FelicityR

Oh dear! My apologies. I forgot that this is GIB/Argine bidding, not experienced human bridge partnerships. I should have realised that from my earlier reply where I stated that the definitions of the bids after 2♣ leave a lot to be desired. But the hand does demonstrate that the robots still have bugs that need fixing. North shows the strong hand type and then forgets that the partnership should be in game. Not satisfactory, to say the least.

You can hardly call North's hand strong - well, I certainly can't given the potential misfit, and that South has limited his/her hand by the rebid of 2♣. I am hazarding that very few players, even British ones, play 4SF as invitational these days, preferring the GF version. I openly admit there will be hands where using 4SF as an unconditional GF will result in a poor contract, but that's no different than making a game force in the 2/1 system. Anyway, a player has to use judgement here, and it is normally the responder who has set up the GF who dictates where the contract is headed. With any 'forcing to game' bid there is also an opportunity to bail out below game level if you feel the hands are not fitting well and will not produce a game. But that is as rare as hen's teeth. If you do not use 3♦ as a splinter here but to show a 5♠/5♦ hand instead, I would expect something like ♠AKxxx ♥x ♦AKQxx ♣xx not a watery ♠AQxxx ♥Q ♦Qxxxx ♣Ax where the second suit ♦s is as good or better than the first mentioned ♠s.

Hello all. I rarely reply on these forum pages these days, but as I have played and studied Acol for some 40 years, I think I am well-qualified to answer this question. 3♦ is NOT Acol. Acol is a neat system that preserves space and uses fourth suit forcing (4SF) by responder to set up a game force. In the very early days, 4SF was only forcing for one round. The bid by responder on the above hand that conveys this meaning (GF) is 2♦, not 3♦. If one wished to show a 5♠5♦ hand then 2♦ followed by 3♦ would show this. The fourth suit 2♦ is traditionally used as asking for a stop initially. Already North knows that a) South is minimum with his/her rebid of 2♣, and b) The hands are a potential misfit. Therefore, there is less likelihood that a slam is on despite North's shape, especially given that North has a 14 count with very poor intermediate cards. The bidding should be 1♥ - 1♠ - 2♣ - 2♦ - 2♠ (shaping out showing either 3514 or 3505 shape with 3♠ support, etc. Some partnerships here might rebid 3♠ on the South hand to show 3 card ♠ support with an honour and a better than minimum hand (11-13), but as a game force has already been set up it is not entirely necessary. And Acol preserves space, not wastes it. The 3♦ bid as shown in the diagram would mean to me 4+♣ support and shortness in ♦, thus a splinter, and would be a game force. The description of the bids given in the diagram from 2♣ onwards are inaccurate, to say the least.

Nigel was a gentleman through and through. I read through his bio, and it appears he used to play at Reading Bridge Club in the 1980s. I used to play there sporadically, so I might have played against him without actually knowing it. I had a look at his contribution to these forums, too. Over 9000 posts which to me shows a total dedication to the game, but it was the gracious way he worded his excellent posts on these forums that endeared him to many. RIP Nigel. You will be sorely missed by those that knew you, and your bridge friends on here, too.

I haven't commented on these forums for a long time myself, however I thought the following would be of interest. My own small club (just an extension of the local golf club) closed down. Before covid it sometimes could not even manage five tables. After the committee took a vote, and quite a few members had migrated to online bridge, it was disbanded through lack of interest essentially. I am not a fan of online bridge even with my regular partner, who also dislikes it, so I have a few friends over once a week for social bridge. A friend who lives in Brighton tells me of a local bridge club who have had to vacate their premises - reason unknown - a large grand house perfectly suited for bridge - she thinks that it was once a hotel - and now play both their rubber and duplicate bridge in a pub in the afternoons and evenings! She says the pub is roomy, but she no longer plays herself at this club as numbers have dwindled, too, and has moved to another bridge club in Brighton. I cannot imagine a pub being conducive to being ideal bridge playing conditions, even if they have separate rooms that they can facilitate for the purpose, and I can just imagine the noise once full-time sports resume. She says the pub has a full range of large televisions for the showing of sporting events, and even if they keep the sound muted, I can just imagine the general hubbub and cacophony from a crowd when sporting events get exciting, such as when England score a goal in the World Cup.

Hello again. I had to reply as this is an Acol question. Why is your partner opening 1♠ here instead of 1♣? With 5/5 in the black suits I usually open 1♣. There are a few reasons why I would not open 1♠ here: rebidding a poor ♠ suit as my next bid; and if game is on partner will have a better hand than me and you'd want the lead coming up to him/her. It might be acceptable in 2/1 to open 1♠ here, but it doesn't fit well into Acol bidding. Let's say you open 1♠ and partner forces with 3♦ in Acol? What now? It's bad enough rebidding 2♠ after 2♦ but make that a level higher and it becomes impossible to describe your hand accurately.

I totally agree it is wrong on every level for any player, whatever their gender or nationality to receive rude and/or disgusting unsolicited mail from other players. Women especially as it can be very upsetting as appears to be the case here. For BBO to completely overlook the matter as it is 'a first offence' is absurd. Not everyone who has been subject to lewd comments reports it. I personally think that BBO needs to reappraise their nonchalance towards this type of behaviour. Their are levels of rudeness/lewdness, and anything bordering on sexual or political (e.g. anti-semitism) should be dealt with firmly from the outset, immediately blocking that person's IP address. They may come back on another device, phone or computer, and start again, but in time they will have no means of accessing BBO except by buying new equipment. At least many Police forces around the world now take this type of computer abuse seriously and will deal with a formal complaint. BBO need to do likewise. It's not as though they have much investigating to do.

A few days ago I was reading the wikipedia entry for Afghanistan, having learnt about the Anglo-Afghan wars from school history lessons long ago. Sadly, for the decent Afghani people, the country has nearly always been in turmoil: wars, coups, assassinations, tribal revolts, etc. for many centuries. It is also the world's leading illicit producer of opium (heroin) and hashish, too. I'm no political analyst, but plain common sense just tells me that military intervention was going to create more turmoil and more bloodshed. If the Americans, British and UN forces thought they could tame the country, they were unforgivably mistaken.

One of my partner's (Berneice, an older lady who has since passed away) greatest moments was playing against Tony Forrester and Roman Stolsky(?) back in the 1980s at an EBU Congress. Our team of four (no better than average club players at the time) had won our first match and then was paired against the best young players in England. Tony Forrester is still a regular in the England team partnering Andrew Robson, and has been one of England's best players for many, many years. As I remember we were vulnerable and they were not, and I believe the scoring was slightly different back then, non-vulnerable undertricks were less penalised, and after two passes Tony Forrester opened 1♠ in third position. I had a big hand, equivalent to a 2♣ opener, and I overcalled 2♠ which back then wasn't Michaels but a bid showing a very strong hand. I forget how the rest of the bidding went until the final round but it was frantic as I remember, where Tony Forrester called 6♠, I must have bid at the seven level with a ♠ void, and Roman Stolsky then bid 7♠ as a sacrifice. My partner thought for a minute then called 7NT and that was the end of the auction. I can't even remember my hand but I do remember feeling panic thinking if we go down it's going to be a disaster. Fortunately, my partner had the ♠A and 7NT made. When we'd played our eight or nine boards, we went back to our teammates who immediately asked whether we had bid the grand slam on board x. Yes, we said pleased as punch (happy). However, we still managed to lose the individual match by 18-2 or something like that. Soon after I met my husband and bridge was shelved for my nursing career. I probably have played against some other good players back then however, that particular board became etched on my memory. 7NT against Tony Forrester. That doesn't happen every day of the week :)

Hello all again! I thought I'd post this on the forum as I am sure you will be pleased. My friend phoned me at the weekend and said she had played a live bridge session at her club in Patcham, Sussex, England on Friday of last week. Hopefully, my club will re-open soon, too. However, I did have a smile ( :) ) at the Patcham Friday Pairs' Winners with an impressive score of 75%. https://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwoo/bw.cgi?pid=display_rank&event=20210730_1&club=patcham

I had to reply to this, Nigel, even though I have resisted posting on BBO some time ago. I'm not surprised that AI has finally entered the world of crosswords and found to be better than humans. I personally gave up crosswords many years ago, having been a Times, Telegraph and Guardian crossword 'attemptee' for want of a better made-up word. Occasionally I would complete one, feeling jolly pleased with myself. However, the watershed moment came when I had one clue left to finish a broadsheet crossword. It was 'Old timer found in dry places'. I had a couple of letters to help me construct the word, but for the life of me I tried for about an hour, juggling the letters into the remaining spaces, thinking what it might be. In the end I consulted a thesaurus and found the word 'Clepsydra' an anagram of 'Dry Places'. I studied Latin at school but not Greek, so I wasn't aware of the word until then. But what got me is that a 'Clepsydra' is actually a water clock. So it can never be found in 'dry places', or if it was in a 'dry place' it wouldn't be working :) I have never done a crossword since. The AI computer programs are welcome to them. Bridge is much more fun!

I haven't posted on here since I 'retired', but I still regularly look at the posts, however, I am going to reply to this one, Nigel. Over the years I have watched many a JEC/BBO Forum match on a Saturday night, obviously willing BBO Forums to cause an upset. I think it happened once in maybe 200 matches. So, my view is, for what it's worth, let sleeping dogs lie. It's not worth the effort. Playing with a team where both partnerships have regular partnerships might work, but playing with a pick-up partner is a recipe for disaster, even accounting for experience. Moreover, the level of experience and bidding and partnership understanding that the JEC team has greatly outweighs any of us. Especially me as just an advanced player. I'd rather see a JEC match where he and his team are playing established internationals, and given how many are playing on BBO at the moment, wouldn't it be better to ask some of them if they would be agreeable? There's perhaps a good reason why the weekly BBO Forum match disappeared off our screens. It's a bit like a TV series that has also disappeared from the channels due to poor ratings.

I've been thinking for some months now that it's about time to pass on the baton to new forum members to comment on these pages. I thought about ending my tenure here at the end of this year, or alternatively on my 1000th post, but have decided to retire early. I miss playing in a club environment, and whilst online bridge offers some consolation to those who cannot play with friends in the real world, to me it just feels too sterile and haphazard to participate. An analogy that springs to mind is surprisingly sunflowers: you can admire Vincent Van Gogh's sunflower paintings, but it is nothing like being in a field of sunflowers on a summer's day :) I am also getting older - as we all are - and I now feel there are different priorities in my life. Not so much a bucket list, but a few life experiences I have missed out on, mainly with regards to travel, that I hope to fulfil in the next few years, hopefully when the pandemic crisis that we are all living through has receded. It's been good knowing all of you, and whilst I am a lesser player in terms of experience than others on here, I do read many bridge magazines and books, and sometimes can get what's left of my brain around the complex elements of this game. I realise there might be a few forum members on here that will say "Please carry on, Felicity" but my mind is already set. This is the last post and the last time I will be logging in on BBO Forums. Goodbye to all and good luck in your lives :)

I actually like 'Pass' here. If we end up in a contract there is good chance that the suits are going to behave badly. Admittedly it is borderline, but since partner hasn't opened 1NT strong here there's more likelihood that he/she has a weak hand. The last thing I wish to do is encourage partner with my balanced 10 count to go to game. If partner has a strong hand perhaps they can balance, Pre-empts sometimes work.

I got the answer wrong :( but would I get upset to get caught out on a deal that is a complete freak and turns up 'once in a blue moon' as verified by the odds posted by the OP. The answer is a resounding NO.