palabreur

I get the same issue when I navigate to a different tab in Chrome. In case it matters, Chrome version 45.0.2454.101 m, Windows 7 Enterprise. Can't say when it started, but sometime in the last month or two. Edit: tried to recreate this just now and couldn't. I don't know what's going on.

Thanks for looking into it; I can just use IE in the meantime.

I have another issue with the new style. I'm in an old version of Firefox for windows (3.6.28) (there IS a reason I'm not updating, but that's not important). In my version, the title bar doesn't appear for the "popups"; so I can't close them (AFAIK) and have to restart the client each time one shows up. Annoying when I'm in a robot speed game. When I first saw the new style, I did search through for an option to change back. I think any of Uday's 1, 3, or 4 would be a good solution. Tough to know what will satisfy the most people; my personal ordering would be 1>4>3>2, but I recognize that 1. creates issues for computer illiterate users.

http://tinyurl.com/b8msntk In case you don't feel like clicking through: I show 18-19 balanced - which I actually have; gib asks how many aces I have; I tell him "one"; he says "I know there's 7-8 points out, but I just don't believe you, let's play 6NT." Thanks gib.

You already know the answer. You should call the director, the director should adjust the result (either to 3NT-1, or to some higher number of hearts, possibly doubled, down however many is appropriate, or some weighted combination if NZ uses that approach) and, assuming NZ assesses procedural penalties like they do in the US, assign a whopping procedural penalty on the 4♥ bidder for blatant use of UI. Would the director assign the PP? Probably not, in a club game, but they absolutely should.

Look back, you did say 2♠ was forcing in any system. You were wrong, you remain wrong if you refuse to admit it. Is 2♠ forcing in GIB's system currently? Yes, as I pointed out. You comment about 2♠ not being unlimited was just silly. Of course it wasn't; North was passed. We all know this. Why you needed to point it out, I'm not sure; any time anyone claims any bid is "unlimited", do you jump in to correct them, because "of course they're not unlimited, they couldn't have more than 37 points, ha ha, I'm so much smarter than you"? One of us may fail to understand what we are reading; but it's not me. You claimed 2♠ was always at least F1 in this sequence, in any system. That statement is wrong. I showed you that it is wrong. That confusion was the reason why the original poster was having problems: (s)he thought that 2♠ was weak and passable. He was wrong for playing with GIB, but that doesn't mean that he could not have been right; GIB just happens to play 2♠ as forcing in this sequence. If you can't conceive of playing it non-forcing, that's fine. But to insinuate that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong, is just plain ignorant.

Fine; "unlimited except by the original pass". Happy now? 2♠ was forcing. It need not be forcing when playing lebensohl over reverses, which is what GIB is playing (as of a few weeks ago, if I recall correctly). For references as to 2♠ not being forcing, since you claim it's "forcing in any system": http://www.acbl.org/assets/documents/teachers/Teacher-Manuals/Commonly-Used-Conventions-Lesson-6.pdf http://home.comcast.net/~kwbridge/rev-leb.htm here's one that agrees with you: http://www.bridgehands.com/L/Lebensohl.htm#Opener%20has%20made%20a%202%20level%20reverse%20bid I think it's counterproductive to complain that anyone who bids differently to you is obviously wrong and foolish. You might want to reconsider your attitude.

http://tinyurl.com/7bxhwpg 4♦ looks pretty buggy to me. Every table that started with the same first seven calls, GIBWest bid 4♦. Is 4♦ meant to be a raise to the spade game, showing diamond length/values along the way? If so, the description probably needs amended, as does GIBEast's understanding of the bid.

Did GIB just make a Stripe-tailed Ape double? :unsure: http://tinyurl.com/73us6s6

The problem is that you think 2♠ is limited. GIB disagrees, 2♠ is unlimited; 2NT is its only limited rebid. Both 2♠ and 3♦ were forcing. Should 2♠ be forcing? That's a different question. But you have to play GIB's system.

As someone with a 7k+ average in robot reward tournaments, I think it's definitely a good idea to pass with the sort of hands you're talking about. In third I'd tend to open 18 balanced if not vulnerable, 17 balanced if vulnerable. If I'm unbalanced, again it depends on vulnerability: I'll open not vulnerable with hands that would tend to make opposite single raises, and open a point or two lighter if red. I wouldn't differ much from this 1st, 2nd, or 4th. 1st or 2nd, I'd open a point or so lighter vulnerable, and stick to the same opening ranges not vulnerable. I've seen Leo's opening strategies, and I can't stand them for me. In robot reward tourneys, he's opening 13 point hands. Maybe that works okay for him, because he's a very fast, very good declarer; but as a very fast, moderately good declarer, that strategy doesn't work for me. Bingo tournaments are a completely different beast, and require much more situational decisions, based on the bingo board. Sometimes it's correct to open an 11 count in any seat playing bingo, if you need low-level contracts.

My point is that the dude had a heck of a game. I bet many people would find it entertaining to see someone who wins a 8-board cross-IMPs game by almost 50. What was the point of your post? Other than to try to put down someone that you don't know...

I thought I had a nice game; obviously #6 was terrible for me, but the rest didn't seem so bad. I didn't expect to lose by almost 50: http://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?tourney=3122-1327543861-&username=jmunday http://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?tourney=3122-1327543861-&username=palabreur

They'd be considerably less disadvantaged under my scheme, especially when you consider that the lower the number of people playing, the more variable are the scores, and hence the higher the chance of getting an extremely high score. And it doesn't seem difficult to get a 10-player game going at all...

Yeah, I had thought about that this morning. Maybe a minimum table limit for the duplicate games, like 10 tables or so?

I loved the idea of the "Super Robot Challenge" run 27-29 December. It was a meta-event, in which your best masterpoint awards from five categories of robot games determined your overall score. The categories were: Robot Duplicate (either MP or IMP) Robot Race Robot Reward (either $1, $5, or Random) Bridge Bingo (either Bingo Race or Bingo Reward) Robot Rebate 55 Here are links to the announcement and results I would like to respectfully offer some suggestions. (1) This is a great format, and I think people would like if it were offered more regularly. Perhaps every month? (2) Some people (in the comments of the announcement) were concerned about cheating. Perhaps reducing the BB$ awards would allay this concern? It would also make it more reasonable to hold each month. Perhaps $5 for 1st, $4 for 2nd and 3rd, $3 for 4th-6th, $2 for 7th-10th, and $1 for 11th-20th. I think most people competing in this would not be particularly concerned by the low BB$ awards, since we (speaking on their behalf) don't have too many problems with BB$ anyway... it would be mostly a pride thing to compete in this. (3) I think the scoring of the event should be revisited. The current method yields a lot of "maximum scores", since you can't get more than 0.80 masterpoints from a robodoop, 1.00 from robot reward, etc. Further, in order to achieve the high masterpoint totals, you have to play when lots of other people are playing, and this disadvantages people who play at odd times. Accordingly, I suggest scoring as a percentage of the score of the player who has achieved the highest score in that event. Example: Leo's best score in robodoop MP is 81%, David's is 78%, and Christian's is 75%. Then Leo receives a score of 100% for robodoop MP, David gets 78/81 = 96.3%, Christian gets 75/81 = 92.6%. This same style formula can be applied to every event (except bingo). In the total points tournaments, the top scorer gets 100%, and everyone else gets a percentage based on their percentage of the top score. Bingo couldn't work this way, of course. One alternative would be to leave Bingo out. Another would be to give an artificial percentage based on the minimum number of boards you needed to complete a BINGO: 4 (the minimum) gives 100%, 5 gives 95%, 6 gives 90%, etc. (4) The selection of tournaments ought to test a wide variety of robot bridge skill. As such, I was surprised to see robot race and robot reward as separate categories. I think a better selection would be: Robot Duplicate (MPs) Robot Duplicate (IMPs) Robot Reward ($1 or $5) or Robot Race Robot Reward (Random) Bingo (either) I think Robot Reward (Random) deserves its own category, since it's a very different game to the Best-Hand styles. (5) The alternative scoring method would encourage people to continue playing even after achieving a high score. Getting the highest score is a big deal, as increases in the high score decrease everyone else's scores! It would also be feasible to run for a whole month (weekly might be better) without all of the top players scoring maximum scores in every category. Looking forward to comments.

I had it happen in a robot reward tournament just now. The bot froze for probably 30 seconds (GIB East, 4th to play to a trick); internet connection was good otherwise. I closed browser, reopened, and everything was okay again. I noticed the scores of other people hadn't changed much, so maybe it happened to others at the same time (about 6:55am EST)

I wonder if it would be possible to implement a record list or leaderboard? What I have in mind is not a "masterpoints won" leaderboard, but a list showing top performances. I play a lot of robot tournaments, and the following would interest me to see: Top scores in Robot Reward tournaments (all-time, monthly, daily) Most scores over 10,000 in Robot Reward tournaments (all-time, monthly) Most four-board bingos in Bridge Bingo tournaments (all-time, monthly) Fastest time to bingo in Bridge Bingo tournaments (all-time, monthly) I suppose the decision to implement something like this would depend on (1) The time to program and maintain such a list (2) The increase in play that would result from people trying to make records (I think this would be more if there were separate lists for each of the forms; like for the robot reward games, separate lists for Free Robot Race, $0.25 Robot Reward, $1 Robot Reward, $5 Robot Reward; then people might try to set records on each of them) (3) The decrease in play that would result from people getting discouraged by the "high scores" (I don't know if this effect would be real or not, but I suppose it's worth considering) I suppose you could implement something similar for matchpoint tournaments too... highest score in a tournament (all-time, monthly, daily; perhaps with some minimum number of competitors). I assume there would be significant economies of scale, so that once the first record list is implemented, it would be relatively cheap to create another. Thanks for the consideration.

I looked back at my last 30 tournaments; over those, my average is 6630 with a standard deviation of 2667; so 95% of the time, my scores are between... 1300 and 12000, or so. My average for completed tournaments is a little higher. Occasionally when things are not going well, I withdraw from the tournament and start another, if I don't expect to have a shot at winning. Do I "make most of my contracts"? That's a red herring, since making contracts is not the name of the game, it's achieving the highest TP score possible. I'm not sure why 42 seconds per completed hand is unbelievable. Many of the hands essentially "play themselves"; anything that takes effort, I just guess. Should I play for the finesse or the drop? If it's close, who cares? Plus, the part scores are the hands that take the longest, either for me to play or (especially) the computer. The more hands you pass out, the more higher level contracts you'll play, and the faster things will go.

When responding to 4NT (RKC) I learned that 5NT was an even number of keycards with an unspecified void. But zero keycards didn't count; with zero keycards, just respond "zero". GIB seems to think zero is an adequate number of keycards to show that void; do other people like or dislike that treatment? Should it be changed? Case in point: http://tinyurl.com/3sovzjn GIB showing (what I assumed was) 2 with a void, I figured the most likely void was hearts and leapt to the grand. In hindsight, perhaps I should have inferred from GIBeast's double that partner had zero keys. After some poor defense I had made it, en route to my second high score in the robot reward tourneys (13290)

As barmar points out, it's not internet connection speed that's the problem; it's lag. I've had bad lag nights where I'll sit there waiting for 30 seconds, and it's frustrating, but slowing everyone else down doesn't solve that frustration. Just don't play if you're lagging. There's so little information being sent, that "connection speed" can't be the problem. LOL @ "23 hands"... a normal good round for me is 50 with 15 passouts.

Hmm... I wonder if the logic has changed, or if I'm just using it in a different situation to you. I've tried this probably ten times after center-hand opponent preempts, but never have I had them pass out the redouble. [EDIT] And of course, the VERY next time I try it, it works! :) Different situation to what I had tried before: (1♥) 2♠ (dbl) redbl all pass with a single overtrick - game wasn't making, but +840 helped propel me to the win. :) [EDIT 2] Ditto the NEXT try: (1♣) 2♠ (dbl) redbl all pass So I guess maybe using it after partner makes a weak jump overcall is the trick.

What style of game are you playing? If matchpoints, 2M looks like a decent shot at the top spot. If robot race/reward... well, it shouldn't be that, since you oughtn't to be opening your hands. Can't be bingo either, since the 1NT rebid would be awful (just pass 1M if you want a one-level contract). So you must be playing matchpoints, in which case... I think 2M was a shot at the best contract in each case.

Well, apart from the facts that GIB doesn't play leaping michaels, leaping michaels wouldn't apply here, the GIB description from the mouse-over was "clubs", and this hand isn't appropriate for leaping michaels even if it applied... yeah, sounds good.

GIBpartner holds ♠- ♥AQ8542 ♦J7 ♣J10652 Bidding: (1♠) dbl (2♠) to GIBpartner, who calls 4♣. Anyone have any idea why?