guggie

the fact that she admits it shows she is honest about it. I would think it impoossible to give my attention both to hands I am playing and the TDing process, furthermore you can see all hands, also of forthcoming boards, so that makes it impossible to play and bid normally, but probably she guards herself from that? This weekend on european daytime there were very few tournaments, especially free ones, and the payed ones ALL had heavy attacks of postponeritis. Maybe the free TD's get sick of all comments here? Maybe the payed TD's destroy the enthusiasm of the free TD's? Other reasons? A lot of regular daily tournaments like Hobsons choice have disappeared. I found myself back on the dutch site I fled from to BBO. Never thought that would happen.

What is the use of posting tournament rules if these rules just imply normal politeness and alerting, what should be valid at every occasion on BBO? If you want to have special rules l, state it: no psyching or the no NT with singleton polish club prohibited languages or friends/enemies limits Otherwise just continue the education;-) people who dont bother to alert, wont bother to read the rules, so just give them immediate feed back when they forget. I learn a lot from the training of my 2 dachshund puppies: a lot of positive feedback, a stern: NO if they do something terrible, and all the time you keep on smiling inwardly and shrug yr shoulders if they demolish something you forgot to guard against them: it is all in the game and you knew it when you started it.

About the postponements: nothing changed, every tournament again the moment you register 3 more minutes are added. My current policy is to unsubscribe immediately after any postponement. It is an infectious diaease, BBOland and BBOitalia suffer also from postponeritis.

ahum. You are right also changed some east/west troubles. My left and right also always get confused. Good that I am not an orthopedic surgeon.

OK, another try West will have AQ of diamonds and suggests ♠KQ. You must prevent east to gain the lead and play diamonds. Has east the hearts Ace? You miss 16 hcp, so east COULD have ♥A. You are doomed than. So lets assume west has the ♥A, than esst will have the ♠Q (he must have something for his spade raise), and west is cunningly creating an entry for east. So you duck the ♠K, you take anyother lead, and play hearts. Later on you play 2 top clubs and finesse for the clubJ with east for a discard for yr Di J. OK, west can have A and east Q of diamonds. Does not explain the long thinking. I am rather in love with my own solution. Oops, always dangerous, being in love makes you blind for the faults in yr love-object...

Hehe. I think the Dutch alert regulations are excellent;-) It is just what you are accustomed to. I cannot play in ACBL tournaments, because i do not understand the alert regulations. Something simple and elementary as multi is forbidden, and the 2 tournaments I played the opps I encountered were - to say it polite - rather convinced of the ACBL superiority and supremacy and not very willing to help but ready to snatch tops because of alert misunderstandings.

Once upon a time alerts were invented to alert opponents that a bid meaned something different than the opponent would expect. I still think the use of alerts is to call the opps' attention to a bid with unexpected properties. I think it is utter nonsense to alert transfers for the majors. An alert for stayman might be usefull if a 4c major is not obligatory. Alerts are meant to be helpful, not to be a goal per se and means to get un undeserved plus score if some opp forgot to alert an xfer. If these riules: "alert all unnatural bids" will prevail, the only safe way is to alert all yr bids. The explaining will take a lot of time away from the bridge ("may be off shape and off agreements" maybe handy as universal explication). It is one sure way to chase people away from bridge. I would strongly advocate to go back to: "alert if you think yr opps should know about this bid".

I started a thread on the multiple postponements of the starting time. It drove me crazy - and away from the sky tournaments. About the misconduct of players: I think the pay has something to do with it: they pay their dollar and feel they have therefore rights. Furthermore if in a free toournament a player is not behaving you can kick him out. In a payed tournament you kick a customer out of your shop. bad for sales

about nr 8 BEFORE the right click option I used to look at the partner of the future sub, than on the sublist, and tried to make as good a match as possible. It took some trouble but could be very rewarding I succumbed to the ease of the right click, I admit, and now I let Fortune decide. Nevertheless it would be handy if we could do some matching again in an easy way. Besides: ALL TD activities would be a lot easier if not the pop-up TD calls killed every activity like adjusting and talking to players. You are in the midst of a heavy discussion about non alerts, you typed 2 lines, and - flop - a TD calls destroyes your lines. You start a reply to the TD caller to wait a moment, - flop - comes the next TD call from the player who wants a reply. Started reply gone too, now. Uday would make me SO happy if he changed the destroying quality of the pop up TD call.

Gweny used to organize meetings for BBO-TD's. Since the upcome of the payed tournaments we did not get any invitations anymore. I liked the few meetings I attended. Could we not revive those meetings and add in some mentoring/teaching from volunteers like Candybar?

I think this is a rather useless debate. TD's who care like Jillybean, JW_nl, etc etc (including myself) read this forum, post problems and try to do their best and improve. The reward we get is TD bashing and proposals for all kind of extra work for a freely undertaken job. Let the TD bashers just for once organize a tournament and experience the problems in real life. And than let us come to a practical and constructive way to improve on TD's and TD-ing

depends on the level. In Holland basic teaching is high low count and attitude, and 4th best against NT, attitude against suit IN higer competition carding can be either hi low or UDCA, roman signals are quite popular, and leads are common 3d/5th

I thought this would be a thread on bridge dreams. I have, making crazy contracts and having weird hands. I never had a bridge-nightmare. Who has?

Apparently BL have been under growing suspicion. The ACBL had been collecting evidence and is organizing a hearing - aside from the Tenerife incident. In my view they have been very careful. Can somebody suggest a better procedure to handle these suspicions? (Yes, I have read, camera's could provide some extra evidence)

uhm... must I second the obvious? OK I will I think Aisha is very right;-). I think tournaments (and especially their directors)like that should be banned form BBO, it leaves the players with nothing but frustration.

I am all puzzled. According to the bidding given, NS played 4h, doubled by west

About the 3card OM, it is no problem, but some partnership explicitly have agreed they wont do it (you should tell this too to the opponents) 4c other major is not allowed, furthermore I think it is bad judgement to do so. 6c in the bid major is explicitly not allowed. If in yr partnership the occasional 6card is agreed upon, you cannot name it a Muiderberg. Variations on the convention have been christened variations on the name Muiderberg (in Dutch Muiderberg is a village near the small city of Muiden, the name means the mountain of Muiden), so one of the variations is called Muiderdal (The valley of Muiden).. "Muiderbergish" also is known

Oops. Dont know for the States, but here in Amsterdam cool is OK according to my daughters of 15 and 19. By the way they think bridge sucks;-) Like opera. As a parent you should not try to hard :angry:

But do you seriously mean that you were fooled by the non-alert? Did you expect anybody, let alone an expert, to open a "natural" 3NT? The goal of traffic rules is to prevent accidents. It needs the cooperation of the traffic users and some laws to achieve it. If you forget something trivial, like putting omn your signal before driving into yr own parking place, and it leads to no harm, nobody will fine you The goal of alerting in bridge is to attent opps to unexpected meanings of bids. This real goal has to be translated into various laws. If the violating of these laws leads to serious damage of the opponents, the violators should be punished. A gambling 3NT with a forgotten -routine - alarm does not lead to any damage. lets play bridge and not play rules. (Yes I know rules are necessary and I try to follow them)

Its not bridge but.. if you want to be a good doctor, you have to be able to read English, as all leading journals are in that language.

English is fine for me, dont need dutch commentary. But when there is italian or french commentary i go there to get some much needed improvement on those languages. So <blush> I use it as a free language course.

Furthermore, the loss of jw_nl as TD is great, as he created free, well directed tournaments on a daily basis. The BBO community is the great loser.

Hear hear. I recently posted about it (payed tournaments trick on starting time) . I unsubscribed, but as you say, Thats more difficult with a p.

I had 1.5 hours this morning to spend on bridge, I logged in at BBO and saw in 6 mins a BBO land indy was coming up. I signed in, and the starting time was postponed. I asked the TD, Bebas, how often he was to postpone the starting time. He responded: starting time 10.45. as always. At that moment it was 10.38, and the announced starting time was 3 mins. Not surprisingly, a few minutes later the starting time was again 3 mins. I unsubscribed. This is a very regular feature in payed tournaments and it drives me crazy. The directors planning this to lure players to their tournaments, are cheating with the time of their players. I should like it very much if something was done to stop this fooling around with starting times.