smerriman

It never times out. The claim will stay there indefinitely until both players accept or one player rejects, or declarer cancels the claim, or anybody at the table (including dummy) leaves a seat, which results in an auto-reject.

Read mikeh's 14 year old post here and ignore all other sources :)

Well, 2♥ seems obvious..? I'm guessing this is another progressive post and you haven't actually gotten to your question yet :)

I don't get it; you still have a club loser? Are you claiming down 1?

I think you misread the table. It's 10.33 from the hand with more HCP, and 10.32 from the more balanced hand - not the weaker hand. The fixed result is 10.32, so the weak result should be 10.31, resulting in a difference of about 0.02 tricks per hand (plus or minus quite a lot due to the rounding to 2dp). Pescetom's original table averages out to 0.03 tricks per hand, so isn't "big" in comparison (and of course, the original sim wasn't 16-9 with a spade fit).

Yes, the whole argument behind rightsiding is that a) the defense are much more likely to give up a trick leading into the strong hand vs the weak, and b) it's easier to defend from trick 2 onwards when you can see more of declarer's values. Neither of these are taken into account by double dummy analysis. The only time you'll get a difference double dummy is when leading into all 4 suits gives up a trick. So when passive defense won't suffice, active defense requires immediately leading through declarer, and partner doesn't have an entry allowing you to do so (or that entry is crucial later). To be honest, I would have expected the results to be closer.

I believe names turn grey if the user has checked the 'be right back' box in BBO (not related to invisibility, the status of which can't be seen by others).

Worse? Aren't they equally bad, other than one being more frustrating? Having it visible always was how it used to work. Are you saying the reason for changing it to only appear on click was to make it 'better', as opposed to because the new interface was designed solely for mobile without proper progressive enhancement?

Just a normal first/second round control, interested in diamond slam but unable to keycard for some reason (perhaps a void, perhaps missing a heart control [unlikely if 3NT showed half a stop in hearts], perhaps just wanting more details before looking for grand..)

Well, if you don't play kickback, you must have agreed some way to ask for aces in a minor suit. Eg 4♦ Minorwood - this itself needs a lot of discussion of when it applies, but in this case it would be pretty clear, having already raised diamonds previously.

[hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html??s=SAK2HAKDQ93CAKQT4&n=SJ74HJ963DAKJT82&d=e&a=p2CP3DP]400|300[/hv] But how do you count them from here? [edit] now that I've thought about it, a 6th diamond, queen of spades, queen of hearts, ruffing out the jack of clubs.. I guess this is just a straight 7♦ call rather than anything more scientific. So probably not an interesting hand.

See here. A non-vulnerable game is 45%, vulnerable game 38%, while the vulnerability doesn't matter for a small slam - major suit 50%, and minor suit 48%. Grands are more complex as they depend on how you think other tables will bid (as explained in detail there).

I've seen a lot of people saying you shouldn't splinter with a singleton Ace, because that will cause partner to misevaluate holdings like KQx as useless. That logic has never made much sense to me; while it makes sense for that suit in isolation, the chances are KQx vs a stiff Ace is going to help you find a slam that's light on HCP strength is pretty low. To me it's more that if you have a singleton Ace and the normal splinter strength, you're highly lacking in values elsewhere. You're probably going to be more interested in whether partner has shortness in your weakest suit - ie starting with 2NT - than vice versa. But I wouldn't rule it out entirely; sometimes a splinter is the still the least of evils.

This doesn't make any sense to me - why do you need two different bids to show weak hands? The reason for jumping to game when weak is to preempt the opponents; surely this just helps them? There are definitely plenty of ways to show gf hands without a huge jump. Splinters are therefore for the lower range hands where the splinter is all that partner will need to know to make the right decision about looking for slam or not. There's no way to say 'I want to look for slam if you have no wastage in this suit; honors in all other suits are suddenly worth much more' by starting with a 2/1 or forcing 2NT. 2/1 would imply your second suit is more important, and 2NT is when you need information from partner, rather than vice versa.

3♠ as a 'transfer' to 3NT is definitely the simplest approach to let responder describe their hand (4m = single suited, 4M = both minors with shortness). You can add other bids on top of that, and it even frees up 2NT - 3NT to show something else - like one of the 5/4 major hands that Puppet can struggle with. But given the number of times partner might forget 3NT isn't natural, it's often simpler to just play 3NT natural too, even though it's completely superfluous.

Good hand for demonstrating why you need agreements :) Playing Kokish over 2♣ lets you rebid 2N with 24+ which simplifies things a lot; though then it comes down to which version of 3♣ you play (normal Puppet doesn't handle 5-4 majors, though Muppet does). In this case with 4 card support for both, it's probably not going to matter much though.

But that's simply not an accurate representation of the situation. Knowledge that 4NT is Blackwood in this situation guarantees that you also have knowledge that 3NT showed spades, after which nobody would seriously consider 5♣. If the laws force you to make a bid that you would never make if there was no UI regardless of the definition of 4NT, something is wrong with the laws.

I think barmar said somewhere they had to massively customise it to get the handviewer integrated (and maybe other aspects like syncing of logins), so upgrading it would break too much.

Interesting. GIB's definition of 4N is 16-17 HCP, 2-5 ♣, 2-5 ♦, 2-4 ♥, 2-4 ♠. Let's assume it also bids Stayman with a 4 card major (but I'll allow it to have 4333). Quick sim of 500 hands: 13 tricks: 8% 12 tricks: 47.2% 11 tricks: 36.8% 10 tricks: 7.6% 9 tricks: 0.4% Perhaps GIB is smarter than us after all.

Yeah, 4N is pretty awful. 6N isn't a database bid; basic GIB passes it like a shot. Just the usual simulation issues I guess (or maybe GIB is just smarter than us).

Assuming you're both talking about 'View New Content', it looks like this whole feature was rewritten in version 3.2.0 when it came out in 2011 (BBO is using 3.1.4) and filtering it by forum came just after that.

Thanks, I see what you mean now. This is interesting. My initial thought was that given East thought 3N was natural, and 4N was a perfectly reasonable quantitative bid, it's not logical that they could suddenly have remembered 3NT actually wasn't natural. While that seems extremely unlikely, I guess it's possible. In fact, 16B1(b) clearly states that logical alternatives are determined based on using the methods of the partnership (even if you had temporarily forgotten what those methods are). Not based on what the player is likely to have thought those methods were at the time. But if that's true, and you apply it to this situation, 5♣ is a logical alternative if a significant proportion of players would answer yes to this question: "You play 3NT as a splinter, but bid 3NT with your hand anyway. Do you now seriously consider 5♣?" Nobody would answer yes to that. So going strictly by the laws, 5♣ cannot be a LA. On the other hand, if that's the correct interpretation, then that somewhat contradicts 75A, since forgetting your agreement and being reminded by partner would basically always turn out to be AI. If being reminded is UI, then (even if the law isn't worded precisely), logical alternatives should be based on what you thought before receiving that UI. In which case, the poll would be that 4NT is natural, and nobody would bid 5♣ over that. In both cases, 5♣ is not logical. The director is in a sense arguing that the knowledge is both UI and AI at the same time, which really doesn't seem right. But even if it were, what polling question would result in 5♣ being considered by most players?

The average person never can or will have a clue what GIB means by its bids. I thought you were meaning they should change the description of 2♥ to ensure GIB never bids 2♥ with 11 points, but I see you weren't.

I'm confused - you seem to be arguing against your own point here. If you want to reduce the upper limit on 2♥, and think it's evaluating this hand as 11 points, are you saying you want it to invite here? Again, the fact the description includes 11 total points doesn't mean it will bid 2♥ with all 11 point hands (or vice versa)

I was playing Robot Reward, which is not so much about real bridge as it is about making games and slams quickly. However, I got dealt a beautiful hand and the first 4 bids all went normally. [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?d=s&v=w&s=S53HAKQ9DAQJ9765&a=1D(Minor%20suit%20opening%20--%203+%20!d;%2011-21%20HCP;%2012-22%20total%20points)P1S(One%20over%20one%20--%204+%20!s;%206+%20total%20points)P2H(Opener%20reverse%20--%205+%20!d;%204+%20!h,%203-%20!s,%2021-%20HCP;%2018-22%20total%20points)P3S(6+%20!s;%209+%20HCP;%20forcing)P]500|300[/hv] Now what? Knowing GIB doesn't play exclusion and probably has no good tools to continue, I just went ahead and bashed out Blackwood without checking things too closely. Rather surprisingly, 4NT wasn't Blackwood. Can you guess what it shows? Some nested spoiler tags for a slow reveal: It's a close race between this description and the one where it promises 14 cards, but this wins for me.