Redirect loop fixed, I need a better rule format

[TECK]

Hello everyone,

I have a little problem on hand, related to redirect loop for a specific
location:
server {
listen 192.168.1.2:443 spdy ssl default_server;
...
location ^~ /alpha {
    return 301 https://www.domain.com$request_uri;
}
...
}
I would like to redirect URL's of this format:
https://www.domain.com/alpha/delta/[more of $request_uri]
To:
https://www.domain.com/delta/[more of $request_uri]

I can access fine the https://www.domain.com/delta/... directory. When the
GET is performed on https://www.domain.com/alpha/, it tries to use the old
REQUEST URI which is obviously wrong. I solved the issue this way:
location ^~ /alpha {
    location /alpha {
        return 301 https://www.domain.com/;
    }
    location ~ ^/alpha/(.+)$ {
        return 301 https://www.domain.com/$1;
    }
}

Is there a better (more compact) way to achieve the same results?
With the rules listed above, I tell Nginx to redirect /alpha or /alpha/ to
/.
If the $request_uri contains something after /alpha, I grab the part of
$request_uri after /alpha and push it to /.

Thank you for helping me make this configuration part better.

Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,245780,245780#msg-245780