SelfGovern

To anyone wanting partners for ACBL tournaments, use these two resources: - on acbl.org, go to "MyACBL Login" (link at the top of page) and visit the partnership desk. You can post requests for a specific tournament event or multiple events, look for a local partner, or look for an online partner. - Sign up for an account at bridgewinners.com and post in their partnership forum. Both of the above are free (well, the first if you have ACBL membership), fairly active, and both will send you notifications when you have a response. Good hunting!

I don't think it's made up. The interface is unfriendly, and I'm surprised that my name isn't there (I play quite a bit, including in ACBL events). For the names I did find, though, the ratings seemed reasonable. People I know are good, ranked high. People I know are poor, ranked low.

A few years back the Houston (Texas) Chronicle dropped its daily bridge column. A concerted effort by local bridge players got it reinstated. With only one problem: Whether a bidding or play problem, the question is always, "Your play?" (or is it "Your bid?" -- it's so annoying that I've quit noticing it) Recently in Abilene, Texas at their Regional, I noted that the local paper had a listing of recent top finishers from a number of bridge clubs. That's what a paper in a town of 115,000 can do, I guess. It was quite exciting to see it -- and the regional, while small, was full of some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I recommend it if you're looking for a very enjoyable week of bridge.

At the recent Lancaster PA regional, we had an interesting situation, starting with me: 1S 2C 2S P 4S 4C !?! Partner recognized the insufficient bid and rebid 4S. After the hand was over, with a really nice 2S call, she recognized that she could have taken the opportunity to cuebid 4D and help me decide if we should be in game or slam. That 4D call would have been all I needed.

Hello, Possum. I want to reinforce that you've gotten good advice here. Specifically, the BIL group is good, they police their membership well (don't tolerate rudeness) and have interclub tournaments that can be a better field and still be fun. Forum members are good bets, too, and there are people here of all skill levels. Also, since you play 2/1 let me suggest you practices with the bots (affectionately called GIB), and learn the GIB 2/1 system they play. Anyone who plays many tournaments on BBO will know a good deal about it, and if you can find a partner or two who know it well, you'll be miles ahead of most of the field. If you want to know how to get a rough idea of how good someone is without relying on their "everybody's an expert" self-rating, let me know, and I'll tell you how.

Two requests: 1. Reporting ACBL (and other, I suppose) tournament results, list the ranks of the top 10 -- that is, have a column for rank in A, rank in B, rank in C, so that we know that a 'C' pair was 5th overall, for instance. 2. Include in the BINGO results how long each person took to get to BINGO. Thank you.

The problem with a direct 4NT bid is... I've actually had a hand where I wanted to ask for aces over their preempt. Not having 4NT available for this can be a problem -- and a reasonable partner should read you for 3!C followed by 4NT as this hand, I think.

Just a suggestion -- given what you said above, it seems that after 1H - X - 1N - P 2C - 2D - P You can't make an invitation in clubs. Why not make 3!C now invitational, and 2NT relay to 3!C, allowing responder to pass 3!C and set the contract?

With both red kings, partner bids 7!C... because he knows you have the spade king or singleton and are definitely not looking for the spade king with xx, AQx, AQ, Axxxxx??

What does partner need for slam? Something like Kxx Kx AKxxx Kxx With that hand you have 12 tricks, but partner would have opened 1NT (15-17). His hand could be much worse for 16, too -- more quacky and fewer prime cards. Therefore, it's very unlikely you have slam, unless partner is 'operating', with a six-card diamond suit, say. Take your plus at 3NT. Note that if his hand is, say, Kx Kxx AKxxx Kxx you won't likely even make six of anything (only if hearts are 3-3, only about 35%. Use your math: with balanced or semi-balanced hands, you need about 33HCP for slam... and partner has told you you can't have anywhere near that much. Save the under-pointed slam investigation for when you've got prime cards (aces and kings) and working shortage.

I try.

I don't much like your key card auctions; you don't know that partner has the !HA and not the !CA. Exclusion Blackwood is useful here if you can get to it, else opener should be the person asking, whereupon West can show his aces and a club void. Also -- does 6!D show the !DK, or just "a king"? This too is important for 7!H.

Exactly. I want to create a Swiss Team tournament for from two to six teams, depending on the date. This seems to be impossible to do.

[Edited to make more clear that I am looking for a tournament with up to six teams]I'm captain of a team with an important event coming up. I have "Director" permission on BBO. I tried to set up a Swiss team tournament for our team to practice vs. one to five other good teams -- but it looks like I can only set up pair and individual tournaments. An email to Support@Bridgebase.com got a reply that "Setting up Swiss Team tourneys is restricted to BBO staff." Why is that? Is it true that no one other than BBO staff has Swiss Team access? Is there anything I could do as a workaround? (My end goal is to be able to run events for 4-6 total teams) Thanks, all.

I'd like to see the actual hand, because we don't all have the same definition of "6-9 points". My expectation is that with only one bid, responder raises the major directly. To fail to do so will tend to show no more than two hearts in auctions like 1H - 1S; 1N - 2H or 1H - 1S; 2C - 2H And often this discourages partner from making a game try with a big hand, or bidding 3H in a contested auction.

Some have an agreement that over a drury call, 3M asks for cuebid of any aces. So I suppose it depends on how much partner knows, and how much he thinks you know, as to whether he'll be able to work out your meaning of 3S or not.

There are two huge problems with a 3♦ bid: 1) Many will play it non-forcing, and while partner won't pass often, he sure will some of the time, and you'll be rather embarrassed in the post-mortem as you explain why you're in a 5-2 diamond fit instead of a 4-4 or better heart fit (and game). 2) It denies four hearts. This is a killer when partner raises your diamonds, and your heart calls are now seen as cuebids, not "to play" (as well as when partner passes 3♦).

Ah, right. I don't know what this bidding system is called, but it looks like it was custom made for this hand, and it's going to make bidding a lot of other, more common hands much more difficult. Not to mention, for it to work, your partner has to be playing the same system. So at least when you put a non-standard auction like this out there, say something like, "I play the xxx system, where the auction would go like ..." so that someone who likes it can look it up and attempt to learn it. But, as it's put forth here, no. In no standard system will partner ever expect you to have more hearts than diamonds when you open 1♦.

This works, as long as you're only ever interested in game. I, more than occasionally, am interested in whether partner has three or four of my major so I know where and whether to play slam. I want a system that helps differentiate between 3 and 4 trump, as well as max or min (or slammish and not). In this case, make your "all others" be 3-level calls, and perhaps the step above the trump suit be 4-card, slammish, some singleton/void, so that responder can ask with a relay.

How can it be called a solid suit when there's a guaranteed loser (i.e., KQJT9xx)? This strikes me as a perversion of the language, at the very least.

Those "aside" comments are often perfectly disarmed by making them public. She says, "You have to be careful, a lot of people are starting to not like you." You say, to the room, "Excuse me, everyone. Dear Martha has told me that many of you are starting to not like me. I do hope that those of you who have a problem with me will come to me and discuss it. I'm really quite reasonable -- except when dealing with gossip, and gossip-mongers. Thank you so much, Martha, for bringing this to my attention." I'm sure *she* won't care for it much. Others? I bet they'll be rooting for you.

What "frozen convention cards"? When I'm playing with someone, say we're N/S -- I click on the "NS CC" button right above the chat window. It brings up the current convention card (or lets me pick something like "GIB 2/1", and I can edit it to my heart's content and then select "save". Those changes are immediately (upon clicking 'save') made available at the table, and there's a popup message sent to the table that says "N/S are using a new convention card". Unless this has been changed in the last week or so, anyway! I think that people who think stuff typed into the profile is a convention card is any kind of substitute for a true convention card are missing the boat. Get your favorite convention card together with the minimum stuff you want to play (Jacoby, 3014, signalling, etc.), and then make that your "favorite convention card" (see your own profile, it's a button at the bottom!). When you sit down with someone, say, "Hey, P -- see my "favorite convention card" and if that's OK, let's play it!", and you're good to go, no? Profiles are not convention cards!

If you haven't yet, try using the partnership desk off your "myacbl" profile. You can look for a partner for a given tournament a month or more in advance, and let them know that you want to spend some time on BBO working out system and styles. https://web3.acbl.org/myacbl

I'd like to get together with three or five pairs of friends and have a small tournament among us. I can figure out how to start a team game, but I can't figure out how to start a pairs tournament. Is it possible? If so, what's the magic I'm missing? Thanks, Thomas.

Lesson 1A, ID = 62, text says, "On the ♠A, West was to discard one of his Hearts or his ♣A, after which one of the N/S menaces would become a winner. For the "B" requirement to be fulfilled, one defender must be BUSY guarding against BOTH menaces (in this case, West). After examining this hand, you should note that that if one opponent had the ♥KQ and the other had the ♠A that you would have to lose a trick." I think the second paragraph should say club A. Also, I didn't see where you defined the "upper hand". It's useful to keep that the N hand in the diagrams... but please tell people early on that "upper" is a convention for "the hand opposite the squeeze card", and could be declarer's hand as well as North or Dummy. Ugh -- I thought that 'id=62" might be related to slide number. But it's not. One suggestion on the movie SW is to enable putting some sort of slide number or page nunber on each of the pages to effect more coherent discussion about the movies.