silvr bull

Thanks for the helpful and friendly advice, but I do not need help with the initial 2C bid. This thread is about the two questions in the op. Additional comments are welcome, of course, but the 2C bid is not the focus of this thread.

With all due respect to the posters who focus on jumping to 3C instead of the specified 2C bid, I agree that 3C is what I would bid with a good partner. However, this is an Individual! On BBO!!! If you have not played many of those lately, you may be surprised to discover that the CHO can have much less bridge skill or reasoning ability than you would guess, no matter how pessimistic you might try to be. For many CHOs, a jump to 3C would be an automatic transfer for the CHO to bid 3NT if he had anything resembling a possible S stop. As the ops then take their 7 tricks, CHO will complain that you do not have the 13 points your 3C bid promised! Although I agree that 3C would be a better call with a good partner, 2C is a much safer bid in an individual. On BBO!!

Whenever there is doubt, my preference is to limit my hand as soon as I can, so partner does not imagine that I have more than a minimum. Here, I would pass quickly, and hope that my RHO opens 1m, or even 1NT. A Micheals 2m que or a Capp 2D, could start a perfect auction for us.

This session was Master Points. If IMPs would have different results, a comment about IMP decisions would also be welcome.

My partner in an individual castigated me unmercifully because I did --.This is your chance to either confirm his insults, or to offer me some solace. [hv=pc=n&s=s5h984dqt54caj983&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=ppp1c1s2c2s3cpp3spp]133|200[/hv]

I guess I should have mentioned in the OP that we open 12-14 NT, so this hand is not only the wrong shape for us to open 1NT, but it is also too strong in playing strength.

Matchpoints, Vul against not. Your bid agreements include 5 card majors and 1NT is forcing for one round of bids. What call do you make? [hv=pc=n&s=skq42hakq62d42ct3&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=p1hp1np]133|200[/hv]

The robot executed a clever trap in a recent Daylong. It passed at the 4 level with enough values to bid, but then it overbid to the 5 level to complete the partner trap. Fortunately, I managed to make 5S, but the robot trap is a viscous tool in its arsenal against human partners! [hv=pc=n&n=s543h76542d6caqj3&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=3dd4dppdp5dp5sppp]133|200[/hv]

My understanding of the standard agreement after a double of 3NT is: a) If either defender has bid a suit, lead it; An example might be 1D (1S) 1NT (P), 3NT (X). If the doubler has KQJTxx xxx Ax xx. Then an immediate S lead is essential before the D stop is knocked out. Without the double, opening leader might try a C from CKQT9x and no side entries. b) If the defenders bid two suits, lead one of them and hope to guess the right one; c) If the defenders have not bid any suits, then lead the first suit bid by dummy. With those guidelines, my answer to both of the OP questions is lead a S.

Thanks for a helpful reply. I must admit that I underestimated the difficulty with establishing a "correct" sequence for bid and play. The intense reaction to my simple example hand should have been sufficient warning to me, but I am a slow learner and an incurable optimist. Your mention of Bridge Master at the top of this thread was the first time I heard of it. I will have to look into it. Meanwhile, I continue to think Decision Point has a useful role in BBO individual tournaments, but maybe as a double dummy (instead of most skillful, that is so problematic to define) replacement for, or alternative to, Daylong tournaments. Thanks.

In my experience, this is a bit of an overstatement. I have not played in all of the pay tournaments, but I have played in several of the ones that offer cash prizes. Look up the list of participants in most of the cash prize tournaments. You will find that all of the players there have BBO master point numbers after their name, and most of the numbers will be high. Intermediate players just starting in BBO would be like goldfish swimming among sharks in one of those contests, and the cost to win enough to get even one master point would be much too high. My idea of a pay section in BBO that might cost a few dollars a year would let players of any skill level play in a better environment. BBO could even offer pay section members free tournaments where they could win BBO master points, and that would be a very popular feature. The cost of becoming a pay section member would be small compared to the benefit of playing without excessively rude events detracting from the BBO experience.

The fundamental idea of Decision Point is that at every turn to bid or play, the player will have seen exactly the same information as every other player at other tables. A script is prepared in advance for each hand, and that script is the exact bid and play sequence for that hand. The player can try to make a different bid or play, but the tournament software will change the player's bid or card to match the script. For bids or plays the hand developer selected as decision points, the player will receive the maximum points if the bid or play he selected is the same as the script. If the players choice is different than the script, then the player may receive a smaller decision point value than the maximum, and the software will replace the player's choice with the one in the script, so the bids and plays will be identical at every table. The only difference will be the decision point scores that the player accumulates during the hands Maybe another (and very simple) example will help to clarify the Decision Point approach. Suppose E-W bid to 6S. After the scripted opps pull trump and lead toward a dummy that still has only trump and KQJ in the suit just led. The South player will have to decide if he will play low or the A of that suit. If he plays the ace, then play will continue as planned in the script. If he tries to play low instead, the software will flash a Decision Point Alert (DPA) message, and then the software will play the ace, just the same way it is played at every other table. The player will be credited with the maximum decision point value assigned to that play (if he plays the ace), or to zero for that simple decision point (if he plays low). Your question is what if a player decides to open anything other than the bid (1C in your example) in the script. Then the software would change the player's bid to the one in the script, so that the situation at that table will be exactly the same as it is at all the other tables. Suppose that the player's hand is xx xx AKJx AKJxx and he is first to bid. If I set up the Decision Point script for this hand, I would select an opening bid of 1C as the bid that the software will actually make at all the tables. I view a 1NT opening with nothing in both majors as less than best, and a player who tried to open with 1NT would receive a DPA. The software would then replace the 1NT the player tried to bid with 1C, and later he would receive less than the maximum decision points for trying to open 1NT. If the player tried to open 1D, his bid would also be replaced with 1C so that all bids and plays are the same at all tables. However, there has been a long running disagreement about whether it is better to open 1C (and possibly be forced to rebid clubs) or to open 1D with the flexibility to rebid Cs later. I would assign the same decision point value to either a 1C or 1D open, but in any case, the software would replace a different bid with the 1C open that is in the script, so that all tables do the same thing at all times. Similarly during the play, some spots will be decision points, but other spots may be irrelevant. Suppose a player on defense holds the 432 of a suit that declarer leads, in a situation where it makes no difference which card the player plays. Then the script might call for the 2, and a different card the player tried to play would be changed to the 2 (so that all tables are exactly the same), but there would be no decision point and no affect on the player's Decision Point score regardless of which spot card he tried to play. Current tournament formats allow different information to be presented to a player, and those differences compound through the play of a hand so that the final results are often skewed as much by luck as by skill. The objective of Decision Point is to make all of the bid and the play information exactly the same, so that the player at every table will have the same decisions to make under the identical circumstances. Luck will be kept to a minimum, and skill will be reflected in the players' accumulated decision points. The winner will be the player who best selects the bids or plays at each of the decision points throughout the hand.

Daylong tournaments I played are 8 boards that I completed in little more than 20 minutes. (No, I did not score well, but thank you for asking.) In 20 minutes, a player better than me could review those 8 boards in double dummy, identify several decision points in each hand, and script the "correct" bid and play sequence. If 50 decision points are identified for the 8 boards, and values of 0-2 were assigned to the key possibilities, then a half hour would be enough time to convert the hands in a Daylong into a Decision Point tournament that would be ready to play. That requires the software to be developed to enable Decision Point, of course, but encouraging BBO to develop that software is precisely the point of this thread. So, why not just play the Daylong with robots instead of Decision Point? Several reasons: (1) There are many guesses that one must make (I would call them decision points) to do well in each hand. One unlucky guess could doom a hand (which is 12.5% of the tournament) to average or worse, and would drag one's score down substantially. In contrast, a miss guess in Decision Point would only affect the score in one of fifty decision points, and the "correct" bid or play would be presented to all players for the remaining challenges in that hand. (2) Every player would be presented with exactly the same information throughout the bid and play for every hand. Every player would have an equal opportunity to do well at the next decision point regardless of earlier misjudgments. (3) Robots are not as good as one would like for tournament play. A small and possibly irrelevant change in a human's bid or play can produce significantly different reactions in the robots. Robot variations are an added luck factor that would not cause a problem with Decision Point, where every bid and play will be exactly the same for every player. (4) Wild bids would not be rewarded in Decision Point. A Daylong (IMPs) I played, North (robot) opened 1D and the human South's only bid was 6NT with AKQTx Kx ATx xxx! That wild bid did produce a top score, in much the same way that a psych bid can result in a top sometimes, but I prefer to play in events that reward skill and minimize the effects of luck. (5) Decision Point tournament results can easily be compared with other players, because every player would play exactly the same hands in exactly the same way (with score differences only in the number of correct decision points) and at the same time. Daylong, in contrast, has different sets of hands for different players. No doubt, that is done to prevent a player playing the hands in one ID and then replaying them double dummy in a different ID, but that would not be a problem with Decision Point. The hands would be exactly the same for all participants, so the decisions each made are directly comparable. My signature line is a good closing comment:

My guess is that a person could open an email and glance at the attached proof in less than one minute. If the proven offense is one of the "deadly sins" that are obviously unacceptable, then it would take less than another minute to cancel the offenders BBO account. If one BBO staffer takes 10 minutes a day to work on this problem, then a few problem children would get a clear message that BBO doesn't condone their actions. That may well be only a drop in the bucket, but it is better than doing nothing. BBO could reinforce the policy of zero tolerance by posting a message that ## of abusers were booted for bad behavior. Anything to help reduce the amount of very bad behavior would be better than doing nothing (which effectively condones that problem person's bad actions).

I too would try 2NT. P could have a S honor. If not, and on a good day, P will have a small stiff and LHO will have two honors, so opener cannot overtake the S lead without giving me a stopper. Looks like today is not that good day.

Out of curiosity, how much more in resources do you think BBO would need to do more than nothing about problem players? Barmar said BBO can cancel the offending player accounts, so presumably BBO already has the resources to do that. It doesn't take a staff member long to read an abuse email (with attached screenshot evidence) and terminate a problem account. If BBO wants to have a pay section that costs a few dollars a year (in addition to the current free and wide open BBO format), and if that payment would help BBO to weed out the troublemakers from the pay and free sections, I will be happy to upgrade my membership to the paid section. If you prefer not to pay a few dollars a year for a better experience in BBO, then by all means you have my permission to not pay the membership fee and to play instead in the free section. Do you really think BBO should do NOTHING about obvious abusers of the site, because some users prefer to play in paid tournaments?

This reply "what can we do about it?" shows a big part of the problem with BBO. I routinely report problems to Abuse, with copies of screenshots or hands to substantiate the report, but the only response is a form letter style Thanks for your report. There is never any indication that BBO will do something about the problem people, and I no longer have any expectation that BBO will actually do anything. I say BBO should institute a clear policy of zero tolerance for flagrant abuse, and immediately ban those individuals. Sure, they can create new IDs, but they would need to start with zero logons and zero time on BBO. Tables can prevent new players from joining, and BBO limits the activities that new players can participate in. After being banned a few times and having to start over, the trouble makers may decide that it is less trouble for them to just play bridge than to cause childish vandalism. When BBO does ban a problem person, BBO should also keep a record of that person's IP address. If the same IP address gets banned a second time, BBO should prevent logins from that IP address. The short answer to "what can we do about it?" is SOMETHING! Doing nothing about proven abuse only encourages the problem children, and makes good players want to leave.

Leaving as dummy is not even close to being rude, and it is much better than saying something uninvited to your CHO. People who refuse to learn basic bridge often compensate with advanced skills in hostility, and there is no value in wasting your time or emotional energy on arguments with a proven idiot. I have played several individual tournaments, and by now I am inoculated at the unbelievable stupidity that can be displayed by the other players, even if they have more than 5,000 logons or they self rate as "Expert." Now my only reaction is to laugh at the display of gross incompetence and silently say something like "incredible." There is one situation, however, that continues to make my blood boil. I just hate it when a declarer has all top winning cards, but refuses to claim and plays slowly as if to decide which useless card to discard. I can still manage to not say anything, but I am grateful that I will not often have to play with that person again in an individual. If was at a table where that person would stay, however, I would criticize the first time. If a similar situation was repeated, I would be unable to restrain caustic sarcasm as I quickly left for a better playing opportunity elsewhere.

Couldn't South have been dealt A AKQxxx KQxxxx --? South must jump soon to show strength, and the 2H strong jump shift immediately is best works best for me. Clearly with my example hand, South needs to be able to bid 3D to show Ds. Some partnerships may agree that a later jump (like 4D here), when no suit has been agreed yet, is a good 2nd suit. There is little clarity in South's 3D or a jump to 4D unless that specific auction has been discussed and agreed to before. With the actual South hand, I like the 2H SJS, but then South must clarify good C support by bidding 3C at this point.

rmnka447 said it perfectly. Apparently, there are few things one can do in the long BBO tournaments that are terrible bridge. I bid the South hand below to a normal 6D in a Daylong tournament. That was a good result, but the guy in 6NT scored better. His auction is shown below. Now that is terrible bridge! [hv=pc=n&s=sakqt2hk8dat3c765&n=shqjt7dkqj962caj4&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1dp6nppp]266|200[/hv]

I played the Daylong (IMP) yesterday and bid to 6D with the hand below. The robot led a normal HA and that was the end of the hand. 6D making 6. [hv=pc=n&s=sakqt2hk8dat3c765&w=s987h963d875cqt92&n=shqjt7dkqj962caj4&e=sj6543ha542d4ck83&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1dp1sp2hp2sp3dp4np5sp6dppp]399|300[/hv] Looking at the traveler today, I noticed one guy in 6D making an overtrick. That seemed strange, so I looked at his movie. Click next to see an unbelievable first trick. Yes, West played third hand deuce and the C5 in dummy won trick one! [hv=pc=n&s=sakqt2hk8dat3c765&w=s987h963d875cqt92&n=shqjt7dkqj962caj4&e=sj6543ha542d4ck83&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1dp1sp2hp3cp3dp4dp5dp6dppp&p=c3c5]399|300[/hv] But wait! It gets worse!! After pulling trump in three rounds (With East pitching a small S and H) and then leading the SA & K to pitch the CJ and a H, he continued with the SQ to pitch a H. East "unblocked" the SJ so he could then play his remaining low S on the ten from dummy!!! That let North pitch all four of his Hs and take all the tricks. The East and West robots acted like they were well paid to throw this hand to the "lucky" winner. Grotesque robot plays like these are an embarrassment to BBO. I hope BBO will soon offer Decision Point tournaments to eliminate robot problems, and to eliminate luck too, so Decision Point tournaments will be tests of skill: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/76068-decision-point-tournaments/

[hv=pc=n&s=sakqt54h7dt6cjt95&w=sj63hak543dkqj2ca&n=s9h862da75ck87432&e=s872hqjt9d9843cq6&d=n&v=e&b=9&a=pp2s4hpp4sdppp]399|300[/hv] The full hand is above. Those who opened 2S and then took the 4S sacrifice (only me so far), and those who opened 4S have a great opportunity, provided they unblock clubs (at trick one and again the next time they play the suit), and provided they rise with a top trump and continue to pull trump. The best sacrifices are the ones that make with overtricks! I posted this hand to see if my example in the Decision Point tournament proposal thread (http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/76068-decision-point-tournaments/) was OK or not. The comments here tell me that a different example hand would have been a better choice. Thanks to all.

Hands would be easy to construct for Decision Point. The free daylong tournaments are full of hands that are double dummy to bid and play (but with single dummy vision), and many other hands on BBO are similarly exacting. Any good player with double dummy vision can identify the key spots in bid and play that would be decision points (systemic bids comparable to the robots now and critical plays like hold ups, avoidance, safety plays, squeezes, end plays, etc.), and assign values for each (with close decisions getting close Decision Point scores). In my example hand, the opening bids of 2S or 4S would be very close in value, and it would not make much difference which was assigned a fractionally higher value. The "point" of Decision Point is not to identify perfection, which would be impossible since many players will disagree about the fine point details of almost everything. Instead of bridge perfection, Decision Point will reward good bridge technique, and (most importantly) eliminate luck. The winners of any current bridge event will be good players who were also very lucky, with opps who did strange things or with guesses that worked out well. Decision Point, in contrast, will eliminate variations in opps or partner (since the script for those will be identical), and focus completely on the actions of the player when presented with exactly the same information as all the other players his Decision Point score will be compared against. The only difficulty I see in creating Decision Point tournaments is for the software to be set up to enable them. My guess is that BBO could create that software without much difficulty. I hope BBO will rise to that challenge and opportunity.

Thanks! I must have looked in that location dozens of times, but I did not read that button. I guess it is easier to see something I am looking for, than something else. So, what does the <Be right back> button do? I click it and it turns red for me, but what information does it communicate to the table? If it turns my ID red too, they will think I am disconnected and they will call the cops to evict me. How is the <Be right back> button better than typing brb into the chat box?

Where is the <Be right back> button???