smerriman

I'm afraid it was definitely some form of virus, not your son - have seen it happen under your account in the past too; it looks like quite a clever AI which writes posts that exactly match the formatting (line breaks etc) and types of words you use in your post.

24 hours to go - Zupey has played against GIB1, which just leaves one highly important game against twisterrz. I would prefer not to do this publicly, but as billyfung2 has not responded to PMs in well over a week despite them being 'seen', and this makes a huge difference to the placings, he has 24 hours remaining to clarify why three challenges were played against GIB, with the first (8.5-7.5) and last (9.5-6.5) being reported, but not the one in the middle (7.5-8.5). There may well be an innocent explanation, but without one I'll have to make a judgment call.

Wikipedia's page is a reasonable description (primarily applying to NMF over 1NT, but same principles over 2NT) North might have 5 spades and wants to know if you have 3, or 4 hearts and wants to know if you have 4. Strictly speaking the new minor forcing response to 3♣ would be 3♦ to deny both majors and a club stopper, after which North can bid 3NT himself. Though some may argue to not tell the opponents this and just bid 3NT directly anyway. There are also better alternatives to NMF over 2NT, though obviously you have no choice with GIB.

For your 1♥ response, you could have a complete minimum, or a good hand that couldn't quite game force - eg 17 or 18 points. If North bids an immediate 3NT, you'll be missing cold slams in the latter case (North would do this with a minimum opening hand, so you can't bid on yourself). GIB's logic / described point ranges isn't very good in this area, which is why it's best to learn about 4SF via resources on 4SF, rather than GIB descriptions. Eg Wikipedia, which, like above, would recommend a 2♠ raise with your hand.

If I were East and wanted to get my partner to pick a major, 5♥ surely accomplishes that well enough compared to hoping they figure out what a double might mean.

Would a poll really find enough players giving serious consideration to passing this out in 3♠?

My point stands too, that your point is completely nonsensical.

You posted this yesterday.

Just 4 challenges remaining in this round. I have sent a PM to a couple of participants some time ago without hearing back - please check your messages at the top right of the forum.

This is a long standing bug (I reported it myself over 3 years ago) - bugs just aren't being fixed unfortunately.

With a human I don't mind 2♣, though if I did so I wouldn't follow it up with 2♥; you know looking at your hand you want to set hearts as trumps immediately and only encourage partner to bid on if they have a couple of tricks, so a jump to 4♥ might be appropriate (see Jump to game in a major: https://www.kwbridge.com/bb/b_2c.htm ). With GIB opening 2♣ on weaker distributional hands is extremely dangerous as it will always play you for way more HCP that you actually do; your auction a case in point. It is highly unlikely 1♥ will be passed out (even if partner can't respond to 1♥, that leaves a lot of points, spades, and diamonds in the other hands, so one of the opps is likely to assist you by overcalling).

Yeah, GIB's cheaper minor logic is completely broken. It uses it when it has a true double negative, but it also bids it every single time it has a 5 card suit of the same strain. I posted about this myself on the forum over 3 years ago, and it's come up numerous times since. (Why GIB doesn't raise clubs is even worse.)

I don't think you're understand the thread at all - the point is to keep barometer on so you *can* still make decisions based on how far behind/ahead you are. Just to make those decisions symmetric with respect to the slower/faster table to take away the advantage gained from playing slowly. Proposed idea makes total sense, I like it.

Seriously? The robots do stupid stuff all the time, and virtually all of the time it loses. See for example all of the stupid exceptions to leading rules in my post #8 here. The fact it works once in a while doesn't prove they are cheating; in fact the full analysis shows much more strongly that they can't possibly be cheating. But perhaps as a result of some dyslexia you actually meant to say the robots are weird. That would make considerably more sense than your actual post.

You can certainly add a point for the doubleton, but then you would subtract the point for the jack. There is no way on earth Kaplan would count both of them.

If partner wanted to force you to bid, they'd open 2♣. You can certainly pass 1NT if you have no obvious way to improve the contract. There are other ways to improve the contract with weak hands other than transfers to a major; eg there also minor transfers, and some play garbage stayman where you can respond 2♣ with weak hands of certain shapes like 4441, planning to pass any response. But that is really besides the point in terms of the original question; many weak hands will simply pass.

Wouldn't this just happen if a table gets dealt a hand but never completes it? (Which will happen regularly when everyone at that table leaves.)

100% blame to GIB. Nothing you could have done, it is just hopeless when it comes to cuebidding. And it doesn't even define a jump by opener after 2♦, which is what should have happened, though it had a second chance after you raised to 3♠ and failed miserably.

It's a glitch in flash. Easiest way to resolve is to click in the URL bar, then go back to the chat box, which will randomly set it working again. But you should get used to logging into the new HTML version, as in 4 months it won't be possible to use the Flash version.

If you don't play 2/1 then a new suit at the 2 level followed by a jump raise of the major is usually the only way to show an invitational hand with 3 card support, so can't be game forcing.

You know partner has 5 (and possibly 6) spades, and maybe only 4 diamonds. Spades is always your better fit, so you should prefer to play there. If you were a couple of points stronger, you should give false preference to 2♠ even if you had *three* diamonds, because there is still a chance of game (and 5-2 fits are better than a likely 4-3 if not).

It seems GIB doesn't have any bids for strong hands with one minor; 3♠ promises both minors. With that shape and 16 HCP, it jumps to 7NT, and with 12 HCP, it bids 4NT. 5NT is undefined and the description of 6NT is 13+ HCP, but that must be one of the autogenerated level-based descriptions rather than a database definition - it seems they just forgot to program bids for the 13-15 point range into the bidding database.

With the usual heavy disclaimers about double dummy analysis (which would say you don't want to be in game on the above hand), and a simplistic constraint of West simply having a balanced 20-21 HCP without taking into account upgrades (ie West is probably going to be a little weaker than predicted), I calculate game at about 35%. So passing seems a reasonable idea at MPs.

Rather than clicking 'Challenge a friend', choose 'Challenge a robot' instead.

For some reason the myhands page is trying to load the necessary scripts through http:// rather thsn https://, so they're being blocked as insecure.