smerriman

You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding what 'randomness' means. If you *couldn't* spot patterns from time to time, that would prove beyond doubt that the hands were *not* random. Unless you're referring to some Goulash-style tournaments, which are specifically handcrafted and thus not relevant to this discussion, it has been shown time and time again there is no bias in the deals, so you're just outright wrong there. Perhaps this would be worth reading, which explains why you - and humans in general - may find it so difficult to understand this: https://cocosci.princeton.edu/tom/papers/hard.pdf

I agree it's an easy decision, but I can't vote in the poll since I don't know what your partnership has agreed regarding rebids.. or are you looking to see what is most common amongst other partnerships?

To me 2♥ is as described above - gf with 4 hearts and 5 diamonds. 2♦ is gf without a 4 card major. This comes from the whole idea behind a Walsh 1♦ - opener is able to bid 1nt with a 4 card major because they know if you have a major fit, responder will still be able to show his major. By bidding 2♥ you show 9 of your cards - if you bid 2♦, you've shown 4 and not exactly saved much room to catch up..

Has been like this for a while.

Permission required to play also prevents them from being removed in the first place. It's the most asked and answered question on the forum (most recently about yesterday I believe), so perhaps it should be made more obvious in BBO itself.

I cheated :( But very cute.

I don't see much in terms of inferences from the lack of interference, but without the Ace of hearts, wouldn't East be more inclined to duck trick 1, retaining their only entry? I'd go as far as to say that East would 100% duck, since that's their only hope of beating the contract. So no guess for me. (I'm obviously swayed by seeing all 4 hands, but the logic makes sense to me).

If you had an agreement that 3♥ only showed 3 - at the cost of missing your 4-4 heart fits - if South was looking for a heart stopper, don't you want the opponents to be leading into North's hand in 3NT?

I agree GIB's documentation is severely lacking. But in this case it's more just standard RKCB practice, rather than anything to do with GIB as such (and once you've realised why it makes no sense to deny the queen with a 10 card fit, it's not something you ever forget).

For me this just seems like a 2NT bid over 2♥ (3NT shouldn't be fast arrival here?). I don't see the benefit in complicating the auction with KJx raise - I would interpret that as 1444 or 0454. But in any case, South has to raise clubs at some point prior to the auction getting to the 5 level.

GIB indeed plays standard RKCB responses. The BridgeBum page is lacking slightly - it is standard practice to "show the queen" if you have a known 10 card fit or better, because that is just as good as the queen. (You don't want to count AKxxx vs xxxxx as a losing trump trick - or, in this case, AKJxxxx opposite any four trumps).

I should have said, tempo is not the only issue here too. Suppose you play a card, then glance away from the screen for a second. The trick is completed, someone leads to the next one, and your singleton autoplays. You now have no way of knowing what cards were played to the previous trick. In fact, I take back my earlier statement. I have no idea how anyone could want this enabled.

If your club has very aggressive players, South in board 2 certainly isn't one of them.. just 3♠ with a 9 card suit?

I can understand some people wanting it on, but it would be an absolute disaster having it on by default.

I suspect this is the experience of the vast majority of BBO users (myself included).

You can't.

Surely any information you receive from opponents has to be AI, not UI. Otherwise, every time your partner explains a bid, your opponents could read what he said out loud - if that's UI to you, and you're forced to pick from logical alternatives as if you hadn't heard it.. well, the game would break :)

GIB is really bad at control bidding. Aside from the fact it only cuebids aces, it doesn't take proper negative inferences from bids like 4♠ / 5♠. Basic GIB passes 4♠, but advanced GIB obviously simulated hands where it thought going on was worth it; unfortunately due to the poor cuebidding rules it doesn't eliminate any of the hands it should.

I'm afraid you can't, at least not properly. Rubber bridge is very old-fashioned and rarely played these days, in favor of duplicate - BBO did offer it many many years ago, but given how few played it, it wasn't included when they updated their software. If you have three friends online, you can theoretically play it by starting a total points table and scoring it manually - but it's not an inbuilt option. The lobby is rarely used - under Account - Settings there is an option to show lobby chat, but most would have it disabled. Lobby chat was normally a case of players accidentally talking to the lobby when they meant to talk to just their own table anyway. If you google "compatibility site:bridgebase.com/forums/" you'll see a heap of threads about compatibility. The intention is for it to be important when viewing someone *else's* profile; it just so happens that it also shows when you view your own, so you're 100% compatible with yourself. But I've never found any meaning or use for the compatbility stars. BBO only supports convention cards for *pairs*. Under Account - Convention Cards you can add a new card and the name of your partner, and it will automatically provide it to your opponents any time you're seated with that partner. However, it's not possible to post personal convention cards. Most players fill in their profile field (Account - Profile) with some details of what they play. But if a random player shows up, there's no guarantee they'll look at your profile. Most people will probably assume some form of SAYC by default; if you play something else it's probably something you want to confirm with them in chat. There's no real way to separate skill level other than trial and error (though you may find the Relaxed Bridge Club more laid back than the Main Bridge Club). There are a huge range of players who play 'pick-up' games on BBO. You'll find people who self-designate as 'Experts' who make beginner-level mistakes. You'll find some who get annoyed if you take more than a few seconds to make a decision; some that boot you immediately or leave if you make a play they disagree with. Or people may just leave because the phone rang, or they're bored, or who knows. But you'll also find players who are friendly and play similar systems to you. You can mark these as friends and arrange to play together again. It will take some time and effort to build up relationships, but it is worth it.

In that case your best move is to probably try to wake up a second time :) I have no idea how that definition is playable.

Singleton J is 2 total points to GIB; it deducts 1 for each short suit with an honor. So this hand is 6 total points to GIB. But since all of your posts are usually sarcasm, this one might have gone over my head :)

You aren't misunderstanding total points. GIB's hand often doesn't match the description - it has thousands of rules to look through for determining what to bid; some have specific descriptions associated with them, but much of the time descriptions are automatically generated based on the level of bidding.

You've misread the question(s) - the first was *averaging* 7.5, not getting less than 8 every hand. The second was getting less than 13 every hand.

That's the probability of having *more* than 12 HCP 25 times in a row. For <= 12, it's just 0.732097^25 = 0.4%.

The most common form of bridge is duplicate. This means you are competing against other tables who are dealt exactly the same cards as you. This removes the luck of the draw entirely - whether you're dealt really bad cards or really good ones, you're still on a completely equal footing. Your aim is to play your cards better than other people play your cards. If you make 4♠, and everyone else with your cards makes 4♠+1, you will get a negative score. If you go down one trick in 4♠, while at the other table your opponents are making 4♥, you'll get a positive score. There are then two forms of scoring (IMPs and MPs) which have different tactics - the default on BBO which you are probably playing is IMPs. See here for some more details.