Siegmund

I'm sure it's spade shortage. But Im NOT sure if hearts or diamonds are trumps. Frances's version is probably what I'd expect without discussion. But you could certainly agree that this was 1-4-4-4 or 1-4-5-3 (assuming that an immediate 3S response to 1D would NOT show 1-4-4-4)

Personally I see lots of reasons to pass and not many reasons to think about bidding. NV I still wouldn't bid but I at least know people who would consider if they weren't vul. No. What actually happened at the table was that the player holding these cards was in 2nd seat and passed on the first round, and a "discussion" arose as to whether it made any sense at all to play (p)-p-(1D)-p- (p)-1NT as natural (10-12?) even as a passed hand, rather than mini-unusual. Essentially the answer depends on how many hands there where you would pass in 2nd seat but want to bid 1NT in balancing seat. (For a lot of people who "are a point shy of even thinking about it" the answer is clearly "almost none." For people who like bidding here, perhaps quite a few.)

It's extremely easy to meet the qualification requirements for district NAPs and GNTs in most districts (many allow anyone who wants to play to buy in even if they didnt qualify.) The district finals are certainly better quality competition than random sectional players, yes. But they are still shortish events and the best players dont always win. I am not sure I would expect the field the first day at the national level to be any better than the field of an open national event on the second day.

Possibly interesting possibly not. ♠xx ♥J9xx ♦A9xx ♣AJx Unfavorable vulnerability, matchpoints. (1D)-P-(P) to you. No special agreements. Expert partner, adequate opponents.

I am just irritated I didnt know about this book until the week after I placed a big book order, so I likely wont see it until late fall.

As nigel said, having each side choosing a strategy makes the problem vastly harder. Without getting into details... single-dummy analysis of cribbage is something that might just barely be coming within reach of a computer. Single-dummy analysis of a random whole bridge hand is a long, long way away. ...strong, yes, in the same way that GIB is strong now -- and its cardplay playing with itself IS very strong -- but if your goal is to avoid the plays that GIB doesn't understand, you don't get there by sticking one ply of single-dummy on top of a double-dummy analysis.

You are absolutely right about how hard it is, and also about "but that if I don't maintain some success, I might become out-of-sight, out-of-mind" -- I was getting some great offers in 2004 and 2005, wasnt able to travel to any regionals in 2006 and 2007 because of two job changes, and in 2008 nobody came calling. (I just moved again, in February 2011, and it has taken a solid year and a half to get anything in the way of a new reliable partner.) In the meantime I have resorted to weekly dates online to practice with someone to play a regional with this fall. You may want to try that as a way to keep sharp while you are hunting for a serious live partner.

As a cynic who works in a technical field... I tend to see a lot of managers of big companies and heads of small ones who communicate just like that; knowing nothing about the operations of the company and everything about fancy doublespeak seems to be key to getting hired into such positions. It amazes me that somehow the companies survive, even if it means they inflict twice the overhead on themselves they really need to. Meanwhile, if that isn't your style, you probably are well advised to steer clear of companies who write their ads that way.

That's more or less what GNUBridge was supposed to be, but the project never was moving fast, and stalled a couple years back. Perhaps breathing new life into that project is an alternative to starting fresh? Or at least a means of contacting some interested participants? It's not really the direction in which my bridge programming interests lie, personally.

In the ACBL you are allowed to run a 'handicap game', where half the masterpoints are awarded based on any of several ways of compensating for player strength and half in the usual way -- and in party bridge there is often a progressive movement with winners moving up and losers moving down a a table so the room is 'sorted' by the end of the party -- but I find it quite odd to run a club game in that way. Maybe it makes more sense in a 100 table club. Of course I find it quite odd that anyone anywhere likes Swisses, too but a lot of people do.

Deal is 1 processor only. But you can start several threads, assign each to a different processor, have each thread return some statistics, and combine the answers, to get more hands processed faster. (I didn't do that; but if I had a family of cases to simulate, I would have two problems going at once each on their own processor.) I seem to recall that a new version of Bo Haglund's double dummy solver came out recently that has improved ability to take advantage of new hardware - but has not yet been integrated into the Andrews Deal package. Deal is open source, though, if you want to try to improve upon it.

In non-arrow-switched games, the director is supposed to balance the two fields and usually does. People sit where they want except for one or two who he moves. In arrow-switched games this can become a problem, because the ways to achieve the best balance are far from obvious -- ex. in the 9-table Mitchell with the last round switched, you are compared approximately equally strongly against everyone except the pair against whom you play the last round -- and the "skill" in choosing your seat becomes quite big. (One director here insists on arrow switching 3 rounds of a 9-table game. That makes it even more important to choose where to sit, in a very odd way.) The director should keep balance in mind, and remember that it matters all the time except in the handful of 'perfect movements'. Sometimes the right way to achieve balance is not the way the players like: with a 2 1/2 table Howell the balance is much better if you make the stationary pair the phantom, but that's a great way to annoy everybody in the room who wished he could have been stationary. If the director isn't going to do his job... can't fault the players for sitting where they like. Different players like different seats for different reasons. Better opps, weaker opps, getting the best opps out of the way first, saving them for last, being close to the dessert table, being far from the dessert table, being near the door, being far from the door.

There was a big flap about whether to allow conventions in the 1906-1912 timeframe, which ended with the takeout double (over a 1-level opening bid) becoming widely used. "Weak" twos in Auction look more like 21st century 4M openings.The penalty for a set was, in relative terms, three times as expensive in Auction scoring as Contract. Basically all bids in Auction were to play, since there was no need to bid game or slam in order to get the scoring bonus - so there WILL be lots of equivalents of preempts and sacrificies -- much sounded that you are used to now -- and there WONT be many examples of fancy agreements about strength of bids. There was a time in the early days of auction when dealer was REQUIRED to open, and usually did so artificially with the cheapest call available (1 non-royal spade, in those days). Those who are curious about Auction are encouraged to flip through Milton Work's Auction of Today (1913), available as a free online book now since it is out of copyright, and keep your eyes peeled in used bookstores for David Daniels's The Golden Age of Contract Bridge which spends more than half its pages on the pre-Culbertson era and how contract developed from its predecessors. Not a bidding or play treatment -- but Mitchell and Howell invented their duplicate movements in pre-contract days, too.

Zero spades for me. My partners lose their sense of humor, but not their fondness for forcing to game on misfitting 12s, if I open too many hands like this.

Yes, that's what the SAYC booklet says. I don't think I agree with that. Far as I can tell, the large majority of standard bidding books have always said the jump raise showed 4, from the time of four-card majors to the present. At any rate the recommendation for 4 trumps appears in sources that don't otherwise show much influence from 2/1 (e.g. Bill Root) It has always been something of a puzzlement to me why the SAYC booklet says some of the things it does. Taken as a whole the yellow card doesn't seem to represent anybody's standard practice at any time.

Mine look very much like my 3m openers. At favorable, KQJxxx and out is the classic hand.Ive been known to stretch and do that anyway with neither vul. Unfavorable it is a sound 7-card suit. The range extends at least an ace beyond that - hands that I would open 4m at favorable or equal I probably only overcall 3m with. If I am playing DONT or Capp, it tends to be only the Axx Axx QTxxxx x type hands where I bail out in 2D. Whether I have a way to play 2C or 2D has very little to do with my 3m range, I am going to apply pressure and take up bidding space if I have a hand to justify it. Especially if it is going to take an extra round of bidding to sign off at 2m. Will be curious what others do. I seem to get a lot of pickup partners who mumble something about why I went to the 3-level instead of just showing a 1-suited hand. But it can't possibly right to go slow and give the opps 2 or 3 chances to make use of doubles and passes and the choice between immediate and delayed action, as well as all their usual system toys.

Ours don't let you click past the opening-lead page even if you want to :) Yes, people do sometimes put in the 2 when they dont know which small spot they mean (it doesnt check to see whether you really have the card you type in of course.) Given a few months of regularly playing, many though not most of the members here have developed a habit of typing in the score and the opening lead at the start of the play rather than after the fact.

Many of us who "write simulations" including myself, are writing scripts to feed to someone else's dealer and double dummy analyzer software. The front ends can be quite involved, doing things like taking a given defender's hand, dealing out 1000 hands consistent with a given auction, and trying every possible lead against each one (double-dummy play for the remaining 51 cards each time), to see which lead gives up a trick least often. My most elaborate such front end will take a set of BBO hand records, go through bid by bid and card by card, flag every move that costs vs. double-dummy par and vs. the state of the game before that bid or card, and create statistics on the frequency of such errors by each player. I have dabbled in other bridge software in the past -- creating a timer application for use in bridge clubs, a LaTeX package for typesetting hands, and explored several computationally expensive approaches to developing a rating system. The timer and the LaTeX package were of a quality to be suitable to give them away to others, though they were intended originally as tools for my local club and to make my own life easier as a teacher and director.

Well, you've got a list there of messages you would like to send as responder. (The messages don't have to be tied to the 2S, 2NT, 3C, 3D names you've stuck on the start of each line.) Choose meanings for 2S through 3D that allow you to show as many of those 12 hand types as possible. Doesn't have to be the same meanings that are in all the books. There are several ways to show 10 or 11 of those holdings by responder.

At favorable, I would try 3H. (Double I would expect to show more overall values, without implying more than 4 or 5 hearts.) At unfavorable, clear pass.

Also, @mbodell: Are you serious? It's vital the old boards not be destroyed until after the scores are finalized. That's how you check to see if a board got fouled (or, in a multi-site game where it matters, initially misduplicated.) I would be slapping the hands of the directors who asked for that. Hard. Actually had this happen to me a few years back... a club game the week before a STaC was starting, and the person in charge of next Tuesday's game stand up during the last round and ask people to sort the cards to save her duplicating time - WHILE I was staring at some impossible results on a traveler I had just typed into the computer and getting ready to start asking questions and inspecting the board as soon as it was out of play. I think it is the second-loudest I have ever roared, "NO, don't do that!!!!" in a bridge club. (The loudest was when I heard a table shuffling four boards at the start of round six in a four-table Howell, because someone - not me - had 'helpfully' flipped a card face up after the cards were played for the third time after round four. It was too late to save three of the boards.)

Two things. Is my club the only one that uses the electronic scorers to record the opening lead? To me, this was a huge benefit to understanding why a seemingly routine result at my table turned out not to be an average, as well as a great way to harvest lesson hands. The players can see right away whether the active or the passive lead, or the high or the low card from JTxx, led to an extra trick. For me personally, gaining a record of the opening lead at other tables was a bigger gain for me than having hand records was - I had for some years been in the habit of marking interesting boards on my scoresheet, and retrieving a couple boards after every session if I wanted to right them down to study them, while I waited for the results to come out. I wasn't suffering from the lack of a hand record all that much. If your electronic scorers don't have that capability or you haven't bothered to turn it on, then yeah, there is not much reason to spring for them over a dealing machine. I agree that to many serious pairs and to the mentor-mentee pairs, gaining hand records is a big plus. But I played in clubs games for many years without predealt hands (its a very new thing for ANY clubs in this area to have dealing machines, and most of them still don't) and even a number of small sectionals I've played at have not used hand records. On the flip side, there have been quite a few times when I have hated the fact we were using hand records (in tournaments where the players preduplicated before the first round): when the sections had 9 or 13 tables in them, we got to play only 24 boards instead of the normal 27/26, both shortening the session (and robbing me of a dollar's worth of fun) and hurting the quality of the comparison by making it not be an everybody-plays-everybody-in-the-other-line game. I'm just saying that switching to predealt hands is not purely upside, there are occasional minuses. (Vampyr: almost every session at a US sectional or regional begins with 10 to 15 minutes of players suiting and duplicating cards, the director collecting all the hand records, and then starting the game. It is a real nuisance, and without machines, accepted as a necessary evil to get hand records. The alternative method I described -- odds to one section and evens to another -- was the standard way of running 18- to 30-table sectionals up until the mid 90s here. There were of course no hand records, as there weren't in any other hand-dealt game, but it was a way to allow two sections to play the same cards.)

An interesting combination I had never thought about before. Messing around with Suitplay confirms that this suit is handled differently with the 8 and 7, with only the 8, and without the 8. I routinely think of 8s as "x"es and expect them to make no difference to how I play a suit, except for sometimes giving me a bonus trick when a singleton 9 or T falls. But there seem to be a lot of combinations where it matters. Anything that gets me out of that complacency is a good thing. Just tonight on BBO I saw Qxx opposite T97xx, where the right play is different from Qxx opposite T9xxx.

@barmar: yes, I did assume that -- since at any club I've ever played at, the extra 10 minutes at the start to make predealt hands would cause a mutiny (or, more likely, cause half the players to habitually show up 10 minutes late). I wouldn't dream of inflicting hand-preduplication on my players, even if I did reliably have Mitchell movements. (If I had two sections, I would do it the oldfashioned way -- give all the odd boards to one section and all the evens to the other, "shuffle deal and play a hand, make a copy of it, and pass it to the other section.") Hand records are, to serious players, a benefit. But the serious players are grossly outnumbered by the casual players at club games. In my experience it won't fly unless it is nearly hassle-free. @mike777... return on investment? Neither one is bringing you in a penny. That isn't a factor imo. Though the dealing machine may drive a few suspicious casual players away temporarily.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The electronic scorers do save the director some time -- but their real value is when you use them to display the contracts and opening leads, rather than the bare numbers-only ACBLscore printout. The usual ways of doing that tend to have hand records tied in too. Local club here has them both. They also are portable. A dealing machine is real handy if you have your own building. But if you have to store equipment in a closet it is much more trouble than it is worth to drag it out and put it away (and it needs to be onsite - 51-and-53 type problems happen as much as once a session in our club and the usual fix is running the board through the machine again to redeal it.) I could live quite happily without either one - did for years - and also live happily with both now. I would find it hard to have only one, if I could only have one.