661_Pete

All very interesting, thanks for the comments. Don't get me wrong! I'm not really gutted at what happened here, I found it quite amusing in reality. And both opponents are from my club, so I know them well (I have partnered this hand's East many times - with a fair amount of success). Certainly 3♦ by west is unbeatable, so it's not all bad. And, looking again at the traveller, I was wrong about getting a 'bottom' - one pair went 4 down in 1NT somehow! I agree that stiff AK in the opponents' long suit isn't an ideal holding in 1NT!

It's bad form, I suppose, to blame every bad result on 'bad luck'. But this one really takes the biscuit: [hv=pc=n&s=st7643hj75dakcaq3&w=sj5ha3dqjt9742c52&n=s982hkt86d65cj986&e=sakqhq942d83ckt74&d=n&v=e&b=5&a=pp1nppp]399|300[/hv] Not wishing to bid my miserable spade suit, I opened 1NT (weak) which was passed out. I know 1NT contracts are usually unplanned and often fail to go as one wishes, but I had some hopes of limiting this to -1 at worst, despite partner's weak holding. West led Q♦ (naturally) won by my K. I decided to set up a couple of spades, hoping that at least two of the honours would fall together - as indeed they did. East cashed her top spades then returned a diamond to my A. Silently thanking E for helping to set up my long spades, I cashed them (west discarding clubs) then led J♥ hoping to set up an entry to finesse the clubs. I knew I was in for the loss of a few diamond tricks, but was not prepared for west to instantly claim the rest of the tricks! -3 and a joint bottom. Yes I realise now I should have played hearts before touching the spades, but could I have guessed that? Over to you guys for advice....

Indeed. I found this out for myself, the hard way. A pity one has to trawl all the way through this forum to find the information. Thanks a lot for calling us users of BBO the 'guilty' ones in this little fiasco!!! :angry: I don't give a damn whether Flash is set to be 'deprecated', whether we ought to be 'punished' for still using the flash version. It wasn't my choice to abolish Flash, thank you very much! You want to know why I'm still using the Flash version, some of the time? It's because I'm accustomed to playing REAL bridge, with REAL cards, with a layout on the screen that I can feel COMFORTABLE with! I do NOT want to play from a hand diagram, nor from those apologies for card representations with only one pip and a number on them. Has anyone who took part in designing the new UI, ever seen a pack of real playing cards? I want to see completed tricks laid out on the table in the same way as we do in live bridge. I.e. with cards laid face-down in a row on the table, tricks won with the card pointed towards myself and partner, tricks lost with the card pointed towards the opponents. Isn't that the way all live duplicate players manage their cards? I don't want to have to constantly drag the 'separator' bars left and right, up and down, just so that I can see all the text in the various fields. I play on a computer with a monitor resolution of 1280 x 1024. Isn't that enough now? Do I have to buy a bigger monitor, just to keep up with BBO's addiction to 'improvement'? If I am inducing confusion, confusion there shall be. I didn't ask for these changes!

John Andrew - I was totally unaware of the personal issues you have to contend with, as detailed in your post. All respect for your perseverance! I've been playing in the Acol@BBO tourneys, on and off, for some years now and I hope to see them continue (though I keep forgetting about the time changes!). I'd be happy to play them even if they becomes paid-for tourneys (within reason), but perhaps other participants might take a different view? I don't know. Would it be worth canvassing the Acol@BBO members to see what they think? Since the lockdown I've of course not been paying my regular table money at the f2f club. Same true for most other club players I reckon. People should perhaps be reminded of this!

OK, I think I understand, thanks. Perhaps it's because I haven't played social bridge for well over 40 years, one tends to forget that there are still social players just moving on to duplicate, even now. Most of my bad habits were ironed out once I resumed bridge about 5-6 years ago when I retired. Firstly, there were the 'casual' rooms in BBO, where many 'sins' pass unremarked. Like, for example, explaining your bid to the table (including your partner!). What else can you do, when you're playing with a 'pick-up' partner who has no system written on their profile, or who categorises themself as 'expert' when they clearly aren't?! Then there was the U3A, where the 'Chicago' section still allowed a lot of latitude. For one thing, the director/organiser (bless him!) had a lot of duties, one of which was helping the less-able players with their bidding. Not so, of course, the fortnightly duplicate, which was much more formal. That was pre-booked on a first come, first serve basis, and once the seven tables were filled (to enable a straight Mitchell movement) you couldn't join in. Frustrating! But when I did secure a place, I learnt a few things - some of them the hard way! On one occasion, I remember, LHO was declarer after my partner had overcalled in a suit in which I happened to be void. I'd hoped he'd lead his suit and give me a ruff, but it never happened. Once declarer got in, being mindful of the ruff danger, she wasted no time in drawing trumps, then led the suit in question. Out of sheer annoyance, and without even thinking, I slammed my discard on the table more forcefully than I ought to have. We all lose our temper at times?! But it put declarer in a rage, she accused me of 'cheating'. Of course I apologised. But what upset me was, a week or two later when I found myself once again at the same table with this person, she repeated the accusation of 'cheating' - before two others who hadn't been at the table in question. That was, I think, out of order. I'd had enough: I then quit the U3A and joined a club instead. Enough of my loathsome confessions, I think! I've learned. The other thing I learned on resuming bridge, of course, was how much bidding has changed over the course of 50 years or so. I learnt most of my stuff, originally, from the excellent 1960s book by Terence Reese, which I still have, but it's very dated now. It says nothing of transfers, of RKCB, of Negative Doubles, of Ogust, Landy, Michaels, jacoby, UNT, etc. Those things must have emerged later. But I continued to learn! Oh and, talking about playing out to the thirteenth trick, that's one of the things I'm diligent enough not to do! I'm often one of the first to claim, and hence one of the first to complete a round. But I know better than to rudely say "claim" when I'm dummy: my partner has to decide that! All of this is way off topic, of course: I still have no idea about how, or whether, f2f bridge will ever start up again. I'm very despondent about this.

I don't know what is meant by "kitchen table bridge", or "those players", alluded to above. Could someone explain? Certainly, those who join a 'serious' bridge club for the first time, whether online or f2f, soon become aware that there are Laws and matters of etiquette which must be adhered to. And if you're in any doubt, anyone can access the Laws of Bridge in the public domain. Worth a skim through, though I don't think even TDs can memorise the entire code word-for-word! (Which is why our club TDs, despite having passed the qualification test, carry a copy of the Laws around in their pocket!) Speaking for myself, I played social rubber bridge with fellow-students and friends up until the 1970s, then I let it lapse until joining the U3A group, and subsequently a club, in the late 2010s. The U3A was still fairly informal (mostly playing Chicago scoring) but not so at the club, playing duplicate. It did not take me long to learn that certain rules must be observed when playing more formally. Maybe I was one of "those players" at first, certainly I was pulled up in the first few sessions for involuntary breaches of rules or etiquette (e.g. failing to alert certain bids) but I think I now know the 'system'. Certainly I know perfectly well, thank you, about not making any movement or gesture that might convey UI to partner. Surely that goes without saying! I only wish other players adhered to the rules - but those that I know, do so. So .... I just hope the expressions "kitchen table bridge" and "those players" weren't meant to be derogatory! As regards f2f bridge - I have my doubts as to whether it'll ever resume in its pre-covid format. I'm still thinking of chucking the whole thing in...

We had an elderly chap at our U3A club, name of Frank, in his mid 90s and rather frail. When he wasn't playing bridge, he'd be sitting in a cafe in town and waiting for his friends to pass by and stop to have a chat. I used to stop for a chat whenever I saw him. He told me that his eyesight was failing and if things didn't improve he'd have to give up bridge, which for him would amount to "giving up his life". Once I came upon him in tears. I didn't stop by on that occasion, because he was with someone else and I didn't want to cause embarrassment. In due course he stopped turning up at the U3A sessions and at the cafe - and some time later I learnt that he'd passed away. At least he never lived to see the present chaos. In the present situation, I fear there will be many more 'Frank's..... :( I feel minded to chuck it in myself. I'm somewhat younger and fitter than Frank was, but I don't know whether I'll live to see the resumption of normal F2F bridge... I'm not getting very far with online, BBO notwithstanding.

My feeling is, BBO has plenty of instances of "bad bid that got lucky". I've seen other examples. Anyone want to comment on this? [hv=pc=n&s=sq763hq54dq8cqj85&n=s9hak9732dkj732c7&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=pp4hdppp]266|200[/hv] I wasn't playing this, only kibitzing. As the cards lay, North made ten tricks without difficulty after hearts split 3-1. E later explained that X was for takeout, but W obviously thought different! Thing is, third seat after two passes, I would never have opened 4♥ on that hand. With the 6-5-1-1 to help, it's good enough for 1♥. The bidding would have probably reached 4♥ anyway, but E would have been unlikely to double - even though they had two AK's. But maybe I'm wrong?

I had already done that! I'm not that stupid! You can drag the separator bar between the table area and the chat area, up and down with the mouse. I don't know if or how it works on phones, though. If you're using the old flash version, then if you drag the separator right down to the bottom, a 'chat' tab pops up on the rhs of the screen. With the new version, the chat just disappears altogether. But this is not what I want. I want to selectively disable chat directed to the 'club', whilst keeping other forms of chat active. Seeing as none of the Admins seem to have noticed this thread - or if they have, they're not answering - I'll repeat: Which part of "Please cut CHAT->CLUB when playing" did you not understand?

I'm referring to the 'casual' areas of BBO of course. I know this has been asked before - by me and probably by others. It is not possible to suppress CHAT messages sent to the CLUB, even when playing at a table, without turning off Chat altogether. This needs to be fixed, especially with the massive influx of new players (very welcome - so long as BBO can cope!). Significant messages from others at the same table are being missed because the chatline scrolls up too fast. So could you please enable CHAT->CLUB messages to be suppressed when playing? If I've missed something, if there is an available option somewhere to achieve this, please tell me. Alternatively, if this is completely impossible, please explain why it is impossible. Your techies have clearly been doing a lot of work making the site more robust in the current circumstances. And in the past year or so, they have come up with a completely new UI for BBO* to skirt around the 'Flash' problem. Surely they could devote a short time to fixing this problem!? *Inferior to the old UI, in my view.

We played the hand below on BCL, sitting N-S at game all, pairs MPs. At our table E-W reached a plausible if somewhat optimistic 3♥, going 3 down. A reasonable result for us, I thought, possibly near a 'top' seeing as there was no game for N-S. Nothing interesting to see, move along please! Not so at another table. Here is the deal and the bidding at that other table: [hv=pc=n&s=sj73hkt7dk853cq65&w=sk42h64dqjt764ckt&n=sqt85hqj8d92caj92&e=sa96ha9532dac8743&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=p2dp2hp3dp3hp3np6nppp]399|300[/hv] Both East and West's first bids were alerted, but with no explanation. My guess is, West was bidding an acol weak 2, which East interpreted as multi, strong 2, or whatever. Or East may have simply lost the plot. Anyway, West appears to have been able only to cash their 4 top winners, going 8 down. Of course, with only one entry to hand, they couldn't set up the diamonds. "-8"s don't come my way very often! I know I shouldn't laugh, but........ :D :rolleyes:

Just how, then, do you expect the hundreds of local clubs to survive this disaster? Play on Skype or Zoom (which are of course also overloaded)? How do you deal out the cards???? At the moment some of our local f2f club (only a very few, actually - we have over 50 members but I've only seen up to ten of us online at one time) have been trying out the (paid-for) ARBC tournaments in the afternoons (when BBO is slightly less crowded). They have been going smoothly up till now, but I'm sure they won't cope if every club member deprived of f2f bridge joins up! I personally have dropped out of ARBC because I don't like playing against robots. I appreciate what the BBO techies are doing, but I still think it's not enough. I tried to get on Acol@bbo last night, but no go - it just crashed out a few seconds before the start. We're looking into an alternative option (not BBO) but I'm not going into details here. To be honest, I don't think there is a solution, and for many of us older people for whom bridge is a major component of our social life, things are looking dire. How many will give up bridge altogether, I don't know. Just as I don't know how many will die. :(

One of my regular f2f partners (UK based) has told me that she is unable to buy BB$. She says she tried with a perfectly good credit card, but no joy. As it happens, I bought some successfully a few days earlier. If this is a bug in BBO, it needs to be fixed URGENTLY. So that we can play in the tournaments. I'll pay for her for the time being, but not indefinitely.

Please will you get rid of this feature with immediate effect. BBO has got so slow in recent days that I have constantly been getting these popups. To say I am utterly hacked off with them would be an understatement. I'm sure everyone else feels the same.

I too have had difficulty logging in to the new client (the version that doesn't use Flash). And when I do get in, the site is sometimes very slow. No problems with the old, Flash version. I'm continuing to use that. And it must continue to be available, at least until the Coronavirus epidemic is over. Live bridge players who are venturing into online play for the first time, are not going to take kindly to the new version.