HighLow21

Seriously Lurpoa, what does this have to do with the post?

If you bid 7♦, you just got overruffed on the opening spade lead. Also, I'd like to have you as a wrestling partner, because you're extremely easy to push around.

If you go 4♣ over 3♥ chances are excellent you just got pushed and they're taking +200 or more. Partner hasn't much in clubs, but he rates to have some outside defense. Try to beat 3♥. And if you push them to a thin but making 4♥, woah nelly!

Squeeze might be on here, but I like the straightforward line of winning, running all trumps except for 1, cashing K♦, and judging from the discards whether to play for hearts 3-3 or try to pin the 10♥ with East.

2♠. This problem would be much harder with AK tight in ♠ and 4 bad in ♣. Pass is absolutely ridiculous in my view. LHO rates to have 5-6 tricks in clubs and at least one in hearts. That's pretty close to making already. Nothing about my hand says that (1) they can beat 2♠ or that (2) we can touch 2♣. Heck, with the right hand with partner we could be making game in a major with 2♣ still on for them.

I agree. Passing is best. The likelihood that this hand will be passed out with a game on is infinitesimally small compared to: (1) The probability that, if you open 1♦, your partner will bid too high without a fit and go down with nothing on for the opponents. (2) The probability that, if you open 1♦, your partner will double the opponents based on the strength of your opening, only to watch the opponents make. OR, alternatively, if you open 3♦, the probability that you will miss a good spade fit. Sit tight. You can decide what to do when the bidding invariably comes back to you. This has so many advantages it's not even close, decision-wise.

Agreed 100%. Hand #1 is not a guess. Hand #2 is iffy, but not covering seems foolish to me.

LOL. MrAce, to cross-reference my other post: Lifetime adjusted -0.30 IMPs average. Amazing, the predictive power of statistics. Other post is here. :)

I can see going 7♦ directly over 5nt. Partner is clearly showing a monster with no fears about the diamond suit. 7 should be on a finesse or squeeze at the absolute worst and might be laydown. 6♦ is good for the frail-hearted. I would only bid 7 myself if I were playing in a tournament with very strong opposition. I might 6NT actually, in a matchpoint tourney with moderate competition.

I diasgree with the assessment that hearts is necessarily trumps. Kenberg made an excellent point about that. Give partner 4 decent diamonds and a singleton heart, and this thing is going to be WAY more productive with diamonds as the boss suit and the heart suit as the side suit for discards. 6-4-6. I can't agree with any of the rationales for rebidding hearts without showing the diamonds first.

Pearls before swine. People who can't think at the table shouldn't be allowed to learn advanced concepts like Lavinthal.

Yep. Give me the money anytime.

I do have to address this directly. The motto of the Christopher Society is that "it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness." In other words, some information is more helpful in determining who is good and who is not than no information. Sure, without perfect information, there will be prediction errors such as the allegorical ones you listed. But they will be dominated by the correct predictions made in the face of actual information and analysis.

Ok I understand everyone's concerns. For the type of bridge I play, it suits me to know if my partner's any good and not get stuck with lousy results because I had no way of knowing my partner was a fool. I do completely understand MrAce's point about moral hazard in publishing such a rating--BBO could become a lot more cutthroat and it could ruin the experience for a lot of people. It is an excellent point and probably that reason alone is strong enough to kill the argument behind objective ratings. I disagree with a number of other points that have been made, but I'll only address a few here and let the others go: - Nothing I can think of is more objective that statistics from historical results. It's one heck of a lot more objective than a self-rating system with very ambiguous guidelines and no penalties for dishonesty. They cannot tell the whole picture, but they tell a lot more than no statistics tells. - Simple Bayesian analysis would indicate that someone with a -1.2 IMPs average is FAR more likely to be a truly bad player than someone who is Advanced and regularly plays way out of their league. There may be 1 of those for every 10,000 terrible players out there. That 1 person could simply create a new login if he/she wanted to start fresh. - Similarly, you can get a great result, in theory, by "bunny bashing." But seriously, just try to pull that off in the long run. You have to find a willing, good partner, and then selectively allow only bad players to your table to whip on them. They have to stick around or be replaced by other bad players. In my experience, this is completely unsustainable in the long run. Anyone who has good results over a decent number of hands actually knows what they are doing. - Helene, very simple: the fact that you do not understand an argument does NOT imply that the person who made the argument needs to rethink it. I will restate it, but the logic behind the argument is very solid. There are people who regularly chuck a hand in a major way and pretend to be Advanced--they often blame partner for their ridiculous bids or play. Some are malicious, but most are just obliviously foolish. These people very strongly negatively impact the experience of playing pick-up bridge at BBO. I'm not sure what needs to be re-thought here. Again, I prefaced all this by saying that for many reasons, the system is not going to change and I'm fine with that. I for one would simply cast my vote in the minority, and nod when my side loses. It's fine. I'd still rather play here than anywhere else. Please, allow the minority opinion in the debate have a voice. It's fine to debate it on the merits, but simply not understanding it, or coming up with unlikely situations as a counterpoint doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of people with solid reasons for wanting a rating system. There are simply not strong enough reasons to merit BBO changing anything (or to MrAce's excellent point, there is a VERY important reason to AVOID changing it). Final point: for those of you who actually WANT to find out how your partner has been doing, you can find it at: http://bboskill.com/. This page calculates IMP averages and a quantitative rating for any player who has played enough hands. It even adjusts (to some degree) for average opponent skill. The only problem with it is that you have to go to the separate page for any given partner, type in their username, and wait about 10 seconds for the results to come back. It can be a handful when you're trying to concentrate on the hand in front of you. In my experience, there is a very strong correlation between the IMP average published on that site and how strong the player actually is at the table. On many occasions I've picked a bad apple and later check this site only to find out his/her average is indeed terrible. Similarly, not once have I played opposite a great player and found his IMP average to be below +0.50. For what it's worth, my adjusted IMP average is +1.07 per hand and it's not because I play against bad players or have Bob Hamman sitting across from me.

4♠. To me, partner is showing a minimum 2-over-1 response and Blackwood doesn't tell me whether I have 1 red suit loser or 2--or in an outside case, maybe 3. It will very likely not be zero. And even if it's only one red loser, what about clubs? I think slam is off here (or at best needs some luck) regardless of how many aces he has. One final note: partner hasn't exactly shown hyper-enthusiasm from the trump suit either. Don't be surprised if there is a spade loser. Be disappointed, but not shocked. Now... if your system is different, then maybe slam is on here. But I don't see any reason why it would be on, and find it extremely unlikely to be cold.

I realize, of course, that this is going nowhere, because it's been debated countless times here. But here's my two cents. Maybe we could have a dual system -- something like "Self-Rated", plus "Recent IMP average"? What's wrong with adding some degree of objectivity to this? If I sit at a random table to play a few pickup hands and my partner has a -1.2 IMP average, I'm out. Next table please. Heck, maybe doing something like this will teach some of the particularly bad players that they are, in fact, not good at all, and should either pick up a new hobby or learn to play better. In my experience the "IMP-Killers" (the ones who drop in for one hand, bid or play terribly, and drop 10+ IMPs to the opponents through no fault of your own) are the ones most likely to be nasty or try to engage you in a ridiculous argument about how good they are. Many of them self-rate as "Expert" or "World Class." NOTHING ruins my bridge experience more than getting ripped to pieces by a foolish partner who often is oblivious and might even try to pin it on me. It makes me not want to play in the main room anymore. And sometimes I don't have time to go hunting for people on my friends list and find one who's available and willing and able to play. One last point: YES, you can go through and make notes on every fool you chance upon, but it would take decades to notate all the fools who are like this. The current system simply doesn't work.

LOL @ mikeh

Yes by covering the major suit blockage is dispatched immediately if Q♥ is covered--though as we've seen it can be overcome anyway. I just wouldn't be surprised for many experts to mess up the squeeze due to the major suit entry position and timing issues.

1NT was ridiculous; so was 3♠. 2♥ was fairly bad but not that bad.

I'm guessing to shoot 4♠ and have my apologies ready if it fails. All 14 HCP are working, you have their suit controlled, you have a monster side suit, you have two doubletons, yadda yadda. Makes easily opposite quite a few 6-counts.

Yep I initially missed the point about the repeated heart finesse before the squeeze. Getting back to the main point of the thread--I can't see how slam is >50% but I am certain 5 of either minor is going down a lot.

There is bound to be some shortage for them to bid so high. For 4♠ to make they'd need either singletons in all 3 side suits (in which case 5 of a minor probably goes down) or a void somewhere--which is entirely possible on the bidding. The critical cases are: - 4♠ makes (meaning 5m is almost certainly dead)--but you should bid 5m as a save. - 4♠ fails and so does 5m--you should double. - 4♠ fails but 5m makes--you should bid 5m. I would figure the odd of these are, roughly, 5%, 75%, and 20%. Among the 75%, I'd say most of the time it's -1 but occasionally -2. The reason I say only 5% for 4♠ making is that it's going to be difficult for them to ruff a suit good and still have the entries to reach it. Thus, double for penalty stands out a mile to me at MPs and several hundred yards at IMPs. When 5m makes there's reason to believe you might be about to get a -2 in 4♠, mitigating your losses at IMPs but not doing super-hot at MPs. But then again, for MPs, the "neither side can make" scenario dominates. By the way, the fact that 4♠ doubled is takeout seems silly to me. It basically means that you MUST venture to the 11-trick level whenever they preempt in this spot. And if you MUST, I dig rhm's auction. But I much prefer X (penalties) by South and North letting it stick.

I'm leading a club. If partner has either rounded ace or maybe even K♥ we are in good shape. Then again, I find it highly unlikely he can have either. The hand is probably going to come down to a lot of smart discarding by me. I would not be surprised if all the finesses work or if I get squeezed on the run of the trumps plus club ruffs in dummy.

Redouble or pass; nothing else makes sense.

How exactly do you propose to take the needed 7 major suit tricks if West discards a heart on the 3rd diamond (the squeeze card)? From what I can tell--minor suit led, 10♥ (not covered), heart to the jack, run the 4 minor suit tricks. On the final diamond, N must throw a spade. W must throw a heart and there it is (I think?) I suppose the squeeze works if 2 rounds of hearts are run before the squeeze--but only if. -T