thepossum

Hi all How would you go about bidding this. I usually open these 2C, try to show both suits and hope for a fit but others on here have suggested that 2C is not good for two suiters. Sadly I was not able to find the fit with the right suit in this case (an error on my part I believe around the 3-4 level). I will give a clue there is a small/possible grand in one suit but not in the other Note: It was a small matchpoints tourney Edit. Both non-vulnerable, third seat after two passes regards P [hv=pc=n&s=sahaqt643dcaqt764]133|100[/hv]

Thanks everyone Very interesting thoughts regards P

Dear all Do top players and teams use statistical analysis/data scientific approaches of their own or opponents play at the top level. I'm just asking since I'm trying to analyse how I go in tournaments, trying to identify my weaknesses, areas mainly in need of improvement and was wondering about how much theory and application there is at the top level of bridge - as is happening in other sports now At a simple level I suppose I'm looking at the changes in mean, variance on different types of hands, different types of tournaments, different sets of opponents etc. Mainly however, just analysing my own hands and trying to get rid of the worst x % of hands, given the skewed nature of the distributions. I dont have enough data on other players to analyse more broadly. I'm also considering analysing time of day, declare vs defense, seat, vulnerability, IMPs/MPs etc etc. I would be very interested to know if people do it outside their own private and personal analysis :) regards P Note, its quite difficult searching for this stuff since there is a huge amount of information about analytics in relation to bridges, contracts, performance, bridging gaps etc. The few reference relating to contract bridge, analytics and performance is the performance of simulation models, not performance of the players :) Matthew Kidd seems to be one of the few people who have published any such analysis on the internet - in searches to date - at a broad level of hand analysis, rather than individual performance analysis

Hi Helene and Hrothgar I agree and concur with everything you say. I wasnt intending this to be a thread about strange bids with GiB. I was trying to build on the video posted today about the future of the game and possible alternative sanctioned variants that could be considered in the future. I have no stake or authority in the game and am more in the traditionalist camp. However other games and sports have added different forms to appeal to different markets - often at the dismay of the traditionalists who feared the death of the real game. Howvever, often those fears have been misplaced and the new forms of the game have brought in many new people, sponsorship, money, support for the grass roots and the traditional elite "pure" game is still as strong and respected as ever It was just an idle thought. Call it Free Bridge or some other name that is vaguely based on the same game under the same auspices but with different rules Apologies for thinking out loud. I fear often my posts are misinterpreted and people think I am having a go at something I'm not. But that is my fault for the way I write sometimes :) Thanks again for replying :) regards P

Dear all Can someone advise me on how strata and sections are determined in NABC. I was very surprised to find that I was not in B or C strata in yesterday's practice. Is it based on ACBL masterpoints. How is it possible that I could only be in A strata - it was quite surprise to me. Has everyone in a section played the same tables - although I dont think thats possible based on the travellers. Obviously I'm not familiar with how big tourneys work so apologies for the question I wasnt expecting to have to perform at that level quite yet :) regards P

Hi Helene I wasnt arguing against the use of complex conventions and alerts. What I was getting at is that many people playing the game now feel they can bid what they like without alerts, especially in online games and even more so against computers. There is no mechanism for alerting bots, and I very rarely see alerts at online tables between humans. I agree with you that bringing in and allowing new and different conventions is a good part of the game but they are all alerted or announced under the rules of the game I was kind of moving a step further to discuss those who are not in the rules space and play from different philosophy or knoweldge base regards P

Hi all I hope this post doesn't upset anyone. I have very strong views on the etiquette/ethics/rules of bridge in relation to conventions and bidding accurately with minimal use of psychs, in order not to mislead opponents at the table and/or gain an advantage in duplicate. However I know I am relatively senior, despite no doubt still being much younger than the average bridge player. Like many of us I would have learned as a child from parents and been immersed in the tradition and spirit of the game. Also those who play in clubs and tournaments play according to very strict guidelines from world and national bridge associations, and play according to established systems. When I started playing bridge I was trying to write computer games on a 8K Commodore PET. The world has changed a fair bit :) Watching the trailer of the video on the future of bridge this morning and having started playing online again over the last year (the last time I played online was the 90s before robots) I have observed a massive change in online players' philosophy towards the game. Many have not learned through the older methods of learning - it is a computer game, often played against robots. The internet and gaming age has changed the attitude to games towards an anything goes, highly competitive, environment, and dare I say a large component of anti-authoritarianism or anti-estbalishmentism - which I do admit to having a great deal of sympathy for that philosophy in many areas. However there is a trend in all fields in the world of anything goes, cheating, gamesmanship. Not just sport and games but work, business, education anything. People steal others ideas and IP. They cheat to achieve. They undermine competitors by any means. I know we all have to compete in a tougher and tougher world but most people play honestly by rules and it is galling to see people who don't come out on top. The other sad things is the attitude of people who break rules towards those who they "cheated". They tend to despise and mock people who play by rules, regard them as losers in this world. Very sad, not just bridge but everywhere. Rant about the state of the world over. So how do we match these things up. Maybe people in professional circles and certain bridge gaming circles do play no-system bridge like poker. I enjoy poker. It is exciting, full of psychology, bluff, all kinds of tactics. Bridge, also is an exciting psychological game (or can be) - even if played under strict conventions. However I think maybe non-bridge players or newer players are not aware of that if they are used to online/computer bridge So as someone with no real stake in the game, despite enjoying it my whole life, and I admit somewhat of a traditionalist how do we all move forward to take account of: 1 - The mainstream game played throughout clubs and up to the top level where people play by rules, conventions etc 2 - All those established players with the masterpoints they all earned playing according to more traditional approaches 3 - Online/computer/robot bridge 4 - Psyching in computer tournaments against a bot rather than a thinking and flexible human 5 - The desire to attract young people to the game 6 - Allowing for the excitement of individual flair and innovation 7 - Potential rule changes for computer bridge and tournaments 8 - Potential for rule/convention free bridge - does this already happen - some in online comps and forums clearly feel they are allowed to play this way 9 - Many other related points I would be interested in the views of any experts, directors, club managers, anybody really As I said, I'm very much a traditionalist in the sense of playing to convention, however I do like to stretch my own point counts much more than many players would, I have a certain anarchic streak myself, and have certain sympathies for people who like playing games that way. How do we balance it all up Over the experts and people with a stake in the game :) Sorry for my indulgence P

Thx Hrothgar I have edited since I had an error. The one table who used it, did bid to slam but ignored the missing control. My memory plays up sometimes and I confused the two slam hands But all your points are still valid, despite my errors. :) Maybe only a top player could compete over it in this case "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Hi I was sitting at a table of World Class and/or Expert players the other day and this hand came up. I'm not sure on the etiquette of posting other players hands so I have left the players anonymous but they were all top players [hv=pc=n&s=sq8543hdak732ct76&w=s62hakq764dcq5432&n=sa97h932dqt864cj9&e=skjthjt85dj95cak8]399|300[/hv] It was last hand, one of the kibitzers said 6H to finish perhaps. West bid 1H, North passed, East bid an alerted artificial bid as Jacoby style. South interfered with a cue, West bid 5H which was passed Double dummy gives this 12 tricks on almost any lead and 13 on a low spade West made 5H+1 on a heart lead I checked the traveller. Only one table (out of 15) bid Jacoby 2NT managed to get to 6H and managed to make it :) One other table reached slam by other means and went down 1 All other Easts bid variants on 4H, 4NT, 3NT, 1NT etc, some tried slam and stopped in 5. Nobody managed to show their control in diamonds and try slam. The Jacoby table ignored the missing control and gambled. I'm not expert enough to know but maybe 2NT gets in the way of a well-ordered slam auction and control bidding and maybe also it invites interference with top players, and maybe most players dont use it much regards P EDIT I apologise. I fixed an error with the two slam tables. I mixed them up.

Double - what could go wrong :)

I have observed this person during NABC practice and they mislead GiB on at least 50% of the hands, most of the time intending to be in No Trumps They are clearly also a possible contender it is blatant cheating Disgusting But to be perfectly honest I find it more sad and pathetic that a seemingly good player feels the need to cheat a dumb bot in an attempt to beat all those thousands of honest players

Hi all I was just kicked out of NABC practice 4 during hand 17/18. This occurred two hours earlier than tournaments were ending last week. Please confirm if there has been a change in time zones. Wouldnt want it to happen during the NABC :) I was a bit disappointed since my strategy in tournaments is to steadily improve my scores during the tournaments and finish on 100% hands in the last few hands :) regards P

Hi Without naming any names I am disgusted by so-called experts, people with huge numbers of BBO masterpoints making disgracefully misleading bids in order to score slams that they have absolutely no right to make It is a disgrace. I dont think they can all be put down as errors We all make occasional errors but not bids b y highly experienced "expert" players that are deliberately designed to mislead the defence on their lead Most of us play by the rules and the spirit of the game. We bid what is in our hand, what our partners and opps understand. We may occasionally stretch our point counts. We do not deliberately mislead. It is a disgrace and it is no surprise this person has so many BBO masterpoints. It may have been a genuine error but I do not see how it could have been in this case This robot is being used to earn meaningful ACBL masterpoints and engage in meaningful tournaments like the NABC. If there are experience BBO people who spend all their time gaming the bot I sincerely hope they are not playing in the NABC regards P

Sorry. I should have clarified but its quite complex and my ideas may not be fully developed yet. My query relates either to bidding or play when some form of simulation (eg DD) is used with current information to decide how to proceed With human players we expect a certain amount of variance from the same player in how they would bid a hand and sequence, and play the hand. We also expect large variance between players - partners and opps. That is part of the game and nobody questions how fair the outcomes are. If we are all playing the same hands with the same computer software there a various considerations and arguments about how much variance there is in bidding a particular sequence and playing a particular hand (leads etc) One argument would say. To be fair every person playing S in an individual tourney should get the exact same bidding and play under identical bidding and play by them. This would require everyone to have the same random seed in any simulation at any stage of the process An alternative argument is that this does not provide enough true variance in the game, is very artifical and does not reflect true bridge. So you could make a case for every simulation to use a different random seed. This could arguably be a more correct approach to simulation of bridge but could be argued against on fairness grounds. It would take me a long time to fully explain what I am getting at. I can see both sides of the issue. If a bot is 100% predictable it may be regarded as fair but it is unrealistic and easy to game It also relates to the broader issue of how valid DD approaches are. Whether the brdge bidding and play problem is correctly specified. Whether the model is being misfitted or overfitted. Whether distributions and variances are correct etc. How to correct simulated distributions to get more correct ones. etc I am not net well enough versed in the Bridge simulation field to have a grip on all the issues yet. I am coming at it from a different direction where these issues play out in other forms of modeling EDIT Also it clearly relates to the nature of tournaments and the value of masterpoints in robot tourneys vs human tourneys, what the points actually mean, but clearly I am not experienced or any authority in that area of the Bridge World and I'm sure people in the ACBL, WBF etc take all those considerations into account. As I said on other threads I have no skin in the game, have no real interest in masterpoints (although its good to get the occasional point) but for many people in the game it is a valid and important area of concern no doubt that their points are not devalued. And despite having played for a long time I very much doubt I could just walk into any reasonable club and sit down with an average club player and score above 50% very often, whereas in robot tourneys I average around 55+% due to the different nature of the game (and having the bids explained as you go). My performance in a club would probably relate more to my partner's ability than mine (based on past experience) :) regards P

Hi Hrothgar I dont know very much about hand generation and issue in tournaments, however I did have a few general queries/concerns about how random seeds work in different parts of a bridge site - hand generation, robot play, bidding etc. Is the handing of deals different in the BBO and ACBL tourneys and general club play. How random are the simulations used during bidding and play etc. One thing I have noticed in tourneys is that there often seems to be a pattern of hands. This could of course just be observtion of patterns that arent there but I wondered if tournaments ever use themes or that the parameters used in hand generation could lead to those kinds of sequences in group of 8/12 hands Obviously the site wouldnt want to give too much away since that information could be abused by people trying to game the site. But I'm very interested in all these issue. Would be interested in any thoughts you have from your experience and references Generally my focus is on how "randomness" works/doesnt work in simulation models of play but the dealing is of interest to me too. I'm also interested in aspects of "fairness" in computer bridge in relation to how random simulations should be during bidding and play to ensure reasonable fairness. regards P

Hi all Thanks for the answers. I should have said it was IMP scoring and all the bid slams were clubs, 6/(6+1?)NT does make too. While I understand Gerber would have been a good bid in this case I thought that it (as a convention) almost interfered with my planning of bidding options - I'm not very familiar using it, more familiar to slower suit exploration, cues and Blackwood for suits and quantitatitives for NT. With this hand combination I was just a bit concerned that even with 3 Aces I may fall a trick short due to my rather thin Club honours. However I should have taken the punt given the IMPs on offer. 5C+1 did not score very well, nor did 3NT + 3. I need to just follow my instincts more sometimes The reason I initially just put a single hand and bidding is to try and ask about the problem I had in my head at that stage :) Thanks again! P Here is the hand. The bot picked the spade lead against me [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?sn=thepossum&s=SK5HT9D86CKJ97543&wn=Robot&w=SA8762HJ86DJT43CT&nn=Robot&n=SQ94HAKQ4DAQ72CAQ&en=Robot&e=SJT3H7532DK95C862&d=n&v=o&b=1&a=2C(Strong%20two%20club%20--%2019+%20HCP%3B%2023+%20total%20points%3B%20forcing%20to%202N)P2D(2D%20bid%20waiting%20--%20forcing%20to%202N)P2N(Balanced%20minimum%20--%202-5%20%21C%3B%202-5%20%21D%3B%202-5%20%21H%3B%202-5%20%21S%3B%2022-24%20HCP%3B%2023+%20total%20points)P5C(biddable%20%21C)PPP&p=SJS5SAS4D4DAD5D8CQC8C9CTCAC2C3S8S9S3SKS6CKH6H4C6HTH8HAH7SQSTH9S7HKH5D6HJD7D9CJDJC7S2D2H3C5DTDQH2C4D3HQDK]600|400[/hv]

This was North [hv=pc=n&n=sq94hakq4daq72caq]133|100[/hv] Others reached 6C by bidding directly over 2NT, bidding 4C (non Gerber partners) after which N bid Blackwood, some bid 6C over 2C, one bid 2C-3C-3NT-6C

2NT was 22-24. I considered Gerber. I ended up bidding 5C unfortunately. I was tempted just to bid 6C but wanted to be more sure. Gerber would have given me 3 Aces Do you think 2D is too weak and I could have bid 3C or something like that after 2C

Hi all I nearly bid this correctly but didnt really know how to proceed and missed out on what I thought was there? What would you bid next and why. I was fairly certain we had likely slam but had no idea on how to tell partner I had clubs, how to explore slam, how to bid controls, whether to aim for clubs or no trumps. A few made the right call. Most of us missed out. Was 2D too conservative and should I make a positive response rather than waiting? What comes next after 2NT regards P [hv=pc=n&s=sk5ht9d86ckj97543&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=2cp2dp2np]133|200[/hv]

EDITED to remove waffle Hi TrampledUF and Etha Very interesting topic and analysis. Surprising how rare they seem to be. Without simulation and simply understanding the use of the convention, when its used, how rare it is etc. I suspect what you are looking at is, as Etha says, simply that firstly Jacoby is rare, not everyone plays that system, thirdly slams are a small percentage of major contracts so you are looking at a small percentage of a rare bidding sequence. And on top of that any individual observer only sees a tiny percentage of those hands. So all in all a very unlikely thing to observe. Etha's sim show 70 hands out of 23K (although that does seem very low, but I havent simmed it, but it will be small and I trust the number :)). Then, how many hands does each individual see/play in a year say. I've been playing and watching intensively for say 8 months. Maybe 3 hours per day -> 30 hands per day -> 30*240 = 7200 hands in 8 months or over a year 10800 hands etc. And then you have to assume that you spent all that time looking for that sequence and noticing it, lets say the chance of observing one when it happens (and noting it) is 10% (rubbery figure No 1) That gives 70/23000 * 40%(chance of making) * 10800 (hands observed) * 0.1 (hands registered and remembered) = approx 1.3 slam Jacoby hands/per annum occurring and noticed by any individual on average (with a very high variance I assume). Then, of course, humans are less "accurate" in bidding than a robot on average so are probably less likely to bid one that is theoretically possible from a simulation. Most players are not experts or advanced enough to bid them as often as they could. You need access to real data to evaluate it ( a bit like Pavlicek's or Kidd's analyses). I believe, reading Kidd on LaJolla's site (based partly on Garvin and Pavlicek's data) that expert players only bid and make approx. 50% of DD theoretical available slams (EDIT Ignore this last figure. Its my interpetation from graphs). And of course there is the unknown percentage of players who play Jacoby 2NT. From Kidd's figures - Low rank players only make slams out of approx <1% of hands, average players approx 2% of hands, and World class approx 5% of hands compared to double dummy approx 14% of hands. This is reading from a graph so not accurate figures - please refer to Kidd Also, according to Kidd many players in different forms of play will stop in game rather than going to slam. It depends on the percentage of the slam, the scoring, state of tournament etc It was a very interesting question from TrampledUF and answer from Etha. Many lessons and implications in it for many application areas and perceptions throughout the world which impact on decision making, politics, everything etc :) The literature of Rare Event Modelling may be somewhat relevant although a Jacoby slam bid is rather less critical than an earthquake, tsunami or coup d'etat Note I also ran a very crude and brief frequency analysis (using bdeal) on Jacoby shape NS hands (5-card major) such that EW are unlikely to open or interfere. My sim backs up Etha's (no doubt much better) sim. My hand generation gave approx 0.15% (crude) Jacoby heart/spade shape and the double dummy slam success rate (12/13 tricks) was approx 30% +/- 2% 95% CI for hearts and spades, 51% +/- 2% (95% CI) for either. Of course that assumes they were bid which I didnt analyse :) It would be great if anyone could actually get any real figures on slam success with Jacoby :) regards P Refs La Jolla (Kidd, M.) Pavlicek Slam statistics - Kidd

I know I'm not as advanced as everyone else on this page but in the absence of the ability to bid weak 2C I would consider a light 1C opening to a 3C preempt Of course it depends on seat, situation in tournament, scoring, vulnerability etc. But I seem to be different to everyone else on Bridge Base and my bids often receive scorn so I will bow to the majority saying it should be 3C :) I do not believe 1C exagerrates the strength of the hand excessively But just ignore me people :)

It is rather frustrating. Also that they disappear within a month or two (not sure why - small storage I guess) and the Daylong hands are not available via the Hands web site. Access them with a query on the Bridge Base hands web site - very painful since you can only get one lin at a time unless you write or use a crawler - I havent had much success downloading in bulk from that site You can download Double Dummy Solver. That allows you to download a whole month of hands at a time - although its missing the Daylongs I believe. This is the best bulk download I have used You can access them using Bridge Solver either through a browser or an app on a phone You can store them each day into folders. Very painstakingly Hopefully one day the service will be available via the site or third party, including the Daylong hands. Im sure there would be a reasonable demand for it. Downloading a zip file of LIN files would be good Double Dummy Solve and Bridge Solver are the best I have seen to date

You are being wilfully obnoxious Tyler. You are the one who keep showing your ignorance on all my threads. So kindly do not post in response to anything ever again. You never have anything useful to say.I dont know where you ever got the impression you know anything about Bridge

It knew we had a 5-3 fit in Spades. It didnt know that in hearts. All it knew was 3-4 And as far as I know under almost any bidding system in the world you can bid Spades followed by hearts without it forcing beyond part score

Hi Thanks Hrothgar I may post the hand later but it may still be used somewhere so will wait until later I would hope a responder would either pass 2H, bid 2S, 2NT, or bid 3H maximum and leave a decision to opener regards P