smerriman

Every time you play, you get a different set of hands (and others on the leaderboard get different ones to you). If you get dealt 4 hands where you can't make any slams, you're guaranteed to be low on the leaderboard no matter how well you play them.

It was definitely unclear but I suspect the intention was "I bid 1♠ because our system doesn't allow us to bid 2♣ with 4 spades".

While I get similar percentages to johnu, they're not the most relevant ones when it comes to what lead GIB makes. Over the 500 deals I ran, my sim says that a heart was only better than a club once, but was equal about 10% of the time. Given dealer.php struggles to sim hands that match the 3NT bid in the first place (after running for 5 seconds, it only finds about 100 in 10 million attempts, and GIB plays much faster than this), it's not entirely impossible that in the small number of matches it found, all of them were the 'equals' case and thus it chose a lead at random. But, more likely, it's probably just GIB being GIB again, where nobody knows why it's broken.

Oops, you're right, it's a slight different decay curve. But the same point applies - when you sum the values of a decaying curve, you don't get something proportional to N, so it makes no sense to award points as if it was. In simplest terms, if it were linear, the top 10 out of 100 would have to average the same prize as winning a 10 player tournament, which means half would get less for a more impressive feat. (If all players were equal, you'd come 9th out of 100 less often than 1st out of 10, so should get a bigger reward).

This is mathematically nonsensical / impossible. The basics of awarding points for a single tournament is very straightforward. Coming first is twice as hard as coming second, so second should receive 1/2 the reward of first. Third should receive 1/3 the award, and so on. Let's consider a basic example - suppose there is a 10-player tournament, we reward the top 40%, and we have 10 "masterpoints" total to give out (obviously way more than real life, just for the sake of nicer numbers). If the top award is N, then we're giving out N + N/2 + N/3 + N/4 points in total, so want that to add to 10. That makes N = 4.8 - so #1 gets 4.8, #2 gets 2.4, #3 gets 1.6, and #4 gets 1.2. With me so far? Now let's say we have a 100 player tournament. By your logic, this tournament should award 100 "masterpoints". If the top award is N, we're giving out N + N/2 + ... N/40 points total, and want to make that add to 100. That makes N = 23.37. Finishing 5th will give you 4.67 masterpoints, slightly less than winning the 10 player tournament. But coming 5th out of 100 people is twice as hard as 1st out of 10 people. So a tournament 10 times the size has to give out double the masterpoints to keep the award proportional to the achievement. Mathematically, the sum 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/x grows proportional to log(x), so the total award for a tournament with N entries should be proportional to N log(N), not linear with regards to N. That extra log factor is what you're seeing with BBO tournaments (as opposed to quadratic). Yes, if you're a good player, you'll get more masterpoints playing in bigger tournaments. But that's not because the awards for tiny tournaments are wrong; it's because they're too small to gauge your skill level to enough precision (you can't come 'higher' than first).

Yes, you're absolutely right. I was intending to go for the best case by filling in all of the top honors in the three side suits, but didn't get close and completely missed the power of the 5th diamond.

I think those three words is about the limit of your post for the Novice and Beginner forum.. The nice thing is that you don't really have a choice but to bid 1♠ - something like Jacoby 2NT would require 4 card support.

I expect I would start: 1♥ - 1♠ 3♠ You can throw in a couple of control bids if you like but when South asks for keycards and finds 4, he can count 13 tricks in spades.

Well, those statements are only true if you use current bidding systems, which make no sense under this scoring. Changing the scoring entirely means you'd need to develop a completely different bidding system to be a "better player.". But that seems far too much work.

It's the same as the ACBL formula: https://blog.bridgebase.com/2020/05/22/how-do-bbo-points-work/

But what would you bid instead? There are artificial solutions, but with a standard system there aren't any other game forcing spade raises (you could jump shift to 3♣ or reverse into hearts, but both of those will put you in a lot of trouble trying to show 4 card support later). Partner bases their choice on how well they can fill in the red suits, so that tends to make up for the lost space.

Hmm, to me this hand (and others you mentioned) should be rebidding 4♦ to show 4 spades and 6 good diamonds. The splinter tells me to change my valuation of my hand by downgrading club honors (likely useless), and upgrading heart and diamond honors equally which are now likely to mesh with partner's holding and take extra tricks.

Has to be 4♠ surely. Even if partner has something like KQxx Axxx AKxx x, it's asking a bit much to hope the club suit sets up.

I remember this one from many years ago. It bids 1♥ then passes with 5432 and 9 diamonds to the AJ. It doesn't really play Walsh / any proper Walsh continuations, just has some weird gap here.

4♥ for me too. Might be in trouble if there's a 4-1 heart break, but seems too much to pass.

This is true. It was probably also true when the above comments were made, though given they were made over 19 years ago, it's tricky to remember for sure..

Precisely. (Come on, somebody had to say it..)

How often are you pulling the 3NT bid? If the opponents are always running the other suits, maybe you're not pulling it when you should be.

I would guess it was after this hand: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?bbo=y&lin=pn|tgwall413,charlinou,matergirl,jjenks|st||md|3S3469TH6TJD4TQC7T%2CS57JKH27KD28KAC2K%2CSQAH358QD679C468A%2C|rh||ah|Board 9|sv|e|mb|p|mb|p|mb|p|mb|1N|mb|p|mb|p|mb|p|pc|SQ|pc|S2|pc|S3|pc|SK|pc|CK|pc|CA|pc|C3|pc|C7|pc|SA|pc|S8|pc|S4|pc|S5|pc|H8|pc|HA|pc|H6|pc|H2|pc|CQ|pc|CT|pc|C2|pc|C4|pc|CJ|pc|D4|pc|H7|pc|C6|pc|C9|pc|S6|pc|S7|pc|C8|pc|C5|pc|S9|pc|D2|pc|H3|pc|DJ|pc|DQ|pc|DA|pc|D6|pc|SJ|pc|H5|pc|D3|pc|ST|pc|HK|pc|HQ|pc|H4|pc|HT|pc|DK|pc|D7|pc|D5|pc|DT|pc|D8|pc|D9|pc|H9|pc|HJ|]400|300[/hv] Where after seeing dummy (or making 1NT+3), your LHO (French, as expected) thought his partner should have invited game with 2NT, got annoyed, and left.

I'm pretty sure most would be in the 'don't care' camp, rather than the 'don't know' camp; telling them in other ways is not going to change that. If you want to play a set system, a pairs tournament is a better bet.

The first day of each month.

I actually had to look up what an FNJ was (have heard of them but not known the specifics). My thinking was that this was an auction where it would have to show a fit even if you don't "play them", just by logic alone.

Try again :) It's a tricky one; I suspect partner probably has something like 5-5 in the minors which is why they didn't reopen with a double; we could be anywhere from making slam to not making game. Maybe it's too much, but I think I'll bid 3♥ which must show some diamond support as well (otherwise why not bid hearts earlier).

In SAYC 1NT is already 6-9 - if you had 10-11 with clubs, you would have bid 2♣.

Yes, that is the common misconception. SAYC is actually a tightly defined system which specifies exactly which conventions you play (it specifically says that it has no choices). For example, 1m - 2NT is forcing and shows 13-15, 1M - 2m - 2NT is forcing, and 4NT is plain Blackwood. If you play 1m - 2NT as invitational, 1M - 2m - 2NT as non-forcing, or play RKCB, then you're not playing SAYC.