Heron

The latest ACBL Bulletin has just arrived, and the letters section has some replies to a piece Jeff Johnston wrote in the Daily Bulletin for the Phoenix NABC titled "No Excuse". It discusses theft, hotel staff abuse, and an action so vile it could not be documented. If you want to have a read, it's here (starts on the first page, rightmost column): http://www.acbl.org/nabc/2013/03/bulletins/db6.pdf I wasn't there. People that I know that *were* there didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Anyone have more background? I've certainly seen the occasional "stop being crappy to the hotel" pieces in the ACBL bulletin that suggest an occasionally strained relationship with venues, but this seems like something a lot worse.

There's a lot to love about this book. I've recommended it to people often. Now, though, I see there's a reissue of it from 2013 that has been "updated and modernized". I appreciate that the material is clear while being engagingly written, and I worry that a rework would lose some of that. (...but I also appreciate that some of the language could be obscure to the modern reader, and what's the point in a "classic" that nobody can read anymore?) Anyone care to make a recommendation on whether it's worth seeking out and/or avoiding vs. the original edition, or if it's all good either way?

The documentation at least says that there's no time limit at all as long as you don't hit the BBO auto-logout idle limit. (Once you log out it's over.) BTW, file me as another who likes the increased time on the robot games. Usually it's not an issue, but a few days ago I had a robot tourney with a bunch of really interesting hands which I blew on time. I'm happy to have them all run longer--does five minutes matter either way for getting the results?

Aha! Thanks. (One more, then...)

I can (if you are reading this!) create new topics in most fora, but in the "Bridge Material Review" section that button is greyed out and instead says "You cannot start a new topic". (The individual topics also all come up as locked.) Is there some nonobvious criterion for posting there? Is there just some setting gone wrong? Has someone looked at my bidding history and decided I should never, ever be allowed to review something?

I have had auctions close to this, and bid much as east has, and I don't *believe* I was acting on UI. I make no representations about whether east has followed the same thought process in this case, but it seems at least possible. Thus a question: Is it a use of UI to say "this is weird and I don't know what these bids mean so I will bid something natural and plausible and hope"? More specifically in this case, "This auction has gone off the rails so all I am going to do is repeatedly rebid diamonds at the cheapest possible level and hey, partner has shown some values so it might even fly"? Or, more generally, is recognition of a broken auction UI? Given the apparent raise of the 3D response I can see West finding this perfectly normal-looking though the 6H bid, but I would expect most would react to 7D with bewilderment and a "PASS". Incidentally, among my lot the 3D would be a weak bid showing diamond length, and still alertable. If I actually was E there I wouldn't smell something fishy until the 4NT call.

Just happened to me, too. In my case it was for multiple attempts to invite somebody to a tournament. (Partner's connection dropped for unknown reasons and we were going right up to the wire trying to get into the 6pm ACBL speedball game, so I was clicking every few seconds hoping for it to register.) Of course just as she came in *I* got punted for spamming! While I understand what you're trying to prevent, maybe it's another sort of uncompletable action that shouldn't count on the spam counter?

I've been watching this hoping for a reply. I almost only ever play non-robot BBO games with my f2f partner mostly because of the pain of finding a compatible pickup partner. I think the really good bits of Precision could actually fit into an incredibly simple bid structure (say 1c 16+ with 2d negative and GF natural responses otherwise, 11-15 five card 1M/2m openers with the usual 1d trash can, weak 2M, natural rebids, nail down some point ranges for notrump bids, a few bog-standard conventions for over NT/competition/slam), but in doing a survey of some pickup games where people were playing "Precision" it looked like everybody had their mountain of crap piled on top of it that they were utterly attached to and that was the Only Right Way To Play Precision and people were bitchy and argumentative and it just didn't look like a good time. Certainly with my regular partner I'm also guilty of the "mountain of crap piled on top" approach to Precision (even without our Bacon Torpedo treatments!), but it seems like it would be nice to have some more consistent and basic understanding for pickup partners who aren't keen on 2/1. I've seen a few convention cards that claimed to be "BBO Precision" but they're all different! (Presumably for different communities within the world of BBO.)

Indeed! An acquaintance worked as a pro for a while while being a student. The formula was simple and far from unique: play lots in local clubs, often with pickup partners, and get known as a good and personable player. Somebody will sooner or later ask if one wants to go play in thus-and-such big event. "I'd love to, but I really can't afford it." Negotiation ensues. Once one has done this a couple of times word gets around. The bread-and-butter clientele here isn't looking for super-high-profile team games, just enough red and gold ($20 per point to the hired help, happily paid) to finally scrape over the "life master" mark, and bridge skills are important but being able to coddle and manage a sub-par partner and generally schmooze is just about as important. For whoever asked about the youngest player to become a pro, if you're looking for anyone who's being paid to play (not just who's on the big international-level teams) it's probably some broke junior high school student somewhere with a good head for bridge. For another account of what it's like to play as a pro outside the world of the big international team games, Sontag's Bridge Bum is a fun read.

Where I am now (New England), people mostly seem to have cards (at least in the better club games), but they're usually in an ancient convention card holder on which the "clear" plastic has clouded to near opacity, with any remaining legible spots covered with stickers. (Sometimes NABC souvenir stickers, but sometimes just unicorns and suchlike.) They're sometimes even on the table, though usually with a coffee and a doughnut perched on top. I do find it interesting and at least marginally hopefuly that when I place a freshly printed card on the table by the bidding box where RHO can easily see it, RHO will sometimes actually have a look, and at least occasionally that has caused the opponents cards to appear and/or be debeveraged without my even having to ask! That's my little part to try and change the culture at my local clubs bit by bit. (Or maybe I just like tilting at windmills. At least I've learned to stop asking where the alert strips are in ACBL-land bidding boxes!)

I'm not sure about cellulose plastic per se, but when I was playing a lot of bridge in the US in the 90's plastic cards were de rigeur at the bigger clubs and I liked the feel of them a lot. I don't remember them being particularly slippery, and they fit in the standard aluminum boards no problem. I gather they were more expensive but longer-lasting, though the failure mode was sudden cracking (sometimes in half) rather than just getting tatty. Still, until they blew to pieces they were really nice. I'm surprised to see this thread as I'd previously just assumed that major events (NABC etc.) would still use them, but a brief look around the web shows just the one kind of ACBL cards. What happened?

This turns out to be my biggest complaint. With the new "human declares" format combined with "best hand south", I'm doing declarer play for just about every hand, and if more than a couple require serious thought and I'm actually paying attention and want to give it that thought, I'll get timed out instead of finishing. (I just played one, for example, in which I passed out a rather unspired flat 14-count. In other circumstances I absolutely would have opened it and gone down 1-2 along with everyone else. Kind of annoying way to get a top!) One might argue that my declarer play should be faster, but it's also certainly the cast that BBO has decreased the average amount of time available per hand-played-as-declarer in these. I don't think I'd want to pay money for that format without having correspondingly more time available.

Am I the only one thinking about a 2c bid here? Seems like the 1nt bidder is never going to leave the double in, my side-suit honors are likely useful, and the clubs are worth mentioning again. I don't say that dogmatically (my bidding judgment clearly needs work), but if someone would care to expand more on why I'm full of it I'd be curious to read it! PS: congrats! With luck and a tailwind I'll see you at the NAP. :) (Well, I have at least a D25 A/B/C qual, just need to work out a partner!)

Thanks! I'd actually tried that, but my laptop is just slow enough that it doesn't clear right away and I thought it was just timing out and going away on its own. I'd still hate to accidentally click something under it with bad timing, though. For both this and the other messages that are presented in the same way (like "CHAT IS NOW BEING DISPLAYED IN A TAB ON THE RIGHT"), how about centering them vertically in the playing area? Impossible to miss, an errant click is harmless, and it doesn't interfere with bidding. Actually, having the big messages at all for the table rotation seems like overkill; it's quite obvious what's going on without them. Seems like it could just be an autogenerated chat message if it needs to happen at all. I declare worse than the robots in the bookkeeping department (a cat will jump on my head or something and then I'll be all "wait which red spot card was good again?") but their overall strategy is hideous at times. Overall I'd rather get the extra play, and it makes the robot games more meaningful as a test of bridge skill instead of robot manipulation. I'd rather leave the bingo races as they are, though. I think a big part of those is actually perverting the bidding into a robot-declared game on the card. It's weird goofy fun that's not really bridge exactly, but I like it.

I've noticed a bunch of the robot games (in particular the free IMP/MP games, but not the races) now swap the table around and force the human to play as declarer for any N/S contract. Anyone else have major thoughts on this either way? I think I basically like it, but perhaps I'm missing some ramifications. (About my only complaint is the giant info boxes telling me the table has been swapped, which block my hand until they go away again.) Also, is this a completely new feature, and will it likely spread to the for-pay robot games?

As someone who has never liked the windows client (and was away from BBO for years because of it), I actually dislike what I was used to. :) I keep it around anyway, though, because there are a few things that are just plain impossible with the web client. FWIW, if you can get to 100% feature parity I think many more people would be quite happy to be web-only.

Agreed; lobby chat is/was a not-completely-awful way of getting that, but it's also getting killed off.

Just pulling that back up, as I would also be very highly interested. (...and afaik this should be trivial to do, though possibly y'all were waiting for the new version to post before making it available for download?) FWIW I've also filed this as a support request (#132376); no answer yet, though I wouldn't really expect one anyway until after everyone is back from Philadelphia.

Could you expand on that? Is it that you think they're not worth mentioning, because nobody at an advanced level plays them, or something else? I basically only ever play in set partnerships anyway, but when we're looking for pickup players to play a few hands with, the number of people who pop in and then pop out again suggests that they're looking for something they're not finding, and I'm curious what. I've never liked the BBO skill definitions much. They go from "Beginner: Someone who has played bridge for less than one year" to "Intermediate: Someone who is comparable in skill to most other members of Bridge Base Online". I think there's a lot of room in there for "has played bridge for more than a year, but still sucks".

I'm also interested in that match, though my sympathy lies with the other team. It's a bit hard to follow from far away, though; I've only just realized that at least the set-by-set scoring on the KO bracket page does get updated in realtime, but I'm surprised that there are no hand records available online yet at all. Am I missing anything?

If you haven't seen these, they'll give you the official answer to many of your questions: http://www.acbl.org/play/alertprocedures.html http://www.acbl.org/play/bidboxes.html As for specifics, for ACBL-land alerts you just tap the alert card on the table (out where everyone can see it) while saying "alert" and stow it again. For announcements, just clearly state "transfer", "may be short", "[semi-]forcing", or a point range; you should also tap the alert strip if your box has one, but the standard US club-issue bidding boxes seem not to; you can leave the alert card someplace you can tap it or just not bother. (...huh, and after reviewing the above ACBL links I realize that I'm supposed to alert our non-major transfers, not announce them! I'm also returning to ACBL-land after a bit, and while announcements may be clunky they beat having to just alert sub-16 1NT openers, forcing NT, and the like!) Note that alerts and announcements are mandatory, and while many people don't care regardless I doubt you'd make it through an open club game without getting called on it if you omitted them. It's much more a subject of debate whether stop cards are mandatory; the ACBL says you "should" use them to protect your rights. To my mind that falls short of "must", and I personally can't be arsed (especially at the average club game), but others disagree and there are many heat-filled threads elsewhere on this forum about whether they're really required. The one thing that is clearly required, though, is that if you use them you should always (in a given game) use them, otherwise their use or lack thereof could convey information.

The only part of that I disagree with is that I think the 75% number is too low. If you can nail down the stuff just in the first two chapters of "How to Declare..." I think you'll be doing better than 75%, and if you can absorb the whole book it's more like 95%. Maybe higher. I reread it a lot and keep getting more out of it. (I would evaluate my declarer play as pretty good and my bidding as stinky, partly because my serious partners are all over the map bidding-system-wise but declarer play is eternal. Still, there's a beauty to a well-played hand that I find compelling, and with the "highest hand south" robot matches on BBO it's easy enough to get practice anytime.) The only thing I'd be happier to have seen more of in the book is some discussion of developing the more abstract skills needed to excel, in particular the sense of what one needs to keep track of and ways of remembering it all if one can't remember the fall of all 52 cards. I'd be happy to see any book suggestions people have for this, though arguably this is a question of "play more bridge, and concentrate on what you're doing".

Same here, although really it's the best of both worlds. The better players around here often end up sitting N/S, and if I try for E/W seats I both have more competitive games *and* my pair's results will be more meaningful with the more consistent opposition at the table.

I find myself denoted a "new member", but I'm not sure what that means other than an inability to play in certain tournaments. My profile (at the moment) notes 21 logins, a 100% board completion rate, and a creation date of 2005. Surely by some standards I'm not new, though as I've had a bit of a hiatus in bridge playing I haven't had terribly much *recent* activity. I do see a thread that suggests that the definition of "new member" is internal and subject to change, and given the goal of reducing abuse from newly-created accounts that seems quite reasonable, but... perhaps it's a touch restrictive? Or perhaps my on-again-off-again playing pattern has landed me in some odd little edge case? In any case, please consider this a request to tune the restrictions a bit, though suggestions on becoming not-new within the existing rules are also welcome! (Alternately, you can tell me to get my sorry wretched newbie self out of here until I've hit at least the ten-year mark?) Thanks!

Thanks for the perspective, all! I originally posted in the Beginner forum because, well, it seemed like a really basic question on interpretation of the Laws. Perhaps not all that basic after all, or at least not all that straightforward, though it is at least clear that as dummy the most positive thing I can possibly do is to play the called card in tempo and hope. (That plus trying not to find one's self in this situation, that is!)