dwar0123

Laugh, I really do come off as a pretentious dick don't I. Ah well, I didn't actually think you were worried about it, I dunno, just wanted to contribute to the conversation I guess, I find this stuff fascinating.

I dunno, I almost feel that anyone interjecting statements like anyone who believes Romney killed a person is a moron into a political debate is partaking in the same type of hyperbolic bullshit that caused that 'belief' to begin with. You are unjustly tainting all liberals as morons just in the same way as that super pac unjustly tainted Romney as having killed her. The ad didn't say he killed her, just connected it with Romney; just like no liberal I know has said they believe he actually did kill her, in spite of your statement. It is dirty dirty politics, both sides are doing it. Unjustly connecting negative ideas with their opponents, exactly like you are trying to connect liberals with morons by making it seem like anyone really believes this. And really, as Obama's people never actually said he caused her death, its a rather bullshit move to go from saying believing Obama's people makes you a moron to believing Romney caused her death makes you a moron, as if they were the same thing.

I know this is possible if you join a table after the cards have been dealt, but that didn't happen here. The 2nd time I saw the board was an hour after the first time and it was the 3rd board I had played at that table. http://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?traveller=M-1342416212-36232008&username=dwar0123

Imps, 2/1 [hv=pc=n&s=skqt96haq94dkq74c&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=pp1sppd]133|200[/hv] Do you bid 2 or 3, hearts or diamonds? Thanks

Even if auto biogenesis is possible in an oxygen rich environment, it would quickly be devoured by the existing life. 3.4 Billions years of evolution trumps a few seconds of evolution in the battle of the survival of the fittest.

I wonder if it this scenario still makes sense if instead of 100% A over B over D still works if it was a more realistic 66%. Then you can describe the scenario as 66% A over B over D over A!

If it is just a flat percentage, no. But that isn't how the real world works, the better team tends to win more often the more games are played. To use a bridge example. If team A has a 33% chance of winning a 16 board final vs team D and a 33% chance of winning a 164 board final vs team D. Then it makes no difference if they intentionally lose vs team B. But in the real world, the better team would tend to improve their odds the more boards are played and hence there there may be an argument to be made to say that if you have to play team D and they are the better team, you want to play as few boards as possible to improve the chances of a random upset. Of course, you would be trading a 33% of gold and 66% of silver for a slightly > chance of gold and zero chance of silver. And this is with really contrived examples, I think the system is very solid for all practical purposes.

When you are declarer, you are in total control. 95% of defense is being on the same page as partner, signaling, giving count, freeing partner from squeezes/endplays etc. Are you and partner on the same page, do you signal and give count consistently?

I think I followed what you are saying and I think I see a flaw in your reasoning. If A is 50% vs D, then D is 50% vs A. So how exactly is D winning 75% of the time if they are playing twice? I could go on in explaining the math behind where you messed up, but that should be enough. Suffice it to say, it is 50% whether or not they meet twice in the winners final and then again in the champions match or just once in the losers final.

Hogwash, my mind has no problem changing the scale. Scale isn't the problem here, the problem is that it is just a flawed analogy. For one, you are trying to compare playing bridge well with playing badminton really really badly. If am honestly floored that intelligent people can not see how these two things are fundamentally different. No one would ever accuse someone taking a safety play as "not using one’s best efforts to win a match" No one would ever accuse someone taking a safety play of "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport" That I can't convince you of this difference after so many attempts speaks volumes about my failure to communicate and your inability to get over your cognitive dissonance. Whatever you may think of doing such things to further advance your chances at winning, shrug. But that analogy is stupid and does nothing to clarify the different opinions surrounding the controversy.

Thanks all, I was pretty sure I had this right and I did. Partner gave me a verbal lashing and I offered to bet a 100$ he was wrong. He accepted but I won't hold my breath. Btw, I showed you his hand, I had the closed hand which was a fairly flat 5 spades with 1 point, he asked, I showed none and he went down 1 in 5.

Imps, main bbo bridgeroom with random partner. [hv=pc=n&s=sakqj7hak932d7cj8&d=s&v=e&b=3&a=1s2d4sp]133|200[/hv] No disclosed agreements, you and partner both list yourselves as advanced. What would you expect partner to have?

I would argue that it is. However, it suffers two flaws, either of which makes it fairly useless for the average player. 1. Not very many players participate in it. 2. It rates players based on a total point system and hence tends to rate people more on how often they play(rated games) rather then how well they play them. Both these points I am sure are obvious to you, not sure why you asked the question, other then to diss the idea that it could be considered a rating system at all. Shrug, it is, just not a good one.

No, not even close. Badminton and bridge are competitive games centered around winning their respective games. Bridge is not a game centered around winning tricks as they become available, nonsensical example. A tournament is a series of competitive games with the goal of finding the best players of that game during the tournament. Losing a trick to insure a contract is totally inline with the competitive spirit of doing your best to win your game. Losing a match to improve your chances in the overall tournament is fundamentally different. You are violating the goal of game(to win the game) to further your goal in the tournament. The tournament is a structure that serves the game, not the other way around. Your analogy is flawed, period. Maybe you can come up with a better one, whatever, don't care, I personally feel it violates the spirit of the Olympics. As it has been pointed out, it indeed violates the rules as well, punishment was handed out and I approve. Maybe you feel that its the fault of the tournament setup(I certainty agree that the setup leaves something to be desired), your welcome to feel that, to some extent our opinions are subjective and while I strongly disagree with you, I am not going to be able to construct a mathematical proof demonstrating your error with respect to the idea that you should do what ever you can to win a tournament. I can, to my satisfaction, prove that your analogy is flawed.

Disagree completely. The bridge analogy is flawed, intentionally losing a trick to insure a contract is done as a percentage increase of your expected average on a board, it is nothing like intentionally losing an entire match. Sports have ethics and one of the basic ethics is that you play to win. The Olympics is the pinnacle of sports and should represent the pinnacle of their ethics. What the badmiditten players did was a disgrace and they should be booted from the competition. However, I agree this does show a flaw in the competitions format and the format should be revised to address it, but that is no excuse for the players.

As you surely know, as you must have read it, it was blocked because it got derailed into a conversation on the merits of making suggestions via the forum. A conversation that devolved into a flame war and was hence locked. By asking a question that forces that topic to be brought back up, you are not off to a good start in trying to reinvigorate the original topic. A better way to have done it would be to ask, 'Now that the original topic has been closed due to an off topic conversation, can we talk about bboskill.com again?'

The irony here is so thick I can't imagine anyone could accomplish it accidentally.

How absurd, of course he has the right to make suggestions, there is even a forum for it, making it an explicit right granted by Fred. This isn't the right forum of course, you could whine about that if you want.

Can east really have up to 20 hcp having passed 1nt? It says up to 20 total points, but thats not the same thing.

I think you have to lead the A♠, sure it might cost a trick, but very unlikely it will allow it to make. Not leading spades however, when you have all 3 of the other suits covered(in so far as partner bidding clubs count as having clubs covered) can really cost you. This isn't going to make without a pretty substantial cross ruff.

4♣ was nuts, but so was 3nt and 5♣. Whatever west is smoking, east gave it to him.

Not sure I would consider what France did to Germany as ass kicking, but as France was on the winning side of both the latest wars, I am not sure what else you could mean.

They play in a way that a human never would, but hatchett is right. Both sides are simulating and it isn't like east doesn't know that the king of diamonds is the setting trick before he exits a heart. After declarer pitches north's 10♥, east knows it doesn't matter which order the tricks are played, 1 each. Had north kept the heart, he would of course have taken the king of diamond first, same result.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bbo+skill+test+answers To create an automated test that is substantially immune to cheating in an online environment is not easy at all. It would be trivial to create a website that can give a perfect result to an online test unless the test is both randomized and timed. Creating a highly randomized test that covers the entire swath of bridge skill from beginner to world class that can fit into a timed format would be incredible difficult to construct. Even in such a case it would still be possible to get someone else to take the test or just create multiple login's until you randomly get a better result then you would otherwise deserve. With that said, in an online environment, people cheat and it doesn't pay to give up on good ideas just because some people will find ways to abuse it, however as this idea is aimed primarily at solving a problem of people abusing the existing self reporting system, it really wouldn't be worth creating a simple test because the same people would trivially get around it. Creating the randomized timed test would greatly reduce the occurrence, as circumventing it would actually be a bit tedious, but such a test is anything but simple to create and hardly worth it to solve this problem, though it might be fun for its own sake.

That is funny :) I would assume you were using the cheap robots, they do not play well at all :) The advanced robots are much better.