david_c

Just out of curiosity really - does anyone know of a playable two-way pass system? By which I mean, a pass in first seat shows either 0-7HCP or 17+ HCP (or something vaguely similar).

Have you tried Farhad relay? ;) This is going to sound a bit silly, but I think the bad thing about forcing opening bids is that you're not allowed to pass them. You see, designing a bidding system is all about assigning meanings to calls, and the main problem in life is that you don't have very many calls available which you can assign meanings to. If you remove "pass" from responder's options, that means you have less space overall. When you find later in the auction that it's difficult to sort out both opener's and responder's ranges, that's a direct consequence of giving up the pass.

Nightmare is something like: 1♣ = 15-17HCP balanced, or 15+ with clubs, or 20+. 1♦ = diamonds or 18-20HCP balanced 1NT = weak 2♣ = Precision Presumably if you were to play a mini-NT in this structure then the point ranges for the balanced types in 1♣ and 1♦ would both need to come down a bit. I think there are already a few people around who use this sort of no-trump ladder (distinguishing different strengths by the minor which is opened), but not with a Precision 2♣ opener.

Yeah, I agree :D There are a couple of things that I don't quite understand though: Firstly, it seems that we will still be able to see everyone who is online. Which is great news for the user, but surely it's just as much of a burden on the server as the online list is at the moment. Now, at the moment, on average one in every n pieces of information sent is used to update the online list (I don't know what n is, about 20?). I suspect that this n is a constant, not depending significantly on the number of people online. If so, then as long as we are going to have a complete online list, we'll never be able to improve the situation by more than a factor of n, no matter how many mini-BBOs there are. And that means, if the membership of BBO increases by a factor of sqrt(n), which we hope will happen eventually, the servers will be just as busy as they are at the moment ... Secondly, if there are lots of near-identical mini-BBOs, how would you prevent the situation where everyone joins just one of them? The bad way of doing it would be to put a limit on the number of people in each one - that's bad for very obvious reasons, but it's the way this is done on many other sites. Is there a good way?

I'm convinced that in general the "as needed" approach is preferable. It seems fairly clear that for the three examples Fred gives of why profile information may be needed, "as needed" is the better way of providing the information. This is simply because the amount of infomation involved is small (being a mathematician I would call it "bounded"), so the wait would not be very long (tiny compared to the expense in keeping all users updated). An "as needed" approach would be useful even when there is an obvious need to be "in synch", as for example when you're looking at a list of tables. The point is that you only need to be "in synch" with one part of BBO at a time. There would surely be a huge difference in the load on the system if each user was only ever in synch with at most one of: - full online list - tables in main bridge club - tables elsewhere - tournaments etc. But there's one thing which people want to be in synch with all the time: that is, which of their friends (and other interesting people) are online. In order to provide this information on an "as needed" basis, the server would need to know the friends of everyone who was currently online. And whenever someone logged in or out, the server would have to search to find out who had this person as a friend. I'd have thought that this would be much more of a load on the server than the current method. So, the fact that we're only interested in a small subset of the online list is of no help at all; we're doomed to be in synch with the entire online list whatever happens ... or have I analysed this wrong?

The length of the lobby list isn't really a problem. Most of the time, the default filtering (which pushes friends to the front) is adequate, and if you want some other filtering that's easy as well. What is a problem is if providing everyone with the lobby list is a big contribution to the load on the system. If that is the case, then you need to seriously consider not providing this information automatically. The point is, if at some point I want to find out the complete list, I won't mind waiting a little while for the information. The same could be said about many other things - there's no need to know about the state of the main bridge club unless you're in the main bridge club (or you specifically request the information, in which case you won't mind waiting). Notice that this concept is almost equivalent to the idea of splitting BBO by function. (Oh dear - now that I've written that, I can see it's been said many times before. Never mind, another voice can't hurt. Sorry to bore you all!)

Exactly. I wouldn't mind if BBO was split by function, so that the main bridge club was separate from tournaments, etc., as long as it would still be possible to see who was in the other areas, and chat to them. It's not necessary to know what everyone else on BBO is doing, though it would be nice if you could find out about individual people (and individual requests like this would not be too hard on the system).

I can see an advantage of this if you add extra hand types to 1♥. For example, some people use 1♦:1♥ as either natural or relay. This might be improved by playing 1♦:1♥ as either spades or relay, and 1♦:1♠ as hearts. Becuase then after, say, 1♦:1♥,2♣, your next relay is 2♥, whereas if 1♥ could be natural you might like to have a natural 2♥ available, so you'd need to play 2♠ as relay. The inversion gains a step here.

The end position looks wrong - doesn't west have ♥K ♣QT9x left? The ♥K prevents the endplay on East. Have a look at the layout again and follow my line above. It's West who gets endplayed to reduce my trump holding (having only black cards left). Sure, your line works fine (and is very, very pretty), but Jimmy was trying to endplay East into giving us two heart tricks. That fails because West can hang on to the ♥K.

The end position looks wrong - doesn't west have ♥K ♣QT9x left? The ♥K prevents the endplay on East.

I sometimes use the "chat to opponents" feature to explain my bids, which is very useful for long explanations. But often it seems that they don't realise I've sent a message to both of them, which is a bit confusing. So could there be some indication that chat has gone to both opponents, which distinguishes it from private messages? i.e. it would be more helpful if people receive this: col3435->opponents: 1♣ = 15+ balanced, or 15+ with clubs, or 19+ any. than this: col3435: 1♣ = 15+ balanced, or 15+ with clubs, or 19+ any. Cheers, David

hmm, what happens if we swap the ♥9 and ♥8? The rabbit's line seems to work still. Maybe now the only way to make the contract is to discard the ♣A on a spade at trick two?

ohh I see, if he leads a club you have a dummy reversal. That's beautiful! Pity that other ways seem to work too.

Sadly, I think the rabbit has a heart mixed in with his diamonds here. If the play went as described he's only got two trumps left at the end, not three, so he's only making ten tricks. Roland, it may not be what you had in mind, but there is nothing wrong with Flame's solution, is there?

Playing it this way, you are stuck in hand after winning the ♥9 (East will remove an entry from dummy whenever he gets in with a high heart.) It seems the point of this hand is that you can either set up a heart trick or reduce your trump length, but you don't have time to do both. So you need to force East to decide which of these things he is going to defend against, which you can do by playing a winning club through him, threatening to overruff. Pitching the ♣A looks good, but it doesn't seem that you can survive it.

I think this must be almost right. Seems that you need to leave some entries in dummy when you play the ♣K. So take the ace of clubs at trick three, then cross to the king of diamonds and lead the ♣K now, while the ♥A and ♦J are still in dummy. If East ruffs the ♣K, you aim to draw trumps and force a heart trick by leading through East. If East doesn't ruff you need a trump reduction, and it seems there are enough entries left. Edit: Actually, it seems you only need one more entry at that stage - the one that lets you lead hearts through East. So let's try this: win ♠A, ♠K pitching a club, ♣A, ♦K, ♦J, and now lead ♣K. If East ruffs, then draw trumps, cross to ♥A and lead a small heart from dummy. If East lets the ♣K hold, then pitch a heart, ruff a club, cross to ♥A and ruff another club, then exit with a heart in order to make your two last trumps.

It certainly looks like the TD got it horribly wrong. One thing that hasn't been commented on yet: it seems odd to me that the TD adjusted to ave-/ave+. As I understand it, if you rule that there was misinformation then you should adjust to the result that you think would have occurred without the misinformation (unless that would be worse for the non-offending side). Please correct me if I'm wrong (I may try to become a TD in future but I'm still learning!) Do TDs routinely give out ave-/ave+ when they think an adjustment is deserved, if they don't have time to work out what it should be?

Indeed, I have the AUC notes too, and the systems are fairly similar - the main difference (in terms of opening bids) is that minimum 5C4M hands are opened 2♣ in Millennium Club and 1♣ in AUC. But in my opinion this is a huge difference. Usually the main problem with playing a weak no-trump is that it's difficult to show the strong no-trump type in competition. Millennium Club solves this problem, because if you have a strong no-trump hand you have described it nicely by opening 1♣. If you hold the same hand in AUC then the opening bid leaves some of your values undisclosed (and there is often no convenient way to get back into the auction). Of course, the advantage that AUC has is a respectable 2♣ opener. But I'm prepared to live with the nasty version in Millennium Club because of the effect on the 1♣ bid. (Incidentally, the range for 2♣ in MC is 10-14HCP, but 5-card club suits are not allowed at the lower end of the range.)

1♦. More problematic is the hand with singleton in diamonds. Poe's "solution" is to pretend this type of hand doesn't exist, choosing between pass, 1NT and (very occasionally) 1M.

Acol weak-NT. I haven't done a simulation to confirm this, but I don't think it's even close. Particularly if you open the major with 4M-4m-3-2, as I was taught to do. Nice point though. I do think that the main strength of MC is that it is resistant to interference. In uncontested auctions your only worry is the 2♣ opener: is it too much of a price to pay? We shall see ...

I've recently been playing Millennium Club as described by Lyle Poe, and the experience so far has confirmed my belief that it's a very playable system. So how come nobody else seems to be playing it? If it's half as good as I think it is, I'd have expected to see it being taken up by a few expert partnerships by now. But I've never seen anyone else playing MC, despite watching far too much bridge on BBO lately. So what's the problem? For anyone who doesn't already know, the 1♣ opening in MC shows one of: - 15+ HCP balanced - 15+ HCP with primary clubs - Any game force, or maybe slightly less with a long suit. This means that 1♦ promises four (and an unbalanced hand), 1M promises five, and 2♣ is Precision-style with an upper limit of 14HCP.

In the version I play, after 1D-1H,1NT: 2C = forces 2D (weak with diamonds, or an invitational hand) 2D = transfer 2H = 5H+4S, less than invitational 2S+ = various other things The nice thing about this is that if you play Keri over 1NT you already know what most of the continuations will mean. (Apart from that, it also makes good theoretical sense, in that transfers allow the unbalanced hand to describe itself to the balanced hand.)

This stuff about reverse Flannery is interesting - I think the usual meaning of "reverse Flannery" is 5S+4H, not the other way round. The convention is designed to make life easier when opener has an unbalanced hand: if the bidding goes 1D:1S,2D you may be missing a heart fit. When you have 5H+4S, you have no problems at all with opener's unbalanced hands, so there's no need for a Flannery-type convention to deal with it. It's true that you can't show 5H+4S after 1D:1H,1NT playing XYZ. But that's an advert for playing transfer checkback instead of XYZ, not an advert for Flannery responses ...

Pass would show a boring hand (i.e. not a good 6-card spade suit, and probably not a 5-5). Double would be a penalty suggestion. 3♣ promises 5-5 in the blacks; partner probably wouldn't bid it if he had a minimum with poor clubs. Good hand for a 2♦ transfer, eh Mark? Looking forward to April 1st ...

On the first hand, I don't like 1♠ much, but it's not criminal. South's 4♠ bid looks bad, but he does have a genuine problem - I once bid 2♣ on a hand like this and ended up playing there, so I never do this now unless I can be sure of my partner. But the redouble is terrible: South had no reason to expect that 4♠ was a good contract even before the double came in. On the second hand, I really dislike 2NT as an opening bid. An opening 2NT is not a compromise between a 1-level bid and 2♣ - it shows a balanced hand. I don't mind if my partner wants to bid an off-shape 2NT sometimes, but with 5-5 that is going too far. I actually think it's reasonable to go for slam when partner bids 4♥. So, bid 6♥ - it doesn't need much more than a diamond finesse even opposite the 2-count that partner provides on this occasion. But the fact that you're missing the ♣A shouldn't put you off at all: if anything it makes partner more likely to have the ♦K. It's generally considered poor bridge to bid Blackwood and then sign off at the 5-level despite missing only one ace.