timouthy

In addition to the self-rating and bidding preferences on your profile, BBO includes the number of times you have logged on. Presumably other users can use this added BBO info. to gauge the compatibility and experience of prospective partners. I would like to see one more statistic attached to user's profiles, and that is the number of times they have booted a player from a table. I have on more than one occasion been booted from a table without any explanation even in situations where my bidding or play has contributed to a good score. I understand that booting is the prerogative of the host. No problem. What would help prospective players at a table is to know what a players boot total is so they can make a more informed choice about playing there, and also to know how much latitude to give an unknown player at your table when the conversation is less than polite. While I am at it one more suggestion. How about a one-click-away to a player's recent performance on BBO My hands. Instead I have to open another window type in the persons bbo name etc. all while trying to decide if I should allow them as my partner at a table. Mouthy Tim

Could you please clarify what shows? I.e. does the claim by one defender show to the other? I need to know because I have the web version of bbo. thanks, timouthy

Excuse my extreme language in the title but I was trying to get attention to this situation. I was not aware that the other defender could not see the claim and my comments to east were made before I denied east's claim so now west does know something! Bridge base should make this clear to players, i.e. just who gets to see a claim, and also instruct declarers to therefore not write any comments in the chat area until the claim is dealt with. BYW I assume that a defender will not be allowed to play until the claim is dealt with but.......I, and I would bet most people on bbo, don't really know that either. If a defender tries to play and bbo wont let them, then they could reasonably infer that a claim by partner has just been made, so again they could be getting advance information, and, the longer a declarer takes to decide the claim, the more likely the defender is to conclude that his partner has claimed. This suggests one more thing bbo should make clear to declarers, hurry your claim evaluation! timouthy

The following happened to me recently while playing on bbo. I am declarer as north. The contract had two tricks left to play. I lead from the board and while east is deciding what to do, west (LHO) claims!! Only trouble is he doesn't have both tricks. He will win the one that I have led from the board, but his remaining card is one that I can beat in my hand. His partner does have one higher than mine also in that suit but he has to discard first and if he discards this card, then his partner's claim is invalid. I have played the hand to intentionally "squeeze" west and he pauses to think and does not play a card before east claims. Clearly RHO/west is not sure which to discard. I deny claim but now RHO can now infer what to discard, and the hand proceeds and they get the last two tricks. I commented to the table that it was inappropriate for east to have claimed and he, an expert, responded with a tongue lashing saying that it was obvious to his partner what card to discard blah, blah, blah and that I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.? The only problem was his partner clearly didn't know which to discard as evidenced by his lengthy pause during the play. I could see that a savvy defender can do this intentionally to pass info. to his partner and appear to have just made an honest mistake. I wrote this situation to bridge base online and asked both if this situation was unethical and also why does bridge base allow a defender to claim remaining tricks out of turn? I got back a tersely written agreement that this was not fair and a recommendation for me to bring it up here in the forums and nothing more, suggesting they had no intention of changing to claiming in turn only. So I put it out there. Anyone think defense should only be allowed to claim in turn? I would really appreciate responses either way. If there is a rationale for leaving things the way they are, I would appreciate knowing what it is also . For reference the hand was xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Thanks, timouthy