smerriman

Entries are closed. Pools will be announced as soon as barmar activates advanced robots. It's been a while, so it must be time to get some challenges up and running again. Since the vote on the last MP event was 10 for best-hand, and 9 for non-best-hand, let's do the opposite this time - the toughest format, MPs, non-best hand. Will allow a couple of weeks for registration - deadline is 7pm, 25th July NZT. Usual wall of text for first-timers:

Nope; either you have something wrong with the conditions, or, more likely, either "what you think should occur" is incorrect, or it's simply a case of confirmation bias. The chance one of the robots has a 7 card suit or 6-5 or better is about 1 in 10; over 20 deals it wouldn't be unusual at all even to see this happening 4 times (15%). Given your constraints, there's a 1 in 4 chance one of N/S has 18 or more points (and about the same that there is a 9 point difference between the hands). Even 13 point gaps you should regularly see more than once a session. I just dealt a set of hands under those conditions at a bidding table and there was nothing unexpected about those two situations. Many people seem to misunderstand that when you consider a bunch of hands, the chances of seeing 'rare' events, even multiple times, increases very quickly - and considerably more so when you start looking for them in multiple aspects, like shape and HCP. You will then never fail to notice them, even though they are expected.

1N (yes, 15-17) - 4♦ 4♥ - P Even seeing the hands I don't want to be in a small slam, let alone a grand.

.. other than 61 comments of interest :)

Oh, I'm definitely not saying you *should* have done something differently. Simply that GIB is unable to distinguish lines which require you to guess, and lines which don't.

It changed in version 39 Invitational jump shifts are part of Bridge World Standard, so the convention itself is a good one - GIB's usage of it, like many other things, is awful.

What does it sound like to you then? Noting that 'it' is the decision to remove the OPs permissions despite not running any such events, not the decision to ban such events.

I'm not entirely sure what the dilemma is. Axxx and Jxx are both poor leads in general, though you have to pick one - and if you decide to lead from Jxx, you'd lead the lowest card - the Jack is 'Something'.

No, 2♠ showed *3 or less hearts*. 4♥ was insane; can't blame the robot for what happened next. Thomas is always South, the seats were rotated for human-declares.

Where exactly are you playing? As Gerardo mentioned, your username doesn't appear to have played at all on BBO since May 18. See hand records.. http://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/index.php?&from_login=0

It would equally well if the opponents also held the diamond Jack. So it's not really about revealing the position at all; West is legitimately squeezed regardless of the position, given the threat is the third diamond, rather than which diamond it is.

Incidentally, the 'export hand' function in the Flash version resulted in a far simpler URL format, where it was trivial to make changes, like removing or replacing names, the auction, and the play, without the massive complexity and length of the lin format. Can BBO please switch back to that method? Quote to see it.. [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?nn=My North&n=SQ75HT84DJCQT9832&e=SKT862HAQJ9DQ72C4&s=SA93HK3DAKT863C65&a=1S2DDP2H3DPP3HPPP&d=e&p=SK]400|300[/hv]

They're 100% random deals, so there's no way of controlling how 'hard' they are. By casual if you mean the anonymous version on the BBO homepage, that's not duplicate, so getting on the leaderboard is 99% luck dependent, which would be 'hard' I guess. In the duplicate version, I'm not even sure what 'hard' would mean - even if it's impossible to make your contract, getting the most tricks possible (your aim) may still be easy.

I don't know where you read that - maybe you were thinking of Instant Tournaments, which are hands from old tournaments, but not related to Just Declare. http://doc.bridgebase.com/Help/About_Daylong.html

Cards are randomly dealt; the auction is then generated by having robots bid for all 4 hands. There are no other assumptions - you might be in a pathetic contract that has no hope of making (not unlikely with the robots), but this makes no difference as your sole goal is to do better than others playing the same hand. As with all Daylongs, the combined scoring for the overall tournament is rather flawed though due to not everyone being dealt the same set of 8 hands to reduce cheating. You might easily get dealt a hand which is a laydown claim at trick 1 for 50%, while the average percentage to 'win' a tournament requires getting dealt 8 more complex hands.

Agreed. While I'd assume 2♣ was puppet regardless of the name you give the convention, I also would want to clarify those situations, regardless of the name you give the convention, rather than being related to the name.

I guess there are variations on anything, but if someone said two-way checkback, I would definitely assume they meant 2C was a puppet to 2D. If you Google 'two-way checkback', it seems virtually everyone else agrees, though there is a rare article that doesn't mention the puppet.

XY-NT and two-way checkback are different names for the same convention.

Even the most optimistic East knows after the 4♥ bid you have two top diamond losers, so there's never any reason to advance any higher.

I realised afterwards (thought I edited it in, apparently not), barmar was probably referring to 3♦ in the original auction, vs 3♦ in the quoted auction. But interesting to know it's actually played that way too.

Really? How do you make a forcing rebid as opener then?

You're missing an ace and the queen of trumps. So not passing 5♥ seems rather bizarre? I wouldn't want to be in 6♠ either..

But that would be a GF jump shift, not a non-GF reverse, so that's a completely different situation.

Correct, but there are even more times when trick 3 gains a trick, because GIB cannot rule out South having 7 diamonds. See sim above. Eg: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?n=SQ75HT84DJCQT9832&e=SAKT62HKJ93DQ7C75&s=S983HAQDAKT8632C6&a=1S2DDP2H3DPP3HPPP&d=e&p=DAD9DJD7DKD4S5DQD8D5]400|300[/hv]

I ran the following simulation (extra diamonds with South under the assumption that East wouldn't throw the queen, ruling out North hoping the trick holds): north SQ75, HT84, DJ, CQT9832 west SJ4, H7652, D954, CAKJ4 south DAK8632 east DQ7 south 14-18 total points east >=5 spades, >=4 hearts, >=11 HCP, 12-15 total points Result of 500 deals: - trump and club equal on 197 deals - trump better on 139 deals - club better on 164 deals Obviously assumes double dummy play from both N/S, but that's a given..