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I would pass. If partner has all the rest of the points you are going to hear from them again. Sean

The TD should not have done this, especially in an individual where there is no possibility of collusion. It is a terrible decision. The TD should have read his laws book and gone through the section that covers "logical alternative actions". The fact that you were booted is ridiculous. Sean

I do the same, ++ + = - --. Helps in the last rounds. Sean

I will actually completely paraphrase the hand as an ad for the book "The Big Game", by Robert Sheehan. It is about the really high stake rubber bridge played at TGR in London. This game can see thousands of dollars change hands in the matter of minutes. They play Chicago, I am sure many of you know what this form of scoring is. They play for £100 a point, (about $200US dollars), so this means making 4♥ vulnerable is worth about $1240US dollars. So it is not the place for the faint hearted. Here is the hand... Zia has a catch-phrase which starts 'There is no hand...' ('TINH'). He says it will be the title of his next book. He then adds the appropriate advice, e.g. 'where you would allow X to be declarer'. or 'on which Y would find an intelligent defence' (X being the worst declarer in the high TGR game, and Y the most wooden defender). Today's example illustrates 'where Michael Courtney is maximum for his bidding so far' ('TINHMC'). This is the deal that prompted his remark. [hv=d=w&v=n&n=sakt5432ha9863dca&s=sqhkq2dajt8764cqj]133|200|Scoring: Chicago[/hv] North South Courtney Zia 2♠ (1) 3♦ 3♥ 4♦ 4♠ 4NT (2) 5♠ (3) 5NT 6♦ (4) 7♣ (5) Pass (!) (1) An Acol Two. His suits are rather straggly; however, if he had opened One Spade and been passed out, he could have been missing as high a contract as Seven Hearts opposite say: [hv=s=s6hkj742dt876c932]133|100|[/hv] (By the way, an Acol Two is a strong 2, just in case some of you didn't know - Sean) (2) Zia admitted when he was recounting the hand to me that, because of TINHMC, he should have bid Six Spades at this point. (3) Three aces. (4) One king. (5) This is the master bid. Zia meant it to say 'pick the right major-suit grand slam'. The point of Seven Clubs is to make North bid Seven Spades with: [hv=s=s6hkj742dt876c932]133|100|[/hv] when declarer may be able to cater for a bad heart break by establishing the diamonds or to bid Seven Hearts with: [hv=s=s6hkj742dt876c932]133|100|[/hv] when he can ruff a spade in dummy to cater fir a bad spade break. But apart from TINHMC the bid was unwise, because it could lead to a major disaster. Remeber, Zia had not supported either of Courtney's suits at any stage. Courtney convinced himself Zia must have something like: [hv=s=s6hkj742dt876c932]133|100|[/hv] When Seven Clubs would be the best spot. With that hand I suppose Zia would have bid Four Clubs over Three Hearts, but when you adopt those confusing sequences, bad things can happen. When Zia went seven down in Seven Clubs Courtney was unabashed; he pointed out his pass had cost only 300 - the spades were 4-1 and Seven Spades and Seven Hearts were failing also. I stress that Zia and Courtney are two of the best players in the game, which is why it is instructive to see that even they occasionally have a disaster. I hope you all enjoyed the hand. Sean

I am a 1♠ bidder too. Sean

There is a hand I would love to include from a book I have but it would probably be a breech of copyright. It involves Zia and Michael Courtney. Sean

For me when teaching, bidding wasn't introduced until about the 3rd lesson. Sean

They are in a forcing auction. They are playing that the player with the shortage makes the double instead of the other way around to gain some flexibility. I have seen some good escapes from this though, for instance, bid a 2 card suit since they will both be long and they might bid on instead of penalising you. Sean

Assuming your partner had the ♠A876, I think they were making an excuse for a poor double. :D Sean

There is a book that sort of covers this written by mathematicians. I am sorry to say I don't remember the name of it. It is something like "A Mathematical Treatise of Bridge", it was written about 30 years ago or so by I think either french or swiss authors. (I am not referring to the Roudinesco book on combinations about 10 years ago) Sean PS: It would definitely be out of print and would only be able to be picked up secondhand.

Sure people lie about their rankings. We all know that. Some even downgrade their ratings. Is this a problem? No. You can soon work out what their ranking is when you play. If ratings were introduced though it would be severely detrimental to the whole BBO community. You would have cheating, you would have people yelling at each other, you would have people protecting their ratings by only trying to play with people with an equal or better rating. I know people say "Why not make the ratings only known to the player themselves?" Still very bad. Ego is an interesting thing. If you can see the rating, would you not want to improve it? Would you stop playing with the novice or beginner that is fun to play with to protect your rating? Or would you create a separate BBO name to play with this person? Would this not alienate said person and perhaps put them off playing on the site? There are so many negatives with this idea and so few positives. Sean

I was unclear in my meaning then, I meant for Fred and Uday to add in our options the ability to use the fkeys as text senders. Using 3rd party software to do so means the less "enlightened" (computer-wise) are at a disadvantage. By offering to all there is less excuse for misinformation which to me as a BBO TD sounds really good. Sean

Correct me if I am being silly but wouldn't it be very simple to program BBO to customise the function keys? Setting text for each fkey? If this is what you mean then I apologise for my ignorance. But this is used in many forms of gaming, customisable text for each fkey. Sean

3.9.9 looks good, although I had to slow down the card animation, it was too fast :huh: I have never seen the white screen thing at all, but this is a nice computer with 1GB of RAM and I am always running lots of other programs. Sean

I never say to play; ever. My explanation that fits this subject is to say "I think this is what I can make opposite my partner's hand but partner may have other ideas :)". This is when playing behind screens of course. At a table where verbal alerts are given then I say non-forcing. Sean

In a couple of partnerships I played in we would alert the reopening pass as showing no shortage. Sean

Personally, I like the idea; however there are too many problems. In some ways it will create a ranking system. Minor problem in context of this issue, but still important. Having it clocked creates all sorts of problems. Having it unclocked creates other problems. :) At the moment we don't have a Swiss Indy that I know of, so new code for this. Permanent Indy is new code also. Personally I would like to see real Indy and Howell movements first. Sean

An interesting book on the 4 handed games is Dormer on Deduction by Albert Dormer. Sean

The hand and the outcome Sean

[hv=d=w&v=n&w=sakq97h54dkq754ck&e=s53hkqt6d932cat83]266|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] NS silent throughout: W E 1♠ 1NT 3♦ 3NT ♥2 to the A, ♥9 returned; plan the play. ;)

The problem with the no further play after a claim is that it is not that difficult to misclaim on BBO, I know I have done it; I know others have done it. With the Less/More structure it is very easy. Perhaps a better way to claim would be total number of tricks, sort of like the bidding, where you can't bid less than the current level. This would be opposite though... if you have already lost 4 tricks, then you couoldn't claim 10, the most you could claim is 9. The only reason I suggest this is that I think it is too easy to accientally click on "Less" one too many times, or forget to click on "Less" and claim too many. Sean

In another thread Uday has said he is working on adding some Indy movements, he didn't say whether he was trying to do some Howell movements for pairs. Sean

The number is in people not pairs, there is a director who persists with 50 people and is surprised when he needs to fill out the 13th table (2 sitouts) consistently. Sean

Very good idea; it could be piggybacked on the partnership desk chat option perhaps. Sean

I assume you mean the bottom left corner of the "table". Otherwise it is covering the names of who is talking. Sean