stevenagy

Thanks!

When playing in casual with a few friends, occasionally players lose connection (or are timed out, another problem). A robot takes over immediately. The host kicks the robot and reserves for the missing player, who returns, but the robot continues to play. All players can see the player returned, but cards are sometimes not synchronized for play with all four players. Help! (also, how can we refuse robots taking back over seats? We want to play casually, not care about time, and chat about hands after the play.)

It seems that when you are logged in, you are in BBO2 (or whichever is the competitive server). When you click casual, you are transferred to another server. Apparently, we can't see people logged into the other server. This seems like a bit of a problem, which will hopefully be addressed shortly, but it was a big architecture overhaul that was implemented a few weeks back.

Rough. Thanks for letting us know!

I was able to login about an hour and change after my post. If it was planned maintenance, it would be super nice if a message was posted to the main page, the forum, or within the client with a relative idea of how long we should expect downtime. If there's a server fire, I guess all bets are off.

Web login. Loads page, but hangs when trying to connect. Anyone else having same problem?

This is strong enough to jump in diamonds or reverse for a couple of my partnerships as well. I would reverse into hearts (even though a spade bid by partner denies 4 hearts) to show the shape, and rebid 3♦ over a probable 2 nt (I doubt I would hear 3♣ as that would be gf for us, and I don't think most of my partners would want to force with what they have after hearing about my shape) to finish the description.

I really hate 4333, and will deduct a full point from evaluating hands with that shape, so 1NT for me. Maybe make a few of those xs to Ts, especially in clubs, and I'll bump it back up, though.

I would support with this. You do have nice spades, but only 5 of them, and also a minimum opening hand. If partner has values for game, showing the fit now will get us there safely. Hiding the fit means we could get too high or in the wrong strain or both.

Tourney #2483 from 7/17, around 11pm est. Just kinda hung, not playing the 4th card to the trick. I guess the finesse was successful and the robot was mad at me. I tried re-logging, and got nowhere, there. Tried logging in on my phone (android), same result. I run Chrome under linux, if that's relevant, but never have this issue. Timed out on the tourney in the end. Any idea what causes this behavior?

I've run into this a couple of times. In ACBL-land, is it the 2♣ bid or the 2NT bid which should be alerted in this auction? I've confused my opps a few times trying to explain this at a club where 4-way wasn't terribly common in the NLM game.

This partnership plays in far more exotic locales than I. I played a game once with a regular partner where we decided that 4NT was defined to be natural (and a sign-off) if it was the first chance we'd had to show the strain, and there'd been competition. It might technically have applied here, though usually we'd have opened and they'd be competing over us. FWIW, the agreement netted us exactly one top and one bottom board before we discarded it.

Assuming 4♦ is a cue showing first or second round controls, 4♠ sounds like the information my partner needs. This is okay by me if 3♣ was natural showing 4+♣, 5+♠ and 18+HCPs. I don't have any fancy gadgets, here. NT might be a better scoring strain, but I'll be crossing my fingers about a heart stop. Let partner decide once you've shown your club support and spade control.

Pass. In most of my partnerships we have a simple rule. When one jumps to game in a GF contract, they are showing a minimum if they haven't yet been able to limit themselves. Here, West bid us into a fsf contract and has a minimum to do that (were it my partners), so they have 6+ in spades, 12-14 points. If I had a stellar fit, or a K more than I have, I'd consider exploring a small, but I'm gonna trust the rule, and my partner, here.

So this isn't a bad idea if it's also amended to include that there are no more absolutely free tourneys, but that all accounts get some number of free tourneys in the month. People wanting to get their feet wet are welcome to play a simple (no pay-out) tourney at no cost still to see if they like it (they can do this, say, a dozen times in a month). A subscription moves you to unlimited play for that class of tourney, and some number of pay-out tourneys (BBO$, BBO MPs, ACBL MPs) depending on the level of subscription. Members could also opt to pay for pay-out tourneys on a per-event basis, if they should so choose. Generally, if you examine the rest of the online gaming pay-to-play schemes, the system BBO has now probably makes them more money. Micro-payments, and pay as you can/want to systems (especially with features which allow you to earn in-game currency for proficiency at the game) are quite profitable.

It sure made me smile just now.

I find it quite interesting that the word "Attention", occurring no less than a dozen times in the laws of duplicate bridge (8 times on the page we're largely discussing), is never defined.

If someone has a significantly low completion rate, would placing a timer on their next sit-down help discourage the bad behaviour enough? For example, a player with that awful 35% completion rate gets into a bad board and quits the table, hits the HMFAG button, and then, 30 seconds later they are placed at a table. When they get their completion rate back up to an acceptable level (60%?), the delay disappears.

I think OP means: why is GIB's system full of gadgets which are likely unfamiliar for a beginner (and to add your embellishment, why are they so poorly outlined)? Frankly, there's a few I wish I could ask it not to play sometimes. Some of the conventions it uses tend to alter meanings of other bids 1-2 levels away, which aren't described well pretty much anywhere I've seen. Is there a tutorial on how to play with GIB? It'd be nice to have a primer on the system and pit-falls to be aware of for new players. I know it would've helped me.

3H if that would be understood as a splinter. 3D, otherwise. If 1D tends to deny a good 4 card major, why not 1N by responder? It's not like we're going to end lower than that anyway. Makes your rebid here a bit easier, too. (because you'll open 1D instead of 1C)

I always balance with 14 cards. I'll be sure to get an extra trick as declarer! Otherwise, I might, but I'd want a better 13 point count than here, though. KJx trapped by long Spades to your left won't be worth much, the overly flat nature of this hand indicates and our partner passing already don't bode well for us offensively.

3D. But then I like to overbid hands like this too much.

4♠ seems fine. 5♠ seems optimistic. I like to play jumps to game in gf auctions as no slam interest, my hand might have been downgraded by the bidding.