JoAnneM

Can I change my vote? You all have convinced me to open 4C.

There is a good reason to hate this ruling - it is illegal. Just as ACBL doesn't give split scores for hands played it doesn't give avg+/avg-, it gives actual adjustments. Avg+/Avg- is for hands not played or fouled boards. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

I agree completely with jdonn. Active Ethics is promoted, even demanded, by ACBL, and that requires full disclosure. In my long years in duplicate bridge it is the wannabee experts who have the most trouble with this concept, the true experts, no matter their age, are expert at full disclosure and Active Ethics. Notice at the vugraph tables how many bids are alerted that don't get alerted in your local club. And, we have a national champion playing regularly at an online to which I belong, and he and his partner alert religiously, with accompanying explanations. I imagine there are some there that think he is a "wuss". lol

Now if I were going to Boston, and sadly I am not, Thai would be the furtherest thing from my mind. I was there a year or so ago and I seem to remember great seafood and beans.

Yes, my daughter-in-law! And don't tell her I am looking at computers! :blink: My son uses several Macs in his animation studio but he has some PCs too. Their 3 year old has a Mac, and an iPod. But I am not really into Apple, I can hardly use my iPhone they gave me. The apps all work but I hate the phone. Well, in this economy I will just look for the best deal. I used to buy computers by the dozen when I was working so it shouldn't be too hard to buy just one. By the way, my other son works in programming at CalPers and I believe they have never switched to Vista.

I need a new desktop computer. Dell offers computers with dual operating systems that boot up either into Vista or XP which sounds like a very nice arrangement. I don't notice any other retail computers offering this. To those with Vista, do you wish you still had XP too? Do you have programs you can't run on Vista? My 5-year old puter is a Dell and I have been happy with it, I just don't know if I should limit myself to that brand this time. My laptop is Gateway and it is good too, now that I replaced the harddrive after two years. :)

Go England!

Congratulations, and the best of luck to you and your team.

Congratulations! I have never heard of this type of game outside of the club level and it sounds very interesting. If you have time could you tell a little bit about how it is organized, setup, etc? Thanks, Jo Anne

Ted Stevens lost - what will Sarah do now that she can't be a senator?

I liked him in the movie "Dave", and in other very small doses.

In an infraction in bridge any "leanings", for want of a better word, go to the non-offender, so if the non-offender tells me they would have bid differently I believe them. If that bid would produce a different result I would adjust the score.

I was responding to an expressed opinion. I believe that is allowed here. If you are the Forum police, I apologize. If there are Forum police I wasn't aware of it.

I have one of the suits that partner asked me to bid, so I will bid it - 3C. That is my punishment for opening this hand. There was a time when this garbage would not have been opened and the auction might have been more sane.

I think maybe it becomes a matter of Active Ethics on the part of the opponents that they make every effort not to gain advantage through an "accident".

I think a "brain fart" is nothing more than an "accident". Instead of unethical perhaps I should have used the word unsportmanlike. When a player drops a card on the floor don't you immediately avert your eyes so you won't see it? Why would you want to do the "unsportsmanslike" thing of staring at declarer's hand if he accidentely laid them on the table. Instead, avert your eyes while he quickly picks them up! I love all the times in the Laws that the Directors are allowed to "deem". That makes him/her the Deemer. :)

LOL, I think MP is the real game.

Blackshoe, do you work as a playing director? This is the problem I have with a lot of things I would like to do. I can keep track of what she is doing at my table, but at other tables I feel very awkward peeking at what she is doing, or actually asking to look at her card. I suppose I could ask to see her card at the end of the game. I have trained myself to not look at the board numbers when I am called to a table, and to not actually look at a hand, just to address the actual problem presented to me and then wipe it from my mind and go back to the hand I was playing. It is difficult to declare a hand when receiving two director calls, but I can do it. However, multitasking becomes harder with age. lol Our club is small - 9/10 tables, a nonplaying director is out of the question.

Voting for a 3rd party candidate is doing nothing more than taking a vote away from either the Democrats or Republicans, and if you want your vote to mean absolutely nothing then go right ahead. I would rather make a positive statement and vote for someone who is running with a chance of winning.

Nader is the "very old joke".

You do this stuff while at work? :rolleyes: Time to get a monitored alarm system. We did after two break-ins. No trouble since.

Source? The laws generally prohibit rather than expressly permit. The more pertininent question, if you are in doubt, is what is the source for a suggested ban on the practice. There being none, it is permitted by default. This can be a matter of judgment on the part of the Director. I have a player in my game who sits with the scoring side of the convention card propped against the edge of the table, facing her, in her lap. She has the reputation of being the slowest player in our club. One day while at my table I noticed she was continually writing. I asked to see her card. She was writing the auction, the opening lead, and little marks for cards played! She still sits with the card propped like that and all I allow her is the opening lead, and I monitor it. I don't know what else to do. She continually is challenging me on the Laws. Can I force her to place her card face down once play has started?

If the Director did anything other than allow declarer to pick up his cards he made a terrible ruling. Actually, if the opponents insisted that those cards remain on the table while they called the director I would consider them guilty of extremely bad ethics.

Yes, and it is sad to think about the books he won't be around to write.

I am going to assume that you are just pulling our leg. How do you know that these people wanted to die, and that we should not be sad that their lives ended before they were ready. Especially with artists, and I include musicians in that of course, the imagination never turns off and we have lost whatever was still there, and they have lost the joy of discovering it. Being the mother of a very successful artist, musician, composer might make me sensitive to this feeling that as long as he lives he will still be creating, but it goes for the rest of us too. You don't feel the same sadness about a musician's death as you would your father's death but you should recognize the loss with respect, not be cynical about it.