DenisO

There are more at Nikos Sarantakos's (Nikos59) site here: http://www.sarantakos.com/bridge/kapnuggets.htm

I joined a table as West in Main Club where bidding had started S W N E P P 1S Pd bids 2NT - not sure if it was just as I arrive - bidding continues and full auction is: P P 1S 2N 3S 4D X P P P I make 4Dx= for a nice top of nearly 13imps. But in my hands I get nothing B) score goes to the player who had vacated the seat and contributed nothing to the top. This seems unfair - I wonder how scores are allocated when a player leaves - do you have to be seated for the complete auction to get the score?

Some results now available - Jack is doing well - winning two matches and narrow defeat in third ;) http://www.jackbridge.com/eindex.htm

Thanks for replies - poll was conclusive in favour of 2 clubs - which seems OK as it just satisfies Klinger's SQ test of 8 for a 2- level overcall. Power doubles and the Overcall Structure look an interesting read . The full hand was - bidding sequences welcome :) [hv=d=w&v=b&n=s94hadakjt6ckjt65&w=sathj4dq8543caq92&e=sj63h7532d972c743&s=skq8752hkqt986dc8]399|300|Scoring: MP[/hv]

MP both Vul Dealer W who opens 1♦ What do you bid with ♠94 ♥A ♦AKJT6 ♣KJT65

This is just one of GIB's CCs. Other systems that it plays are Acol, Kaplan- Sheinwold, Moscito Byte, Traditional and Standard with Gadgets (a 2/1 system). A lot of development with considerable help from the GIB community went into Standard with Gadgets and I hope that this is the CC that Fred has chosen. Having said that, GIB development has been dead for two years and I can't see it being resurrected unless Matt Ginsberg is prepared to do some more work . From what I understand the GIB program and bidding database are so complex that no one else can carry out even simple mods to correct known bidding bugs. If you use GIB, you just have to realise that not everything will be perfect and it would seem that if you find suspect bids/ or plays you just have to live with them :)

Hi Erkson - I had no problem last night. I've emailed the file to you. Denis

Especially now - there's a real match ahead after that 4th segment :)

The full version of Jack is fast - *very* fast - almost instantaneous par results and dummy dummy analysis. Also Jack is a very fast card player - unlike the full version of GIB which can be painfully slow when it's thinking time is set to give a reasonable standard of card play. Denis

Green for declarer means he can make if he plays a green card; red he cannot. Similarly for defender - green means he can beat the contract - red he cannot. That is what you get for free with BBO and very useful it is during live Vugraph. With the full version, you input any hand and contract you like .Then you go through the play trick by trick and DF will tell which cards will let you make. You can modify the contract, declarer etc. It's never been known to fail AFAIK - truly a superb piece of software and a steal at $40 or that's what it cost when I got it a few years ago.

Richard Pavlicek has kindly given me the following relevant link to one of his bidding polls: I know it's two years old but still interesting to test yourself and read the analyses. http://www.rpbridge.net/7y41.htm Denis

Go to : http://www.worldbridge.org/tourn/Sydney.05/Information.htm and open the Conditions of Contest pdf file. Para 15 gives the details about carry-overs.

Cascade's Linconverter should be Ok - try : http://www.ebridgenz.com/download.html There is also Richard Pavlicek's utility at: http://www.rpbridge.net/rpbr.htm#11 Denis

For anyone interested in bridge history, vugraphs of the complete 1955 BB are now up on Nikos's site : http://www.sarantakos.com/bridge/vugraph/1955/bb.html You can watch the great players of the past in action including Reese, Schapiro, Roth and Mathe. Various reports that I've seen pick Adam Meredith - with his love for the spade suit - as man of the match. Meredith's love of Spades can be seen in many of the hands. An article in this month's EBU magazine, English Bridge, by Mike Wemble picks out bds 28, 47, 62 ,66, and 111 just from the first half. His play of 3NT on board 33 is often shown as a good example of his great card playing skill. Denis

I'd agree with you on this sceptic - excellent book. I wish something like this had been around 40 years ago when I was starting bridge. You'll not be disappointed in any of the Really Easy series as long as you remember their target audience. A little further on in the learning curve (but well before you Kelsey's classic books), I would recommend Defensive Plays by Sally Brock. This was published in 2003 and is one of a series of three which are ideal for improvers/intermediates; the others are No-Trump contracts by David Bird and Suit Contracts by Brian Senior.

We shall see :) Over the next few months we can follow the reports of JacK against International or near International class Dutch players: Follow the action at : http://www.jackbridge.com/eindex.htm

Good to see the advertising from the Bridge Shop and Lavazza in Explore Bridge and Vugraph areas. Hope it catches on and brings in lots of $ ;), to keep BBO always free.

A useful feature in a team match, particularly long ones with many segments, would be to have the both the score for the individual segment available as well as the cumulative score. Denis

It used to happen with *very* large Vugraph audiences but I thought Uday had sorted it all out befote last year's Olympiad.

If you missed any of the action [or just want to see it again :) ], all the files are now up on Nikos site : http://www.sarantakos.com/bridge/vugraph/2005/2005-spin.html In addition to the final, see Fred/Brad in action against Zia/Rosenberg and Lauria/Versace in the close match vs Jacobs. Denis

Is this after the appeal decision?

In Today's Bidding Quiz on Mike Lawrence's excellent Bridge Clues site (http://www.bridgeclues.com/), we are asked what does have partner (North) have if he bids any of 2S,3S or 4S over West's opening 2D. The answers are all given in terms of support points. I would like to know what these mean as I thought that you need to find a fit before using support points. Thx Denis

File sent - but there may have been a problem - let me know if you get it. Denis

The first draft of Paul Marston's new booklet on Moscito is now available as a free download from: http://www.australianbridge.com/

At the moment the BBO GIB is very much a plain vanilla flavour with no User options for changing systems or conventions. Since I bought GIB ( about 6 years ago) GIB bidding development was concentrated on its pet system of "standard with gadgets" ; this is a 2 over 1 GF system with various conventions. This might be what Fred has implemented initially. Considerably less work went into the other systems although Moscito (Bo Yang's Terrorist version) received a lot of attention at one time. I think it was when Matt Ginsberg thought it was the system that would beat Zia - anyway it was good enough to won the World championship for GIB - but that was in the pre Jack era - and before Ginsberg really fell out with Al Levy the ACBL exec who organises the computer championships Denis