oryctolagi

Zillahandp, your profile (on BBO) says that you're based in GB, so presumably English is your first language. If your intention was to demonstrate that I'm a cr@p player and my idiot of a partner pulled off a brilliant coup which I failed to capitalise on, fine, go ahead, say it. I can handle that - I've been there! But if you shroud your post in the most incomprehensible gobbledygook, expecting me to waste my time trying to decypher it, go and post your rubbish somewhere else please. All right then, chum, so you were typing in on a fancy smartphone and trying to manipulate your touchscreen with fingers the size of pork sausages, was that it? Go and learn to type on a proper keyboard please. I learnt my typing on a typewriter, and there were no spellcheckers for me. If I made a mistake, out came the Tippex (or better still, rip out the sheet and start over). And I don't have a smartphone (I did have one, but I gave it to my son). Quite frankly, this sort of lazy attitude p***es me off big-time. The rest of you - thanks once again for the replies.

Sorry, what's that in English please? :angry:

As it turned out, the clubs broke 3-1 on this deal, so 3NT was cold. I suppose that's what annoyed me - as it would anyone! I could kick myself for not having gone straight there (I put in Blackwood 4NT - probably a silly move - and passed the 5♦ response). But my main cause for being perturbed was that my partner quit the table without a word. I was thinking, was he trying to cover his embarrassment? Or castigating me for mis-bidding the hand? Of course it could have been a totally innocent reason. Anyway, thanks for the replies. I'll try to remember - not all bids are what they seem....

Maybe to you. Bear in mind we were in the Acol club, and I have Acol very firmly stated on my card. We had made no agreement to play otherwise. And in Acol, unless I'm very much astray, a reverse is a reverse, a natural bid showing a strong hand and two suits. Where are the two suits in this hand????

I'm baffled. Perhaps I just don't know enough. This was in the BBO Acol club and I thought my partner was reversing: [hv=pc=n&s=skqhaj743dkt53c94&n=sj9hkdqj7cakqt853&d=w&v=e&b=16&a=p1cp1hp2dp]266|200[/hv] Anyway, liking partner's (presumed) diamonds and (presumed) lots of points, a lot, I thought "slam" but eventually landed us in 5♦. After the fiasco (3 down), I was about to ask partner what 2♦ was all about, but he/she scarpered before I got a chance. Perhaps it's me. Not the first time something like this has happened. Perhaps I'm not up to this game, and others are taking it out on me... :( Should I quit?

You're right, I didn't give full details of this hand because I wanted to have the topic discussed on more general terms (as it has indeed turned out). Bear in mind I was only kibitzing, not playing this hand. As it happens, East held AJ10xx in ♦ plus a side entry, while declarer had Kxx. But East hadn't bid, so it would have been down to guesswork. I'm not a great fan of the person who was declarer, so I was willing West to come out with that Q♦ :rolleyes: . But it didn't happen...

The point is certainly worth making, that all defensive conventions (including things like HELD and McKenney) might give information to declarer as well as to your partner. I don't suppose there's any getting away from it: you can't (legally) exchange any information with partner without giving declarer a few clues... Unlike psyching or other unusual bidding, I don't think there are any rules laid down in the big tournaments, about falsecarding during play (assuming you don't have an undeclared agreement with partner). Or are there?

Why do so many players rigidly stick to that lead in no trumps? Are we talking some sort of rule that 'must be obeyed'? I was kibitzing a hand recently, declarer was in 3nt, and LHO was faced with: [hv=pc=n&w=sq92ht62dq7cj7642]133|100[/hv] Declarer and partner had bid both majors between them. With my advantageous view of all four hands, I could easily see that a diamond lead would have killed the contract. But, predictably, out came the 4 ♣. And 3NT was made - easily. With so poor a hand and only one potential side entry, surely West didn't expect to run his clubs! Wouldn't it be better to 'play for partner's strength'? All I can say is, if I'm defending 3nt, don't expect a fourth best from me every time!

Not merely a mis-spelled quote, but a misattributed quote too. Voltaire never actually wrote those celebrated words - they were penned by someone called Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in a biography of Voltaire and his friends, published in 1906.

Yes I am aware of that. Bear in mind that my fellow players, although some of them are pretty good players, are not exactly world-class! I think the difference between MP play and IMP play would be lost on some of them - including myself! :unsure: Anyway, this is just for curiosity's sake.

I'm not sure whether I should be posting this here, but I have a question or two - so here goes. A few days ago I was lucky enough to secure a place in a fairly informal pairs tourney held by our local U3A. This was organised into seven tables playing 21 boards, scored Match Points. The organiser has E-mailed the results, along with all the travellers, to all participants, and my partner and I came exactly midway: 4th out of seven. Not a brilliant result but I'm not gutted, at any rate. Now I'd like to satisfy my curiosity and see whether we'd have got a better placing if it had been scored IMPs rather than MPs. This is purely for my own edification, vanity if you like, and not anything I want to make public - not even to my partner. Just a private thing. One reason is, on one board we were the only pair to reach a slam: in fact we were the only ones to secure a >1000 score, anywhere in the entire tournament (6NTv+1 giving us 1470). I know well that MPs scoring tends to level out big swings.... So the first question is, is there a convenient (and preferably free :rolleyes: ) tool I can use, to score up the travellers? Or a plug-in for Excel perhaps. I've got the data in HTML text format at the moment. Alternatively, if I have to do all the calculations myself, the hard way (I can easily get hold of a points -> IMPs lookup table), how is the baseline in pairs normally calculated? Simple average, sigma-clipped average, highest/lowest excluded average, median, or what? Any suggestions much appreciated!

I don't know anything about the OP, but I will also add this. On other forums (not bridge-related) which I post on, Shouting is most certainly come down on heavily by the Mods.... :lol:

I would prefer to have the "confirm navigation" warning come up only when I'm actually playing at a table - or waiting for a tourney to start. I don't want to quit the table by mistake: it's so easy to hit the 'close' button by accident. At other times it's a bit superfluous.

I agree with the above, in that I think we've exhausted the topic. I shall remember not to double one-level overcalls for penalties - and make use of the negative double convention. Others are a bit too complicated for me to remember! :unsure:

Interesting. I wonder what amounts to a 'positive expectancy' in your view. To me, the expectancy - the expected return - on a £1 lottery ticket - is always less than £1. Otherwise the 'good causes' wouldn't be able to benefit, nor would the operators be able to make a profit. It's the same with bookmakers and casinos. They're run as a business, not for your financial benefit! Clearly I got it wrong! I thought that these were like what in the UK we do call fruit machine, that means the sort with (usually three) rotors carrying pictures of fruit and other symbols, the object is to line up three identical symbols or certain combinations. Presumably that's one form of what's called 'slot machine' in the USA. But I've just googled a bit (betting shops being off my regular beat! :unsure: ) and it seems the fixed-odds machines offer different games like roulette. I didn't know that. Anyway, the point is, a minority of vulnerable people (I'm not speaking of multitudes of course) do get horribly addicted to these things, push all their cash into them, and end up seriously in debt. And it has erupted as a significant social problem, which is why many people want the things banned.

I've tried to do that, but I don't know how to, on this forum. Clicking on his profile, I can only bring up his last five posts, none of which upholds your assertion. Anyway, isn't it the Moderators' job to sort that sort of thing out?

OK, so you say Reese had it totally wrong. You're entitled to that view. As I said, I don't follow him to the letter any more. I still don't see what relevance your earlier post has, though.

You are right, sometimes it's not easy to justify one's point of view with perfect consistency. After all - yes - I do drive a car - I also cycle - and I look upon that as weighing up the risk, which is not the same as gambling as I see it. Some people do get enjoyment out of studying racehorses' form, scanning the football teams' performance, watching the cards at the casino (is that illegal btw - cf. Rain Man?) etc. etc. I don't have any interest in that sort of thing myself, but I can see they have a point. Years ago, in the days when the Football Pools were paramount, I helped out a syndicate of colleagues. I should explain that I was the geek amongst them, and I offered to write a bit of software simply to generate random numbers which they could then mark down on their coupon. I had a bit of fun writing the program, although it was little more than a pseudo-random-variate algorithm, using system time as the seed. I also had fun explaining to my sceptical colleagues, that a list with three consecutive numbers was still a random selection. They took a lot of persuading! But I made it perfectly clear, that I was happy to supply the numbers but in no way would I join the syndicate. As far as I recall, they only won trifling amounts. :rolleyes: Here in the UK we now have our national Lotto and the Euromillions, etc. etc., all of which I shun like the plague. But the real controversy of the moment, here, concerns so-called fixed-odds betting machines: fruit-machines located in betting shops and the like which accept very high stakes. Many people want these banned because of the damage they cause. You can guess where I stand! <_<

You want to know something? I was first playing bridge when most of you guys on here (or your parents) were still in nappies, back in the 1960s. I learnt a lot of my bridge back then from an excellent little handbook by Terence Reese, no less (and you're surely not about to dismiss him as a dumbass player or something....?) In the book, he quite explicitly states "If partner has already made a bid, a double is for penalties with the expectation of defeating the contract". Of course, I know full well that I can't play by that book any longer. Bridge has changed beyond recognition in the 50 years since, and I've had to learn my way into BBO systems the hard way, with many slip-ups on the way. I still don't understand much of plenty of other players' convention cards, even in the Acol Club. But I get by, now. And yes, I know that double of an opponents overcall at the one level no longer means penalties. After all, we have negative doubles now (which I do understand....) So I'm wondering where we get by insulting other contributors to this forum, possibly for no other reason than that they were, like me, playing bridge a long time ago. Oh well, if someone else can be a p****, so can I.

I once got inveigled into a 'penny-a-hundred' Rubber bridge session: this was back when I was a teenager and the pennies involved were old British pennies (240 to the pound but worth a lot more back then in real terms, than the present day British 1p or US cent). I was asked to make up a four along with three elderly ladies, friends of my parents, whom I'd never played with before. The session went along fine, but I didn't know it was going to be for money until right at the end, when we settled up and I found myself about 1/5d to the good :rolleyes: . I felt a bit embarrassed because I've held a lifelong aversion to gambling of any sort (OK: I'll buy the odd raffle ticket for charity, but that's as far as I'll go). But it would have been poor form to refuse to accept. Oh and I've paid up for a few BBO 'dollars'. I felt a twinge of conscience one day, felt I owed the site something after I've been using it for free for many weeks. But I don't intend to profit out of this (as I understand it, I can't cash in BBO$ anyway...) So that's not 'gambling' to me. Which is why I'd be as perplexed as anyone, if I'd been one of those unfortunate players in Thailand.

Well, it's happened to me several times. When I join a table straight from the List Open Tables view. And I've come in as declarer or defender too - not just as dummy. I know I won't get credited (or debited) with the outcome of the hand, but it's rather hard on the other players who didn't flounce. If it's an opponent who suddenly appears as a substitute, mid-hand, I try to help them out by explaining what's been played so far (assuming I can remember). Should I be doing that?

Apparently, in the UK, duty was levied on playing cards right up until 1960. That is the reason why the A♠ is still larger and more elaborately decorated than the other Aces, on British cards: it used to carry the duty stamp. And I remember reading somewhere, that back in the 19th century a man was hanged for forging the A♠ on packs of cards, in order to evade duty.... So it could have been worse.... :blink:

With respect, I don't think the troll problem is as bad as all that. My only other bridge activity is at the local U3A group. I don't know how many people are familiar with U3A (= "University of the Third Age") nor whether equivalents exist outside the UK, it's a charitable organisation for retired people, very friendly and informal, who get together in small groups for various self-organised activities at minimal cost. 'Small' groups maybe, the bridge group is very popular, we regularly have some 15 tables playing! We do Chicago and match-points duplicate. As you will have guessed, most of the participants are pretty 'senior' (we had one star member who'd just celebrated her 101st birthday - sadly she has since passed away, but others there are in their 90s) - and of course politeness goes without saying :) . So I've asked one or two people there, have you tried BBO? Some of the answers are, "yes, but people are SO rude over there". I've tried to reassure them that it's not all like that: I'm quite a fan of BBO, it's helped me a lot to get back into the game after a gap of many years. This suggests that there's a perception of bullying, rudeness and trolling, on BBO, which is largely imaginary. Sure, I've got a few people on my blacklist. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. What more can I say? Table-hoppers. Yes, some folks may not appreciate that this is rude. It's something I refrain from doing myself. One way to find out if you're up against a rogue partner, is: use "List Open Tables" instead of HMFAG, and when you see an attractive seat, join that table as a kibitzer first. That way, by looking through the past records, you'll see if there's been a quick succession of people occupying the seat you're about to take - which might indicate a problem partner. Another benefit in taking a seat from being a kibitzer, is that the hand has to be re-dealt. A way of avoiding coming in and having to play out a part-played hand, which I dislike intensely. The downside is that this all takes time, and in the meantime someone else might grab your seat. If there's a way of working around that, I'd like to know.

This sounds rather like a hand which I reported recently to Abuse@, which certainly fell under the category of 'impressive' :unsure: . This was a hand played by four humans, no robots, and I didn't discover any suspicious pattern in the humans' play, apart from this hand. Nevertheless, opening bidder called 1♥, and their partner, missing three aces, raised immediately to 7NT. Which made. The hands totalled 33 HCP. I'd played the same hand myself: this is how I came to be interested in the result and examine it. Without cheating :lol: , we reached and made 6NT with an overtrick.

As is the video ... looks like one of the cops has had a few too many green curries, there... Seriously, what are the risks of this sort of thing happening, when visiting one of these far-off places? Mrs O and I are off to Indonesia in a few weeks' time. Not to play bridge - still you've got us worried...