smerriman

smerriman 46 - 13 shubov https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=ARDCHALLENGE:3ae368e1.3cfa.11eb.94ca.0cc47a39aeb4-1607833099&u=smerriman&v3b=web&v3v=5.6.18 smerriman 46 - 30 shuba https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=ARDCHALLENGE:2f421d7c.3cfa.11eb.94ca.0cc47a39aeb4-1607833079&u=smerriman&v3b=web&v3v=5.6.18

In SAYC, even though 2♥ isn't game forcing, 2♠ is still forcing; you simply can't pass. If opener has to jump to show a good 13 or 14 that would make game opposite an 11 count, then something seems to be wrong with the system.

The tournament doesn't start with a 'not enough entries' error. You would have just seen the last person to finish.

No, the 0.467% probability is right; well, that's the probability of being dealt exactly an 8 card suit, though in this case you'd want to include 9 or larger as well in which case it's bumped up to 0.5%. But that isn't the flaw in his logic; it's exactly the same basic lack of understanding of probability as other users. In his last 20 hands on MyHands, he was indeed dealt three 8 card suits. In the 176 hands he was dealt before that, he got one 8 card suit. It is a complete fallacy to notice something odd (hey, I got three long suits in one session), and then calculate the probability it happened. Otherwise I could go up to the winner of the latest lottery, and tell them I was 99.99999% sure they had cheated.

No.

I think when pescetom mentioned weird stuff, he was referring to 2♠ as a 3-way bid, as opposed to 2-way (at least, that's why I find it very weird as well). 2♠ as range ask or clubs seems to be most recommended method currently - had never heard of giving up the diamond transfer to make it a 3 way bid before, which does seem to lead to some difficulties.

Wouldn't 4♣ be unambiguously "bid your minor" (pass/correct)? A 1NT opener can't be suggesting playing in a self supporting club suit. (Not saying whether that's the right bid or not, but it seems unnecessary to use 3NT for it).

Not on the daylongs, but if you go into Solitaire and choose the weekly free tournament, that's exactly how it works (it refreshes the hands once a week).

That was my logic in terms of the high card points, but don't forget vulnerable RHO is also likely to be extremely long in hearts, so it's likely that at least one of the minors is breaking very badly for us. So some way of offering a partner a choice seems worth it.

If a partnership has discussed how to handle this situation, well done to them. I don't have the slightest clue what any bid means here. So I'll just make something up on the spot and bid 5♥, intending it to mean "please don't pass". If partner bids spades, then I'll bid 7♣. Since I didn't bid 7♣ the first time, I'll hope they'll figure out that I may be wanting them to correct to diamonds if more suitable.

It simply isn't set up that way. Deals are completely random, so will be declarer approximately a quarter of the time, unless you're bidding in a way to bias this. Being declarer only 4 times out of 36 isn't *likely*, but it's not so unlikely that it shows anything is wrong either (and there have been countless threads recently debunking claims like this - it's usually due to confirmation bias). If you are just wanting to declare, most robot *tournaments* online are best-hand - but if you're playing at a normal table, you have to just put up with randomly generated deals.

https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=ARDCHALLENGE:f162e136.3761.11eb.94ca.0cc47a39aeb4-1607217936&u=smerriman&v3b=web&v3v=5.6.16 smerriman 17 - 15 billyfung2

Well, up until a few years ago, if a claim was disputed in real life, you weren't even allowed to carry on - getting the director to rule was the only option. BBO was built well before then for a different audience, but the ability for different players to see different information online allows for many different aspects to face to face bridge (such as the concept of self-alerting). Having the claimer's hand revealed the way it is online makes far more sense to me - if you don't want it to happen, just don't make bad claims.

Yes, if your opponent claims, you can see the whole deal in order to know whether to accept or not. Only you see all four hands - the person who claimed does not.

There's really no reason not to cancel and reissue to be safe regardless. smerriman 5 - 24 gszes https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=ARDCHALLENGE:e10840f7.3748.11eb.94ca.0cc47a39aeb4-1607207171&u=smerriman&v3b=web&v3v=5.6.16 smerriman 42 - 12 barmar https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=ARDCHALLENGE:dbcd7dd8.37f2.11eb.94ca.0cc47a39aeb4-1607280177&u=smerriman&v3b=web&v3v=5.6.16

Knowing GIB, I would expect a 3♠ bid, but I'd probably rank that 4th behind 1N, 2S, and 3N. I'm struggling to even think of potential bids that get me up to 9 though.

Are you sure something has changed? It has always been the case that players can choose where to direct their chat via the button at the bottom (to opponents, to table, or to kibitzers). It's likely they've just selected 'to kibitzers' by accident, so only kibitzers will see their chat. It can often default to this, depending on how you joined / set up the table. And kibitzers can still communicate to each other privately without the players seeing it. (If the table has the option set to allow kibitzers to chat with players, they have the choice of where to direct comments as well).

It's already been proven that it would be *impossible* for you to score above 50% on these particular hands no matter how you played. As awkoo mentioned above, perhaps your "good" boards could have been improved slightly to increase your overall average. But in reality, the "best" pairs are just as likely to have a week when it's impossible for them to score well, no matter how they play. With a large number of pairs, there are always going to be some who keep getting good "luck" many weeks in a row, just by the laws of probability. With 100 pairs, if you flip a coin 7 times, there's probably going to be one pair who gets a good set of boards 7 straight weeks, just as much as there will be one pair who gets a bad set 7 weeks in a row. That "lucky" pair still needs to play well in the areas they can control, but there still is a factor of luck that will always be involved.

PS - I had a look at the actual travellers and had two more points to make on the hands where you made mistakes: Board 1: if you had cashed your tricks your score would have skyrocketed from 12.1% to .... 42.14%. The only way to get a better score would be for your opponents to not be playing a weak notrump. You can't control what happens at other tables. Board 5: if you had led second highest your score would have jumped from 16.4% to ... 39.29%. You cannot control what happens at other tables. So the result would be scoring less than 50% on all 7 boards, even with optimal play. And that would be a result you should be extremely happy with.

I'd suggest you focus on getting better at interpreting the results, rather than reading the cards. On board 2, you're in the right contract, so you should be happy regardless of the score you get. You can't control what happens at other tables. On board 3, you did nothing wrong as North; 6♠ is laydown. Clearly you can't take into account those pairs who were able to steal the contract at the 5 level. Of the rest, South bidding hearts is the only chance you have at finding the true par score (sacrifice in grand); without that, 5♠ is a good result for you. By what you're saying, 7♣x would probably have scored "badly" too - despite being what experts would reach. On board 4, again you obviously did nothing wrong as North; unless it's your style to open such hands 2♠ in second seat (it certainly isn't mine, nor clearly your partner's), South also did nothing wrong. You can't control what happens at other tables. On board 6, your analysis is wrong; it makes no difference at all what you discard. You can't control what happens at other tables. On board 7, obviously you did nothing wrong as North. Not only that, but if everyone else was in 2♠ going down 1, then passing out 2N would have gotten you an equally bad score. You can't control what happens at the other tables, or your opponents. OK, on board 1, you made a mistake. Board 5 was a small gap in knowledge; it's standard to lead the second highest from four small for this type of reason. Now you know. If you'd rather get a good score from playing badly, that's one thing. But assuming that a below average score must mean you made a mistake - even if it happens time and time again - is not good for your game, especially if you get demoralised by it. Analysing these hands properly - and ignoring things that you don't have control over - should result in the complete opposite mindset. You learnt 1 thing about leads, made one other mistake, and should be happy with the rest.

They duck first round finesses regularly.

The handviewer JS is pretty obfuscated but that doesn't stop someone like me from debugging it :) When the double dummy solver is called, it only considers "highest of equals" so that it can perform as few double dummy calculations as possible. Eg when your suit is AQJ54, it will calculate the double dummy result for playing the A, Q, or 5. It also eliminates cards from past tricks from calculations, so if the king had been played in a past trick, it will then only look up the result of playing the A, or the 5. The handviewer code then loops through each result, and figures out all of the "equals" that result applies to. It starts from the card returned (eg Q), adds the result, then goes down one card at a time - J, T, 9. If it finds that card in your hand, it applies the same result and continues down. If if finds that card in an earlier played trick, it skips it and continues down. If if finds that card in someone else's hand, or it has been played as part of the current trick in progress, it stops. However, the loop that goes through the "current trick" has an off-by-one error - a < when there should be a <= . This means the most recently played card to the trick (in your example, the 9 of diamonds) is considered to be entirely missing from the deal in terms of "equals". It therefore continues down and thinks the 8 is equal to the ten, so applies the same score to the 8. On the double dummy solver's side, the same bug does not appear to exist - it is returning a result for the T, and a separate result for the 8, not considering them equals. Therefore, in most circumstances, the bug in the handviewer automatically "fixes" itself - it starts with the T, which results in the wrong score assigned to the 8, but then continues onto the next double dummy result that was returned (the 8) and overwrites it with the correct value. However, in this case, the results are being returned in increasing order of pips - so it's applying the result to the 8, then continuing onto the T which overwrites the correct result for the 8. Changing < to <= in the appropriate loop fixes everything. I tried setting up some example hands to make the bug even clearer. But when I tried this hand on the lead of the king of diamonds: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?n=DKHAKQJT9876543&e=DAQJ98765432CA&s=SAKQJT98765432&w=CKQJT98765432H2&d=w&a=1NPPP]400|300[/hv] everything works as intended - it turns out the double dummy results returned have the Ace listed before the Queen, so while it does incorrectly assign results the first time through the loop, it fixes itself the second, so you never know anything went wrong. This intrigued me further - what causes results to be returned in increasing order sometimes, and decreasing others? I played around with more hands and was fascinated to find it was something to do with signalling. That is, if you look at the double dummy results for an opening lead, the results for 4th high from a suit etc are listed before other cards. So perhaps this is the inner "bonus" GIB is meant to give certain cards when determining which one to play. Fun stuff all round, but now trivial for BBO to fix :) (It's in the gibDataReceived function - the last else condition, where it loops up to < inTrick, but inTrick appears to be 0-indexed, so should be <=). @BBO - is this a good time to repeat my numerous requests to see GIB's code :( Even if I can't fix anything like here, not being able to do the above and see *why* GIB does things drives me insane.

Interesting. It doesn't appear to be an error with the double dummy part - the response from that is correct: So it must be an error at a later stage of the handviewer code.

Oh yes, that does look better. I always forget about the option of running the whole side suit like that even when we don't have the whole length.

Not if West ducks the first heart trick as mentioned above. Now if you cross to dummy to finesse again, you've opened up the diamond suit to the defense, so you lose immediately when the finesse is off. And the finesse is more likely to be off than on given the club split.