thepossum

Hi I know ads may be necessary but having them so animated at the top of the app is too distracting to play I don't know about anyone else but for me Bridge requires a great deal of concentration and thought. That level of constant distraction is a significant issue One way to work out who is actually using their brain to play I suppose :)

I don't know about you but I'm happy to consider any system or method proposed by a world expert on Bridge rather than a group of unknowns on a discussion forum 🙂 First discovered LTC a few years ago via debate on here, read Klinger and I think my bidding improved almost overnight, especially on decisions over part score, game, slam exploration. Also use similar loser count to decide on borderline opening bids

It's a rather concerning thing where a global system seems to be based on the assumption that the majority will is "right" or that popularity gets you "the best" or that the big seller should be "most successful" I know most of them are smeantic and many people do not even discuss or understand the complexities or sophisitcation behind those systems That in itself is dangerous and can lead to tyranny as someone once wrote You could think about things like the tyranny of the majority or maybe an equivalent or laterally related concept is the degradation that occurs by always going for the lowest common denominator But, without having studied it, I have my own theory of democracy, or the way it generally works (with some extreme and terrible exceptions through history). That is it placates and keeps the presently most extreme and obnoxious and dangerous tendency under some sort of control ... or alternatively its this terrible oppressive conservative system used by the powerful elites to keep the disgruntled people under control by making them think anyone cares The only thing that gives me any comfort speaking out on anything these days is knowing that those in power have the ability to essentially ignore me without those physical cruelties of the past. It doesnt mean the psychological cruelties are still not avaialable but I feel safer knowing they dont need to get their hands as dirty dealing with those of us who speak up .... EDIT I need to defend myself against any accusations of complacency or ignorance. I know thos forces still have many ways of inflicting their cruelty (physically and mentally) on their targets or undesirables If indeed there is a system of oppression through some kind of phony debate leads to progress kind of system, that has been around a very long time, how long has it been around. Does it (as I believe) operate among the elites at a global scale over the millenia, to give the people some phony hope of progress while they same powers keep control forever. But when you look at history (from my layperson perspective) the same characters the world over have been in power for ever. The rest is just a big con to make people feel there is a bit of progress from time to time, only to see it knocked back

Dear all I know 2020 has been a terrible year and is getting worse but too many people are not asking questions, and in my view are asking the wrong questions and pointing the fingers in the wrong direction at what went wrong over recent years, culminating in this year to date Maybe we will find out eventually who or what is resposnbile for the mess the world is in. It may well be too late. Hope everyone has something approaching a reasonable Christmas (insert alternative appropriate cultural celebration here) and New Year (likewise) 2020 hindsight is an amazing thing. BUt what good is it to anyone

John Le Carre I never knew if it was my academic ability, mathematical knowledge, my ability to think quickly about problems, or that I could talk intelligently about Le Carre novels that gave me an offer at my college.

I haven't got the right brain for rules. I need to work things out. More processing power than memory :) Its funny how many people continually dis the LTC. Maybe they dont use it properly. I've found it remarkably useful for quickly assessing what kind of contract we are looking at

:lol: I know I am joining in the general mocking of rules, but with some provisos and a bit of thinking (as per Tyler's suggestion) the most useful "rule" I have found over recent years is the Losing Trick Count GiB sometimes plays the rule of 3 which is the number of key cards required for slam Surely guidelines is a more appropriate term

You cannot possibly encourage thinking Tyler

No idea, but recently I accidentally found myself talking to the kibitz having just dropped into the table to play a hand. I hadnit pressed the UI button to switch to Table :) Needless to say I did the right thing and left the table without even bidding ;) Not that anything untoward had or was happening. I just didnt like what was going on - and that everyone at the table ignored my introduction, pleasnatries, questions about bidding systems whether they wre directed at the kibitz or the table :( In fact, while I'm here, I would like to ask who the people are at these tables who don't understand the basic ettiquette of the game, and also why, despite many attempts, every time I tried to go to an interesting table I ended up at the same one An example of a more enjoyable interaction and hand Dropped in to a random table - people I didnt know, a few words of hello, a quick eht system are we playing, a quick basic SAYC is that ok, and on you go etc

Thx, it does appear to be seriously underbid

I'm interested in how everyone thinks this should be bid. But to help me I ran it through QPlus 2/1 and slam was reached with a spade double jump I think (4S) bid rather than a cue. Is that not available in GiB 2/1. Isnt a cue too weak for that hand?

I posted about Maradona in other forums. I wasn't sure that many here would have heard of him. He broke many English people's hearts many years ago but it's hard to argue how great a footballer he was for his country

Deleted a late night upset pos at the above quoting of a hot-headed post I planned to delete I'm out of here. I have enough real problems in my life and difficult people without having to worry about saying something careless in a discussion about a silly Bridge problem I apologise to anyone who ever took any offense at any of my hot-headed (but not meant in any real way) comments in any forum any where in the world Stop making people's lives difficult please.

I'm fed up wasting time arguing with a bunch of morons who wouldn't have a clue how to discuss or argue anything mathematically. If someone produces mathematical argument I may waste time on them further Seriously what is all your obsession with trying to prove me wrong. None of you have demonstrated that capability at all So keep copying and pasting my stuff as much as you like to try and undermine me. Keep trying to undermine my arguments and my knowledge in every issue because I challenge this site's BS ona regular basis. I'm not wasting more time here. Go and pick on some innocent victims with your flawed analysis and argument

EDIT. I will return to your post in the morning. Too much whisky. The following is still being edited :) What I thought we were talking about Peter is the change in probability of either an identical or a distributional hand given any particular shape as compared to the average chance etc And just out of curiosity did your code actually enumerate all those hands I will accept a mathematical argument if there is anyone reading this site with that level of maths For starters what we are talking about is a change in probability of the order 10^-28 to 10^-some other reasonable integer And we are also discussing a level of symmetry in such a complex way that you wouldnt know if those results were symmetric or not But while I think of it I was pondering that the law of similarity is getting close to a tautology. It applies with every hand and as soon as you pick up your hand and look at it (strictly when it is dealt) the probability of similarity has gone up. Can you show me the change in that probability with your program :) And it doesnt come down to an estimate, an approximation, a confidence interval. There is actually a number :)

Given the number of hands involved and the probabilities we are talking about its unlikely any small simulation would show anything up. Also when O mentioned symmetry, the principle will only obviously show up with a trivial simple example but I am sure (without having studied that speciality) that it is there I was hoping it could be discussed/analysd and/or understoood through a more analytical mathematical formulation

I think part of the problem is that everyone seems to be arguing different things for starters I reckon you could definitely challenge "more likely than not", even use of "likely" in the wording but maybe "marginally more likely" (in the sense of, there exists an epsilon > 0 etc) is more appropriate - thats the forumlation I've been working on - and I have needed to simplify to two suits and two hands or a very simplified gaame to demonstrate the obvious symmetry. Also, are we talking similarity or identicality in shape etc Obviously with 4 hands and 4 suits identical shape is an option - is it that specific? Does there need to be the same number of suits as hands? Is the number of cards in each suit irrelevent (eg 4 hand 4 suit 5 card game etc) I'm sure similar (in the broader sense) is more likely the more extreme (or freaky - Pavlicek) your hand is But come to think of it, its obviously more likely for identical shapes I will go even further and claim that the chance that everyone has the same shape hand as yours increases too - in fact this is the most simple and obvious case (Restrict it to ordered hands to simplify 1,2,3,4 . There is only one comintaion where all 4 hands have an identical shape to any particular shape etc. (5-4-0-1, 1-5-4-0, 0-1-5-4,4-0-1-5), once you have that shape the probablity everyone else has that shape has gone up - because you have many fewer deals to divide by) But this very simple case is not the interesting one. The more interesting one is whether overall freakiness has gone up in the other hands too but that seems obvious It reminds me a bit of the first time I heard the weather forecaster discussing the SOI and the forecast for rainfall. The forecast was 50% chance of above median rainfall. I used to think that was strange and obvious until I heard at other times that it was on 30% chance of above median rainfall etc Oh, and getting back to the obsession with shuffling I maintain the distributions are not affected by shuffling at all :) But while I find shuffling theory rather tedious (I dipped into a paper for a few seconds) - one thing that fascinates me about packs of cards developing character over time is whether they can every be restored to being interesting packs after (entropy???) has increased so much they have become boring - I wonder looking at the world at the moment if shuffling theory and entropy and irreversible processes apply to the world at the moment - and that sadly it is irreversible. No chance of it every being fun or interesting again :(

Just watched American Factory. Would recommend but also suggest watching very sceptically. Hoping someone else has some views on it

Its Sunday morning and I'm either not fit for an discussion of this kind or motivated to engage However if you have to divide a suit up between 3 hands, the number of available cards 0 to 13 determines the distribution and possible lengths of those hands Trivial example 0-4, say, cards left the chance of anyone having length in that suit is 0 Any more cards and the chance of anyone having length in that suit increases :) As I said, I caan't be bothered to even think what kind of distribution it is. How you can arrange n cards in the longest remaining suit (say) between 3 etc and how the distribution changes as n increases etc .... and I gave a trivial example of how it works in the simplest case I could think of with 2 hands, 2 suits and 2 cards each :) .... actually I know you could have a 2 hand, 2 suit, 1 card each game that maybe also demonstrates it but I wanted a game with more than card each But maybe to make it more convincing we need to start with a 4 hand game and the most basic case etc

Come on Richard, until now I gave you credit for a fair bit of understanding of maths and the concept of proof..it's nothing to do with shuffling at all. It's a mathematical proofs, whether possible analytically or not I don't know Unless of course by shuffling we are discussing complete randomness with any hand equally likely etc And in terms of data you would need however many times 10^28 hands and a large database. Sorry the number of hands has been reduced considerably by the OPs hand But it's obviously and selfevidently true. But I don't know if it's provable Just by way of an aside I read something about a law of similarity in Gestalt psychology. It seemed to me a statement of the obvious too

I reckon you could try something by induction Consider a simple game. 2 players. 2 cards each, 2 suits etc

I agree. But from what I can see online technologies of so many kinds this year in particular are being used as an attack on the privacy in all our lives

Thanks for the clarification Richard. Sometimes the authorities and corporations in this world do themselves a disservice

I'm curious (also as someone with experience in IT and politics) how this can be achieved without a totally fascist or other authoritarian type state What I (and I am sure many others) actually have a right to know is. Just because I signed up for BBO and the occasional ACBL tournament (to get better quality hands and play) whether there are people arrogant enough to think they have a right to pry on my private life, where I sit and play on my computer or on my phone. Thats all I am asking. Simple question to those obnoxious and arrogant to think they can intrude into every area of our lives If anyone else is wondering, those proposing such surveillance have just been given the FU in every direction I can imagine them watching from I think a bit of clarification is required before this goes any further. Oh why I mention it is I imagine they will do studies and find that after they proposed fascistic surveillance of all online bridge fewer people have been playing accredited tournaments - therefore they are cheats QED you ignorant assholes. Sorry for using a rude term I meant Nazis And no, just because of some small print in an agreement to use an online Bridge site, that does not give you the right to spy on every aspect of someone's life, no matter what BBO or anyone elses' lawyers might say. Apologies to the Lw and everyone in the Law. I mean no disrespect. But I know my rights under any manner of laws and conventions. I don't exactly trust all the institutions with those conventions and how much effort it would be to bring a case but I suggest anyone considering total Bridge surveillance check them out too. To me those rights should not even need to be written down, enshrined in anything, argued in any court. they are basic and unchallengeable human rights The fact such measures are even countenanced or discussed is a terrifying and sick indictment on the state of the world and the techno-fascists who want to, are trying to or currently rule over us Seriously all of you. I know there are total fascist out there. But I'm sitting on my mobile phone using the App to play an ACBL tourney. What. You want full observation on me at all times, where I am, whom I am with Any of you even countenancing that should be ashamed Ohh that terrible Possum accusing people of fascism or Nazism. You know there is an easy way not to have people suspect it. One is not to act like one. Secondly maybe dont even talk like one Seems to me that all the concerns the world has about trust is that those in power misunderstood the direction that trust needs to go Apologies for jumping into yet another Bridge issue but this whole discussion has been englected in every area of our lives for far too long, and I think given the lack of trust in the techs and all tech-related power (almost everyone these days) it is high time these issues, the means of surveillance available now were discussed widely by the whole world and at every level of power. Its disgusting that it has even reached this stage. Under the pandemic we gave persmissio for a while for some in power to break those rights (for a while). But sersiously. Is nobody else cocnerned about the breadth and extent of control and surveillance over every aspect of our lives. I am not ingorant of power and quite appreciate if the bulk of the world want fascistic control and surveillance its hard to resist but .... Sorry but the word Law (to me at least) applies to rights in every area of our lives I actually had something of a dream, a nightmare or maybe a musing last night. Recently I have been getting very creeped out by certain things going on on various platforms. Lets take Facebook for example (not singling out at all) and certain creepy things I have observed with the way it behaves, changes to certain embedded objects and media (ie big media-tech-data-academe-etc all linked interests these days). And it crossed my mind given the way web services work, the dominance of a very few technologies (eg Facebook objects, Zoom etc) to everything we do, the ubiquity of something like Zoom (and I imagine an embedded component), and also the seeming breakdown in previous highly trusted behaviour by many of our technologies (OS, broswers, phones, the core of the Internet actually), geopolitics, you name it, how easy it would be to embed a video surveillance object into almost everything. I know thats not new. I'm sure they have been doing it for a long time. But it was just a dream last night. You know what brought it on was the creepy eyes people have started putting into media photos (must be new tech) - so the eyes are real/creepy enough to seem to be looking at you through your screen. Thats kind of what brought me there last night I've had a lifetime in tech and go back (for the younger among you) to pre-Internet, pre-Web, pre-PC, pre-mobile Phone. And actually in those days I trusted almost everyone. These days I wouldnt trust most of the characters as far as I could throw them, which isnt far any more, I'm getting older Last but not least. I have an important meeting in 5 minutes. It cannot be seprated from geopolitics and what has happened this year and the massive powers and how they weild them. Many of them do it without any care or interest in the rights of the individual over any aspect of their lives. Otherwise Covid would never have happened

I know but some people may want a special convention to cover it Would a transfer work It would be sad to get excited and bid no trumps I do imagine a lot of people would pass in case they were accused of psyching But seriously getting back to the OP have there been attempts at analysing or proving such things. Could you not prove it on a simplified game