Scarabin

I wonder if you, and mikeh, do not consider a "religious moderate" as a contradiction in terms? My own experience is that life is not as simple as that. I have known many believers whom I would consider moderate. Let me pose an hypothetical: I think it was Dick Morris who said of President Clinton that "when he went to church on Sunday he was a devout Christian , when he entered the Oval Office on the following Monday he was a complete pragmatist". I do not think you could label Pres. Clinton a fanatic or an atheist, would you call him a religious moderate? :D

I will have to explain by examples. Anything else would be too obscure and boring. I think the current theory of declarer card play may be regarded as a combination of analysis and knowledge, applied slightly differently to playing to the defenders opening lead(s) and to declarer's development of the hand. This approach seems to be totally historical and follows a well trodden path. GIB introduced a different approach which might be characterised as search and evaluate or generate a sample and test double-dummy. GIB's approach however has little relevance to human players and could only be implemented with the help of a computer. It has achieved only limited success. An approach which evaluates each card-state ( declarer & dummy's cards and any cards played & any inferences) as a numerical value and aims at monotonically increasing the numerical value of each successive card state, could perhaps be derived from computer analysis and provide an alternative theoretical approach. As far as I know no one has attempted this. In a nutshell, that is what I mean (or at least my best attempt at an explanation). :D

I am not sure what point you think I am missing since, to me, you seem to be putting forward opinions and assumptions as facts. In my life I have met many people I would consider moderate, and the religious and secular moderates seemed to have much in common, especially a reasonable outlook on life. I note that you do not approve of religious moderation, but I personally admire moderation whether religious or secular. I suspect we are starting from different definitions of moderation. But does it really matter? :D

I would, of course, agree with most of what you say, except that I think there is a wide gulf between moderates and fanatics. Imo moderates are capable of rational thought, fanatics are not. Thus I expect moderates to be capable of changing their beliefs and to be tolerant of others' beliefs. I am cynical enough to believe no one is completely rational. By coincidence I am watching a Scandinavian detective series in which the heroine is a blonde, Swedish detective who governs her conduct entirely by police, legal rules and has no concept of other peoples' feelings. Unless you have seen the TV series, "The bridge" you have no idea how weird she seems.

Further thoughts on voting. I realize, of course, that any individual player can improve play by reducing unforced errors and extending knowledge of technique. Maybe we have reached the stage of diminishing returns and it's clearly easier to formulate new theories on bidding although not so clear these are improvements. I really wonder if we could have reached stagnation? How would you prove you'd improved the theory of bidding and/or play? Win a world championship? Would you be believed or accused of cheating? I really don't know. :D

I still cannot decide how to vote. I find it impossible to believe that declarer play, in the abstract, has reached such a level that it cannot be improved; conversely I cannot suggest just how it could be improved. Deception? Forward technique? Rare plays? :D

I have a copy of Borel & Cheron, and I know Roudinesco, although his great work has been superceded by Suitplay. Which books would you recommend from the others? I have largely given up books in favour of interactive software. :D

I probably owe Eddie Kantar an apology as well. I remember Kelsey as ahead of his time, like Autobridge. If someone publishes Kelsey's books as interactive software I'd be ready to try them again. Probably a fault of memory but I don't remember their presentation as textbook. :D

Strong stuff! But as regards your first sentence: has this ever been true in any field of human competition? What about further inferences from bidding and play (not mannerisms)? And techniques that have no immediate but have potential benefit? :D

Thanks :D

That's fascinating: I take this as saying top players do evaluate and monitor progressive card states but the process is not well documented. Agreed deriving information is the major factor but others would be creation & management of entries,stops, and ducking and unblocking. The factors writers tend to classify as basic technique but do not list and that players at my level tend not to recognize as necessary. I think too many books on play are written as entertainments (good for sales) and too few as textbooks. Let me take Forquet's "Bridge with the Blue Team" as an example. As an entertaining puff for the Blue Team it's magnificent but as a textbook it stresses the "shock,golly" at the expense of straightforward explanations. The first hand describes how Chiaradaia made 6 spades on the following: [hv=pc=n&s=sak985hk8daqckqt2&n=sqj7ha943d932c865]133|200[/hv] Forquet, who is one of my favourite writers, waxes eloquent on how Chiaradia "played as if he could see through the backs of the cards" instead of just saying he assumed everything was favourable. Ch unblocked the spades and created an extra entry to dummy. F describes this as a farsighted unblocking play instead of saying Ch needed another entry to dummy and the unblocking play could not lose and might provide this. The whole effect is to suggest Ch exercised inimitable genius and not to instruct you how to play a hopeless hand. The only genuine textbooks I can remember are Love's "Bridge squeezes complete", Mollo & Gardiner's "Card Play Technique" and, perhaps Culbertson's Blue Book. :D

Yossi Nygate, author of Python (bridge squeezes) and Aspen-Bassinet (rule based declarer play program) said in his paper on Aspen: "To use these techniques one must have a good evaluation fubction; but no one has been able to find such a function for Bridge......the overall quality of card playing has not improved substantially since the invention of Bridge......I believe this stagnation is due to lack of research.If more time was spent in developing card playing theories both humans and computer programs would benefit." Here's a link to Aspen (if I've got it right): My link Sorry I do not know why it does not work. Can anyone help, please? Best to just Google aspen+nygate :D

In researching past work on simulating bridge play I have trawled through many papers by academics, mostly theses, and was surprised to fond that many feel that bridge play is inadequately researched and analysed. Many lamented a tendency to rely on examples and skimp on formulating general rules. One writer, and remember these are highly intelligent people, took the view that bridge is under developed by comparison with chess, is of recent origin and hence relatively unstudied. Because of its infancy there has very little analysis of play, and hence its development is stagnant relative to the progress on bidding. Now its probably true that since the 1930's there has been greater development in bidding than in play but I think this could merely mean that play was already analysed under whist, plafond and auction bridge? I don't expect many posters can recall the 1930's but in your experience is it true that development in play hangs behind bidding, or is bidding development merely catching up? :D

I think Paulg is saying that in Bridgez's comparisons, humans play against Wbridge5 but robots play in isolation: ie Wbridge5,Jack,Gib,etc bid and play all 4 hands. Thus a program that is weak in defence play may score higher as declarer, and similar considerations apply to competitive bidding. I remember also Gerard Joyez saying that he always has the latest version of Wbridge5 but not necessarily for other programs. :D

Yes but not completely without logic: GIB treats doubles of game contracts as penalty. :D

Forgive me if I am being naive but I am puzzled by the general sentiment against trolls. I would classify many posts as trolling even though the authors would probably deny any such intention and I frequently enjoy reading posts I would class as trolling. I tend however to object to carping at minor points in posts and completely negative posts that seem to be activated by malevolence. Some posters seem to view any post that seeks a reaction as trolling but surely no one writes a post hoping it will be ignored? I can see that hi-jacking a topic could be considered trolling. If my present post is an example of trolling then I can only say it's not intended as such and it's completely sincere. I would really like to understand this. :D

I am probably a special case but I have reached the stage of buying 90% interactive bridge books, to practice play and help with computer simulation, and 10% paper (old books I specially want. :D

Congratulations. Surely that must be the most obscure movie mentioned so far! :D

I seem to have no problem in finding obscure movies; my only worry is will anyone else enjoy them. That said, let me offer "The Shadow Dancer": a gritty little tale about "the troubles" in Belfast. It's taut but not excessively violent, and probably true to life. A word of warning: either I've lost my ear for female Northern Irish accents, or I'm losing my hearing, or there's a problem with the sound. Probably worth watching but not worth searching for. :D

I never thought you insensitive, merely thought you misunderstood Greenman :D

I normally agree with your posts but I feel you are unfair to Greenman. Like him I feel sad that BBO and posters cannot be more helpful in these instances. I would suggest, as an arrogant, misunderstanding male, that victims of harassment first need relief from harassment as a short term measure and then, ideally some sort of long term remedy. I do not think Greenman makes "energetic attacks on the women posters"; if anything he seems supportive. Fair? :D

Death narrates (provides a voice-over) the movie also. Seemed to me to work well. :D

Never mind. The third series has been promised, not yet completed. Watching a new Scandinavian crime series called "The bridge". Which has similarities to the original "The Killing". :D

Saw and enjoyed "The Book Thief" yesterday. It's unpretentious and likely to remain obscure: a movie about Nazi Germany in which even the Gestapo are portrayed as decent human beings is not exactly mainstream. Written by an Australian the background may relate more to pre-war Sydney than to Germany but, as I said, I enjoyed it. :D

Have traced www.PBS.org but cannot find "Prisoners of war". Any help or advice? :D