Kaitlyn S

Apologies to diana for taking a quote out of context. You need to call them "undocumented immigrants". Otherwise some gullible souls will think you're saying she's having group sex with extraterrestrial beings.

I see nothing about faith alone or ultimate knowledge in the first post. From what your post alone, one would assume that mikeh was running a scam. Do I think that mikeh is running a scam? No, don't be ridiculous. (Of course, some of my friends might point out that any liberal that isn't just being duped themselves is pulling off a scam, but I'm not buying it there. I think mikeh truly believes what he posts, just like I truly believe that Rush believes what he says - again, remembering that Rush started when broadcasting conservative messages was not a moneymaker.) Did I think I was trying to be funny? Of course. Do I think it's totally sad that nobody here got the humor? Yes. Very, very sad. Sad because I'm being called the clueless one. My next post will be another attempt at humor, Please don't read anything else into it.

I'll let Eddie Kantar tell you. https://books.google...%20suit&f=false

East was on lead. This makes West likely to hold the ♡ King.

I did enjoy it. BTW you may be surprised to hear that I'm in favor of vaccinations being a requirement to attend school.

I have reached such a high level of fame that I am now described by one letter :D

I've finally found something that mikeh and I strongly agree on.

This. I would nominate this for post of the year if I didn't think that the nomination had to be bridge-related, and if it wasn't too late for nominations.

So MikeH is running a scam?

I'm going to talk from the POV of someone that knows nothing (yes, I know you think that should be easy for me :lol: ) and has no preconceived notions. While what you are saying is possible for Hannity, I have some evidence that it is not the case fr Limbaugh. I believe he started his conservative talk show in the 1980's when it wasn't popular. If he was into pulling off a scam and making a buck, he had many easier ways to do it, as it was difficult for him to get sponsors at the time. He claims to have had to give away advertising time on his show for free in order to prove to advertisers that it was worthwhile to advertise on his show. From your POV, he was essentially gambling several years of his life on an untested sham or an unproven method of making money. I find it hard to believe that he would have taken that chance if he really didn't believe what he was preaching. You could make the point that at one time he did believe in it enough to take that life gamble but has since learned that by being more outrageous he can make more money that if he sticks to what he truly believes. I have no facts to disprove that, just as I think you have no facts to prove it. However, he has probably surrounded himself with people with opinions similar to those of the people I've surrounded myself with, so I think it's fairly likely that he still strongly believes what he's preaching. I will grant you that Hannity may have seen a get rich quick scheme since he has seen that it was successful for others. I'm not conceding the fact; I still think it's likely that he believes most of what he says, but I will concede that there is some chance that I am being duped. But given Limbaugh's start, selling him as a fraud is going to be an uphill battle.

I hear this argument all the time but usually from the alt-right when they tell me that I am not only a deplorable but also an infidel who many want to kill.

Answers: (material in blue is more advanced) 1. [hv=pc=n&s=s73hkj742dkq95c62&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1cp1hp1sp1np2sp]133|200[/hv] Do you agree with the auction so far? What bid do you choose? Hint: Your partner hopes to take several tricks with black cards. How is he going to get to use them? Answer: (a) Do you agree with the auction so far? 1H is pretty clear. Partner rebids 1S and you can't leave him in a silly spot. A 2H rebid which is very likely to be passed when partner is minimum is a poor choice. You don't want to play with hearts as trump when partner has a singleton, but what do you expect partner to do with 4 spades, 1 heart, 3 diamonds, and 5 clubs over your 2H rebid? Many pairs play 2D as forcing and artificial (fourth suit forcing) but even if you play 2D as natural, you hand isn't good enough. While I suggest 11 points for new suits on the 2 level, some players say 10 and while you originally counted 9 HCP + 1 for length, your fifth heart is unlikely to be that productive on this auction, and in the cases where partner does have three-card heart support, partner's diamonds are likely to be short, making your ♦KQ less valuable - so I would say you have only 9 points here based on the auction up to 1S. Charles Goren used to suggest subtracting a point for an aceless hand so that also argues against having the strength for a 2-level bid. All that's left is 1NT and 2NT. 2NT shows 11-12 and you clearly don't have that. Even if you bid 2NT on 10, the same hand evaluation argument applies. So, 1NT is the correct second bid on this auction. (b) What now? Your partner has at least eleven black cards and will attempt to play to make his black suits good. Once, good, partner will need an entry to get to them. This entry will likely be a trump, and this will be a lot easier when partner has six trump and your side has eight trump than when partner has five trump and your side has seven. Make clubs trump. Bid 3C. Note that although you have 9 points, you have a terrible hand for partner. You have no help in either black suit, and if partner has one card in each red suit, your high cards may prove to be worthless in covering your partner's losers. You'd like to get out as cheaply as possible, and are only taking the auction to the three level to allow partner to play in your side's best trump suit. If you thought about 2NT, think about how the play would go in notrump. You want to try to promote one or both of partner's black suits but have no help and will have few entries to partner's hand, and his suits will have lots of holes in them. You could be down several tricks in 2NT. Partner needs to play in one of his suits in order to reach his hand to establish his suits. 2. [hv=pc=n&s=sk63hk9754dk754c2&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1cp1hp1sp1np2sp]133|200[/hv] Do you agree with the auction so far? What bid do you choose? Hint: How do you think the play is going to go? Answer: (a) Do you agree with the auction so far? Again, you don't want to rebid hearts which will usually lead to hearts being trump opposite a singleton. You're not strong enough to bid 2D even if it's natural. A spade raise tends to show four trump, and while 2S might play okay if partner passes, your hand will be a disappointment if partner bids a spade game based on four spades and lots of clubs. Partner is likely to be forced to trump a red suit and his clubs will be stranded. The auction so far is fine. (b) I can see thinking "Goody! We have a 5-3 spade fit so now we can count our singleton club as 3 points giving us 12 points! We are very close to game opposite a minimum hand!" Not so fast. Is this singleton really an asset? For partner to make 4S, he will have to set up the clubs, which is pretty difficult with you having one club. You can trump club losers, but how is partner going to get to his hand to lead clubs to trump? If he gets to hand with a trump, that's one less trump you can trump a club with. If he gets to hand by ruffing, he may set up clubs but won't have enough trump to draw trump and be able to get back to enjoy the clubs. Chances are that partner will have several club tricks that he can't get to. A crossruff is no better. Neither of your red suit kings is likely to be useful so even if partner has the ♣A and you never get overruffed, you can only get 8 tricks on the crossruff plus his ♣A. The only high card in your hand that is likely to have value is the ♠K, and your singleton club is a liability in setting up partner's black suits. I recommend that you pass 2S. Often when partner's hand is so good that he can make 4S on normal splits opposite this hand, he will have jumped to 3S on his third bid. 3. [hv=pc=n&s=sj96ht765da72ckj3&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1cp1hp1sp1np2sp]133|200[/hv] Do you agree with the auction so far? What bid do you choose? Hint: How is partner going to like this dummy? Answer: (a) Do you agree with the auction so far? It is tempting to pass 1S with this hand (a new suit by opener normally isn't forcing) but partner's 1S rebid has an upper limit of about 18 points so game is still in the picture. You need to show a minimum hand by bidding an old suit or 1NT but you should strive to bid again to give partner a chance to show 17 or 18 points. Again, 2S would show four. If partner would bid this way with 4-3-3-3 distribution with 4 spades, you can't go back to 2C risking a 3-3 fit. Bidding 1NT is fine. If you and partner only would rebid 1S on unbalanced hands, then partner shows at least four clubs and probably has five. With this agreement, I would choose 2C rather than 1NT. (b) What next? This time, your cards are excellent in helping your partner establish his long black suits. Your ♣KJx means that partner may be able to run clubs with no losers, and if his club suit is bad enough that there's a club loser, then his spades are likely good enough to lose only one trick opposite your ♠Jxx. Your ♦A will take care of one of partner's two red suit losers. Also, the hand should be easy for partner to play with few entry problems, your three-card support for each black suit means partner can play each of those suits three times before needing an entry to his hand to lead the suit. Consider that if partner has as little as: [hv=pc=n&n=sqt832h2d3caq6542]133|100[/hv] that partner will draw trump, driving out the ♠A and K, and even if he gets repeated heart leads making him ruff three times, he can use your ♠J to draw the last trump and make 4S when trumps are 3-2. If you didn't bid game here, a general lesson to be learned is that when partner is distributional, high cards in his suits are quite valuable.

Thanks. Removed it.

Do you think that Sean Hannity is stating things he believes to be false or do you think he believes what he says? Same with Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter, Savage, Levin, etc.? Because much of what Jon says, I've heard from some of these people also. I'm sure that much of what Sean Hannity says you would say is an opinion that no honest person could believe to be true. I also think that Hannity thinks that everything he is saying is true. So is he being deceitful? I don't think so - if you say what you truly believe, even if there is some guy out there named Mike H. that says that no rational person can believe that, how is that being deceitful?

Set 16 is available. Problem set 16

Hi - these problems should be very easy for experienced players but an I/N player needs to think about the right things in an auction. If you get them wrong, don't feel too bad as long as you understand the rationale for the answers. I'll provide the answers later but I'll put a hint as a spoiler. Try to solve the problem without the spoiler. Also, let me know if you would be interested in seeing more of these from time to time. Assume you are playing Standard American (a natural system with 15-17 1NT openings and 5-card majors), IMPS, and nobody is vulnerable. Some background. Let's say you hold: [hv=pc=n&s=saq765h9d83caq765]133|100[/hv] Several decades ago, many opened 1C on this hand, planning to rebid spades twice. Today, most if not all experts open 1S. Bridge World Standard 2017 says to open 1S; and I don't see the question in the polling, so I assume they thought it was so obvious to the experts that they didn't ask. So what if you do open 1C and rebid spades twice? The second spade bid shows five cards. Since you would open 1S with five spades and five clubs, you must have at least six clubs for this auction. Let's look at some of opener's options with five spades and six clubs. If you want to make sure to get to game, you would have to jump shift for 1S isn't forcing, and many of the hands that partner would pass a 1S rebid might play quite well opposite a 6-5 hand (partner should have 3 spades for that pass; he is not going to leave you in a silly spot.) I'm not certain there is universal agreement, but another strong action is for the second spade bid to be a jump. It isn't forcing (partner didn't jump shift the last time so he didn't want to force to game) but it is very highly invitational - you would only pass if you thought the hands fit poorly. The reason I'm bringing this up is that when partner rebids his spades without jumping, he is limited. You could have a game if your hands fit well but partner isn't expecting to get to game. 1. [hv=pc=n&s=s73hkj742dkq95c62&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1cp1hp1sp1np2sp]133|200[/hv] Do you agree with the auction so far? What bid do you choose? 2. [hv=pc=n&s=sk63hk9754dk754c2&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1cp1hp1sp1np2sp]133|200[/hv] Do you agree with the auction so far? What bid do you choose? 3. [hv=pc=n&s=sj96ht765da72ckj3&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1cp1hp1sp1np2sp]133|200[/hv] Do you agree with the auction so far? What bid do you choose?

You're right! Odd that nobody replied to Stefan with that solution, but that may be because of the thread he chose. It seemed like ACBL used to make a big fanfare of this (it was in my cognitive space for a long time and I don't look at the BBO home page) but now I rarely hear about it except occasionally when I hear someone say "Why did they get replace Learn to Play Bridge with this new learning tool which isn't as good?" Then, as I was perusing another website, I noticed a link to Learn to Play Bridge and lo and behold, the link still works even though ACBL keeps changing their URL's. On the upside, one doesn't need to use my link because the one from the BBO homepage will have the most up to date version of the program. Also, the BBO home page link avoids giving your email to the ACBL.

Another idea: I just downloaded Learn to Play Bridge from the ACBL website. I had to give them an email so I'll probably receive a lot of ACBL marketing emails. It has some instruction but your friend can go to the Table of Contents, and choose a topic - some of the topics have subtopics "Bridge Master Deal xx". Those let you play hands. The deals are non-trivial; for example I brought one up in Learn to Play Bridge 1 and the theme was finessing into the safe hand. However they are free. The software was written by BBO founder Fred Gitelman. Here's the link I used: Learn to Play Bridge Software Between the two of them he'll get quite a few deals that he can play (with explanations.) While this software was popular at one time (I think it got over a million downloads) it feels like it's a well kept secret now.

Really! On my other forum, when I quote such sites as Fox News and Breitbart, they call them "alt-right".

It seemed like Richard & cherd were pushing hard for the truth. I thought I would make it easy for them 'cause they're such cool awesome dudes :D

LOL why would we get different hits with that search? There's nothing political there and we might agree. But in any event, my top five are: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming http://marvin.cs.uidaho.edu/About/quotes.html http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/files/1450667434_Belsky_RO669_PNAS%202015_Quantification%20Of%20Biologica%20Aging%20inYoungAdults.pdf

True. This year I came back to BBO after several years off. I couldn't log into the forums with my old username so I used this one. My name is not Kaitlyn Smith. However, I would have no problem posting any of the same posts in the Water Cooler under my real name. However, I would not have been able to post honestly about bridge experiences, at least about negative ones. My spouse works for the ACBL. We have, in the last year, been told that speaking badly about any of ACBL's products or services is unacceptable. This makes it impossible to speak about my true feelings about tournament bridge under my real name without compromising my spouse's position. I think I'd be allowed to type: ♥ The masterpoint :♥ is such ♥ a wonderful ♥ thing! ♥ Everybody ♥ should try ♥ to get ♥ as many ♥ as possible! ♥ If someone thinks I'm trolling, you'll have to trust me when I tell you that I posted much more obnoxiously under my old username which identified me. In fact, one of the people calling Kaitlyn S a troll likely called my real name a troll also! However, the ACBL didn't have as many issues with free speech then so I was able to post opinions with abandon. So, as long as anybody can link my ideas to Kaitlyn Smith's ideas, I will not be likely to be posting on BridgeWinners.

Did you know that Google shows you what they think you want to see? A poster on another site challenged me as you are now to look something up. He told me to look up, as he had, the percentage of Muslims in the USA that wanted Sharia law. I posted my top 10 hits. He thought I was full of crap since every one of my top 10 hits said that 51% or more of Muslims in the USA wanted Sharia law. Not surprisingly, he got different results. One of the other posters pointed out to him that I was not full of crap, but I was getting sites that Google thought I wanted to see. (I have since been to some more liberal sties so I don't think I would get those 10 hits anymore.) They do the same with their autofill. He typed in Muslim and got suggestions like Muslim women. I typed in Muslim and all my suggestions had to do with jihad. So I could indeed follow your suggestion to do a simple Google search on things and they would simply back up my preconceived notions. In fact, a few months ago I did Google "Clinton murders." Nine of the top ten hits all were alt-right wing sites which said that they happened and not to believe any clueless liberals that tell you otherwise. I'm dead serious! The tenth one was Snopes that said that many of the rumors were proven false but many of them have not been checked yet. (Of course some of the other sites claimed that Snopes was a liberal front. What am I supposed to think? I did my research, and that's what came up. Honestly. My bias was already cooked into the search engine.) By the way, your bias is also reflected in your Google searches. If you'd like, I'd try an experiment, Give me any hot-button search term and we'll each post our top five links I'll bet mine are alt-right and yours are alt-left.

Isn't that kind of what happened in Germany, except it was a lot of immigrants?

I appreciate you guys trying to show me the light, that the liberals have it all right and I've been a fool who has listened to charlatans. Mind you, there are many that are still calling your side the charlatans. But you have tried. And I had this weird impression that the "Water Cooler" is a place where people can toss around ideas. You are telling me instead that I need to do more research than is required for a typical college course. While I'm not disputing that I'm somewhat lazy, if I'm going to something that feels like work in my free time, I would prefer to create my Bidding Problems for I/N players and perhaps maybe a few bridge movies for players to enjoy. I realize that being well informed is good. However, I've done a lot of political research and look where it has got me. I'm being told that I've wasted probably thousands of hours looking at the "wrong" shows and websites. So far I've received positive feedback on my bridge problems so I don't feel like that is time wasted. Trust me when I tell you that I'm not being malicious and it was not a schtick. I simply posted my ideas. You told me that my ideas are based on ignorance. I know my ideas are based on very much research; however you are telling me that my research has all been misguided. It is possible that you're right but at this point I really don't feel like starting over. Maybe someday, maybe soon. But how would you feel if you had put thousands of hours into something and then been told by several people that it was all a sham? Be serious now.