Chamaco

Gambling 3NT. Equal level conversion Weak jump shift not in competition. Unusual 2NT (not the convention per se, but its most common application). Strong 2C opening. Any convention that gives controls before distribution at the first round of bidding (without a known fit). Free negative bids (no pun intended, FREE ! :D ). Use of negative doubles as "card showing", with little distributional info (e.g. generic 8-11, usually balanced, regardless of majors).

I will speak only for my self, obviously :D 1) I know what it means to be a volunteer. I have volunteered for free and stoill do in activities where I am skilled. I volunteered for BBO Italy for things I can help to: translating things from english to italian and vice versa. Also, I am a Chess Master and have devoted for free MUCH of my chess mentoring time during the last 15 years both online and live (obviously not on BBO ;) ). 2) when I mentor, my questions at the end of the session is to receive by the pupils/audience comments and suggestions on how to do the explanations. I am happy of feedback, it helps to improve my level of mentoring. 3) Speaking of commentators. I had to say that *for some specific commentators*, who I have happened to see quite often in the competitions I watched, the level was not up to the level that I was used to at the beginning of BBO. I have to say that they are not many, so in a sense, I understand that some posts replied in this thread (e.g. Rado's post, and a few others) listing several of the wonderful commentators we have on BBO Vugraph. Still, I did not think it was nice and proper to mention the names I referred to, so I simply described what kind of comments I like and what not. This is feedback, I believe. It is also criticism in a sense, but not destructive, since it is suggested the lines for improvement. 5) The lines I would like to see improved is specifically when some experts seem to get bored of the hand. This never happens with some commentators (the ones I like). Others, when dummy goes down, sometimes just comment: "A dull parttscore for E-W" and then turn to some jokes publicly with friends, when many more technical comments could be added, which may seem superfluous and obvious to an expert but not to lesser players. 6) if a commentators does not speak in depth of the hand because he has not the technical skills to do it under pressure, I have no problem with it. What I find frustrating is when expert - who have indeed such skills - do not do it. Ben (Inquiry) suggested in one post that sometimes one has the impression that only when there is a possibilityt of a truiple progressive 7-ways squeeze do they find the hand challenging enough to enter the discussion of the play of the hand. I agree with him. Much of the times it would possible in a "boring " hand to discuss typical card combinations or falsecards. A non expert would have trouble to do it, and this is not a problem for me. But I find extremely pleasant when experts, during dull phases, make such comments on fundamental card play techniques. 7) I think feed back is the key to improvement, as long as it is expressed properly. If the policy should be that if I do not like some commentators'style, I should just shut up just because they do it for free, I do not like it. I still believe that a proper and polite feedback should be allowed. Nevertheless I will accept to shut my mouth if that's how things are supposed to be...:) 8) Finally, I repeat, these are ONLY expectations, NOT requirements. This all is for free and thankful for it. Commentators may obviously ignore or not the feedback. I just thought it was right to let them know what some part of the audience like (as well I am glad that other posters have expressed their own opinion different from mine). I hope I was not wrong... :D

I reckon that a jump to 2NT is used by many 2/1 pairs as natural, balanced GF without a 4 card major (maybe 4333). Question 1 I guess that any NON 3NT rebid by opener here is a slam try. Do you suggest any specific sequence (artificial or natural) from here to investigate further responder's hand (maybe for a minor suit slam) ? Question 2 I read in Lawrence's 2/1 workbook that he suggests playing: 1m:2NT = either 12/14 or 18/19 (show battleship at 2nd round) 1m:3NT = 15-17 If so, what is your suggested set of slam try responses after 1m:3NT ? Thanks all !! :ph34r:

Hi all, I am trying to define better and better strong club (16+) overcalled sequences, so here are 3 questions related to opps preempting at the 3 level. In the version we play, 1NT opening = 10-12 bal , 13-15 bal are included in 1D opening, so the minimum strength for a balanced 1C is 16. Thanks all !! :o ---------------------- CASE 1 1♣-(3Y)- ? I know double shopuld not be playted as penalty nor as simple "cardshowing". However, I have see 2 different approaches: 1) negative double as takeout major-oriented 2) "thrump double" à la Bergen, stopper asking )especially useful when preempt is in spades) Which one do you recommend ? Also, what should a cuebid mean ? ---------------------- CASE 2 1♣-pass-1♦(0-7)- (3Y) ? What should double be here ? Also, what should a cuebid mean ? ---------------------------------------------------------------- CASE 3 1♣-pass-positive suit response- (3Y) ? "Positive response" here is 1H/s or 2C/D showing 5+ cards and 8+ hcp. What should double be here ? [broken Record] :ph34r: = what should a cuebid mean ?

i agree with cascade. There are so many communities on BBO with different interests. Diversity is a plus :)

I hope you do not refer to myself. But as usual, I take your posts as an occasion to clarify my ideas rather than start unpleasant discussions: I never said the commentators have no idea of bridge. I would rather say that - for me - the opposite is frustrating : when a commentator who indeed has good technical skill starts to talk of non technical issues neglecting details that would be of interest to players like me. I assume from your posts that you did not happen to watch vugraphs with such type of comments, but I guarantee you it happened to me.

Uday, I do understand your point. About the issue you mention I'll just say that: I prefer anyone (even a non-expert) who at least tries an analysis of the hand, even if the analysis is wrong, to an expert who gets bored about the hand and talks of something else (or only superficially of the hand). In my opinion anyone who tries hard to do his best deserves praise, regardless of the technical quality of the result. On the other hand, being an expert does not necessarily mean being an experienced commentator: indeed, not every expert may have in mind what the audience like to hear or not. These suggestions should be viewed - in my opinion - just as feedback, so that every commentator can see what some BBO players would like to hear. Then, of course, they will decide on their own how to handle the chronicle.

Cherdano has expressed even better than myself my overall feelings and ideas. I agree 100% with this post.

I would like to add that many lectures held in the BIL club are for a wide range of skill levels, and can be useful for anyone is not an expert, from novice to advanced. This club is a real treat, try it, you won't be disappointed !! :P BTW thanks to all the BIL volunteers , you are doing a wonderful job !! :)

I did not write that statement. It was written by a different poster after my post. -------------------- Oh ok, I just saw ansibragge mentioned this and I thank him.

Thanks Matthias ! :D The scheme sounds interesting, so I have tried making my own serch on the internet on which are the sequences after the responses, but I had no luck. There seems not to be much material on the questions that i list below. After the transfer response, what is the policy of opener ? 1) should he ALWAYS accept the xfer ? In this case, if responder rebids, is he invitational even when making a weakish 2nd bid such as: own suit rebid raise pard suit bid cheapest NT How should one differentiate a 2nd round bid a ) weak (especially if u are weak and have xferred into a 4 card suit) b ) invitational (whether or not u xferred in a 5 bagger) c ) GF (same: xfer in 4 or 5 bagger) 2) if opener does not have the obligation to accept the xfer, what does it mean if he(being limited to max 15) does not accept the xfer ? Thanks all !! :)

In chess servers with rating, one enters with a fixed rating, but the fluctuations in rating at the beginning are multiplied by a coefficient which is larger at the beginning and decreases in time. So basuically: at the begiinning you experiene large loss and gains in rating very quickly, then after a while you start to stabilize your level while your coefficient decreases. After a while you find yourself at the level you deserve.

I thought about that. However I got stuck on one thing: how do you know when a bid is Ace asking ? I do not want to use 4NT as ace (or keycard ) ask when the agreed suit is a minor. a) if I use Minorwood RCKB (4 of the agreed minor), i cannot use it as "Unserious slamtry" b ) if I use kickback RCKB (step above trump suit), I cannot use it as cuebid, and I add one more indetermination on the controls besides the LTTC suit. Basicall I will end up having 2 undefined suits for controls, for which cuebids are unavailable: 1) the kickback suit (step above trumps); 2) the LTTC suit (step below trumps) c) if i use 4 of the opposite minor as ace ask (4 clubs for diam, 4 diams for clubs), I have similar problems to kickback (for clubs), and if diams are agreed I cannot use 4C as cuebid (serious or unserious).

Hi all, here is one thing i could not do today, maybe it is a bug or there is a workaround I may use, in the latter case, suggestions welcome ! :D During the broadcast, at the end of a deal, I clicked to bring up the movie console. I wanted to watch again the play of the hand just finished. However, only the "save" button was enabled, and all the other buttons (including Next and Prev buttons) except the Help button ere disabled. I suppose I can still save on my pc the movie and reopen it eparately as lin file, but I'd prefer to avoid that: the BBO client is somewhat unstable, and I hate whenn BBO crashes for that. ciao ! :) Mauro

1) archivio vugraph Per quanto ne so io non è scaricabile sul tuo pc, ma lo puoi consultare online quando entri in BBO (Explore bridge/Bridge Library) 2) l'aggiornamento del sito Non mi pronuncio su quto, anche se non mi viene in mente un motivo per un aggiornamento piu' frequente, se non l'upload delle classifiche dei tornei BBO Italia. 3) La partecipazione al forum E' fisiologico per un forum che solo una piccola frazione di coloro a cui vi assistano partecipi attivamente. Molti altri fanno parte della "maggioranza silenziosa" ("lurkers" = "sbirciatori") che leggono con interesse, ma per indole o altro non intervengono direttamente. Questo fenomeno è ancora piu' accentuato quando la comunità del forum è circoscritta, come nel caso di forum in lingua solo italiana. Nei forum inn inglese, il bacino di interesse è asai piu' alto, e, se è comunque vero che tendono a postare le stesse persone, il loro numero è assai piu' elevato

My personal opininion is that the benefits of ading a rating system would be minimal. 1) right now, after a while you play on BBO, you get to know which players you like and which not. 2) yes, sometimes there is no known partner available, so you have to "guess" or their self-statement. Guessing on a BBO point rating would be more reliable, but by how much ? I don't know how well the rating systems of the foreign federations work, but speaking of the ratings in Italy, I can tell you they are absolutely meaningless. You will find MANY MANY players with a low ranking which are actualy MUCH better than other players with SIGNIFICANTLY higher rank. And this is not an exception, but an extremely common occurrence. 3) on the other hand, my experience in any field that adopts rating systems is that people become les nice. One does not need to be a genius to recognize this in bridge clubs and bridge competitions, and my long experience as a ches player confirms that it holds true also for chess (and other posters will probably have experienced the same in many other fields). 4) one of the effects of rating introduction is also that it becomes harder and harder for bginners to play with and against good players. More and more tables become composed of beginners/low level intermediates only. This is a damage even for the selfish people who want to play only between experts: remember, the bridge world is alive because there are a large number of players, the more players we have, the better it is for everybody. And the best way to do it, is to let these beginers improve by keeping them in contact with stronger players. So why should we introduce a rating system for a minimal benefit (knowing "better" the strength of your pard, based anyway on unreliable criteria), for a probable cost much worse (losing much of the frienly atmosphere and segregating low level players to a level where they can much less frequently interact and improve) ? My bottomline is: let's leave the hierarchies to the bridge federations, and keep BBO as it is. We do not need yet another means to pump up our ego (which the rating essentially is).

Assume you play precision with nebulous 1 diamond including: -13-15 (semi)balanced -4441 (no diam sortness) - any 54-55-45 in minors - unbalanced with diamonds (5clubs+ 4M are opened 2♣) what are your set of responses after opp double ? E.g after 1♦-(Dbl)- ? 1) new suit at 1 level forcing or non forcing ? 2) new suit at 2 level = forcing or non forcing ? 3) any suggested meaning of jump bids (I usually use them as preemptive) 4) what is the suggested meaning of 1NT ? 5) Redoiuble is 10+ balanced or what ? 6) do you use conventional bids for good unbalanced hands in the minors (not suitable for redouble) ? Finally, is there a thorough description available somewhere of what Meckwell use in this situation, besides their convention card ? Or do you have any info ? thanks !! ;) Mauro

Nikos, I respect your opinion, and I am glad you liked what you saw on the Vugraph shows you looked at. It is quite possible that we did not watch the same vugraph shows (icertainly was not watching those show you mentioned). Just one point about myself and the commentators: I am aware of my low skill level and would never ever try to suggest any pearl of wisdom to the commentators. My regret is not being able to ask questions and clarifications. I hope my position is clear now, and I am glad to see that a debate has come out of this thread: in every situation I try to see the glass half full, and my position is that it is interesting to hear from the audience about their different interest in the Vugraph comments. Finally, let me present my apologies to anyone may have found my post irritating. It was not the intention of the post. Yet the intention of the post was only to communicate the *thoughts* on the matter (not *requirements*, since this is a free service and I am thankful for it), knowing that some other people had similar position on this - while obviously others disagree. I still think it was right to communicate this. Whether I choose or not the best form to do it, I cannot tell. Thanks all ! ;)

I had promised to myself not to mention names about commentators, but I will break my promise since this involves making compliments :)) Yes, I agree, Sabine Auken does a great job, and I have to say that I liked also the commentators mentioned by Rado in his post here the few times I had the occasion to view them.

Kantar's book is not online anymore :P. I think a new commercial paper book is coming out soon, so the web link was disabled. If I am wrong (hopefully) please someone points me to the new web page with the online Kantar material ! :)

Yes, that is definitely one of the points of my posts.

I think Ben hit the nail right on top. Some commentators sometimes go adrift because they fail to realize what the audience needs. And it is not by chance that this happens mostly with those who do not have "+++" in profile. Ler me repeat once more that enabling direct feedback with the audience will help these commentators, who indeed do have the technical skills required for a good analysis, to stick to the technical points needed by the audience, with benefits for both sides.

Happy B-Day Slothy ! :huh:

Hi all, let me start this post by stating first one thing. If anyone will reply to this post with a message stating "what are you complaining of ? You got all this for free, accept it or just ignore the downsides", he/she sure has some points. My intention is not to criticize destructively anything, and I apologize in advance if in the follow-up it may seem so. And let me repeat out loud how grateful I am to the people who organize Vugraph shows ! These Vugraph shows are just great ! Thanks a lot to all the folks who make this happen ! :D ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Having said that, the topic of this post is the vugraph chronicles. I loved the first vugraph shows, not only because of the possibility of viewing the deals themselves, but especially for the comments. Some early commentaries were done by Fred himself, and these were obviousluy awesome (although it is unrealistic to expect him to do it again frequently). Yet, also others made a great job in commenting the hands: among them, I especially liked "ghinze" 's comments, and also Cascade's were nice. Why did i like them ? I liked them because they were giving to the audience an analysis of the critical points of the hands. Those things that an intermediate player may easily miss. They were pinpointing for each hand if there was a critical decision (even hidden), and, for each decision, what would be their mental process to cope with it at the table - without seeing all 4 hands. So, things like: - LEAD: *what to lead after the given bidding: trying to explain to the audience what they would lead without seeing all 52 cards - BIDDING: *what would make them choose between two different contracts (partscores, games, slam, and maybe the strain in which to play it) * bidding or doubling * sacrificing or defending * preempting or not (or how high) - CARD PLAY *something like "usually this card combination should be played that way for XXX tricks. However here declarer has to think of this proiblem (can be entries, dangerous opponent, trump control, modified odds due to bidding/play, etc etc) * false cards, unblocking plays, etc. In short, anything that involves a non-trivial decision that involves expert judgement. -------------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately, during the last 4-5 months, the quality of commentaries has dramatically dropped, in my opinion. Nowadays, many of the commentators will at most say something like: "I bet that the final contract will be 5♠. Anyone up for betting a coke ?" or "when i try such finesse they always go wrong". or "Bidding a slam with 55% odds is way too conservative for me, I usually bid them at 30%"... Not to mention all other cases in which most of the comments are referred to the kind of drinks, or of food they like... :D In short, most of the comments are jokes, intended to entertain people watching, which is always good (we also want to have fun watching bridge). And I agree that a chronicle which is *only* technical will be boring in the end, there is the need to relax the atmosphere. But it is very frustrating, at least for me, to watch bridge deals where expert commentators deal only superficially on the problems of the hands, but rather dwell in several entertaining chat with their buddies. Most of these chronicle just have nothing technical about the play of the hand, except the pure description of what everybody can see. You do not need an expert to do that. I would expect (as in the early vugraph shows) experts to point hidden falsecard possibilities, differentiate between various percentage plays according to different situations, and other things like that. And I have to say that I spoke with many BBO players who agree with me. Yet again, I am aware I have no rights to complain for anything, since the service given is for free. ----------------------------------------------------------- I suspect that the gradual change of the commentary style is due to the fact that now the audience cannot make direct questions on the hands to the commentators. In fact, the quality drop of the commentaries started more or less after the feature of allowing questions by the audience was disabled. When the audience was allowed to ask questions, the commentators were automatically more aware of what the audience needed to know. Closing the direct feedback between commentators and audience left the commentators alone with their own idea of commentaries, and it is easy to go adrift in a direction which is not the same expected by many intermediate players. I also understand that it is now unfeasible to give any player in the audience (thousands nowadays) the authorization to write publicly or privately to commentators in the BBO client. That would clutter the chat console, and it would be a mess. Yet, there is an in-between solution. There could be enabled a different log file or a console only devoted to questions. This could be , for instance, a chat console on yahoo or msn messenger (or anything). This would continually log the questions, and commentators could, once in a while (during idle moments or uninteresting play/bidding) just have a quick look to one or 2 interesting questions (out of the many), and respond publicly on BBO. If anything, this would allow the commentators to see what are the info that the audience needs (without cluttering their BBO chat console). After all, I suppose the commentators decided to give their availability in order for the audience to better understand the play, or am I wrong ? :huh: ciao all !

Complimenti, mi sembra un'ottima iniziativa che fissa un buon termine di riferimento per coppie occasionali e per gli obblighi di alert.