Deanrover

6 entrants including the illustrious Fred and Sheri. After a good start which hand me in a solid second place behind the wonderful Rain, I drop off with lots of bad boards. My previous board the opposition made 5 ♣ doubled and I am now down in 4th. I am 200 points behind Fred, and 1000 behind Sheri, with 2 minutes on the clock. I look down and see ♠ A9 ♥ 98765 ♦ AT72 ♣ KJ All vul, 2 passes to me. Not looking good for the big swing I need. I open 1 ♥, LHO overcalls 2♣, partner now surprises me with 4 ♣ splinter, I don't get greedy and settle for 4♥ LHO now doubles, and RHO takes out to 5♣ ! I need points so I gamble with a double, partner now bids 5 ♥ and RHO doubles! Well, if I make this I will go above Fred, but if I make it redoubled I might overtake Sheri! REDOUBLE! West leads the 9 ♦ and partner tables the paltry ♠ QJT863 ♥ KQ42 ♦ 863 ♣ ------ Ugh. Well at least I can just run the clock down rather than taking the brutal - score that is due my way. But, hang on. What if one guy has a singleton diamond and the Ace of ♥ and I only lose one trump trick? I play a heart to the Queen, both follow, neither with the Ace. Hmmm. I run the ♠ Queen, and West takes it. Oh well. Whats this? He reutrned the Ace of clubs! I ruff that and return to hand with the Ace of ♠. Now I play a ♥, West pops up with the Ace, and returns a ♣. I check the clock. We are in the final minute, I am not sure exactly how long I have left but ***** I am going to make this thing, please dont let me time out. I have never clicked a mouse faster. Diamond discard from dummy, taking it with the King in hand. Draw the remaining trump, curse the lack of a claim feature, and run my winners. +1200 baby! The tournament ends and I beat both of Bridge Base's founders! I ended up seond and won a (sadly theoretical) 20 cents. MBTs are fun.

btw shouldnt this thread be in the watercooler forum?

It is a shame that you are leaving as you are a valuable member. The blog you linked to was notorious for ridiculing one of BBO's members. In fact that is what it was by far most famous for. I like Rain a lot, and she puts in huge amounts of work for BBO, which the last time I checked was entirely voluntary. She made what she thought was the right decision. I happen to disagree with her here, but I think her intentions were only good. I note that this isn't the first time you have left BBO forums or BBO, and hope you change your mind again. Dean

These were fun. I think you are right that they will prove immensely popular. Fred, you said 'I can easily play 2 hands per minute.' Are you serious? you can get in a hand every 30 seconds, even with 3 GIBs having to make their decisions? You could 'easily' get 50 hands in per MBT? Dean

I was at the world infividual championships in Verona in 2004. One evening, I am on the hotel computer (ye ye I have no life). This was the official hotel, VERY posh (I wasnt staying at it). Everyone there is middle aged, wearing a suit, checking the time on thier rolex etc. Then these 4 young guys come up to me. They were mid 20s. They were dressed very casually, and just seemed like lads on a night out. It was most strange. They asked me something in Italian, I requested English and one of them asked me the way to a bar. I had no idea. I thought nothing more of this bizarre encounter, until in turned out that the Inter Milan team were staying in the hotel ahead of their game on Sunday! So the next morning I was in the lobby with Edgar Davids, Juan Sebastien Veron etc. as well as Fred Gitelman, Zia Mahmood et al!

I am soon to start a PhD in economics in Chicago, USA.

Chicago is very nice!

Sax

The pill. For those who don't know it was developed by George Rosencrantz, a World Class player.

Why so? I can only think of

Just played this one out. What is your lead and why? Hint: Dealer: North Vul: All Scoring: IMP ♠ 95 ♥ A8 ♦ J98 ♣ J76432 West North East South - Pass 1NT Pass 2♦ Pass 2♥ Pass 3♣ Pass 4♥ Pass 4NT Pass 5♣ Pass 6♥ Pass Pass Pass No experts please!

You should make the time aspect more transparent. i played many hands without having a clue how much time I was allowed. Then I got a message which seemed to hint that you were allowed x seconds per move (where x = 30,60,90 when speed = slow, medium, fast). I also don't think this is the best way to implement a timing element - it should be x minutes allowed per board imo. Bridge decision's are not monotonous - some of them, typically at the beginning of a board, may require a couple of minutes thought - others are pretty much automatic. It would be nice if you could introduce a funky little 'timer' somewhere on the screen - this would make the situation much more clear (bear in mind that not everyone will understand the little text message that appears). Another thing - please enable GIB to claim! It uses this facility excellently in its original form, if you could allow it to do this on BBO, not only would it mean happy customers, but also more hands/hr = more $ to you! e.g. this hand just played [hv=d=n&v=a&n=sq8762h974dqt76c5&w=sj4hqt653dk5cakqt&e=sakt3hkj2da432c98&s=s95ha8dj98cj76432]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South - Pass 1NT Pass 2♦ Pass 2♥ Pass 3♣ Pass 4♥ Pass 4NT Pass 5♣ Pass 6♥ Pass Pass Pass C4 CA C5 C8 H6 H4 HJ HA C6 CK H7 C9 S2 SA S5 S4 H2 H8 HQ H9 CQ S8 S3 C2 CT DT HK C3 D4 D8 DK D6 D5 D7 DA D9 SK S9 SJ S7 D3 DJ HT DQ H5 S6 D2 C7 H3 SQ ST CJ Really not necessary to play this one out. (OK OK, I only included this one to show off my lead, you got me.......) Other feedback - the move to have GIB take a couple of seconds minimum per move has been implemented excellently. It feels much more natural now, and the risk of UI is greatly diminished. Dean

In the new version I can't add any 'money' - so the only option is to play at the play money tables. Just checking this was intentional. I am ready and waiting to test it out now, if anyone is up for it.

You can get tickets for the tests and ODIs by becoming a member. Actually I went to the South Africa tests 3 years back and they mailed me some forms enabling me advanced booking for the following summers internationals. I wasn't a member.

Strangely enough, The Oval is in London, not Surrey.

Oh, and that one specialising in mind games, not just bridge (bridge takes up approximately 20% of the floor space).

I only know of 1 in London (The one on Euston Road)

So say I withdraw $100 from one site, and deposit to another - do both sites gets charged ~$3?

I am able to deposit to poker sites using my debit card, but maybe that is due to be being from the UK/my type of card etc. The reason I use neteller is that enables me to transfer from one site to another without incurring exchange costs. If I had to withdraw my $ account to my debit card and then deposit from my £ account with the same card every time it would get highly expensive....neteller removes this significant cost for me. I'm not sure but I think neteller processes my money faster - my bank account takes a few days to process foreign currency transactions. I am also more secure having my money in neteller - I think it is much less likely someone will get hold of my neteller details than my debit card details. Neteller is also excellent at protecting against fraud - they will freeze your account if they notice a deposit from an unusual IP address. Further, since you say online casinos/poker rooms don't accept credit cards, and this will remain the case for a long time - lots of your users will have significant amounts of money online/in neteller, but not on their credit cards. For these people, the use of neteller would be sweet.

Unsubstantiated sweeping statements like these are of no value to this discussion. Please explain why BBO Inc "would be making a very big mistake if it didn't" nickf sydney Well I believe that a significant part of BBO's clientelle will also be online poker/casino/backgammon etc. players. By FAR the most popular conduit to transfer funds from one site to another is via neteller. AFAIK, NONE of these sites even accept paypal, and I suspect lots of only gamblers will have neteller accounts and not paypal (I online have a paypal account because I use Ebay). I also believe that neteller has lower fees than Paypal, although I am only 90% sure of this. Yes, people could get by without neteller, but BBO should want to make their service as easy as possible to access and use. Dean

Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't.

The analytical software available for poker is much much weaker than that for bridge. The opposite is true for backgammon. I believe that the bot problem in backgammon has had a significant effect in curtailing the market for online backgammon, particularly at the higher levels.

A program like Jack could definitely be used to help in declarer play problems. Deep Finesse too. Not that rare that a player will find himself in a situation where he more or less knows everybodies cards, but the situation is highly complex and he doesnt know the best play. DF would get it in an instant. I do agree that it is unlikely to be a major problem in the foreseeable future. Bridge bots are currently at the perfect level for this kind of venture - good enough to make reasonable partners, not good enough to facilitate widespread cheating.

BTW, I played 2 sessions yesterday. When I logged in the second time my account had been reset to $100, but now that I log in my account balance has been remembered from the level it was after my 2nd session <_<

Just had a deal terminated and was booted from the room because a player was too slow. That player? GIB!!!!!!