Vinish

My question is how does a diamond lead allow you to make 4S? Does declarer not still have two clubs and two heart losers? Before he can set up hearts for a pitch, it would seem that the defense should find their clubs. Do the robots continue with diamonds after winning their first heart? Do they then continue with diamonds again after winning their second heart? G'day, Vinish

Wow! There are some impressively knowledgeable people on here about statistics. I certainly in my original question and in the follow-up question wanted people offering help to assume that the BBO dealing was random and that the assignment of hands to a seat position was also random. Sure, this might not be true but I am glad that post #35 suggests there is some evidence that it is true. I am sorry that poster thepossum got upset but I saw nothing posted that was insulting or patronising. Thanks for the help on my two questions.

How is this option accessed? I play on the casual side with three friends. We play matchpoints. Under the "table menu", there is no "deal source" option. Am I correct that this "table menu" is the one that can be accessed after the game has been started and before the first hand has been dealt - for example while waiting for all invited persons to join? Thanks. G'day, Vinish

Ok, here is a related question. In that same sequence of 25 hands, I had 12 hcp exactly once and all other 24 hands were less than 12 hcp. What is the percent chance of having 25 hands with no hcp higher than 12?

In fact, it will happen precisely 0.1% of the time :) which is about 1 in 1000 25 board sessions. My team still beat the other team handily. As all duplicate players know - it is not the cards you are dealt, it is what you do with the cards you are dealt.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge than I have of statistics can help me with a question. How can I calculate the % chance of having an average of 7.48 hcp over the course of 25 hands? In recent BBO play in a casual side game created by me, I played with three friends and we played 25 hands. I went back and looked at all my hands from that session and counted the hcp in each. My max was 12 which happened only once. I had 11 hcp twice and 10 hcp four times. I even had 0 hcp once. My average for 25 hands was 7.48 hcp. I wonder how you would go about calculating the odds of getting that few an avg. number of hcp over 25 hands. According to website with some bridge statistics, the odds of getting exactly 7 hcp in one hand is 8.03% and the odds of getting 8 hcp in one hand is 8.89%. Graphing and interpolating yields the odds of getting 7.48 hcp as being about 8.5043%. I do not think this is a correct analysis but is there any chance that the odds of averaging exactly 7.48 hcp over 25 hands is (1-0.085043)^25 which would be (0.914957)^25 = 0.108 or 10.8% of the time? Thanks for any help you can offer. G'day, Vinish

The game in which my friends were auto-booted was in the "casual" room and then I selected a "Relaxed" game. Despite it being a "relaxed" game, they still got booted. Is a "Relaxed" game different than a "Relaxed bridge club"?

Yes, it does auto-boot players if they do not act in a certain amount of time when it is their turn. This is true even if they are "friends". Last week I was playing with three people I know. All of us know each other. I had all three of them listed in my "Friends" list. All three showed up in the "People" tab as being in the game I created. Two of them got auto-booted after certain amounts of time when they were inactive. They were automatically replaced by robots. I had to boot the robot and re-invite the booted person to the table. I will try putting "+slow+" in the table description. It will only be my friends playing again so this description will not cause any concerns. Thanks.

When playing in a casual game with three friends, we play for 2-3 hours. At least once and maybe more often we want to take a bio-break or raid the fridge. As the table host/creator, is there a way for me to pause the game so we can all take a break? I tried searching for this topic but the only words I could think to describe it are "break" and "pause" and these elicit large numbers of posts related to breaks in tempo or pauses during bidding/play delivering possible unintended information which is not what I am asking about. Thanks for any help you can offer. G'day, Vinish

I was pretty dang proud of myself... at least for a few moments. I used search to find a thread titled, "How to use old vugraph deals in a set game". I though I was all set. In this thread were the instructions to: "Click 1. CASUAL 2. Start a table 3. Start a vugraph game table" I tried doing this but when I reached step #3 there were only two options in blue boxes at the bottom of the page: "Start Table - Relaxed game" "Start Table - Competitive game" There was no place to select a "Vugraph" game. The thread I found was from August, 2018 and I have been reading a lot about the BBO software changing. Perhaps the instructions applied to the previous version. If so, what is the process to start a game using past Vugraph deals? Thanks for any help you can offer. G'day, Vinish

helene_t, Thanks for the quick response. I will go look for Vugraph archive hands and see if I can figure out how to play these. Can you or anyone else tell me specifically: 1) What are the numbers in the second "We" and "They" column when I selected an IMP type game? These numbers seemed to range from ~10 for N/S to ~10 for E/W. 2) Is there a way to post an image that is NOT from the web but, rather, is from my computer? 3) What are the numbers in the orange boxes below the second "We" and "Them" columns? Are these overall game percents like you get in a matchpoint game? G'day, Vinish

I tried to search for an answer to this and could not find anything so I hope you will forgive my asking the question if it has been asked a zillion times before and, if so, just point me to one of those places. With the shutdown of our local ACBL sanctioned club, four frequent club players have decided to play on BBO. Two of us have played a few times in the past in tournaments but the other two are total novices. Today, I created a game in the "casual" section and invited my three friends to play. This went well. I did not know if it made any difference so I left the game type as "IMPS". We played about 28 hands over a couple of hours and after we were done, I looked at my "history" and saw some results that I did not understand. I took a screen shot and saved it as a .jpg but cannot see a way to post an image from my computer. So my first question is - How can I post a small (~60 kb) image? The results had column headings of "Board", "Result", "We", "They", "We", "They". I understand the first four columns. The first "We" and "They" are the normal hand score (e.g. 3NT NV making 4 is listed as 430. What are the second "We" and "They" columns? I suspect that since I left this as an IMP game, these columns somehow contain a score compared to other tables but how is this done for IMPS? Lastly, at the bottom of the list of scores it shows two boxes in orange - one for each pair (N/S and E/W). The N/S box says "59.9" and the E/W box says "45.1". Is this some sort of overall percent like you get for matchpoints for all the hands played in that game? Thanks for any help you can provide. G'day, Vinish

Thanks. Your responses are helpful. G'day, Vinish

Please pardon my beginner questions. My normal partner and I are new to BBO. We tried to play last night in our first tournament on BBO. It was about 6:45 p.m. Eastern USA time. At the time, we has not put any money into the BB$ so we tried to join several free pairs tournaments. We were unsuccessful at doing this. In hindsight, we now realize that one of the tournaments was limited to members of some group so it makes sense we could not join that one. The other two tournaments did not appear to be private but we could still not join them. We surmise that this may be due to something we subsequently learned about "TCR". Both of us had a TCR of "unknown" since, at that time, we had completed zero of zero tournaments. We later put BB$ in, played in a $1 tournament (took 2nd), and then looked at our TCR and it still was "unknown". Then, this morning, I looked more closely at some of the "restrictions" listed for free tournaments. This led me to the following questions I hope you can help with. 1) If a tournament language is not English (e.g. Greek or Spanish), is it rude to join if you only speak English? My partner and I sure don't want to be rude or violate any etiquette. 2) What does it mean when it says "country" in the restrictions? Does this mean that you have to be from a certain country to play in that tournament? 3) What does it mean when it says "no runners" in the restrictions? 4) What does it mean when it says "include custom list" in the restrictions? 5) What does it mean when it says "exclude custom list" in the restrictions? 6) What does it mean when it says "exclude web list" in the restrictions? 7) When it says something like "TCR 70%" in the restrictions, this probably means that you must have a TCR of 70% to play. In how many tournaments do you have to play to get a TCR? We played in a Pay BBO tournament last night and still have a TCR of "unknown". Does playing in individual tournaments, in BBO tournaments, or ACBL tournaments on BBO, count toward your TCR for free tournaments? 8) What does it mean when it says "No new members" in the restrictions? Does this mean it is a private club tournament and the club is not accepting new members? Or does it mean that the tournament will not accept players/teams who are new to BBO? If the latter, how long do you have to be a BBO member to not be new? An example of this is a tournament called "AA Friday Hornets AA" Thanks for your patience with what are undoubtedly newbie questions. G'day, Vinish