sceptic

http://online.bridgebase.com/cgi-bin/histo...11252153-172445 Hi, I am not looking for adulation, what I would like to know is whether you think I played this hand well or not (my personal thoughts are I played it very well and I was quite pleased with myself). what I would like you to consider is, I saw the contract was in danger of going down, so the only way to avoid 3 spade losers was to do something unusual, so first opportunity I got I played the spade suit in the hope that opps would change suit and give me the contract by avoiding their obvious winners. do you think I would have gotten away with this play against two experts ? was I lucky against the opps I had (they are nice opps and I am not here to belittle anyone) this is the hand [hv=d=e&v=n&n=sat6hk854dkt72c96&w=sj752htdj94ckqjt4&e=s943haj9763daqc73&s=skq8hq2d8653ca852]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South - - 1♥ Pass 1♠ Pass 2♥ Pass Pass Pass

south could bid 2nt showing clubs and hearts, but if that is not available I suppose you could blame south for not playing that convention

How do you go about offering ur services to BBO for Vu Graph operators in your country or one close by? i.e. how much notice do you need so you can arrange time of work or what ever plans you need to take into account?

Simple Answer is NO, as for reducing the pool of available playes, I have tried 6 sites now and there is no shortage of available players here, try the EBU site if you want to see what a shortage of players is like. BB0 is the best there is at the moment, with the managements attitude it will be the best for some time to come, but evolution comes to us all and if there are system or programme restrictions that have to be considered, then you will have to do what is best for this site or best for yourselves or as your attitude would reflect "what is best for us collectively" and that is why BBO is so succesful. I personally think that team games and tournements take more people away from the main lobby than is taken away via Vu Graph (though that may not be true at the finals of the Vanderbilt), so maybe split the tourney room up into pay and free tourneys, Or develop a team game lobby, I find team games are the hardest to join in, but that is personally where I would like to play more, I would like to see somewhere a team of 4 can advertise for games at certain times, may be something like a bulletin board for adverts ?? A negative comment for Vu Graph is to many tourists in there (I actually have no idea if that is true, but I am sure you have the demographics to challenge that statement), I wonder if they all play here or they just come to see the matches they want, if that is the case then, may be charge for Vu Graph

I fully support the system unregistering missing pairs (even if only one is missing) there are usually lost of people wishing to enter the tourney and that persons lack of commitment (arriving in good time or having a good connection) prevents others fun, so do not change it. keep the auto unregisters please and as for not fair on the remaining person who is faultless, you can only imagine the number of requests or dissappearing bodies you get when someones reg p is missing and they fear a substitue from hell is going to be deliberately inflicted upon them :D

ok not so easy as it looks :D, I will try again

1/. Qs As 2s 4s 2/. Ks 3s 6c 6s 3/. Kd 2d 4d qd 4/. Jd 3d 5d 5c 5/. 2c Jc ac 7c 6/. 2h kh Ah 7h 7/. kc depends if they play a D but I think you can lose 2 hearts and make that way

PS our bidding went 4 spades pass by me, I have been at the wine a bit to early and saved wrong persons board LOL

when is a 4 spade opener a preempt against opps and a pain in the **** for your partner? this is an example of what I mean, it was played today half the field bit 4 spades and stayed there the other half bid slams [hv=d=e&v=n&n=s87hadj732ca98652&w=skhk9854daq964ckj&e=saqjt9654hqj32d8c&s=s32ht76dkt5cqt743]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South - - 1♠ Pass 2♥ Pass 4♣ Pass 4NT Pass 5♦ Pass 5♥ Pass 6♥ Pass Pass Pass I would just like some opinions as to what is a good 4 spade opener and wht you need to bid on and what is a bad 4 spade opener, on this example I was missing 3 aces so decided to quit and not bid over 4 spades

why did I bid 4 hearts and not 3 hearts, may be inexperience, I find competitive bidding quite hard and it is probably not helped by me getting some good results by being aggresive (That is not to say I dont get some terrible ones, as I am sure you have seen some of my previous disasters posted here before) a clear misunderstanding was 2 spades x, I thought it was T/O showing 4 hearts with my hand I am happy to risk a game at imps, as it turns out listening to some of your logic, it is quite clear 2 spade x was for penalties (my screw up) I can live with them, I just like to think I can learn form them. may be my biggest flaw is poor judgement or may be understanding of some basic principles that I am missing , anyway I will probably bid some more like that before I ever get to be advanced as a player. I only ever advertise myself as intermediate as sceptic, which is what I use 95+% of the time (why do I use another ID, on occasions beacuse I feel like throwing sceptic in the bin on a bad day and think I will never understand the dam game, possibly an ego boost for when I have a real bad day, the are getting slightly less frequent BUT they still keep cropping up on too regular a basis)

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=sk98752hj953dac94&w=s3hkq82d92caq7652&e=saqj64htdkqjt74ck&s=stha764d8653cjt83]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South - - 1♦ Pass 2♣ 2♠ Dbl Pass 4♥ Pass 5♣ Pass Pass Pass in a tourney I bid 2 clubs, then 4 hearts. was this unreasonable and was it worth [negative] comments from my pick up p?

yes it was my lucky day hehehe

A lot of discussion gos on about Psyches, whilst I have no real opinion about the rights and wrongs of such bids, a few questions come to mind. Is a psyche with a pick up partner a sensible thing to do or is it totally stupid? Is a psyche with a regular p really a psyche after the first time? or is it trying to get an edge or is it down right cheating? if you decide to answer my question, tell me how long you have played the game and how often you psyche (especially with a regular pard) do you psyche with regular opps or friends (just for a bit of fun) do you psyche in major tournaments against unknown opps then explain why you psyche? specifically for a swing, for devilment, lack of system tools you can use? what level in your bridge development would you consider playing psyches are an intrinsic part of the game, do you think beginners should learn them or intermediates or advanced or even expert players. do you also think that you should play them as expert against weak opps? and lastly is a psyche not a bit like playing poker?

[hv=d=w&v=n&n=s8hk95dak87ct9765&w=sqt32haj763d43c42&e=s974hqt82djt952ck&s=sakj65h4dq6caqj83]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South Pass Pass 1♥ 2♥ 4♥ Dbl Pass Pass Pass Hi whilst bidding and playing this contract, I was reasonably happy with our bidding and play and potential result, BUT, not so afterwards, we had a slam nice and simple, I have a few questions what are your opinions of the following statements 1/. michaels, my thoughts are nice 5/5 split and nice and strong so good bid 2/. 1 spade overcall of 1 heart then rebid clubs 3/. after 4!h I would prefer my p to bid 4nt to ask which minor suit I had 4/. x of 4 hearts was good and we did well to get -800 5/. could I risk bidding 5 clubs on my own with out p? 6/. is 1 heart a pshyce?

[hv=d=w&v=a&n=s43h97642djt52c73&w=saj2hkdq83cakqt92&e=st976haqt8dk764c8&s=skq85hj53da9cj654]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South 1♣ Pass Pass 1NT Dbl 2♦ Dbl 2♥ Pass Pass Pass Hi, myself and my Pard, we are not total strangers to each other, but we do have flaws in our understandings. (we play SAYC) Found ourselves in this contract, I would like your opinion of all the bidding and also, the 2 diamond transfer as I thought this was rather a good bid, all thoughts and comments are welcomed

Both threats in one hand Q diamonds in LHO is a threat so 6 diamonds becomes a guard as does a spade or a heart Loser count is correct 12 tricks and 1 to be squeezed I assume the clubs split 2/2 as I would have to guess which way to finese if they did not (I doubt I would get it right) A6H A6D KxxS xH K spades becomes squeeze card, if LHO has both threats then he is squeezed out of one

Hi can you expalin how it evaluates to 18 please?

Pass, there is too much that can go wrong unless you have closely defined 4 level openers, but I have seen bid alsorts of hands at the 4 level opening, so I think you are chancing a good game (with that dummy) for a dodgy slam chance.

just my opinion for what it is worth, and you know better than most how bad that can be Geof, unless you have a power house or a very nice dist and fit hand, I would not bid over this as I think the amount of times you would miss a slam as opposed to disrupting opponents bidding it is not worth the risk, you may have a hand you consider good, but it may have to be good for 3 quick tricks just to make the game

4 spades

I also think if I am to spend more cash on pay tourneys or be attracted to other pay tourneys than ACBL, themed tourneys would be quite good, the reward I would get would be ability to practice live my conventions etc etc, not the goulash type but hands construced to allow certain techniques to be played etc

I think, to distinguish pay tourneys all you can offer (if prizes are not an option) is the standard of directorship and in the ACBL's case master points. It would be nice to think that some organisation like the ACBL could package up the hands and present them as lin file or whatever to all participants with, the best contract possible or the most sensible way of bidding the hands, for this they may be able to increase revenue as it may attract more players or may generate more revenue by justifying $2+ a tourney. (may be it is worth testing a few tourneys out using this format) Another may be instructional tourneys (ABCL again as they appear to have huge resources) could do a session after the tourney (like some of the BIL teachers do) (I am sure there are a lot of advanced players that do not realise what they are missing from the sessions I have attended) the level of instruction could be higher than BIL perhaps, this would open it to a far greater audience and could be a good revenue generator for the tourney hosts and BBO. There may be program changes required to look at, so only those that payed for the tourney are able to visit a selected chat room or teaching table, but Fred and Uday are geniuses and I am sure it iwould not take them long to do a new version that incorporates this feature hehehe. I think air miles or things like that are not the way forward (sorry rain, they are only any good if you need to fly to singapore in a hurry), but the idea of playing with Roland or someone that good is quite appealing to me personally, as this is about the only place you are ever really likely to get the chance.

it would be nice to have the ability to pull up tourneys that individuals have played in, something along the lines of hands played in last number (X) of days, as well as the current format of tourney history

nice, I entered about 10 days worh and got average imps and mps for this period, quite interesting and should satisfy those that want some method of assessing opps sucess in the games that they play. it allows you to enter any date, I think it could be improved if it automatically defaulted to the furthest date the records are held for (not sure how hard that would be) or what benifit it would be just seemed a sensible idea to me.

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=shaq86dj984ckjt94&w=sak52hkj9dkqt73cq&e=st98643h7542dc652&s=sqj7ht3da652ca873]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South - - Pass Pass 1♦ 2♣ Pass Pass Dbl Pass 4♠ Pass Pass Pass [hv=d=e&v=n&n=shaq86dj984ckjt94&w=sak52hkj9dkqt73cq&e=st98643h7542dc652&s=sqj7ht3da652ca873]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West North East South - 1NT Pass 2♥ Dbl 2♠ Pass Pass 3♦ Pass Pass Pass comments on bidding please