Antraxxx

That was cool nige1. Is the answer (to the old one) that west has ?

Poker servers supposedly have mechanisms in place to detect such things. Since the details are never disclosed, odds are it's a bluff. The paper you linked to is basically a problem statement and an expression of desire for a solution, with no actual proposal, since the scheme seems to rely on the existence of an Oracle to supply answers as to what constitutes a reasonable play for varying skill level. Considering the amount of complaints about GIB and considering such a thing would also greatly simplify real life director-ing, it's safe to assume such a thing does not exist.

Thanks all (and especially mtvesuvius) for your answers. After the board I had no doubt I made a mistake looking for slam (all the results were 4♠= and ours was the only 5♠-1) but until now had no real idea why. I tried to do that thing you guys always do where you think "well opposite <some hand> slam is laydown and opposite <that hand> it's on a finesse" etc but obviously I'm not very good at it yet :)

Thanks for the responses so far. I was sitting south (and don't object to any criticism of my bidding, it's definitely my weakest area). Some followup questions: a ) The thought of bidding 3♣ never even crossed my mind. I see the merit in retrospect, similar to how opposite a 1♠ opening I would delay with 2♣ before supporting spades. However, is 3♣ forcing in this situation? Moreover, I often see people saying "in a competitive auction, support with support". Why doesn't this apply here? b ) After North's 4♠, I thought I had a great hand. I didn't expect him to cue bid for slam when I have the ♣ and ♦ aces, but I did think many combinations of honors could work for us, so I went with 4N and stopped in 5♠ after the 1/4 response. Obviously that was misguided, but how do I know to avoid it next time? It seemed that Q♣, any ♦ honor, good spades, any of those allow a decent chance for slam to make. So what about this hand makes it not good enough for slam opposite a non-minimum opener in spades?

[hv=pc=n&s=sjt9h84dat2cak972&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=p1s2h3hp4sp]133|200[/hv] The 3♥ bid by south shows a limit raise or better in spades. 4♠ by north is a positive response, a hand that would've bid 4 had the bidding been 1♠-3♠ with no interference. Sitting south, is there any point in investigating slam here?

One point that I probably should also mention is that my preferences do specify the relaxed bridge club as a preference, which seems to mean I always get placed there. It's very possible the problem is only existent for the relaxed club and not anywhere else. Sorry for not mentioning it earlier.

Thanks for the detailed answer. Could you elaborate on the quoted part? Do you mean there's still chance of a slam with a 0-8 HCP partner?

I tend to think the fact people do flicker in and out of empty tables I sit in should strongly suggest that the option wasn't selected, but I do promise to double check, as well as jiggle the cable and reboot my computer.

Thanks. I think you'll find that it's extremely difficult to fill a table of one in the off hours, certainly it takes much longer than leaving the table and clicking on "take me to the first seat available" again.

Why is it better to have to hijack threads and start flame wars in order to express lack of approval towards a post?

In the off-hours, using "help me find a game" normally results in being placed as south in an empty table. Then you have two options: leave the table and click on "help me find a game" again or stay in the table and see people flickering in and out, never filling it. Generally, rational or no, nobody stays at a table with less than 3 players, and even those who are waiting for a fourth often give it 3-5 seconds before leaving. A modification could be made such that clicking on "help me find a game" sends you to some data structure that then dishes out full, four-people tables (can be randomly, FIFO, based on skill, that's the next level of details). If you're in that "help me find a game" limbo for more than <timeout> time (probably can be as low as 2-3 seconds based on my experience with the feature), then you get placed according to the old algorithm as south in an empty table and try your luck at getting people to stay. I think it's relatively simple to implement (especially if you don't insist on any particular grouping of ordering of the people), can be easily configured around if some people prefer the old way (we already have "preferences" for "help me find a game) and is likely to improve user experience and reduce server strain of people hopping on and off new tables.

dcohio, in the sequence you described: 1♥-2NT 3♥-4♣ Wouldn't 4♦ require spades to also be controlled? (as 4♣ rules out ♠ control)

I'm going to assume that was an honest question. Generally, everything on the internet, no matter how seemingly irrelevant, is tempting to attack. The attackers can be wannabe hackers in training - they often randomly choose forums (sometimes based on searching google for keywords and choosing randomly from the results) and try to deface them to "get their name out there", in a way. Sometimes they're politically motivated and are trying to get their message across no matter where, but this forum is likely not very good for that. Another type of attacker that doesn't care about the target is people distributing malware. The odds of someone clicking a malicious link in a private message is considerably higher if it comes from a friend, rather than a newly registered member. A third type is the standard "people hoping the password to your forum account is also the password to your email". If I can break down exhaustively searching someone's password to two phases, first of all guessing the letters in the right order then guessing the capitalization, I need significantly less computing power - it's like playing mastermind :)

I thought I did. No offense intended to whomever made the (obviously deliberate) choice, but was this thought out? People who are less computer savvy are more likely to choose a weak password, and accepting all capitalization would render such a password even weaker.

This is actually a rather curious treatment, though. Regardless of how passwords are stored, case insensitivity is considerably easier to brute force. Are people really having that much difficulty remembering their original capitalisation?

I'm not sure I understand why the original distribution of partner's hand matters. For spades to work, partner needs to have AQxxx in spades, in which case he's likely to have overcalled 1S. So he must have ATxxx of diamonds for us to win. So we must switch to J♦ and hope partner returns a low diamond if declarer covers. I think.

Oh. Well, I don't see how the information about count and low spot cards is relevant since the 2 is the lowest card anyway, and by the time you see RHO's second card you've already committed.

Why cash the next trick and not just lead towards the longer hand, and cover whatever appears? If LHO discards you're screwed and were screwed to begin with. If not, then by covering you can't lose more than one trick. No?

Thanks. I read about it after, it just seems like a solution to a very specific problem, kinda weird for it to have a name :)

My plan is to avoid learning specific conventions until I have a good grasp of basic bidding. Currently I'm having difficulty with far more common scenarios than "responding to 1NT with a game forcing 5-4 in the majors" :)

I honestly have no idea what that post meant.

I think with game force hands with 5 spades and 4 hearts you could stayman then bid 3♠ over 2♦.

Okay, thanks. I couldn't fit my mind around the whole line of play.

I'm sorry, I'm clearly behind here, but how do you avoid losing K♣, A♠ and a diamond along with the original heart? Even if RHO is forced to play a club, if he has Kxx the K will still take a trick, no?

I don't. Why would they duck the ace? [edit] Or even if he ducks, why not return a diamond?