pilowsky

I made a small presentation that shows you how to set up a table on BBO. It also demonstrates how to make hands of different types and then import them into BBO and practice bidding and play on a teaching table. Here is the link. It's my first effort. Let me know what you think of it. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v9p-Nk8eQmKmJCLzkJeXFGyiTfjnY3vO0bdT_h6x3R8/edit?usp=sharing

Either you have not been following current affairs, or you are under the influence of alcohol and your cognitive abilities are mildly impaired. The graph clearly shows that: As soon as restrictions are lifted, caseload increases.The incubation period is 2 weeks.Alcohol causes a dose-related disinhibition of all function.It's a bad idea.More people will die,What is hard to decide?

The two things about tournament registration on BBO that could be improved are: You can only do it in a 2-hour window before start time.Your partner must be online at the same time.

Now you are simply being abusive. Turn it in.

There are several issues here. Some of us are expert educators. I know Ken is. I have held many jobs in the tertiary sector. Despite the tightly held beliefs of some on this Forum, I am not a mini-golf instructor. When I told my mother that I wanted to be a film director she said: "sure - as soon as you finish medical school". The unfair part was that she advised all my friends to become lawyers; including my sister's friend Julia Gillard. I like arguing. It seemed very unreasonable. So I took up Bridge when I retired. Yesterday I unearthed the handwritten memoirs of my Grandfather that my Father had transcribed. He liked to argue as well. So did my Father. There is an important distinction between teaching and education that is being missed here. Teaching is a completely passive activity. The person at the front speaks and you write stuff down. Later when you go over it you might learn something. At that moment you are educating yourself. Education is a singularly personal activity. When somebody says "I'll teach you a lesson" you are usually in trouble. Education leads to that "aha" moment when we suddenly understand why underleading an Ace is a bad idea. Somebody can TELL you not to do it until they are blue in the face but no 'education' occurs until you 'realise' what the purpose is. Hence the Latin root of the word to draw out. or lead out as in Il Duce. I learned that from "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" great book and film. The use of Latin words in English is a common way of disguising there meaning. Moving right along. When I say school is largely child-care I am serious. For the most part, society wants drones, not thinkers. Watch the famous " " by McRaven. It is a riff on the 'be prepared' motivational speeches. That is what school is. It 'prepares' people. But for what? Few people that I know come out of high school able to think. They are, by and large, not trained to be imaginative. I do not really think I understood mechanistic thinking until I was well into my thirties. At that time the quality of my research (I'm my opinion) improved dramatically. My understanding of how to do it was in place. I had the tools and for a while, I was able to produce some great stuff. Learning lots of things is good. Being competent is excellent. Being prepared for anything is wonderful. But so what? You have to do something with all of it otherwise you are just playing Bridge; which now that I am happily retired, is what I mostly do - just not very well. The younger people can try to pick up the baton where I left it. Good luck to them.

Possibly Vampyr is missing a valuable feature of the Daylong format. I am also unconvinced about the evidence for 'rampant cheating'. Is there any? Or is it another mail-in voting fraud story? The reason that the tournament is offered over a 24 hour period is not that players take 24 hours to complete 8 hands of bridge. Most people would forget their own name over such a long time. The reason is that it allows the entire world to participate. BBO is the world's largest Bridge Club. There are multiple types of "Daylong" they come in several different formats. Free, not free, matchpoints, IMPS, BBO, ACBL, challenge style, stratified and others. As an aside, all of our masterpoint records are available for anyone to check at this link at any time, so it is possible to see who has played robot tournaments and who has played paid tournaments on BBO. I do not understand why anyone would criticise other people for taking pleasure in playing one form of Bridge as opposed to another. I find the challenge format to be one of the purest forms of Bridge available. Playing the $0.39 MP Daylong is a highlight of my day. at the end of the week, I discuss the results with my Coach and I learn a great deal. Who are you to criticise? Why should I, and others that post questions on the Forum, not enjoy their game of Bridge as much as you, rather than being held to some arbitrary standard of what is supposed to be "proper" Bridge? It's the Bridge Base Online Forum after all, not Mayfair Teahouse Forum after all. Everyone who uses it plays with computers not cards.

I could not agree more. The Prime area is an excellent facility for doing just what you suggest. It is particularly valuable because you can import specific hands to practice. That way you and your partner can practice opening 1NT, playing Stayman all sorts of things. Many times quickly and easily. It is amazing how the underlying reasons associated with maxims become apparent when you do this. Simple stuff like what happens if you lead away from an Ace in a suit contract or why you need a particular point range for a particular bid. All becomes much clearer. Paul Gipson 'paulg' - and others - have made some great youtube content. I have made a short presentation also - about how to get onto BBO and use this stuff. WARNING: I am one of those weaker players whose advice about play you should not listen to. But I know what a strong player looks like. I do not work for BBO. I do know how to learn stuff and I do play in the BIL - it's a very friendly Club. Knowing how to ask the right question is the key to all learning. Remembering the answer is the path to knowledge. Using that knowledge wisely is the secret to success. Good luck partner

The reason luck is involved is that you may be in a group that gets more 'flat boards' than other people. This decreases your opportunity to achieve high percentages. Here is an example from today. The winner of the Daylong scored extremely well with 2 100% boards. The first one is a makeable slam in hearts or spades but only makes 2NT!. Nobody else made this contract. The other time they found a makeable 3NT that nobody else found. Good luck to them. Meanwhile, I played in a group where I shared top board for 54.55% with 21 others. 2 people not making. The normalisation of scores with small sample sizes is commonly done to ensure that groups are compared fairly across candidatures. That way, people undertaking Advanced Calculus get fairly compared with those taking History. The mathematics behind this is designed to enable everyone to enjoy whatever course they like - or in this case, play different sets of boards, without being disadvantaged in the end. Unfortunately, BBO does not undertake any normalisation for massive daylong tournaments. As johnu and smerriman point out, this means that there is a great deal of luck involved. On the other hand, they are FREE. Which is quite cheap. You can get a sense of how well you did within your group by looking at your modal position for each board. This means did you score at, above or below the commonest result for that hand. Some, like Vampyr dislike the format. I quite like it. The robots have a (mostly) knowable system, and when a mistake is made, I have to own it.

I like candy. But on a more serious note. Please be serious.

In that case, there appears to be a major disconnect between your concept of Prime and reality. It appears to me that the people that play in Prime are quite seasoned players who are not in the least bit shy. We use it to practice. It is an excellent space for this purpose. You may have noticed that I am promoting it all over the place and I do not work for BBO. I have met several players in the Prime area. They are not shy and they know what they are doing. I rarely do well in the Prime tournament. Of course, I rarely do well anywhere, but I doubt that your characterisation of this area is correct. Regarding team matches, These do not require credentials to allow a person to set them up and run them outside the Prime area. Anybody can do it. I did myself for a while. You just need to have 8 people who will stick around. You need credentials if there is a dropout and there are sub. problems. Isn't that correct?

Are you suggesting that the people that come to play on BBO are not real? Or are you saying that the tournament directors on BBO lack some sort of competency that Directors not on BBO have? Or is it both?

That's a great idea. Apparently BBO is constantly striving to add new features to the Prime area for us. I have started a thread about it. It would be good if you could add your thoughts there. Just follow the link: https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/83342-prime-club/page__mode__show

That is correct - well done. It makes no difference to the point made.

Another thing that differentiates scientists from non-scientists is that we use actual data when presenting examples. I understand that when you substitute 'x' in your examples Mike, you are indicating a range, but the range extends from 2-9 in your cases. In a previous post, you that you recently removed, you abjured us to be specific when replying. I believe that it is bad Bridge, bad logic, and a bit silly, to discuss mathematical problems by throwing up xxx all the time and then saying "horrible". The smiley emoticon doesn't help . While I agree in general with your point, your examples, when I run them through the various hand evaluation calculators come within the range of 21-23 +/- 1 (there are no 'units' for these numbers) what makes these hands 'difficult' as you well know is that the shape and strength mean that different people and partnerships have different bidding options available to them. Once in the contract, the play is then commonly difficult also. Ultimately the result depends not just on how well you play, but on how well everyone else plays. It is the score that defines the result. This is also critical in deciding what contract to place your partner in during FTF competition. A good player knows the quality of themselves, their opponent, their partner and the entire field. It is not enough to simply evaluate the 13 cards in front of your eyes. Experts will understand what I am talking about. It's a strange thing but learning turns out to be similar in every field. In the end, everything is composed of one's and zero's. There is no God in the machine if there was we would need to give the robots 'agency' and then lawyers really would have work for life!

What? You mean he's still right! Could this be the Lawyers paradox?

I am not a great bridge player but I am a world expert on education. What is intelligence? Maybe we better start another thread. I differentiate between competence and intelligence. I also differentiate between capacity and 'leakiness'. I was studying Stanford and Binet when I was 14 years old. I have a copy of Cyril Burt's infamous tome. Intelligence is a metric that went out of fashion in the education business in the 1970's. It is a meaningless characterisation. Similar to stupidity. Trump calls himself a "very stable genius". These are characterisation words put together in a string. It is just word salad. It conveys no meaning at all. What is he a genius at? What are his competencies? What has he accomplished? This is why the characterisation "intelligence" is not used. It conveys no real meaning. space for sm In the same way, masterpoints in bridge tell you nothing about the quality of a player. They are a measure of something, but like prizes, they are mainly barnacles that stick to a ship as it cruises through life. They tell you how you are doing at a point in time, They do not inform anyone else about the future. So too with the term "intelligence". It is intended to convey an aptitude for acquiring competency. That is what Stanford and Binet designed it for. Characterisation words such as stupid, idiot, moron, genius and so on were later added (hilariously with percentages) to denote positions on the IQ Bell-curve. Unfortunately, the variance accounted for by the relationship (seriously important concept here) is terrible. I mean shocking. Thousands of hapless children were streamed into a variety of classes and courses. on the basis of this baseless research. He was wrong - the tint of your skin has no effect on your capacity to retain information. He knew it then - it was obvious he was a Southern racist. A good ole boy from the confederacy. They still called it the "War of Northern Aggression" when I visited UNC in 1986. All the crap jobs were held by black people. There were almost no black faces in the laboratory. When I went to Society for Neuroscience non-white faces were a rarity. I doubt much has changed. No, just checked, not a single black president. Pathetic. History began with old white men. A few women are being allowed in. Things are not getting better fast enough for me. In fact, according to Dennis Leary, when you grow up, you're going to find that life is going to suck And there is no Easter Bunny, even worse, Big Bird isn't funny I agree with him.

The quality of a random number generator is an extremely important question for codebreakers and amongst computer scientists. It is not something that you will be able to detect much difference in when looking at a few deals. Mathematicians argue for hours about random numbers and the best way to generate them (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1062902/how-random-is-javascripts-math-random) The link that I provided originally shows that two sites can get very slight differences in their curves depending on where they start. This will only affect a tiny number of deals AT THE MARGIN. But, this may mean that one population of random numbers contains the unique deal with the AKQJT98765432 spades North. and a particular variation of cards in the other seats. If you want a discussion of what 'perfection' is, then I think you need to start a topic in the Water Cooler. Interestingly, nobody ever writes to complain that they had a string of hands with a lot of HCP and that this caused marital discord. Suresh and his wife could simply swap seats randomly to solve their problem if that were the case.

Thank you for that. I very much doubt that Prime will ever become obligatory. To charge an entry fee would be like a Supermarket or a Casino charging people to walk in the door. The idea is that you spend money once you enter. Prime has some big advantages for people like me who are starting out and want to learn in peace. In the Prime area, I can load up specific types of hands and drill them until I get them right - or at least think I do. If I want to practice hands with a void in Diamonds and 17-19 HCP in South and 7-10 HCP in North - no problem. Hands with 4 card majors on each side can easily be set up. Partnership bidding and play is also easy to do. For me, Prime is an excellent add-on. Sure, the bidding style that the robots use is not to everyone's taste, but then, in the end, it's the same 52 cards.

The irony of the title has not escaped notice

I never experienced overt anti-semitism until I left the ivory tower of academia. I think I was just narrowly focussed and clueless. When I started playing Bridge it became very obvious. Come to Sydney and speak to some of the DJ Trump supporters in the Bridge Clubs. During my time in Academia, I once met a famous (he wrote the most widely used textbook of Physiology at the time) Professor who told me, without a trace of irony that black people, on average, were not as smart as white people. It's out there. There is no correlation between aptitude in one area and intelligence in another. The best chess player in South Australia, when I was young, was a taxi driver. The Professor of Physics couldn't lay a glove on him. Here is a recent report on the topic Mark Kenny is interviewing Vic Alhadeff from the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. I have seen multiple instances of Holocaust denial in the USA. The KKK still exists. And Trump wants to outlaw non-existent organisations.

Hi Suresh - Welcome to the Forum. We are very lucky to have so many sites to play different mind games. BBO is the biggest of the Bridge sites. John is, of course, being silly. Your question has come up before, and it is just a matter of luck. Gerardo is one of the administrators of BBO (he looks after the site. The site (Myhands) that he has directed you to holds the records of all the hands that you play on BBO. This will allow you to check for yourself what has been happening. You can also use it to find out how other people played the hands that you were dealt. In fact, the hands are dealt quite randomly with respect to distribution and points. Here is a link to a chart that shows a distribution of what sort of shape and high card points you can expect to get with a deal. It can be quite surprising. Good luck with your games. It is possible to create specific hands and import them into BBO for practice, but that is another story. These types of hands can be very unusual. Really strange hands in BBO are called "Goulash hands".

Thank you. at the time, it was alerted as 18-19 HCP so I took as a sort of inverted Benji 2 where the 2♦ was like 2♣ - a sort of omnibus bid for hard to handle hands. Which is why I bid over it.

I could not have put it better myself. BBO is providing a facility that is only useful to people with experience at writing code. I am suggesting something for people that do not have that experience. A lot of bridge players are not software engineers. Many people that drive cars are not mechanics. I think that the vast majority of users would prefer playbridge to make hands. Both of the people that I have shown it to do. Both of them know there way around computers. <br style="color: rgb(26, 95, 38); font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">qx|o1|md|3SQT986HAQJ3DQ5CA8,SJ5HT852DJ87CQ954,SA42HK7DK32CKT632|rh||ah|Board 1|sv|0|pg|| qx|o2|md|4ST82HA72D8752CT53,SAKJ74HKJ84DKJCJ2,SQ3H9653DAT3CAK64|rh||ah|Board 2|sv|n|pg|| qx|o3|md|1ST632H9DKT963CQ94,S8HQ763DAQ4CAKT62,SKQJ95HAKJ8DJ2C85|rh||ah|Board 3|sv|e|pg|| qx|o4|md|2SK8HK975DQ543C876,SJ54HA6DKT2CQJT93,SQT7HJ42DJ976C542|rh||ah|Board 4|sv|b|pg|| qx|o5|md|3SKQ964HJ753DK7CAK,S32HDAQT854C87632,SAJT7HAKT984D9C95|rh||ah|Board 5|sv|n|pg|| qx|o6|md|4SQT5HKQ9D8632C643,SAJ743HAJ86DK7CQT,SK96H752DAQT5CK97|rh||ah|Board 6|sv|e|pg|| qx|o7|md|1ST5HT432D762CJ753,SAJ62HK9DA984CQT9,SKQ983HAQJ5DJ3CK4|rh||ah|Board 7|sv|b|pg|| qx|o8|md|2S42HA543DQT82CT92,S763H96DA64CK8643,SAJ5HT82DK753CA75|rh||ah|Board 8|sv|0|pg|| qx|o9|md|3SKQJT5HQJ87DA5CQ7,SA8HAT932D87CJ984,S76HKDQJ932CAK532|rh||ah|Board 9|sv|e|pg|| qx|o10|md|4ST7HT8532DKT76C94,SAKJ53HKQ74DJ5CK6,S98642HJ9DQ984CAJ|rh||ah|Board 10|sv|b|pg|| qx|o11|md|1S5HAJT84DT742CT82,SKQ42H2DAKJ95CQ75,SJT976HKQ63DQ3CAK|rh||ah|Board 11|sv|0|pg|| qx|o12|md|2S75HJ4D87642CJT64,SHKT87532DAK9CA72,SAQJ982HDQT3C9853|rh||ah|Board 12|sv|n|pg|| qx|o13|md|3SQT432HKQJ7DA4CAT,SAJ5HA52DKQ5CJ653,SK98HT98643DJ83C4|rh||ah|Board 13|sv|b|pg|| qx|o14|md|4S43H32DQT7632CQJ6,SAT862HAJ98DK5CA2,SQ95HT754D8CKT974|rh||ah|Board 14|sv|0|pg|| qx|o15|md|1SJ874HQ742DT5CKJ5,S2HT5DKJ8764CT843,SKQ965HAJ93DAQC76|rh||ah|Board 15|sv|n|pg|| qx|o16|md|2SA73H8754DKJ632CK,S92HT62DQ9854C876,SQ65HA3DTCAJT9532|rh||ah|Board 16|sv|e|pg|| qx|o17|md|3SKQ763HKQ32DKQCJ7,ST54HJT97D974CA65,SAJ98H85DA52CK984|rh||ah|Board 17|sv|0|pg|| qx|o18|md|4SQ82HAJDQJT9832C2,SAKJ54HKQ92D65CQ5,S976HT7654DA74CJ4|rh||ah|Board 18|sv|n|pg|| qx|o19|md|1ST6H875DAKT532C42,SA93HJ93D76CT9765,SKQJ42HAK64DQJCJ3|rh||ah|Board 19|sv|e|pg|| qx|o20|md|2SA964HT8654DQ53CT,SK83HJ3DJT96CK532,S5HQ9DK872CAQ9864|rh||ah|Board 20|sv|b|pg|| qx|o21|md|3SAKQJ7HQJ82DK4CJ2,S83HAKT943DA985CA,S94H765D63CQT8653|rh||ah|Board 21|sv|n|pg|| qx|o22|md|4S953H9632DQ954CT3,SAKJ82HAJT8D76CA2,ST7HQ74DKT32CKQ64|rh||ah|Board 22|sv|e|pg|| qx|o23|md|1SKJHT82D8543CAKT5,SQ754HAQ7543D2C73,SA8632HKJ96DAQCJ4|rh||ah|Board 23|sv|b|pg|| qx|o24|md|2S75HQT8743DAQJC74,SQ94H65DK9832CT52,SJT3H9D654CAKJ983|rh||ah|Board 24|sv|0|pg|| Here are 24 boards South has 15-17HCP 5 in spades 4 in Hearts 2 and 2. everything else distributed randomly. Want a game? Took 5 seconds. LIN, PBN and hand records available. I can stipulate HCP and shape in North as well.

In order to see if I'm improving, I play challenges against Stars. So far they are beating me comprehensively. This hand just came up. [hv=pc=n&s=saqjt872hakjdt65c]133|100[/hv] I have exactly 8.5 tricks. What to bid? I only have 15 HCP and I'm in 2nd seat. If I bid 2♣ and ops start interfering I might miss my chance. If I bid 4♠ I might go too far, or I might miss a slam. There are 6 spades out. They should split 1,2,3. There are 25 HCP out they should split 8, 8, 9 or thereabouts. All things considered, the odds are good that I'll have an 8 card fit with 25+ HCP. And, I'm not vulnerable. In the end, Both of us opted for the same bid. Here is the .LIN file. What do you think? As usual, the Star beat me. (5/44). But = on this board. The reason I'm posting this hand is that I think it illustrates the many different ways that people handle the "in-between" boards. A similar, albeit slightly stronger, hand came up today in a tournament and was opened 2♦. It looked like this: [hv=pc=n&s=sakj96hq95daca653]133|100[/hv] This hand rates at 20.1 on the K&R scale - a bit more than the other hand which comes in at 19.15. This hand also made 4♠ because I made the wrong lead against it. Here's the .LIN file.

It would be laborious except that there is a free programme on the web that does it all for you. They even save the deals for a year. This excellent site is called playbridge. It is much better than the method that you describe. The reason is that with your method knowledge of coding is needed. With my method, none is required. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. With this site you can download the .LIN files, .PBN files, and much more. Using playbridge, I was instantly able to generate and play hands of many types. This took me a few hours to learn, after being unable to work out how to do it using the method you describe. By the way, I have over 40 years of experience writing code. This means that the instructions for writing the code are poorly described. You can find my explanation of how to use this site, set up a teaching table and how to use the Prime area for practice on my Forum home page. But here is a link. Feedback appreciated. I don't get paid by BBO or anyone else, but I do promote Prime out of self-interest. If it gets better, I will get more value for the money that I spend on it. BBO will become a better site and I will have more fun. GLP.