based games.

Thanks for answer. Yes, some of my partners are familiar with another whist-based game - Preferans(it has bigger/realistic penalties for failed contract), but there is no partnership in Preferans - as the result no need for communication via bid system. So, bidding convention description is the most important in my situation. Anyway, I think playing rules of Bridge itself are not hard at all even for people who never played such kind of games - novicies do not need to know every detail of scoring system, I think basic understanding of aims are enough.

Regarding 20min - yes maybe it is ambitious. But I fear that if my description would be longer than 20min-30min I am risking to never find company for playing Bridge "live" - because Bridge is not popular in my area.

Play 4-card majors, with just Stayman and Blackwood as conventions, and jumps stronger than non-jumps. Any old books by Goren you can find at a used book store will serve as texts. When your players get a little better, show them Five Weeks to Winning Bridge by Sheinwold. Then let them loose.
Alternatively, Edgar Kaplan's Bridge for Dummies is a good modern introduction to the game by one of the best bridge writers of the 20th century.
Update:
Given your time constraint, and the desire to introduce Bridge (which I applaud), why not try Auction Bridge instead of Contract? There is still a dummy to allow the increased precision of declarer and defending card play which that allows, and the selection of trump by the partnerships, but the points are simply for how many tricks are taken, not o whether that number of tricks was contracted for.

I just want to say how frustrating it is that there aren't more resources online for how to teach bridge to new players who are already familiar with card taking games. My group of friends loves playing cards but are spending time playing simple games line Hearts, spades, and Euchre. My girlfriend has expressed interest in learning bridge but I don't know how to get started to try and teach 3 of our friends the game. For the advice to teach the most popular system in the area- I don't even know where to start. I'm in america but it would be suicide to try and teach standard american and several conventions to people who currently don't know what a dummy hand is.
I think that bridge can be played starting out with just natural bidding and no conventions at all- once people get more comfortable with that then express other options for bidding that have a bit more information. But seriously... In searching for resources online for how to best teach beginners to play when sitting down at the table I just can't find much out there.

That is how the game became popular in the early 20th century. If you decide to start that way, try playing Auction Bridge instead of Contract. The increased precision of bidding really comes into its own when one must bid up to the game and slam bonuses. Without that requirement, players can learn dummy play and defense quite nicely with Auction Bridge.

As I said in my answer, I taught my son to play bridge when he was 5, and it took about a month of playing about 20-30 minutes per day (he had already learned Spades so play of hand was not too hard). If one person knows bridge at a solid beginner level, the way to teach is by playing frequently and having a lot of open hands where the bidding is explained by the one person who knows how to play. Even when you close up the hands, be open to people saying "I have no idea how to bid this hand" and lay down their cards so you can help them through the thought process.


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Are stations used in Ticket to Ride: The Heart of Africa?
Are stations allowed in Ticket to Ride: The Heart of Africa?
The rulebook explicitly mentions that the plastic carriage pieces and scoring markers from the main game are to be used, but doesn't appear to mention stations. We played without stations, and completing routes was much more stressful than a standard game.

No, the rules explicitly state what pieces are required from an earlier set:

This game is an expansion and requires that you use the following game
  parts from one of the previous versions of Ticket to Ride:
A reserve of 45 Trains per player and matching Scoring Markers taken
  from any of the following:
  - Ticket to Ride / Ticket to Ride Europe  110 Train Car Cards taken from:
  - Ticket to Ride / Ticket to Ride Europe / USA 1910 expansion

Anything not mentioned in the above list should be considered surplus to official requirements.  Though you could always try playing with stations as an interesting variant!
EDIT: yes, without stations Heart of Africa is a very claustrophobic Ticket to Ride game.  But this does seem to have been the intention of the designers, as they've admitted as much in a footnote in the rules booklet:

In 5 player games, the Heart of Africa (center of the map) area can
  get crowded very quickly. Players beware! - and if you like your games
  to be less competitive, stick with 4 players or less.

Yes, that was my thinking... until we actually tried playing it. Without stations, it's really a very claustrophobic board, even with only four players. I can't imagine how it could work with five.

@ire_and_curses Even the designers admit as much - see my edited answer.

The rules only have stations for the europe map. None of the maps are broken by playing with stations, however. I have played the following maps with and without stations:
Europe, USA, Africa, Switzerland, India, Asia, and Legendary Asia.
The effect of adding stations is to reduce the stress (and uncompleted tickets).
The USA map is much less cutthroat with stations, but the others only somewhat less.

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Good ways to speed up a game of Ticket to Ride
I just played my first game of Ticket to Ride and we loved it. Our only issue was making it a little faster. We had some small obvious ideas that wouldn't affect the gameplay much, like keep score on paper, play the game when each player has 4 less trains, start the game with 7 cards, and get a free route at the beginning. However I'm still curious about some more drastic boosts.
Here were a few other ideas that actually affect the game:

You draw 3 cards if you choose to draw train cards. Locomotives still cost 2 normal draws.
For each turn you draw 2 cards AND get the opportunity to claim a route.
You can substitute 3 cards of any one color for a locomotive when building. (stolen from the ferries in the other versions)
7 cards stay face up instead of 5

What other affects will each of these have on the game? Are there any other good ways to speed things up? How can I decrease the time required to play while keeping as much of the original feel of the game as possible.

Is it possible the game played slow just because this was your first time playing it?  Were the other players familiar with the game?

Funny how someone who has played just once is so interested in making changes.  I guess patience is a lost art.

@SMBiggs what is more fun: patience or fun?

Assuming your changes will make things more fun after a single game is likely to be wrong.  https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/

It will speed up with a few additional plays. Honestly, I suggest starting with people getting more experience before modifying the game.
You asked about how your ideas will effect gameplay, so I'll tackle that, having been involved in balancing a lot of games. The game was playtested hundreds of times to reach the balance it's at now, so some things to consider:

keep score on paper

You'll lose the easy checking to see who's ahead and who's behind, which should affect your play. On paper you'd either have to do without or keep asking.

play the game when each player has 4 less trains

If I were playing I'd be much more likely to dump the long tickets because it's not at all uncommon that they're completed in the last couple of turns of the game, especially with 4 or 5 players.

start the game with 7 cards

Probably wouldn't cause any problems.

get a free route at the beginning

Tricky. They'd have to be the same length (or same maximum length), and if it's long it will help people with western tickets much more than eastern ones. It would also change the early game quite a bit, where people traditionally build up a pretty large hand of cards before laying down, so as to not give anything away to others about how they could block you. It will likely hurt ticket completion a bit.

You draw 3 cards if you choose to draw train cards. Locomotives still cost 2 normal draws.

I think this will help longer routes more than shorter ones, again with the western/eastern division. Each card draw will be slower (draw, fill, draw, fill, draw), but it would still likely be a speed-up. The bigger problem is that drawing cards will help your game much more than playing them, so it will again favor longer routes, making the already-somewhat-imbalanced longer routes much easier to complete, so the luck of the ticket draw will have an even stronger effect on what many consider an existing flaw (the 1910 ticket replacement add-on is designed to fix it).

For each turn you draw 2 cards AND get the opportunity to claim a route.

This won't speed the game up as much as you'd think: the cleverness in the current system is that after you draw cards you have the whole rest of the round to think about what you'll do with them. With this change after drawing players will have to think through what they'll lay down while everyone waits.
If they play first and draw second, they'll still need to weigh the cards on display with what route to claim, knowing they're about to draw from them. With the regular game there's no point in thinking about them because they'll likely be significantly changed before it comes around to you.

You can substitute 3 cards of any one color for a locomotive when building. (stolen from the ferries in the other versions)

This should have no negative effect, though I don't know that it will actually speed things up, since yes, you'll finish that route, but the train car to played card ratio will actually go down. More tickets will likely be completed, though.

7 cards stay face up instead of 5

This will also favor longer routes, exacerbating that problem. It will increase decision time a bit, but speed up route completion for everyone equally. You'll need to decide on a rule for how many locomotives have to be showing to wipe, likely 4 instead of 3.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to knock all of your ideas. I just see rippling balance issues that are worth considering. If you implement any of them, I suggest getting a few more games under your belt first so you can more clearly see the consequences, if any.

To speed up the game, and keep the mechanic of having a turn to think about what to do next, I find having turns have to take the order of 1) lay down trains, 2) drawn new cards (of both types) works quite well.

One note about the draw-two-cards-and-claim-a-route rule: it will favor shorter routes. Someone going for three 6-train routes will only get that "bonus" turn (claiming a route) one turn in three, but someone going for nine 2-train routes can potentially get that "bonus" turn every time. Running a route up the eastern seaboard or the north-south midwest route will take about half as many turns as normally. This might help balance out the other suggestions that favor longer routes.

What is west / east? Is this the same as left / right? Are you talking about any specific map of Ticket To Ride? I think there may be more than 10 of those, are all of them the same in this respect of west/east point you make?

@AndrewSavinykh Only one game is called just "Ticket to Ride" and that is the original one with the US map.  I think it's reasonable to assume that is the one meant.

@EricNolan, "Ticket to Ride" is the title of the original game when no other maps existed. Since then many more was created, so when selling the original title it is often listed as "Ticket to Ride: USA" for example see here. While it may be "reasonable to assume" in the question, which I, by the way doubt, it is not clear from the answer, thus why I wanted to clarify. If you have any experience playing those game you know that they play similarly, so it is reasonable to assume the question was about all of them.

Play more games
You said yourself that you've only played once.  It'll go faster once you get a few games under your belt and everyone gets over the initial analysis paralysis.
I'm hesitant to recommend any of those proposed changes.  I've played maybe a half dozen games and my gut feeling is your suggested house rules would all have a negative impact in some way (and not actually make the game play faster).

I agree, really.  It's a really quick game once you're used to it and everyone is picking up two cards and passing the turn at lightning speed.  In our group, if anyone ever picks up new destination cards, it's always their turn again by the time they've finished choosing!

Could you elaborate on the effect the rules will have on the game and why? That's what I'm really curious about. :D

@Crazy, it's really just a gut feeling on my part.  I'll defer to Matthew's answer for details.

I would say, just reduce the number of train cars in each players' pool.  This would have an obvious, linear effect on the speed of the game without any dramatic side effects on the strategy and gameplay.  The only thing you'd need to worry about is keeping enough trains in the pool that any cross-country route, if drawn, would still be playable - off the top of my head, I'd say that would be somewhere in the 20s, though it might be wise to add a few trains on top of that, to give wiggle room in the event of another player claiming a crucial route.
I have to say, I find it a tiny bit odd that you'd want to speed up Ticket to Ride - it never struck me as a particularly long game!  If you're consistently finding that to be the case, I suggest you try the strategy of just playing out lots of random routes really fast (instead of trying to build based on your destination cards) to end the game early, hopefully before other players can reach all the ambitious destinations in their hand.  After that, the rest of your group may not be quite so keen on house rules to make the game even shorter :D

+1, my games typically reached the "wow, I'm surprised the game hasn't ended yet" moment when someone gets down to 6 or 7 trains.  As that's the cue to start making a last gasp for points, subtracting 6 or 7 from each player's starting pile is probably a good starting point.

There's no way you could take any of the long routes and win. Shorter routes will win out every time, so the western US should be avoided at all costs. Luck of the ticket draw will have an even stronger effect on deciding the winner.

Why do I want to speed it up? So we have time to play more. I'd much rather have the option to play a gently sped up game of Ticket to Ride than not be able to finish or not play at all. We often have an imbalance in player skill as well, and the more chances to start over makes for less time spent in last if you've got a bad initial draw or end up losing one crucial route. Handicaps usually make the less experienced feel even worse about themselves unless.

@Crazy: fair enough!  As I say, simply cutting down on the number of trains everyone gets will have a commensurate effect on the length of the game: taking away 1/4 of everyone's trains should take away 1/4 of the duration.  It's only a shame there aren't smaller maps available to play on too...

Super-old answer, but just in case: this will also favor eastern routes over western routes since the latter provide a lot of points in exchange for playing a bunch of trains, while the former requires very few trains to complete routes. The game would end earlier, no question, but a lot of western routes would be left incomplete, particularly painful if you've drawn western routes at game start and have to lose all of those points.

We've noticed that a lot of the problem is people focusing on the board when it's not their turn (which is good!) to the extent that they don't realize quickly when their turn starts (which is bad). Things sped up a lot when we simply had each player announce "Done!" as they completed their turn.

Thanks for the great suggestions! I've messed around with the game a bit and found the best way is just to give people more cards at the beginning. In the normal game, players often spend their first few turns drawing cards anyway to avoid revealing their plans, so this helps get things get rolling quickly. With every 2 you give out, you're approximately removing a whole round that would've been used drawing cards.
We've been giving each player 20 cards to start with, maybe only 18 with 5 players. It does add a little more luck, but this is easy overcome with skillful play, and it's little different from the luck found in the draws of the normal game. If this bothers you, just give people only 10 or 12 instead, or maybe remove the locomotives before dealing. More cards makes you look at alternate routes that work with the colors you've been dealt and adds of lot of interesting decisions.
We also just total scores at the end of the game instead of continuously keeping track. I've found this rarely influences the game-play or players decisions, and its easy enough to do your own quick estimate of a players score if need be.

Does this not destabilise the early game, because people will immediately grab their key routes, rather than waiting to conceal where they're going?

@deworde What do you mean by destabilize? Players have to take their routes eventually, but they still have the option to conceal them if they wish.

But normally the risk of leaving your key routes untaken is balanced because people don't have a good chance of taking them first. Now if you leave any route untaken, with 20 cards, someone could easily take it from under you.

In my experience taking routes in the first couple turns usually doesn't happen very often in the unmodified version because you want to gather some cards first; all this modification does is cut down on those first few rounds where most players take cards. The risk of leaving a route untaken in the first round of this version is the same as leaving it untaken when everyone now has ~14 cards on the 5th or 6th round of the normal version. The risk of having a route stolen hasn't really changed much with this house rule in my experience.

Fair enough, answers my concern

These Ticket to Ride games are played in 10 to 15 minutes:
"Ticket to Ride: New York" and "Ticket to Ride: London"
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/253284/ticket-ride-new-york
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/276894/ticket-ride-london

I understand Gordon's wish to speed the game. I only played the Europe version and I felt longer than it should be.
I like the way of drawing cards and if is suitable claim a route. I didn't play the american version but on the EU version I didn't feel between the long and short routes. I don't understand why getting enough cards to complete a route but having to wait the next round to do it. For example: in Catan, in your turn you play the dice, you get the resources and if you have enough resources its possible to build new settlements, citys, roads...then the turn ends. I think this is a good way to play it.

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The Proper use of Stations in Ticket to Ride Europe
I played a game of Ticket to Ride Europe recently, I don't own it but am vaguely familiar with the rules. When we started playing however there was some confusion about the placement of stations and I was out-voted 3:1. What the rules specifically say:

A Train Station allows its owner to use one, and only one, of the routes belonging
  to another player, into (or out of) that city to help him connect the cities on his
  Destination Tickets.

My interpretation is that this allows you to do what it says, use a single route owned by another player. The next bit toward the end of the section however states:

If a player uses the same Station to help connect cities on several
  different Tickets, he must use the same route into the city with the
  Station for all of those Tickets. The Train Station owner does not
  need to decide which route he will use until the end of the game.

At this point the same route into the city statement was picked up really strongly. The group believed that this means several routes going out of a city could be used, as long as the same route into the city was used. In the end this meant that during the scoring they believed in the following diagram (red routes):

A continuous path from Frankfurt->Madrid exists.
No continuous path from Brest->Madrid exists because it didn't use the same route into Paris as the Frankfurt route, and therefore couldn't share the blue link.

Can someone confirm if I'm correct, in that you can only use 1 link, and in this scenario both destination tickets are completed at the end of the game. If so can you think of any convincing arguments I can put forward to the group?

There's no concept of direction of travel in Ticket to Ride.

If, by the end of the game, a player has created a continuous path of his color plastic trains between the two cities named on a Destination Ticket he holds, he scores the additional points indicated by the Point Value on the Ticket. If he has failed to complete a continuous path between those cities, he deducts the Point Value on the Ticket from his total score.

A path between cities must be created. Nothing about traveling from one of the cities to the other city.
As such, the Brest-Madrid path exists because it did use the same route into Paris as the Frankfurt-Madrid path, the Pamplona-Paris route.
Ticket to Ride is a simple game with straightforward rules. It's obvious to me that the purpose of the second rule you quoted is to prevent the station from being used to borrow two different routes. In fact, this is stated explicitly earlier in the rules (quoted below). It's a botched attempt to clarify this rule (which was already plenty clear).

A Train Station allows its owner to use one, and only one, of the routes belonging to
  another player, into (or out of) that city to help him connect the cities on his
  Destination Tickets.

This means your group is clearly wrong when they believe that several routes going out of a city could be borrowed.
My proposed rewording of the second rule you quoted is the following:

Only one route is ever chosen per station. This means that a player can't have a station grant him the use of two routes for two different tickets, but any number of tickets can use the chosen route. The Train Station owner does not need to decide which route he will use until the end of the game.

I like this revised wording, I'll have to share it and see if everyone agrees

All of this is confirmed through personal experience with the electronic version of the game.

I've looked up my rules and your quote is correct but I believe you are right and that the second 'rule' is just poorly written.
It makes sense that there is something in the rules to stop the player moving the station from one line to another between Tickets.  So, if you were the blue player you could use a blue station on the Paris end of Paris-Frankfurt for Pavlona-Frankfurt, but the rules need to prevent you from moving it to the Paris-Brest line for a second trip from Pavlona.
I think this is what the text was trying to convey, but failed to do so. Rephrasing it as the following might help:

If a player uses the same Station to help connect cities on several
  tickets he must use the same city route (the one with the station) for
  all of those Tickets.

This fits with the spirit of the application of a Station being to 'convert' one line to your colour.  No other part of the rules has anything like as asymmetrical a mechanism as the rest of your group seems to be suggesting.  It seems extremely unlikely that Alan Moon (whose rules typically have a natural flow) meant this unnatural oddity, and far more likely that this is a small error in transcription somewhere.

Proposed rewording still not perfect. Other tickets need not use the same route even if use the same station. e.g. Red has Brest-Frankfurt completed.

@ikegami Agreed it's not perfect but I was minimising changes from the original text - to remove the problematic "into".

Trying to use as much of the confusing text as possible is not a worthwhile goal. Actually removing confusion is.

Given the OP's need to convince the rest of the group, minimising delta to their literal interpretation is essential to support the ensuing argument.  If writing the rule from scratch I'd do it very differently to any version presented here, but that's not the requirement.

If you are the red player and you placed your station in Pamplona, you are entitled to both the Madrid to Brest and Madrid to Frankfurt tickets.  You used one route out of Pamplona which became your route when you added the station.  The same holds true if you had placed the station in Paris as your "one route in (or out of)" Paris would still be between Pamplona and Paris.  What you could not do is use a station in Pamplona to place trains from Pamplona to both Paris AND Brest.

The way I look at it, you have one path in and out.
When you go from Frankfurt to Brest, you travel East/West through Paris. To travel to Madrid would require a South exit, so is not allowed.
Brest to Madrid would have you coming into Paris but on another route and not from Frankfurt, so that is not a valid scoring route. Your logic is wrong.
However, you did say you required a way to convince others that it is valid, so...
The fact is, you don't need a train station to get from Frankfurt to Brest. It is a complete route. You are only "invoking" the train station to achieve the Brest to Madrid route. One route = one way in and out, QED. ;)

Frankfurt to Brest is irrelevant. I don't think you've understood the question. And, as you think his logic is wrong, you haven't understood how stations work either.


text:
How Unethical Is A Purely "Blocking" Move In Ticket To Ride?
Here's a scenario to illustrate my question.  My wife and I were playing Ticket To Ride: Nordic Countries earlier this evening - apologies if you don't own this particular edition, but hopefully the basic situation will be obvious to anyone who's played any TTR, even if you're unfamiliar with the map.
We'd both drawn a poor selection of Destination cards and kept only two each.  My first play was Orebro - Stockholm.  The next two routes were played by my wife: Kobenhavn - Karlskrona, and Karlskrona - Norrkoping.  At this point, with a spare red ticket in my hand, I opportunistically played Stockholm - Norrkoping!
With both the southern entries to Stockholm blocked, my poor wife now had no choice, if she wanted to link Kobenhavn to the top right segment of the board, to undertake a cruelly circuitous route, involving three turns and ten tickets, instead of one single ticket and a single turn.  I patiently endured the two minutes of dire recriminations and imprecations that followed my dastardly move, and ended up winning the game by in the region of 20 points - hardly a landslide.
I'm just wondering whether this kind of thing would be considered poor sportsmanship in other groups.  I ask because there was a question on this very site about whether it was poor form, in Settlers of Catan, to pretend to want to trade for a good, to sneakily fish for information before playing a Monopoly card.  To me that seems like a perfectly sensible procedure, but a lot of people seemed horrified at such unsportsmanlike practice!
There's an argument that one should play Ticket to Ride only "by the book" - making only plays that actively help to score Destination cards in one's hands.  I would counter that, in an exclusively 2/3 player game like Nordic Countries, blocking one or both of the other players can be just as beneficial as straightforwardly aiming to score routes, if not more so.  If another player has drawn and kept 5 amazingly compatible routes and I am going to struggle with my 2, why is it unfair for me to "even the odds" a little by throwing a spanner into my opponent's works?  Essentially, I don't understand why it's okay for me to try to crush an opponent by "above board" means, and not okay to do that by "devious" play.
In a game with many players I think a purely blocking move could be slightly more dubious, on the ground that it will probably only mess with some players, allowing others to pull ahead: it's kingmaking, basically, and that can be really annoying.  But is there anything wrong with such tactics in a 2-3 player game, where it can obviously be an effective route to victory?  Would a player who regularly tries to spoil your plans rather than concentrate on his own be persona non grata before too long?
Certainly it really gets my wife's goat - I'm lucky I'm not sleeping on the couch tonight!

You do not actually have to ask people if anyone has a resource. You are allowed to count the stockpiles at any time. So you always know exactly how many cards a monopoly will give you.  The point is people cry about dumb things, anything that is not cheating is fair

It seems like your question isn't really about whether it's ethical (it just boils down to the question of whether it's cheating) but instead about whether it's good sportsmanship, wise, or polite. Andrey's comment is the correct answer if you're truly wondering about ethics.

I don't fully understand the distinction people are drawing between "ethics" and "sportsmanship/wisdom/tact/politeness", but perhaps my personal definition of the word is a bit screwy.  For me ethics is just interchangeable with "how one should ideally behave", under any interpretation of that phrase.

Actually, there are several answers below that are correct about ethics. There are three similar, but separate questions about blocking moves: (1) "Is it cheating?", (2) "Is it bad sportsmanship?", (3) "Is it a good strategy?". Asking more than one of those at a time wouldn't be appropriate for this site's format, and it would be wise to clearly understand the distinction anyway.

Sorry, I didn't see your comment in response. You're not far off with your definition of ethics, but it's less about behavior and who you are than it is about accepted principles of right vs. wrong. Ethics considers questions of right and wrong outside of specific applications. The distinction is that it's very possible to do something that's ethical (not "wrong" or against the rules), yet still isn't nice. I think the question of whether blocking is bad sportsmanship is a good question; it's just not the same as the question of ethics.

Settles of Catan monopoly ethical abuse is not asking to see who has a resource, but selling that resource to everyone else first before playing monopoly :) If you have a hand full of ore, swapping it for grain/wood/bricks/sheep at favourable ratios to other players before claiming it all back with monopoly is a game-winning move. (If you don't win that turn though, people will gang up on you!)

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised no one has linked to the Penny Arcade comic. NSFW: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/04/16

Your notion of "by the book ticket to ride" is a little off.  One of the best ways of getting points in ticket to ride is completing long routes (5 or 6 length), regardless of your destination cards.  This is just one of presumably many reasons in the game to not just play things that go towards your routes.  Also, the fact that you can be blocked is a reason to not leave gaps in your network if you care about the route because then it is obvious where you want to build next (namely to fill in the gap)

There seems nothing unethical about such a move - opposite to your example of pretending to want to trade (which in my book is clearly unethical because it involves active lying), this move is just one of two main winning strategies:

Get more points for yourself
Limit points of the opponents

There is no lying or obfuscation - you are making it harder to win for the opponent by legal game means without any metagaming (like looking at an opponent's cards or hustling opponents into telling you some information which you shouldn't know while playing by the rules, like in your Settlers example).
Basically this move could be similar to a situation in Settlers when you put a robber on someone and also yourself - you are losing something (a turn in TTR) but in certain situations limiting the opponent more.

I think it's more similar to playing a blocking road in Settlers.  See this discussion for more: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/68652/the-infamous-road-block-strategy

Hmm, does asking "does anyone have any stone they'd be willing to trade?" really count as lying?  I guess it's certainly obfuscation.  But in many ways it's nicer than just playing the Monopoly, because you get to find out if people have stone they'd be willing to part with - if they really, desperately NEEDED it they wouldn't (or shouldn't) say anything!

@thesunneversets - I would say, that it is more lying because you are not hiding (obfuscating) your intention under another "true" (Not implying false information) sentence , like "anybody knows, if there is still some stone available?", but implying that you are asking for the sake of a trade, which you are not actually going to make. In the obfusction category would fall a similar move, where you trade away something and in the same turn claim it back with a monopoly - here you didnt cheat out any information, but just acted maybe a bit unsportmanlike.

@thesunneversets - About the second part of yur comment - I think it is deffinately not nicer than not asking, because, by asking you not only hustle the information, but also instill false hope of possible deal and your argument of not saying anything if you really NEED resource yourself doesnt hold its own in different groups (almost allways at least that resource is needed, but another or even two might be better, so will encourage people to voice their readiness to trade). Also blaming a victim is usually not a morally acceptable answer :)

I completely agree. If you are making a move in game, it should only be considered unethical if you are motivated by factors outside the game, or are intentionally making a move that you fully believe is not the optimal move. However much this move "screw" the other player(s), if you truly believe you are making the most beneficial move you could make, then you are in the right.

@Gundabad: I respectfully disagree. I don't believe that an action that is in your best interests is therefore ethical. However, I think those are just variations on "What is acceptable in our group?", and the answer to that question varies from group to group. You might play with people who don't mind the "fishing" tactic mentioned above; I might play with people would would deplore it. Neither of us are right or wrong, but we'll likely have a better time if we play within the expectations of our respective groups.

If you have agreed not to play a certain way before starting, or are playing in a location where a house rule is standard, then it would be unethical to go back on your word or break a rule (in effect, cheating).
Otherwise, actions permissible within the scope of the rules  and motivated only by in-game factors, regardless whether a group likes them or not, are still ethical. They may not make you popular, but there is a difference between something that is looked down upon and something that actually violates ethics.

Well, it depends on how much longer you want to keep playing board games with your wife! :-)  Every gaming group tolerates a different level of "screwosity" - people making blocking moves such as yours only to derail an opponent.  My group loves it.  It sounds like your wife doesn't.  It's not specific to Ticket to Ride.  If your wife wants to play where you can only advance your own cause, then you'll have to adapt to that.
In all fairness to you, your wife possibly made a tactical error.  If there's a critical leg in one of your routes, you need to claim it first.  You don't have to build your route in order.  We don't know if she had the card to do that though.

Personally I try not to start building routes that are heading towards a "bottleneck" until I have the cards in advance!  If I was her I wouldn't have started building from Kobenhavn towards Stockholm, telegraphing my reliance on the Stockholm-Norrkoping corridor; I'd have hoarded cards and waited to build Stockholm-Norrkoping first.  The way she went about it was relying on me not to rock a boat that I could see setting sail, practically daring me to make the block.  I guess she tends to overestimate my desire to keep the peace between us!

"It's not specific to Ticket to Ride." True, but I would say that Ticket to Ride has a uniquely large culture of players who are interested in playing "kinder" games. Check out the multiplayer in the apps, you'll see lobby after lobby of "no blocking" games, where you'll be shunned if you do anything too aggressive.
I don't think it changes the answer at all, but just something I do think is somewhat distinct about TTR in actual play, and that you should always talk about expectations with new players.

The only time a situation like this can become unethical is in a multiplayer game.  As long as every player makes moves with a goal to win it is perfectly fair.  On the other hand, if a player desires that they are going to carry out some personal vendetta this game, and instead of working to win just tries to block one other player, letting a third party get ahead it becomes a problem.
I can imagine situations like "if you go there, i am going to spend the rest of the game just blocking you so don't"  That is not a game i would want to be in.  But maybe someone would.

Upvoted for raising a good point.  Whether or not blocking another player's progress is obnoxious in a two-player game (and I agree with everyone that it isn't really, and those who perceive it as such are muddled in their thinking) - the issue becomes a lot more thorny in a multiplayer game.  Even if aggressively blocking your nearest rival while you are in pole position may increase your chances of coming first, it can dramatically and "unfairly" change the final placings.  And kingmaking when you aren't even going to win is a VERY contentious issue, of course...

I still don't see how that's unethical. It's a game. You are not cheating by helping one player over another. Once you have lost there is nothing to play for other than spoiling the game for others. It may not be nice but as it a game, it's hardly unethical.

You know, it never occurred to me to ask whether playing a completely legitimate move in a competitive game is "ethical".  The designers already figured that out when they made the rules.
Now, if you are making up your own house rules that say you can make binding contracts with players, like "if you give me the Edinburgh route, I'll let you build to Stockholm" then you are not playing the same game.  Good designers and HUSBANDS should figure out that kind of game balance in advance.
I'd honestly say that IF a player is pressuring another player to not compete, because "well, I did something nice for you whenever" then stop playing games with them.  That's not game playing. That's some ugly passive aggressive relationship stuff. You should play games to AVOID situations like that.  I'm not saying it happened in your case, but I have seen it sour more than one social event.
Just go with this scenario in the future: You are playing hearts.  The other player is trying to run the hearts (aka getting a lot of points, and causing the other players to lose points). Should you stop them?  If you play with people that answer that question differently, your games won't be very fun, I can tell you.
There's a reason there are rules to games. It's to answer questions like the one you brought up.
"Essentially, I don't understand why it's okay for me to try to crush an opponent by "above board" means, and not okay to do that by "devious" play." Exactly. And players are free agree upon house rules before a game starts. That's totally cool, and can solve a lot of problems. But you should really agree(!), and before the game.
Bohnanza is one of the least cutthroat competitive games I've played. You trade with people, yeah you can lie or not, but a deal is a deal. Most people enjoy taking the attitude that every deal you make should benefit both parties (but you more, of course). It makes for an amiable and less competitive game. Even so, cutthroat players will have a blast promising all kinds of "future considerations" if you give them what they want NOW. Awww, there's been an unexpected market change in soy commodities. Ah well, I'd catch you up next game (Ha!).
One more comment and I'll shut up. :)  There are situations where you think you are playing one game (like a fun online multi-player WW2 FPS), and you find out quickly that you are really playing the victim in someone else spawn camping game. Yeah, that sucks.  It's due to poor game design. By contrast, TTR, Settlers and Bohnanza are examples of good game design.

Spawn camping is different.  It is beneficial to the player.  I think the best example of bad play is driving the wrong way in a racing game.  You are not going to win, but you sure as hell are going to ruin the fun for everyone else

I don't know why this is even a question. The goal of a game is to win, and half of winning is preventing others from winning before you are able to. If blocking a route prevents your opponent from winning, then how could anything be unethical about it?
If you aren't allowed to do anything to affect other players, you are all just playing solitaire on a shared board. You may as well just each grab a deck of cards and play real solitaire at that point.
Also, this is a completely different situation than the Settlers example, but I think that is perfectly valid strategy as well. There is nothing in the rules that says you must make a trade when you ask if anyone is willing to trade a particular resource. And like others have said, asking if they have any they are willing to trade doesn't mean that they are going to tell you they have said resource.

Maybe I'm reading into your answer too much, but "I don't know why this is even a question" seems kind of hostile, and could be dialed back a notch or two.

@LittleBobbyTables - No hostility intended - I seriously don't know why this is a question. Unless you are knowingly breaking the rules of a game, nothing you do can do within the game can be considered unethical. Not nice, sure, but unethical? No. Unless, of course, there's a definition of unethical that I'm unaware of (which is possible).

It's a question because I do play games with a lot of people who are perfectly (ish) happy to be beaten by you pursuing your strategy on your side of the board more effectively than they're pursuing their strategy on their side of the board.  But if you go over to their side of the board and start making moves that don't increase your positive victory points, just negatively impact theirs, they get really angry.  Without debating the precise definition of "ethics", I feel like there's definitely room to consider whether it's legitimate to play in a style that makes others feel unhappy!

@thesunneversets - I agree completely, but that's a different question. The answers here all seem to be talking about "ethics", not whether or not it makes others unhappy if you play a certain way. But I do believe that playing that way is not playing how the game was intended to be played, so at that point, you're playing with "house rules". And if you have an established house rule, either explicit or implicit (e.g. you don't want to upset your wife), then not following it would be akin to breaking the rules and in that case would be unethical.

Well, I think like you, basically.  But we've never established any such explicit house rules in my group and people always complain if you seem to be nobbling their strategy at the expense of promoting your own.  I don't necessarily understand what you mean by an "implicit house rule", but if it's "generally implicit" that blatantly sabotaging other players' strategies is bad, then that does seem to me a wider question of ethics... even if the rules do not condemn, or indeed seem to encourage, such a play style.

In my opinion this is a justifiable move. You compared it with the pretend trades in Catan. I'd say that the Catan situation is much more borderline than this: One exploits a player's trust to gain an advantage. In your situation you are merely speculating on your opponent's goals and sacrifice a turn to make a counter move.
It all however depends on your group. If it's a very non-confrontational group then this move will get you more criticism than in a cutthroat group. You'll also have to be prepared to handle the consequences when the rest of your group adapt to this play style and become more confrontational themself.
In Tock/Dog (Pachisi variant) games we usually play all nice and non-confrontational at the beginning. But at some point one person just has too good of an opportunity to send someone else home and takes it. After that, war is pretty much inevitable and people send each other home as often as they can.

It's not unethical at all, unless you're playing a game agreed to be "no blocking."
Note that it's less effective in the Europe version, so is done less in that flavor, but even then, blocking is a part of the strategy set for successful players of all flavors of TTR.

I would approach this on two levels: 1) the game, and 2) the opponent.
From a purely GAMING point of view, I see nothing wrong with it. "Blocking" is a feature of most games. And in most games, "it's all relative," meaning that it pays to make a move that may hurt you some, but your opponent more.
I'd think twice about using such tactics if your opponent was your wife. Because it could cost you in some other arenas.
(I once wrote a short story about a "mixed" couple playing "mixed doubles" tennis, "we were both pulling our punches because it was our [respective] mates on the other side of the net.")

In Ticket to Ride we aim to "play nice" and not perform pure blocking moves for several reasons:

provide a more friendly and casual atmosphere
save the less experienced players from getting slaughtered

Playing to win at all costs is a surefire way of peeving off at least half my gaming group (including any female spouses), but in a competitive setting, why not?

I always feel like "slaughtering" a less experienced player is okay if you do it in a nice way (i.e. being willing to demonstrate to them how they might be able to beat you the next time), as opposed to a horrible gloating one.  Competitiveness for its own sake is bad, but so is playing very suboptimally in a game which is designed to have winners and losers...

We definitely block in our group, though not as much anymore, since I've discovered that I'm usually too tight for trains for routes to be able to do it much.  I've really hosed myself sometimes.
If you play online, you'll definitely see blocking moves played.

At the end of the game I missed being able to claim one of my routes because I was one train short.  If I hadn't built Stockholm - Norrkoping I'd probably have had it!  Then again, if I hadn't built Stockholm to Norrkoping my wife would probably have built the Lieksa - Murmansk 9-length route and gained a whopping 27 points!  So it's all about weighing up potential gains and losses.

People block all the time but it is nice to agree upfront whether blocking is on the table.

The game mechanics are clearly designed around blocking. There are finite number of routes between any pair of cities, and the number of routes available decreases if the number of players decreases. Ticket to Ride is a strategy game. Destination Tickets are part of that strategy. Do you go for the routes that make sense in the short term, or do you secure the key routes to keep from being blocked? Do you concentrate on your own Destination Tickets, or do you block others? Do you go for the routes you really want, or do you avoid them to keep from tipping off your opponents to what you're going for? I've gone for routes that aren't part of my Destination Tickets just to screw with the other players' minds, and distract them from I'm really going for. That's part of the game.
Oh, and as far as Settlers of Catan is concerned, if you really want to piss the other players off, trade a bunch of a resource, and then reclaim it with monopoly.

I would say, due to the nature of the game, that it IS unethical, and hear me out as to why: the whole point of the game is building a NETWORK of trains and trying to earn the most possible points out of that network.
Building on a single section of track that is nowhere near your actual network, just to prevent another player from building their own network, seems to fall outside the spirit of that, especially thematically (it's hard to imagine a railroad company halting production of their own project just to travel across the country and sabotage the production of someone else's project).
In fact, I think that is why some of the later games addressed this. For example, Ticket to Ride: Europe added the "stations" - it basically makes blocking completely useless because if you only blocked one section of the track, then you basically just wasted your own turn because your opponent can use what you built to finish their own route. IMO, the fact that they added that mechanic to later games indicates that it was not intended to be a tactic in the original games either.
The other thing to consider is how the game is actually played - turn based. By only being able to build one stretch of track at a time, it's pretty difficult to NOT give away what you are going for. It makes it very easy for an opponent to block you, especially on tracks that are only 1-2 trains long. So it also seems unfair when you need to connect 3 sections of track and it takes 3 turns to do. I think it would be different if you could connect as much as you wanted on your turn, then if you left something open to be blocked, fine... but if there are 3 places to block you, it's just not possible to cover all of them on 1 turn, meaning you are helpless against being blocked, which changes it from "a valid strategy" to "not fair", because there is nothing they could do to prevent you from blocking them, so they feel cheated rather than outwitted.
I mean, let's take a real look at the situation described in the original "question" - the wife has to complete 3 small routes to set up her network. If she had played the one that had been blocked first, what's to have prevented you from taking one of the other legs instead? If she played Stockholm-Norrkoping, you could have still blocked her by playing Norrkoping-Karlskrona (a 3-train route, so slightly harder to block, but not impossible by any stretch). So really, what options does she have to complete this 3-leg route without being blocked, if you are intent on blocking her? There aren't really any, which is why it feels "cheap"/"unfair" to be blocked.

Blocking isn't unfair: Player A has as much option to block Player B as vice versa. And blocking can use up your trains, making it more difficult to complete your own routes.

Short answer: Pure blocking - and almost any other in-game tactic - is ethical if and only if everyone playing the game agrees, outside of the context of the game, that that action should be permitted in the game.
Long answer:
The key thing to understand here is that ethics should most properly refer to decisions and agreements made outside of the context of the game. The structure of competitive games is such that you are inherently discarding normal moral considerations to allow enjoyment of contextually unrestricted competition that need not have effects outside of the game.
But all players get different things in different quantities out of playing games. Because of this, players may prefer there to be additional "rules" outside of those specified by the published version of a game itself. Things go well when these house rules are explicit, and poorly when people assume "everyone does it like that". Or worse, "it's unfair"/"not nice"/"bad" to do this thing in the game, and people disagree.
As others have said, the key is to make agreement outside of the game prior to starting it. Agreements made outside of the game have normal moral and ethical considerations. But - contrary to what at least one other person has said here - there isn't much limitation on what you can agree to allow inside games, up to and including clear-cut lies, and (in a multi-player context) sabotaging a player when it decreases your own chances of winning, placement, or absolute score.
For all of these things it is completely valid to not want to play with those behaviours, but also completely valid to enjoy the additional tactical and strategic considerations that they bring to the game. For instance, allowing sabotaging other players in a multi-player game even to your own detriment can lead to extremely sophisticated game-theory considerations across multiple games, that can drastically enhance the scope of a game. People can then "play" with whether and when things like vengeance or reputation building can be valuable across multiple games. On the other hand, some people might prefer the nature of a given game (or all games) without those considerations.
All of these viewpoints are valid, the key is to have agreement on what is permitted inside the game and what is not. Because if you don't have this agreement, you're not truly playing the same game, and this will tend to lead to conflict.
The one thing I would warn against in terms of permitting things in game, is permitting bringing outside considerations into the game itself - e.g. I'll give you this chocolate bar in real life if you do this thing in the game. This destroys the separation between the ethics of the real world and the ethics of the game, and has the effect that all real-world ethical considerations are now part of the game. As far as ethical considerations go, you would in effect no longer be playing a game at all at that point.

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Why is the strong 1NT so prevalent in Bridge?
Bridge is widely considered to be the queen of card games on both sides of the Atlantic.  However, there's one huge difference between the way that (most) Americans and (most) Britons play.  In American Standard, an opening 1NT bid signifies a balanced hand of 15-17 points.  In (British) ACOL, the same bid signifies 12-14 points balanced.
As someone who learned Bridge in the UK, it seems to me obvious that weak no trump is the better system.  A 12-14 point balanced hand comes up WAY more often than a 15-17, so you're getting a lot more use out of the bid.  Yes, you will proceed to game from a weak no trump bid a lot less often than from a strong, but that doesn't seem very important.  The amount of bidding space that you take away from your opponents by a 1NT bid where they have the balance of the points is a huge bonus, in my opinion.
Could it be that British players just prefer playing aggressive, interferential Bridge?  As well as weak no trumps, I also love weak jump overcalls, whose main purpose is to eat up large amounts of the opponents' bidding space, to prevent them easily making games and slams that they have the points for.  Do Americans prefer a "fair" game of Bridge, where you bid on the points you have, not to mess the opponents around?
I'm sure that the strong no trump would not have remained central to American Bridge for so long if it wasn't pretty robust and well-thought-through, though.  So can any aficionados of it explain to me what's so good about it?

There are two main advantages I see to the strong 1 NT:

When your partner is very weak, the strong 1NT is far more likely to make (and far less likely to be doubled) than the weak 1NT.
Though 15-17 is much rarer than 12-14, when it does occur it is very easy to put the contract in the right place with the strong hand as declarer. Hiding the partnership's strength makes defense more difficult.

Against intermediate players, I suspect that the pre-emptive power of the weak 1NT gives it an edge (at least in America, where players have less experience against weak 1NT openers), but stronger players will be able to bid around the 1NT and accurately double for penalty more often.

at least for majors you are likely to have transfers to get strong hand as declarer with weak 1NT anyway

This is less relevant when the "strong hand" has 12-14 points than when it has 15-17. In a game-going auction, both hands are of roughly equal strength, and so which hand is the declarer is less relevant.

A very very strong advantage of strong NTs is in competition when you don't open 1NT; you open 1m with a minimum hand (balanced or not), 4th seat bids/X, you get to pass.  There's this huge gap between minimums that pass, and NT rebids that show 18+ that you don't have to worry about - because they would have opened 1NT.  Weak NTs put that gap between 11 and 15 instead; which can be uncomfortable in competition (there are compensations, says this weak NT player!)

@Mycroft That's a good point! In one partnership, we play a weak NT and good-bad 2NT. After opening one of a minor and getting 2-level competition, almost any hand that's not 15-17 balanced is forced to bid 2NT (showing a desire to compete with distribution but not extra strength) so that partner doesn't make a penalty double counting on you to hold the strong NT hand. This is... inconvenient at times.

I am no bridge historian, but wouldn't the underlying answer have to do with the underlying  "path dependence?" This is a standard: Most people in Britain use weak 1 NT, so people in Britain first learn weak 1 NT. Conversely, most people in the US use strong 1 NT, so most people in USA first learn strong 1 NT.
The main idea of path dependence is that there doesn't have to be some grand "reason" that a standard develops. A standard would only get undermined if it was radically inferior (e.g., people that play one system win way more often, ceteris paribus) . I'd guess that Truscott's book has some story... which gave a kernel of advantage to each system in different countries... which led to a "lock in" of each standard in each country.
It's not like the average player in the US plays often with people from Britain. And there's not this bias at the highest levels of bridge, right?

I did a quick Google and found this: "One problem of the weak notrump, however is that 4-4 major-suit fits are frequently missed, when playing in a major is much better than playing in notrumps. Also, because the weak notrump is subject to penalty doubles by the opposition, an escape system such as Meckwell Escapes or Touching Escapes, is a necessary adjunct."  So it's certainly not the case that the weak 1NT is a convention without any downsides.  Fortune favours the brave, though, I still say!

Escapes? Redouble, staring them right in the eye. See who cracks first.

The world has changed a lot, even in bridge. The real strength of the weak not trump is when you do not open 1NT! It makes bidding much more precise, no need to open 4crd major (which acolytes may prefer), 1m is always strong, either in hcp or distribution. This and much more was writen as early as 1958, by (sic!) Americans (Edgar Kaplan and Alfred Sheinwold) in "How to play winning bridge".
Of course using the WNT changes your complete bidding struchture. Even more foolish to have the strength of 1NT depend upon vulnerability as in original Acol. You have to learn two different bidding systems. Better to use your brain capacity to improve your card play. IMHO Kaplan Sheinwold Updated (published 1978) is still the best compromise between natural an conventional bidding systems for ordinary people.

My teacher told me to learn hard to use weak opening, though it is risky. He said that most world best players use it. And he warned that it is often viewed as sort of "heresy" :)
About British - he said that some of them use the following rule: open weak if non-vulnerable and strong if vulnerable.
I think that strong NT opening is popular because it's not that risky. And I don't think it is purely American thing.

I play both weak and strong NT.  The American Strong NT evolved from Culbertson who initially played a weaker version and the average players were being set a lot, even doubled.  thus, the strength was increased to 16-18 for the masses.  Culbertson's initial 1NT was a balanced hand containing 2 1/2 honor tricks when not vulnerable and 3 honor tricks when vulnerable.

When I play on the difficult evenings at my local club (North-east of England), many of the players use a "mini" no-trump, opening 1NT on 10-12 (not vulnerable) and 12-14 (vulnerable). Try as I might this is rather a difficult system to overcome.

I have played both.
One thing I find about a weak NT is when the LHO overcalls it, it can be hard for the 3rd player to compete to find a fit. The system I play makes it easier to find a fit when you don't open 1NT.
Although finding a fit after a strong NT has been intervened might be just as hard, you will be able to play in 2NT more frequently when there is no fit, and you're certainly unlikely to get doubled there.
Catching the opps for a penalty when they intervene over a weak 1NT at the wrong moment sounds great and sometimes it may be but as with using penalty doubles of overcalls in the regular situation, it loses you a bid you can use to compete to find a fit of your own.
As for getting doubled in 1NT, not as frequent as you think but at MP vulnerable you certainly risk -200 when the opps are only making a part-score or were only ever going to bid to one, and even -100 going down 1 may be bad as 1NT making for the opps is only +90.

i played a strong NT for years & subsequently switched to a 10-14 weak NT & have been moderately pleased but with 1 proviso. A suitable run out sequence must be available when a double is passed to opener. I suggest Eric Luft's "How I Became a Life Master Playing the Weak NT" for a good ROS.
that said, i still have reservations as the very common interference makes conventional responses difficult & often impossible. a 2nd issue is when the would be responder lacks the points or distribution to venture to the 2 level. I suspect that this is more of a condemnation of 5 card Majors than a weak or strong NT.
since I'm already a Precision advocate, I'm contemplating a return to 4 card majors with a  non conventional 1NT with 54+ minors 5.8433%. this fits well with an alerted, GCC legal, 0-9 HCP, 54+ minors 2NT which I've used for years. the 2 level is for single suited hands defined as a suit 3+ longer than all others. this is not a weak 2 or ACOL intermediate 2. thus the 1D opener covers all other hand types 16.6% thus denying a 4 card Major, 54+ minors, single suited hand & 15 or 16+ HCP.             keng

I've played high and low--high is for the risk averse and kind of boring to play.  When my opponents open strong NT, I interfere with the Multi-Landy when I can to messes with their transfers and Stayman conventions--most pairs don't have a defense for Multi-Landy, feel they have to get to Game but are left with limited bidding space and very annoyed.
Personally, I like 12-14 NT when not vul and 14 NT when vul.
In practice over 6 years, this has worked out really well.
This pre-empt forces our opponents to bid up and then they often end up too high if they are weak.  If they are strong, they usually get to Game regardless.
Exit transfers take care of doubles, and most of the times we've had to resort to them, opponents either decided to bid or we ended up in a 7-cd suit at the 2-level for a 'good' sacrifice.
You can't make this work to your ultimate advantage though, if you don't use conventions: 4-way Transfers, Stayman, Exit Transfers.  And learn Multi-Landy to defend against strong NT players.

Coming in late.  Used to play K-S and loved it, except never found a way to beat a very slight hesitation from LHO after 1NT is opened.  When bidding is passed around, his partner can balance or double with crap because of the hesitation.  Yes, it's cheating, but there's no defense to it.  Hesitation isn't long enough to call the director.  This happened to us so often and was so aggravating that we switched to 2/1.  I wrote to the ACBL and suggested you should be able to say, "I'm going to open a weak NT, please wait."  They didn't answer.

It's much easier to have all suits stopped (or nearly so) for 1NT with 15-17 points than with 12-14.
With the latter, I bid 1 club, then 1 NT when partner responds. (If partner can't respond, I'd rather be in 1 club than 1 NT if for no other reason than it gives the opponents a better chance to take me out.) In this sequence, I probably have a weak suit, and hope partner bids "one over one" in it.
A "weak" 1NT works fine if it succeeds, but not when you hear "double." (And it would not be for takeout). The chances are much less with a "strong" 15-17. Unless partner has less than 3-5 points, you're almost guaranteed 20 or more, and no double.

Keith's answer is almost certainly the reason for the difference between North American and British styles of 1NT opening. Add to that the fact that the authors from the respective countries (e.g. Terence Reese and Rhoda Lederer in the UK) taught different systems and you have a self-reinforcing system.
Regarding the advantages and disadvantages: with a weak NT (and four card majors, as in Acol) an opening one bid in the minors is always at least a four card suit. Finding a 4-4 major fit is no harder than after a strong NT opening - e.g. with Stayman. Acol actively recommends Stayman with a weak hand and tolerance for diamonds, hearts and spades, for example. (Just pass opener's response). And knowing partner has four card support for your minor is good for both competitive bidding and discovering minor suit slams.
If you are doubled, you get an escape mechanism, e.g. exit transfers. If not, one down is better than letting the opponents play.
The problem is when you go two or more down and the opponents have only a part score. I would like to see some analysis to see how often this occurs. It definitely exists, because you see it in competitions, but my subjective experience is that the pre-emptive benefits of the weak 1NT outweigh the occasions when it goes for a large penalty. Especially in pairs.


text:
How would these Ticket To Ride variants change the game?
In a recent question we securely established that the "Longest Route" bonus in Ticket to Ride is earned by the largest number of train cars used to make the route, not the largest number of stops.
This confused at least one smart user here, who had assumed the opposite to be true.  After all, any fool can build a direct train from New York to Los Angeles, but surely a train that makes a few stops along the way to accumulate passengers would be a much more valuable commodity!
I personally feel as if there could be a strong argument for switching the way that Longest Route works.  After all, you already get lots of points for building the efficient 5- and 6-length routes that are the bread and butter of winning the Longest Route bonus.  Wouldn't there be a more interesting tension in the game if building lots of inefficient, low-scoring routes was what lined you up for the bonus?
I'm going to take this opportunity to suggest another variant, that I brainstormed up a little while ago: Contracts.  Under this variant, any player could spend a move to sign a contract on a route: this is represented by taking one of their trains and placing it over the route, at right-angles to normal train placement.  This train can be later used to build the route in question, but cannot otherwise be picked up from the board.  At the end of the game, any uncompleted contracts score negative points equal to the positive points normally gained for completion of a route of that length.  "Contract" trains do not count as being in the player's supply, for the purposes of determining if the game is about to end.
What implications would adopting these variants have on Ticket to Ride strategy and gameplay?  Are they terrible ideas?

Would a contract block other players from claiming the route?

If I understand correctly, you'll have to use 1 less card for contracted route when you build it. If that's the case, using contract is equivalent of taking 1 Wild card, which usually takes full "draw" turn.

I wouldn't say they're terrible ideas. I REALLY like the first one as it would add another layer of depth to the game. The second I personally would leave out, just because racing to get the train cards you need is part of the fun. Being able to cut other players off too easily could change things. The penalty would need to be pretty hefty, because you could easily rob somebody of 20 points as they try to complete a long route.
There's usually a few routes that end up critical to certain people in the game, and I could see a mechanic of "find out what destinations you opponents are trying to get to and do everything you can to stop them," which could make it a competition to see who has the highest negative score since nobody could complete their destinations. When you have to claim routes normally, you are loosing the privilege and resources to do something that would benefit you, and you need to have the right cards at the right time. Unless you happen to have a lot of cards or have been gathering cards of the same color by chance, you can't block. With contracts you'd be able to stop anyone at any time during your turn at the expense of just a few points if you didn't follow through later.
In the original Ticket to Ride there's a powerful connection of short routes down the center of the country that link almost everything together. You could easily contract as many of these as possible in the beginning, work on your own destinations, then 'complete' your contracts at the end of the game since they're all short colorless routes.

I've found hardcore players have shot down almost many variations I've seen posted, such as drawing 3 cards per turn, having the option to build AND draw in a turn, having 7 cards face up the whole game, etc. See a list of those here. The game is very carefully balanced in the sense of East vs. West, long vs. short routes, and attack vs. defense. This doesn't mean variants are bad, and if you have any revisions or others I'd love to see them. It just means that there is a delicate balance you have to be careful not to destroy if you want the game to retain its original feel.
I haven't found many actual variants to the gameplay, but if you are able to print them and the additional cards there's a TON of fan created maps that give the game a new feel.
and there's always the catapult expansion...

The catapult expansion raised a smile.  I wonder if the Catapult expansion for Carcassonne would do the job?  There's got to be room for a mashup of those two games - Ticket to Carcassonne? - in the world...

I personally feel as if there could be a strong argument for switching the way that Longest Route works. After all, you already get lots of points for building the efficient 5- and 6-length routes that are the bread and butter of winning the Longest Route bonus. Wouldn't there be a more interesting tension in the game if building lots of inefficient, low-scoring routes was what lined you up for the bonus?

This is precisely why all of the TtR versions after the first don't use the Longest Route mechanism, and at least two use exactly the method you describe.

Ooh yeah, good point, I do own "Nordic Countries" so I did know about the "Most Routes" bonus.  Which I guess isn't that different from "Most Routes Joined Together In A Line", when it comes down to it, and a lot less fiddly!

This is incorrect, at least TTR Europe has same Longest Route bonus too. I never encountered any confusion about this, really, I'd say different versions just vary "special bonus". Longest route/more completed tickets/something else.

The first option is already included in the Asia expansion of Ticket To Ride.
The Asian Explorer bonus gives you:

A 10 point Asian Explorer bonus is awarded to the player(s) who have connected the most cities in one continuous network of routes with trains of their color. This network may contain various branches connected to each other, as well as loops, but each city on the network may only be counted once.

TTR Wiki
Days of Wonder rules pdf
BGG Rules forum

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How long does it take to play Diplomacy?
I guess this varies a lot from game to game, but I've seen everything from 120 to 360 minutes, and wondered where the average lies.
If it's closer to 360, I don't think I will bother to buy it. I know how rarely Axis & Allies is taken out of its box...

You can always buy Diplomacy and put a time limit of say 10 minutes on each turn.  However, since the fun of Diplomacy is mostly going off into closed rooms with every single one of the other players and making wildly contradictory promises to each one, you may be losing the "fun" of the game by doing so...

Odds are that you're not going to want to get it (which is tragic, as it's a great game), since it's a long-play game.  I've found that a game typically takes 4 hours or more.
Interestingly, new player groups and experienced player groups will typically take about the same amount of time.  New players take time because they're figuring out the rules, but they're not going to be nearly as Machiavellian.  Experienced players take time because they're creating plots within plots and being devious, which leads to protracted engagements on multiple fronts.
If you really want to make a game of Diplomacy cruise along, I recommend the following:
1) Have an experienced player resolve all orders at the end of each turn.  That helps speed things along.
2) Set a solid time limit for each turn, like five minutes.  Five minutes is very long for the first three or four turns, but by the eighth turn it's barely enough time to write your orders.  Yes, setting a time limit impairs your ability to engage in negotiations, but it'll make the game end in a reasonable amount of time.
Another option:  Play in one-hour (or two-hour) sessions.  Leave the board set up between sessions.  Long ago, I made a copy of the board, mounted it on foam-core, and stuck color-coded push-pins in it to "save" the state of the board between games.  Something nice about this is that you can do all the diplomacy and negotiation you want to, and you can engage in diplomacy between games.  That's a big part of Diplomacy (go figure), and can make for a really fun experience.

I would say that its about 5 hours on average.  Its not that the game ends at that point so much as the game is agreed to be a foregone conclusion by that point, even when it might not have been, due to fatigue/disillusionment from the players :P.

As the consensus opinion is: yes, it definitely will take you a whole day to get through a game of Diplomacy - why not play it as a PBM (or PBEM, or whatever kids are calling it these days) instead?
Just because something comes with a physical board doesn't mean you have to gather your friends and sit round a table.  A Diplomacy game is quite an undertaking, but you needn't complete it in one gruelling sitting.  Amortize the endless wrangling and backroom deals over a period of weeks - the thrill of finally backstabbing your "dearest allies" will stay just as sweet!

As mentioned in other answers, 4-5 hours is an accurate average length.
I'd also go as far to say that 1/2 of all games are never 'officially' complete - more often a leading player and assumed winner is agreed upon.
I'd argue strongly that neither points detract from the game, it's length and involvement is half the fun - but if you don't feel you have that sort of time to invest, it may be worth avoiding.
It's worth pointing out that Diplomacy has a lot less pieces to wrestle with than Axis & Allies and to a certain extent, an easier ruleset to learn. Its slow point is diplomacy, which is easier to tweak, rather than the (very fiddly) physical move phases of Axis & Allies.

The "official" answer is six hours. And studies have shown that a typical game lasts until 1910-1912, that is 20-24 turns. At an average of 15 minutes a turn, that would be 5-6 hours.
Note that the above is a "median" and not a "mean" time. One tournament game lasted until 1952, that is 104 turns, and a handful of long games would skew the mean to the right.

This is the quantitatively informative answer.

Where did you get these stats?

My experiences have been varied, but much like @GWLlosa, I have found it to be, at a minimum, 5 hours.
We often take a weekend day - say a Saturday or a Friday holiday off of work - to play the game.  This way we can start around 10 AM, have lunch in the middle, dinner later and then stop whenever people are done.  It is a fun, quality game, just one I never plan on finishing.
That being said, I have heard of (but never been a part of) cut throat groups where the game goes much faster, but I think you have to have a group of people who are willing to backstab at the right times, and are willing to betray alliances for a win, something that tends to be less common amongst friends in my experience.

I've noticed the reverse; my group can be horrifically cutthroat, but that makes the game longer.  When you don't trust ANYBODY, its harder to pick up steam, and the burnout of the constant tension/paranoia itself slows things down as well.  The SHORTEST games we've had are when a capable player somehow picks up a devoted ally and together they steamroll the entire paranoid board before a kill-the-leader coalition gets started.

Those are definitely the shortest.  I am more talking about the case where you have two strong alliances (which I see a lot) and neither one will backstab their partner to end the game, so you end up with a stalemate.


text:
In bridge, what happens if a bidder makes a wrong bid that can't be corrected?
Suppose opener bids one spade. Second seat doubles (takeout). Responder redoubles. Then fourth seat "bids" one club and the opener declines to let it stand.
That is an easy fix. Fourth seat has mentioned clubs, and is now forced to say "two clubs" to make the bid sufficient.
But suppose fourth seat (a newbie) says something like "double," or "double the redouble." You can't play one spade for eightfold stakes. But the bidder has presumably given away unauthorized information. So in a tournament, what would be the penalty and how would it be assessed?

In your first hypothetical, it's actually not the case that fourth seat must bid two clubs. However, if they bid anything else, they will incur penalties for their side in the rest of the auction. See Law 27, which deals with insufficient bids.

@ruds: In theory, you are correct. But in practice, it's hard for me to imagine a pair taking administered penalties instead of the natural "penalty" of having to bid two clubs instead of one.

They might be forced to do so if e.g. their 1C opening bid is artificial or if their 2C advance of a takeout double is.

@ruds: If "one club" artificially meant something other than a desire to play in clubs, then the "misbid" (intentional or not) would convey unauthorized information to partner and itself be subject to sanctions.

Yes, under Law 27, mentioned above.

@TomAu your assumption in the first case is flawed. In official bridge rules when an insufficient bis made first of all next player has the right to accept. Meaning the opener can bid 1 diamond over 1club if he wishes. Only if he refuses than that bid can be made sufficient (if it can be made so). Only then ruds' answer applies.

@Sinan: I explicitly stated in the  question that "the opener declined to let it [the one club bid] stand.

The Laws of Contract Bridge's Law 36 deals with inadmissible doubles. If the player in first seat takes a call before somebody realizes that the double was inadmissible, the double and all subsequent calls are cancelled, it becomes fourth seat's turn to call, and everything proceeds as normal.
If, on the other hand, the irregularity is called out immediately, the double is cancelled and the player may substitute any call. Their partner (in second seat) is forced to pass every time they make a call for the rest of the auction. In addition, there will be lead restrictions:

Declarer may prohibit offender’s partner from leading any one suit at his first turn to lead, including the opening lead, such
  prohibition to continue for as long as offender’s partner retains the lead.


text:
Can opponents ask for "alerts" in bridge?
Suppose a bidder makes an unusual bid that is "alertable." The bidder's partner is then supposed to say "alert," and then field questions about the bid.
But suppose the partner fails to do this. Can the opponents ask for an alert?
What happens in the two opposite cases, if the opponents do ask for an alert and 1) the bid is alertable and the partner forgot to alert (opponents are wrongly deprived of information) and 2) the bid is not alertable (opponents may ask for and get unauthorized information)?

Law 20 of The Laws of Duplicate Bridge deals with review and explanation of calls. Quoting partially:

F. Explanation of Calls

During the auction and before the final pass, any
player may request, but only at his own turn to
call, an explanation of the opponents’ prior auction.
He is entitled to know about calls actually
made, about relevant alternative calls available
that were not made, and about relevant inferences
from the choice of action where these are
matters of partnership understanding. Except on
the instruction of the Director, replies should be
given by the partner of the player who made the
call in question. The partner of a player who asks
a question may not ask a supplementary question
until his turn to call or play. Law 16 may apply
and the Regulating Authority may establish regulations
for written explanations.
After the final pass and throughout the play period,
either defender at his own turn to play may
request an explanation of the opposing auction.
At his turn to play from his hand or from dummy
declarer may request an explanation of a defender’s
call or card-play understandings. Explanations
should be given on a like basis to F1 above
and by the partner of the player whose action is
explained.

...

(a) A player whose partner has given a mistaken
explanation may not correct the error during
the auction, nor may he indicate in any manner that a mistake has been made. “Mistaken
explanation” here includes failure to alert or
announce as regulations require or an alert
(or an announcement) that regulations do not
require.
(b) The player must call the Director and inform
his opponents that, in his opinion, his partner’s
explanation was erroneous (see Law 75)
but only at his first legal opportunity, which is
   (i) for a defender, at the end of the play.
  (ii) for declarer or dummy, after the final
pass of the auction.

Alert procedures and requirements are prescribed by the Regulating Authority, such as the World Bridge Federation or the American Contract Bridge League.
The ACBL has a document explaining alert procedures, as well as a document that advises directors how to deal with failures to alert.
So, to answer your questions:

Opponents do not ask for an alert, but they may ask you for an explanation of your partner's bids when it is their turn to bid or play.

An unexpected alert, or alternatively a failure to alert when expected, by your partner presents unauthorized information to you. Not only may you not take advantage of this information, you are required to avoid actions that are suggested by the information. From Law 16, which deals with unauthorized information:

B. Extraneous Information from Partner

(a) After a player makes available to his partner
extraneous information that may suggest
a call or play, as for example by a remark,
a question, a reply to a question, an unexpected (i.e., unexpected in relation to the basis of his action)
alert or failure to alert, or by
unmistakable hesitation, unwonted speed,
special emphasis, tone, gesture, movement or
mannerism, the partner may not choose from
among logical alternatives one that could demonstrably
have been suggested over another
by the extraneous information.
(b) A logical alternative action is one that,
among the class of players in question and
using the methods of the partnership, would
be given serious consideration by a significant
proportion of such players, of whom it is
judged some might select it.
When a player considers that an opponent has
made such information available and that damage
could well result, he may announce, unless
prohibited by the Regulating Authority (which
may require that the Director be called), that he
reserves the right to summon the Director later.
The opponents should summon the Director immediately if they dispute the fact that unauthorized
information might have been conveyed.
When a player has substantial reason to believe
that an opponent who had a logical alternative
has chosen an action that could have been suggested
by such information, he should summon
the Director when play ends (It is not an infraction to call the Director earlier or later). The Director shall
assign an adjusted score (see Law 12C) if he
considers that an infraction of law has resulted in
an advantage for the offender.

If partner fails to alert a bid (or otherwise gives an erroneous explanation of one of your bids), and you are the declaring side, you must call the director immediately after the last pass ends the auction. If you are the defending side, you must call the director immediately at the end of play.

+1 for a clear explanation, and if possible another +1 for recognising that there are other authorities besides the ACBL.

However, a perfect answer would have indicated that asking the question when it is your turn to bid is not risk-free; you are indicating to your partner that you have reason to believe the bid was not natural, which could itself be unauthorised information.

A minor but significant point; the request for an explanation should not be leading in form. That is, one should say "what did the 2 Heart bid mean?" not "was two hearts a transfer?" Never suggest a possible answer in the question, as if the answer is 'no" you have told your partner what you were thinking, which may be unauthorized information. Also, do not ask if you already know the answer, or if it will make no difference to your actions, or to alert your partner to the situation.

@DavidSiegel I will note that there is some difference opinion as to the first two clauses of your last sentence. In particular, I know of player that (at least in high-level play) always ask about opponents' bids (when alerted or not clear from their convention cards) so as not to give partner unauthorized information about their hand / thought process.

I also know several who claim that they always ask about opponents' bids in [situationX].  And a fair percentage of them do.  The rest somehow magically forget to ask with a flat 2-count, even if they do it the other 90% of the time.  If you choose this option, you must be completely ethical about it, same as the STOP card users had to do it even after 1S-2NT-STOP 4S and ... STOP-7NT.  Having said that, I have three cases where I always ask: Alerted overcall of my weak NT; "when can it be short?", and cuebids of our preempts (I play "one-under splinter" and "NLD doubles", 1-U wins).