eyhung

I was in the same game and played in your seat, Stephen. Having played against your partner fairly frequently, I noticed your partner often bids Michaels with 4-5 in the majors. I think that would explain why he feels the way he does. At our table I showed both majors over a 1C opener and my partner bid 3S over 3D, and I had no reason to go further. EDIT: Never mind, I forgot that the OP was a Landy auction, so what I said doesn't really hold water.

Good, glad to see I wasn't completely bonkers. I led the DJ, partner had: K9x 9 AK75 xxxxx After declarer covered the jack, partner then was faced with a problem of how to get me back in to score his heart ruff. I could have J(x) or JT(x). He guessed to underlead the ace, thinking I might have led the x from Jx. I didn't think this was a situation for a sexy doubleton honor underlead -- my feeling is that if partner has a vulnerable diamond holding like KQxx then declarer is probably making.

Playing in a Swiss with mediocre opponents and good partner/teammates: [hv=d=w&v=n&n=sa2hqjtd9642cakq3&e=st63hak8754dj3cj9]266|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] The bidding goes: P 1NT (15-17) 2H (natural) 2S All Pass Partner leads the H9 (standard leads, low from three small). You win and declarer follows with the 2. How do you continue?

As the thread shows, he'll have no trouble finding good partners. What he'll have trouble with is finding partners who bid with your style.

Sorry Josh, I didn't realise you enjoy masochism. Imo bidding is really poor. And IMO passing is really poor. You're white at MP. You're playing the form of game where, if you go down 1 or 2 undoubled, you can get a great score, and where frequency of correctness is more important than magnitude. For every time partner ends up overbidding as a result of your response and you end up going down 1 against nothing, you will find multiple heart partials, better diamond partials,, steal the opponent's partial/game, find a nice sac against their partial, or find a NV game. Bidding has many common ways to win, pass relatively few. White matchpoints is a bidder's game -- make the percentage call : 1NT.

Well, I like having options, so a button for both overwrite and new would be fine for me, but having too many options can overwhelm/confuse casual users. Tradeoffs in user interface design.

Also, if I save a convention card with the same names as a previous convention card, it should overwrite. Right now I have 3 copies of the same convention card, as I was editing and coming back here to give feedback. Also, allow users to delete convention cards.

It looks nice for Standard American or 2/1 players. Here are some ideas to improve it: The field for the maximum 1NT range is much wider than the field for the minimum 1NT range. If the two are to be unbalanced, I would expect the minimum to be wider than the maximum, most people upgrade (good 14 to 17) but don't downgrade. It's possible you widen it for seat info or vul, but best would probably involve keeping the field lengths equal and having a separate field on the right for seat/vul info. Extraneous fields: There is a very wide field in the 1 Major box under "Min Length" that does not exist in the ACBL card. I'm not sure what this is for, especially since the 1 Minor box does not have an equivalent field. Similar fields exist before Upside Down count/attitude. The 2NT fields should be flush center not flush left. In fact, all places that are HCP ranges (1m : 1NT/2NT/3NT; 1M : 3NT; 2-bid ranges, Notrump Overcalls, etc.) should be flush center instead of flush left. Spacing errors: 1m : 2NT (after 2NT); Weak Jump Overcalls Strong/Intermediate/Weak is formatted oddly with the checkboxes; Notrump Overcalls -> Jump to 2NT should have spacing; Over Opponent's Takeout Double -> New Suit Forcing should have spacing; Slam Conventions spacing makes it hard to tell which checkbox belongs to RKC and which belongs to 1430. A few checkboxes should be radio buttons: it is nonsensical to play jump to 2NT as both Minors and 2 Lowest.

It's a rolling average so your quit will be gone in 50 hands, and 1 quit in 50 hands will give you a 2% "drop" rate, which should be enough to satisfy most hosts. I suggest making the ban on drop rate completely customizable by the server, with a default of 5-10%. If you are disconnected a lot, well, I don't think most hosts would like that, so you would have to play in Relaxed Club where there are no restrictions, or find a host who can tolerate your frequent drops.

As I stated in another thread, I think it's far more important to rate people on the basis of their behavior rather than skill. In particular, the unpleasant behavior of quitting in the middle of the hand is easily quantifiable and can be discouraged with a reputation system that tracks how many times a player has left prematurely in the last 50 hands played, and allowing main room servers to specify how tolerant they want to be (bar people with more than a 10% drop rate, for example). Right now the main room of BBO is trending towards the unpleasant nature of Yahoo! bridge with people popping in, seeing a bad hand, and leaving, or leaving immediately when their partner makes what they consider a bad mistake. I think this is fine for the Relaxed Club, but the Main Room should be a little more serious. It's my belief that this behavior has induced most of the good players on BBO to only play in set games, tournaments, or team matches.

With my partner Joel Hoersch, I play "Joelcoby" -- 2NT promises 3-card support (could be more) and a balanced hand. Opener rebids show shape (bal/unbal) and strength and responder has relays available to identify the best game (or slam). I like it, it's definitely superior to standard Jacoby for choice-of-games auctions, but it's not easy to remember all the followups.

Ace and low to the ten doesn't lost to KJ9x on the left, so Pooltuna's line loses to only six 4-2 breaks and three 5-1s. What about low to the queen, then low to the eight later? That loses only to LHO's K, K9, KJ9x and KJ9xx, which is four 4-2s and two 5-1s. Low to the eight and then low to the queen is equally good from the point of view of making the contract, but gives up some overtrick chances. You're right -- I misanalyzed pooltuna's line for KJ9x offside. But doesn't your low to the queen, low to eight lose to four 5-1s (stiff K 1 case, KJ9xx 3 cases), not two? It's still a better line, just wanted to clarify your commentary. Low to the eight, low towards the queen (playing the ace if a non-x appears) feels slightly superior to me from a contract-making perspective. In practice LHO is less likely to have a small heart stiff because he is more likely to lead it in preference to a club, but he might have stiff K (or stiff J). Once the eight forces K or J you can win the DA, cross in a black suit, and draw trump to guarantee the contract, so you only pay off to K9 doubleton (1 case), KJ9x in LHO (3 cases), or KJ9xx in LHO (3 5-1 cases).

It also loses to most cases where LHO has KJxx, as you can only draw one trump before leading a second time from dummy. On a good day, I'll notice that RHO has played the 9 on the second round of the suit, so I'll play the ace. Yes, this is the pretty part of the problem. The threat of a diamond ruff argues against a line that may let you lose the second round of hearts, but the ruff with 4-2 is not an issue in most cases because you can play the ace when you see RHO follows with a non-x, and when RHO can ruff, you were about to go down anyway.

That's the best play of the suit in isolation. It's not the best play on the actual hand because you can't lead towards the HQ later, so you lose to all KJ9x's (6 cases) as well as Jx (3 cases) in RHO. You also lose to KJ9xx in RHO (3 5-1 cases).

The problem of "finding good followups" was solved for me by awm's structure. Having played both styles, I think it's far better to be able to raise on 3 coupled with a structure like awm's than to require a raise on 4 with standard game try structures. My partnerships now get a lot more partial and game strain decisions right. Note that there needs to be good judgement applied on when to raise on 3 and in choosing the best strain later -- if you have lousy judgement, better stick with a strict 4-card requirement to raise.

[hv=d=n&v=n&n=sjt8643ht43dacaq2&s=sahaq82dkqjt652c4]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] I saw this neat hand in a home team game. You reach 5D from the South chair with no enemy bidding after N/S start with a 2/1 game-forcing auction. The lead is the Club Ten (standard honor leads). Plan the play.

I would just like to say that I've been playing awm's style of responses here for over a year now in the context of frequent raises on 3 and I love it. It's easy to remember, natural, and allows both partners to use their judgement in choice of games. However, it may not be a good fit for the OP who almost never raises on 3. If you adopt a strict 1m 1M 2M raise style that practically guarantees 4, adopting your 1M 2M game try structure in 1m 1M 2M auctions may be the best mix of simplicity and effectiveness.

53/112, missed a few obvious ones, though. Someone got over 100!

Instead of technical solutions like tracking IPs for punishment, why not technology to facilitate social solutions? For each account, keep track of "reputation" by tracking the last 50 hands played by the user in terms of finished properly (left during the bidding) and not finished properly (left during the cardplay). And then allow servers in the Main Club to specify a minimum properly finished percentage before an opponent is allowed to take a seat. (The Relaxed Club should have no restriction.) Malicious users have no reason to create multiple accounts since only the last 50 hands are used, and they can go play in the Relaxed Club while they are building reputation if they want to leave in the middle of a hand. And if there are people in the Main Club who don't care about habitual leavers, they can play there too. But for those of us who want a serious game, we can specify 98% properly finished in the last 50 (or whatever percentage we want) and have the software allow or bar people appropriately.

I vote pass, especially playing opposite myself, since I tend to open marginal hands with spades. I think it's close, and agree with cherdanno that I would bid with better honor location.

Many years ago, I did just that and converted Power Precision to a "system note" format. Daniel Neill has a copy of my transcription on his systems page here: http://www.bridgewithdan.com/systems/SWPow...c_fromEHung.doc

Anything in your external environment can aid your randomization technique if you look hard enough -- such as the last digit of the round timer, the number of objects on the table, or even the color of a random person's shirt. This is in contrast to a bridge book, system notes, or a calculator. The law is directed at specific aids, not general ones.

I randomize by using a similar technique I learned from poker -- glancing at my digital watch and looking at the final seconds digit when I can anticipate a later decision (obviously not when i'm about to play.) Odd is one direction, even is another. I think this is unexploitable even if known, especially if I wear sunglasses.

Yeah, I played club ace, club to ten, losing to Jx offside. The hearts do run for 4 tricks (RHO has HQ), but when the DQ was offside, I was down 2. I mistakenly thought playing the club ace first would clarify a significant number of positions, but Justin convinced me it's not worth risking KJx offside and instantly going down. FWIW, Lew Stansby was in 6C at the other table and was pretty much forced into the line CA, C to ten, but playing in clubs allowed him to hold things to down 1 since he had no play for the contract after the misguess. So we lost 2 instead of winning 14. Had I played the hand like Justin, we would have won the match. Oh well.

Anyone who doesn't get all of the level 1 problems (and level 2 problems, for that matter) at the table isn't an expert, in my opinion. I just went through all 36 in level I A, they are really trivial for any competent declarer -- guessing KJ combinations when someone has / hasn't opened, hold up plays in notrump, establishing tricks by promotion, etc. That doesn't apply to level 3, in particular A-20 which has been cited as a common blind spot for many experts. Maybe BBO should administer a bridge master test using the free deals before letting people set their level as expert or world class.