paulhar

When the opponents let me play 2D on my 8 card fit in matchpoints, it's usually worth a lot of matchpoints :huh:

Not going to happen. Which has the lower p-value, an opening 3-bid on KQxxxx or 2H showing 4+H and 4+S? I would guess the latter, Ekrens, but the first would be allowed anywhere, and the second would be banned in a lot of places, simply because it's harder to defend against. An opening 1D bid which shows either 5 hearts or 5 spades, kind of like Multi would have a very low p-value, much lower than that crappy preempt. Are you really saying that should be allowed for just that reason? Now, if y'all jump on board and tell me that THIS is a real convention too, I'm really going to be surprised!

OK, let's come up with a list with a high 'p' value. Opening preempts. (especially 5 of a minor :angry: ) Bergen raises. Preemptive raises. Including the standard 1 of a Major - 4 of a major. Sacrifices. The Unusual Notrump. I'm sure there are others but need I say more? I think the definition needs a little refinement.

How is it determined whether a logoff is intentional? I can think of three reasons I have left tournaments in the past few weeks, each of them occurring more than once. 1. Windows ME! Occasionally the system hangs, and total time to shut down, get back on, dial up, and connect to BBO can be 15 minutes. 2. ISP disconnects. Total time to dial up successfully and connect to BBO can be 7 minutes. 3. SW Florida power outages. My UPS doesn't supply enough power to make it through the entire tournament. Total time to dial up successfully and connect to BBO can be several hours :D It's thunderstorm season here which is why you see a lot more posts from me than hands played on BBO :rolleyes: if I get disconnected from the forum, nobody else suffers I'm sure that others have had similar problems and been falsely maligned.

As usual, you are right on several counts. Despite the fact that we are frequently on opposite sides of the fence, I have also enjoyed your posts which are well thought out and based on much broader knowledge than I have. I must admit that I didn't intend to offend either Richard or Frederick although it might seem to him that I'm specifically picking on them. If this is so, I'm truly sorry for all I wanted to express is my dismay that the WBF has set the rules up in such a way that pairs are going to be confused to another pair's advantage. Perhaps my dismay is misdirected - I've never seen MOSCITO in play and that is probably because I live in ACBLland. If it were allowed, there would be much less discussion on these boards about not knowing how to defend these things. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't seen it. As I look at the ACBL MidChart, it appears that their 1D and 1H opening bids are allowable in ACBLland! If this is true, I'm very surprised, but I think I'm reading it right. (I'm sure I'll be corrected here if I'm wrong.) Under 'ACBL Mid-Chart' under 'Allowed', item 4 reads: Any call that promises four or more cards in a known suit, except that weak openings at the two level or higher that show hands with two suits must be no less than 5-4 distribution in those two suits. Now, I haven't played in any event recently that allowed MidChart but I would have thought I would have seen reports of it in some of the Bulletins or Bridge Worlds (I must admit, I haven't read them all.) I guess I overzealously tried to defend the players that play 'for fun' against the inevitable onslaught of unfamiliar conventions and systems that may spring up when pairs playing unfamiliar methods start winning a lot. And here's where Richard and Frederick come in. Most people could play their crazy stuff and nobody would notice. Richard and Frederick, if not already there, could get to be good enough to start winning some major events. (At least it appears that way from the thoughts behind their bridge hand postings.) When they start winning, others will think that the chaos they create with their system is responsible. While this may be a little bit true (there will always be some pairs that can't defend Moscito), a lot of their success will be just good bridge. But less perceptive pairs might not see it that way. There will be a lot that think that all their success is due to the confusion they cause. Now, you and I know that this is utter nonsense and not even possible, but people will think it anyway. Those that don't leave in a huff will try to win the same way (not the good bridge part) much to the detriment to themselves, but also to the game as they will create much chaos and random results. Fortunately for me, they seldom seem to enter the arenas where my pickup partners and I play. But if weakish pairs try to win by creating confusion, the Main Bridge Club could become a place where pickup pairs fear to tread.

The heart tenace could matter if partner has H-AKT or H-AQ and a fourth club. A club lead could matter if pard has H-AK and C-ATxx. I'm still not sure that that's enough reason to transfer; that's why I asked. Incidentally, if partner has two aces and you use Gerber, he's playing the hand anyway.

I don't like it, but they're right. The following is a link to the WBF Systems Policy written in 2000. http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/wbf_sysp.htm I couldn't find anything more recent that disputed this. So, all be forewarned. These players will win tournaments because their opponents haven't disucssed what to do over an opening diamond bid which shows hearts! Sounds like usualmethods to me! But you too can win by baffling and confusing your opponents! They will fight for your right to do so. As long as you don't enter into the realm of HUM... I guess if you can't beat 'em, you gotta join em :P The funny thing is, these two are excellent card players, quite studious, and work hard at the game. They could win without making their opponents uncomfortable for reasons unrelated to playing good bridge.

Some funny things could happen at these 'anything goes' tournaments. Pretend I'm a professional with all the tricks. I notice that those two MOSCITOs are one of the seeded pairs in my direction (N/S). On all the E-W chairs, I put a copy of my optimal MOSCITO defenses so that their opponents will be ready to handle 'em. Of course, the timing has to be just right, otherwise one of the skeeters will pick them up and throw 'em out (or even better, replace them with some crappy defense with my letterhead on it!) Alternitively, they could opt to play some differnet bids they've been working on and totally confuse the recipiants of my handouts. Every good pair in this event will have two or three different systems ready to go, right?

I don't think that you're going to always get the right answer this way. I think a better approach to practicing suit combinations is to get a book with lots of them in it (I would assume numerous choices, I know the ACBL Bridge Encyclopedia has a whole section on 'em, for example), pick one at random, bust your brain trying to work it out (practicing with real cards if that's helpful), and when you're satisfied, look at the solution in the book. If you're like me, it will almost never be the same as what I came up with :lol:

S-KQJT53 H-J D-A76 C-KQ5 Partner opens 15-17 NT. You're using transfers if you care. You're not playing anything fancy (i.e. transfer followed by splinter.) Texas isn't allowed. 3S is a slam try. How do you bid this? Yeah, I know these methods are not best, but these are the conditions of the poll. The poll answers assume that you're bidding six missing 0 or 1 aces and signing off at 4 of something otherwise. My most serious question here is do you transfer first, but I guess I'll also be smoking out the feelings about asking for Kings (presumably 5C, Gerber) off an ace.

That depends on how the simulations were run. If you randomly dealt hands and then had Deep Finesse play them, the assumption is that both declarer and defenders will play perfectly seeing all 52 cards. This doesn't happen in real life. Another point: if 1NT goes down 24 times in 100, I presume it also makes +120 a lot of times too. Most of these will be winners. On the other hand, 1NT will go down 200 more often (probably not too often with extra points though.)

I wouldn't mind a popup that came up just as I was clicking a bad bid or play :lol:

My thoughts (from a standpoint of teaching beginners:) It makes sense to them if they know they need 26 points for a game so teaching 16-18 makes it easy for them to bid a game (3NT, 4H, 4S) with 10 points, and to invite with 8. It's also simplicity splitting the opening 1-bid range (13-21) into three equal parts. If you're asking which is better, you're past this stage. With 15-17, you get more opportunities to describe your hand well to partner while making it tougher for the opponents to come in. 15-17 also clears up another inconsistency. Playing 16-18, many play that: 1H P 2C (showing 11+) P 2NT is nonforcing, and 1H P 2C P 3NT shows a hand that was too good to open 1NT. The problem is, that when you have 15 balanced, you know you have enough for game but are stuck for a bid. 15-17 solves this problem. The other problem is that people still invite game with 8 (with no possibility of 26) and bid game with 10 opposite 15-17, meaning that players have to assume their play is vastly superior to the opponent's defense. Personally, playing 15-17, I think some bad 10's should only invite - but I seem to be in the minority of one here. My partners who tend to play better than the field they're in complain that they want to be in the same contract as the field and pick up matchpoints in the play - rightly so. 15-17 has the slight downside that you're playing 2NT sometimes on 18 opposite 6 (or whatever junk your partner might respond on - so that downside is increased if your partner frequently responds on 4 or 5.) All in all, I would opt for 15-17, and the experts who voted for Bridge World Standard in 2001 thought the same thing.

Fact: If you get five minutes to prepare a defense and find the negative inferences, and you do that 13 times in a 26-board MP game, you add over an hour to the session. Fact: Looking for negative inferences in someone's system notes is grueling work. If everybody is spending mental energy doing this, the quality of play and defense is going to suffer. Stamina issues will be much more prevalent. In a real MP game, sometimes you get to relax because you're dummy or the play doesn't make any difference - you just lead winners and hope the opps screw up. Now, every round could be potentially taxing as you search through system notes (which probably won't be in a consistent layout), and try to figure out the negative inferences. Then you have to discuss the defenses with pard. While I think I might be better at this skill than your average tournament player, it would make the game a lot less fun and a lot more like work. If I have to dissect someone's system notes, I might as well spend the time dissectng a company's reports instead and make money doing it. A lot of players would just as soon give up bridge rather than go through this. If you like small games, this is a good direction to go. By the way, in my youth, my system notes were 63 pages! Try finding the negative inferences in 10 minutes! Just because life is unfair doesn't mean we should strive to make bridge unfair. Not really - they're going to confuse themselves more often than they're going to get me. What I'm concerned about is the pair that knows exactly what they're doing but people don't know how to defend against them. I can see your point of view, but I don't agree with it. You're suggesting some game where anything goes and a major skill required is coming up with new undefended conventions & methods, and another major skill is defending against these. That's a playable game - I just don't think that many people want to play it.

I'm not arguing that your defense isn't better technically, clearly it is. But if I have to play some more boards with this partner, many more IMPs or matchpoints will be lost in future boards if I lead the DK and partner overtakes with the Ace and gives the declarer the DQ - even if my temprament is not shaken, partner, by having made that play (and partners do) will think that I am the idiot and play future boards under that assumption. Not too long ago I played in an 'experts only' room (surprised they let me in with my Advanced title) and on the first board partner thought I made a rediculous bid. On board 2, I doubled and corrected his reply to my own spade suit. He passed with three trump and 8 points. When I asked him about it, he stated, 'after what I saw on the first board...' This is just one example of a long line of similar experiences (happily not that common) ... IMO it pays to give up on a slightly technically better bid/play if there's a reasonable possibility that partner might make a mistake based on your bid or play that he might think is your fault. Obviously, this doesn't apply if it's the last board. I'm not trying to avoid being blamed - I'm trying to avoid the bad results that come from my partner not trusting me. Clearly this doesn't apply if you have a long standing partnership with a partner with a good sense of humor or with the ability to see things from your point of view when these accidents happen.

A lot of ground to cover on this thread. First, the lighter side... ROFL is too calm - when I read this I had to excuse myself to the restroom where I could laugh for the next five minutes without anybody thinking I was totally crazy - this was better than anything I saw on "Last Comic Standing". Every country must have a large popluation of players that play some natural system similar to SAYC - maybe with weak NT's. I'm sure that almost anybody that knows how to defend against anything knows how to defend against a natural system. And Flannery - some people in Flight A don't know how to defend that here in the US either. IMO opponents of Flannery users should be able to chat a quick line about defense. However, your point is well taken. If everybody in Australia (for example) played a strong club, y'all would be caught unprepared for a natural system and I think you should be afforeded the opportunity to discuss a defense to my 1C bid showing clubs! Otherwise, we're just taking advantage of your ignorance. But I highly doubt that this is the case. And because there are some pairs that don't put in that time and effort, the winningest bridge players aren't necessarily those who play the best, but could be those who play moderately well but play a system that only they understand. Might be a good bid! But it's far better when played against opponents who will misunderstand each other's bids over it. OK, so your E-W opps are too lazy to defend it. Should that give you an advantage over another N-S pair that plays sound methods that the E-W pairs understand? Indeed - it's far worse than that. When I play in the Stratified Pairs, the answers are almost always "I don't know", and when they do authoritatively answer, they are frequently wrong. Unfortunately, it's hard to know if they really do know and are just annoyed with your incessant questioning or if they're really that clueless. But I do know that most F2F opponents think my trying to find out what their bids mean is annoying. Since I rarely gain any useful information, I have given up. So, if you really do know something about your partner's bid that I don't know (pretty d**n likely), the clueless people have helped you immensely by making me assume that your answers aren't going to be right anyway. Simple. They play that junk, you get to chat your defense. If they get annoyed, they can go find another pair to play against. I would tend not to be annoyed if I played anything unusual (say Flannery B) ) and an opponent chatted a defense. Well, there's more Helenes in this world that play bridge just for fun than there are those of you that want to take advantage of them with your unfamiliar methods plus those of you studious enough to have countermeasures to anything that could come up. They don't want to be world champions. All they want is that if you're going to beat them, you do it by playing better, or having more solid agreements than they do, rather than trying to confuse them with conventions that they haven't discussed or even heard of.

you can't remove it but you can edit everything out of it except one characther which I assume could be a clickable smile :)

If this happened in a BIL-sponsored event, the natural pair might not have even noticed the inconsistency. Indeed, I have heard many anecdotes from different teachers who made a mistake and played the same hand twice in their class and none of the students noticed. So, if an adjustment would have been made on the first board, it should still be made.

Ben plays with better partners than I do - when I lead the DK, my partners overtake and try to lead back to my supposed DQ! I lead a small diamond. If partner wins the ace and returns a diamond, nothing should get away, unless declarer is 2-2-1-8 with the spade King. I'll know by the spot partner leads back whether the third diamond cashes or not. If declarer wins the DQ with the Ace and plays trump, I can win a trump trick and play diamonds; again nothing should get away.

Let's make it 4-0. Might turn out to be the first time I've ever agreed with all three of these fine players!

If the touney description tells me to read the rules, I always read the rules. Once I saw in the rules 'Cross-IMPS' and the tournament description said Matchpoints I let the TD know and the tourney description was quickly fixed to CrossImps. Too bad - I had already registered with one of my favorite matchpoint partners :)

I'm with EricK. 2C, but if pard had opened 1H, then 3C invitational.

They need a clickable ROFL - a man pounding the floor laughing too hard - I coulda really used it when they were discussing the value of masterpoints In any event, I just made that 2H bid up! Could I have really guessed it was a real convention? B) I guess it is playable! Maybe there's even already a defense for it! Excuse me while I try to find Lorenzo 2's on the net now... B) OK, found 'em, now that's REAL garbage (clickable ROFL to be inserted) got only ONE hit on Google, it's 2 of any suit shows 0-7 and a four card suit hey, why not go one step further and play DONT two bids? 2C=4C, 4higher 2D=4D, 4HorS 2H=Ekrens! (learn something new every day :) ) of course you need some strong opening bid... But all this wasn't my point. Let's say you come up against something that even YOU would only play against once a year. Don't you think you should be able to at least chat a simple defense against it? Or do you think you should have a predefined defense against all possible sequences and possible meanings? And... I know most of the posters of this thread are really die-hard serious players with a great work ethic toward the game and destined to be great if not already there, (of course, it's good players who post on the forum :) ) but let's talk about the vast majority of players that play this game just for fun (horrors!!), the type that really DO go into the main bridge club and partner whatever comes their way (yes, there ARE some of those) and think that bridge should be a pleasant pasttime rather than a doctorate level course (which new medicines all the time!) I know it's hard for some of you to think like that, but pretend for a minute that you have a life or maybe other time-consuming hobbies or lots of schoolwork or a full time job (here in the US that might mean 60 or 70 hours a week) and want to pop on once in a while to play some bridge - yes, a game! And somebody opens 'Ekrens' against you and your pickup partner in the Main Bridge Club. OK, we're not talking about a decent pair here. But still you deserve to have some clue what their partner is thinking when they make a bid. (I would say even in a tournament, but I probably won't get much support.) I won't doubt that, but as I've said on many other threads, maybe the best reason to play this convention is that you get many extra IMPs and matchpoints from your opponent's confusion, lack of familiarity with the bid, and lack of popular defenses against the bid. This seems really close to crossing the ethical line.

3S at favorable vulnerability, otherwise 2S. In third seat, I would open 3S at equal vulnerability also.

I disagree. I'll bet if you polled the beginners and could really get them to answer, many of them would think that 2S was natural. And many of these play in our tournaments. Many years ago, I played with the 'best player in my home town.' She did bid 2S natural in exactly the sequence you discussed. She had lots of masterpoints. Holding 0-5-3-5, it seemed that this was likely and I passed. Against a MOSCITO 1D opening showing 4 hearts, it's not unlikely that partner could overcall hearts naturally and find me with 3 or 4 so it wouldn't be obvious whether their 1H overcall was natural or not. If I guess wrong, I'm in trouble. And it doesn't matter whether I've discussed it with partner or not, as long as other pairs in the tournament haven't discussed it, pairs playing these methods have an advantage. So what is the best system? Seems like under the current BBO standards, any reasonable system that will confuse SOME opponents is better than one that won't confuse anybody. SAYC is woefully deficient in the realm of opponent confusion. 2/1 isn't much better. If MOSCITO catches on and becomes very popular, it may be a great system now but it will fall prey to some new concoction when the rabbits know how to defend MOSCITO but not somebody's new pet system. For now, though, MOSCITO has a lot going for it. If you're in the same tourney that I'm in, it doesn't matter whether I'm lazy as long as some of the pairs you play against are. If your partnership and my partnership play equally well but yours plays a more unfamiliar system, you have an advantage in that tournament which manifests itself when we play against weak (lazy?) pairs that will be confused by your methods but not by mine. Is it a deserved advantage? Jtfanclub, you said it well in your post on this thread. I just wanted to let you know that you have somebody on your side. Incidentally IMO: It's OK if you get an advantage if your system preempts the opponents or makes it hard for an optimum countersystem to reach a good contract. It's OK for your system to get to a contract without giving information about the declarer's hand so the defense is in the dark. It's OK to psyche as long as your partner is fooled too. As far as I'm concerned, it's okay to psyche an opening strong 2C, strong 1C, or strong pass! If people want to come up with destructive methods to handle your strong club or pass, that's OK, but it should be OK if you psyche that strong bid so that their decision to not have constructive methods costs them. In fact, it's OK to have ANY system that gains an edge in ANY way EXCEPT through the fact that the opponents don't know how to defend against it, OR that they don't know what each other's bids mean because you've thrown them in an unnatural situation. What's NOT OK is that people have an edge simply because the opponents can't read each other's minds on what certain bids should mean, whereas they have standard meanings against well-known systems.