Elianna

For the same character, I was asked: If my character was female If my character was a woman If my character was a girl. I answered yes, yes, no (because I thought that it was a question about age), and it answered all men.

It got Abel on it's second guess (first set of questions led to Tesla). It completely missed Melvil Dewey (but had him in the database), same with Rosalind Franklin. I added Charles Goren.

Speaking as a teacher whose students played games with their parents, but weren't read to, I think he's just plain wrong. While they may teach him TO read at school, they can't teach him to LIKE to read.

Very well said Dana, thank you. I have previously stated my experience as a (not so young) female junior in other threads, but, in short, being spoken down to, and having "bridge lessons" that consist of when you should have sex with the male juniors so that they'll play better, is not my idea of creating a level playing field for both genders.

That's true of all national events, plus GNT district finals. The payout is decided ahead of time, before the event, and is not based on the number of tables.

And were EW actually playing short club, or was that just an assumption South made?

I don't doubt that you are right about that. :( But Adam didn't ask his partner. He asked BBF. Rik Adam asked what the best method was. I pointed out that the best method was the one that partner would remember. Gerben agreed with that criteria, but disagreed with which one would be easier to remember. It is the last point I am arguing with.

Although I agree with points (a) and (B) I fail to see how this relates with SJS... For me, playing a jumpshift as something strong goes against my basic philosophy that jumping around should be some specifica hand type, leaving partner an informed decision. Also the hand type should not be extremely rare. Opposite an opening bid (13 HCP on avg.) partner rates to have 9, so IJS will come up a lot. Also, they are well described and very often give partner a simple decision. With a SJS, there are just so many more contracts possible opposite partner's nondescript 15-count, that I wouldn't want to rob him a cheap rebid. It is often the case that with a SJS hand you would want to vary your strategy based on partner's rebid. For example I can think of cases where I do not rebid my 6-card suit based on the auction. With an IJS you often just want to show your hand and let partner make the tough decisions. To come back to (a) and (B) for me it's very easy to identify a good IJS hand, but to identify and make a SJS, you need to consider complicated reasons why it would be preferred over bidding 1M instead, looking at all possible rebids by partner etc. So for me, (B) is not given for a SJS. Maybe that's lack of education. I hate to argue, but I do think that I am more capable of predicting what his partner would find more intuitive to remember than you are.

I think that you should play whatever raises the probability that (a) your partner will remember what the bid means. (b) remember to make that bid with a suitable hand. My vote goes for SJS.

Sorry, doesn't beat Tom Lehrer's New Math for me.

He lost his convention card less often than Lindqvist. And was nice enough to move when asked to move early so that we could start the last round.

Is he still bachelor? I was following him the entire second session. Definitely ranks up there as one of the better-looking bridge players, along with the pair I was following the first day, too.

Is this the thread you meant? If so, it was never deleted. Expert personality thread about 20 experts in an individual I realize that my above post was very long, but if you read to the end, I addressed that.

I am not sure, but I thought that it was a different thread than that. I remember the how quickly to judge ability thread, and Adam posted in that. That one was interesting, too. I thought that this was a different thread, asking about top experts' styles. Someone started it by saying how the experts at his (her?) club had specific styles or mistakes (like overbidding), and then others responded by saying that top experts don't vary so much because they don't make as many mistakes of that sort. And there was some debate about that. I mentioned KR because there was some discussion about him (just so that you knew what point in the conversations I saw), not because he was necessarily involved as either a criticizer or someone being criticized. The part that was fun was not about other posters. That part could be deleted for all I care (though the ones getting deleted deserve some feedback as Justin notes). The part that was interesting to me was about styles of top experts, and it was a shame to lose a whole thread over other things going on. Although now that I've looked, I've refound that thread here: http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=35520 I had understood from Justin's other thread THAT one was deleted, but I may have been under the wrong impression, and I'm sorry about that. Unfortunately, Justin's thread is no longer here, and I can't re-read it to see why I was confused. So in short: We were talking about different threads being deleted (which was my fault). But I still think that Justin's WHOLE thread should not have been deleted. And I do not think that making fun of other posters is fun. It's just that if posts are found to be objectionable (by whoever's judgement), it would be nice if it were addressed to the poster, and when there's feedback about moderation, it were acknowledged, as you are doing, instead of being summarily deleted, like Justin's thread. (Sorry, not so "in short")

If someone would paraphrase the points in the deleted thread, I would be more than happy to share my views. The original thread (that Adam alluded to) was asking if the twenty best players were playing in an individual annonymously, would they recognize each other by their styles, and there were several informative statements about variance among these top experts. Then someone said an interesting challenge would be identifying posters by their posts. And someone said that they could recognize Ken Rexford (who did not seem insulted by this). And according to what I heard, someone said that they could recognize someone else (but I did not read that post). Then all of a sudden (overnight it seemed), this thread was gone. Instead, there's a thread Justin started in the Water Cooler asking if it's an insult to say that they'd recognize a certain poster in less than 6 posts. Then that thread was suddenly gone. No explanation for either why the (otherwise) interesting thread was gone, and no response to Justin's thread. I understand deleting posts that others deem offensive, but did the whole thread have to go? And with no explanation? And then a thread asking about it was summarily shut down, with no response. I appreciate you taking the time and engaging. I know that both you and Uday are very vigilant about taking ownership of post deletion, and that you have tough judgement calls that someone has to make. I do appreciate that the two of you don't sweep things under the rug, and respond to complaints that members have.

Yes, I agree. I did not mean to put the focus on the moderators. I do not want to start a thread criticizing them. I realize that they have a very tough job. My main hope is to launch a clarification of rules and policies, in the hopes that if they are stated, they will be clearer for the whole community, and there might be less people unknowingly falling foul of those rules. I think that it would benefit everyone to have transparent rules rather than opaque ones like "be nice", which are up to interpretation.

Justin recently started a thread asking about a moderation question. Several others responded, saying we agreed with his concerns, or at least agreed with his interpretation of a post in question. As that thread was closed and deleted, I do not know what response forum moderators would make to his points. I do not wish to discuss his specific issue, but I would like to discuss thread moderation in general: If someone finds a post offensive, is it policy that the whole thread is automatically deleted? Is it policy to not give any feedback on any decisions? I don't mean ASKING for our opinions, but posting reasons for deleting threads/posts. Or even a post saying that a thread was deleted/locked, so that one could send that person a message to discuss it. I hope that any regular forum member who posts in this thread will be polite. I am not trying to start a thread criticizing moderators (I know that they have a hard time). I would just like to discuss policies in a calm, adult, and open manner, so that everyone knows where they stand. And I would hope that if someone feels that this thread is inappropriate, they would tell me why.

This was almost exactly the post in it's entirety. BTW this post was NOT by me and was by someone who does not really ever use personal attacks. Then it seems to me to be even more so WTP. Because someone had ALREADY started the topic of I'd recognize so-and-so's posts, so it wasn't out of context.

I think that it would depend on what else was said. If it was just "I'd recognize Elianna's posts in 6 or less", what's the problem? If it said "I'd recognize Elianna's posts in 6 or less because they're usually random and seldom never on topic", that might seem to be looking for a fight, but it's not a PERSONAL attack. If it said "I'd recognize Elianna's posts in 6 or less because she's an fing idiot and shouldn't be thinking about playing bridge", I'd say that was a personal attack. As I did not see the post, I cannot comment on which of the three it was. From what you describe, it would fall into the first two examples for me, and I wouldn't report it. And I am a pretty liberal reporter. eta: I voted no

[hv=d=s&v=b&s=sq9753haqj4dqj98c]133|100|Scoring: MP 1♠ (x) 4♠ p p (x) p 5♣; ??[/hv]

I voted for the middle road, because it depends on these "others" that you speak of. I know that there are some people that think I'm a way worse player than I am (because they played with/against me five/ten years ago or when I'm watching TV) or those that think I'm a better player than I usually am, because I've been unusually in practice when I played with/against them. And there are those who make opinions solely based on stupid facts. Some of them include that I am a director (usually an upwards evaluation, sometimes (MATMAT) a downwards evaluation). Some based on the fact I'm a woman. Some based on the fact that I'm younger than many bridge players in my area (and look even younger than I am). And others evaluate based on who I play with (that they've seen). And that can go up or down depending on their opinion of the person. So it's very hard to judge my skill level relative to what "others" think, because who knows what others think. A more telling question may be asking about judging vs. some objective ranking, like masterpoints for ACBL players. Or tournaments won. Etc.

The difference is that the brackets will be 32 teams, instead of the more typical 16 teams, and each round will be a full day of 48 or 56 boards (depending on the masterpoint range of the bracket) instead of 1 session. So the winner of a bracket will have to play for 5 full days, much like the current mini-Spingold. But it still pretty much sucks. Especially since they seem to want to put a proviso that teams can only move up one bracket. And that's only if a team is willing to move down. Like that's going to happen. Plus, this thing about capping it at 36,000 points to discourage pro teams? Yea right! There's the SPINGOLD going on. That's enough to discourage pro teams that have 4 pros with more than 9,000 points. There are plenty of pros that have less.

;) Would/do the same people complain under ACBL where I understand that Self Abuse (oopps sorry Self alerting) is mandatory If that is not an 'aid memoir to Wake up partner I dont know what is :P Partner can't see your alerts. But he CAN see the FD explanation of your bid.

The main person that does this that I'm thinking of is under 40 (I think) but is still among the oldest at the bridge club where we play.

It only works if you yell it loud enough so the tables around you can hear. I hate card snapping, and what I call "after snapping". This is AFTER the person has managed to place the card on the table, and then starts snapping it. So annoying. Usually I say nothing, except if it's a newish deck, then I say something about wanting to ruin the deck, and leave it at that. These people are NEVER going to change, no matter what's said to them, so I don't bother saying anything most of the time. About getting partner to stop arguing/lecturing, OP has gotten some GREAT advice. I particularly endorse Justin's "It takes two to tango" approach. If that's not enough (and I had a partner one time where that wasn't enough, "You are lecturing me on something that I told you, therefore I already know it", in a very flat, unemotional tone worked wonders. "I need to concentrate on the rest of the game" sometimes works, too. The trick is to deliver lines like this UNEMOTIONALLY. You're not joining in the argument, nor trying to deliver the last comeback. You're trying to distract the person and change the subject/tone.