pilowsky

Yes

Speaking of messing around, What's your call on this hand? What are you hoping for? From a tournament that is ongoing. [hv=pc=n&s=sat842hdacakt9832]133|100[/hv] Full hand tomorrow when the tournament finishes.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the GIB system.

I don't know what Club you go to. I have tried at least six face to face clubs in Sydney. The experience is the opposite of pleasant. One Director explained to me that all South African Jewish Women were arrogant - presumably, this includes my dead mother. Despite my complaints to the Recorder he is still employed by the NSWBA. AND, I was told the second time I brought it up that I should not make a fuss because it's Christmas! I may not be the most charming person I know, but believe it or not, I can do without the kind of behaviour that would have resulted in summary dismissal from any workplace in my Country. He is not the only misogynistic racist antisemite that I have encountered at the Bridge Club (or the Chess Club when I was a child). Nowadays, Trump seems to have normalised this kind of behaviour but frankly, I prefer to play Bridge from the safety and comfort of my own home. As I said elsewhere that kind of "community spirit" is not for me. I like my friends. You can keep yours.

Are you sure that will work? Maybe a different Ego or Superego is needed as well.

Could not agree more!

You can sometimes get a clue if the robot's partner has a purple badge. Then they are a Prime customer and might be playing in the Prime club with an advanced robot. This is most useful when comparing results from hands played within the Prime club where outcomes seem to differ depending on the robot type.

You are right it does not look like a hamburger. It looks like three straight lines. Unless you are incredibly hungry. Click them anyway

As I understand it all Forum members - including you - are automatically enrolled. Just logon to BBO on the day go to the competitive section where you will find the tournament listed as free for all Forum members and you will be able to play - and no doubt easily beat me. The other members may prove more of a challenge!

It is ridiculous that I should be able to score 50.09% in the BBO Forums Sunday Daylong. Until I discover that only 275 players completed the challenge. I note that this is basically a gigantic group challenge. We all get to play the same boards. This makes it different from every other robot tournament. I could understand one, two or even a few of the regular posters being absent. But nearly everyone! In the words of ? Congrats to Nige1, diana_eva, Povratnik and kenberg for beating me - again. And everyone else whose names I don't immediately recognise.

I am seeing many posts on the Forum complaining about User interfaces, software and hardware. Like many of you I am not a computer expert but I have grown up through the computer age. My first computer was an HP-125 - the same level of equipment that Armstrong used to land on the moon in 1969. In 1976 I learned Fortran programming in University. BUT, computers are something that I use. I don't build them or programme them. So my question is, what is the optimal rig for playing on BBO? My main rig is an IMac with an attached TV as a second monitor. Since I am in Australia I use Telstra for my internet connection. This costs slightly more, but it is the only carrier that has a sim card in the modem so that if there is an outage the modem switches to 4G (/5G). When I was with another carrier nothing worked. I also have Parallels so that I can run Windows as well. In addition, I have an aging Mac laptop, An Ipad, A chrome tablet, A pixel phone A windows computer and a Windows laptop and a bunch of other rubbish leftover from work. I have had to use each of these from time to time when the systems run back-ups or updates. I use Chrome as a browser because it is well-integrated with my phone. And I have cloud storage with google. Normally when I purchase software. the minimum hardware requirement is specified. The optimum is never specified. What do long-term users suggest? I am particularly interested in the opinion of computer experts. At a minimum, for tournament play, I would suggest a laptop with an attached monitor running Chrome or similar. I would also recommend a backup laptop. I would not suggest playing tournaments on a tablet or phone since it is not possible to see the history. What I am saying is that it seems appropriate to join a tournament prepared to play with the same level of seriousness as if you were playing at a club. I frequently hear people say "Bridge is a social game". What they mean is that people are involved. Football is also a social game. But the players do not have a cup of tea and chat during the match. In the same way, the online Bridge player ought to be properly prepared so that all the players in the tournament can be assured of an enjoyable contest. They can have a chat and a cuppa afterwards or beforehand. Or perhaps a friendly comment between hands. It seems to me that information of this type would be extremely helpful to anybody joining BBO or other platforms for the first time.

Life is very unfair. Look what I just discovered in wikipedia. "According to a meta-analysis of 144 studies, totaling 1,787,629 participants, the best estimate for the male to female odds ratio was 1.23, indicating 23% more men are left-handed. 11% of men and 9% of women would be approximately 10% overall, at a 1.22 male to female odds ratio.[69][clarification needed]" This means that if you sit South then the person on the left is definitely at a disadvantage but only - as you will discover later in the same article - if they are a male or a kangaroo.

Quite right, there is a 74.3% chance that you are dead.

I think the critical point is that as far as medical management goes, there isn't any. The same problem was faced back in 1918. Doctors were called to see patients but could offer very little of substance. Reading the stories about the pandemic then is quite an eerie experience (see post above). Exactly the same social problems were faced because of a lack of scientific and medical expertise. Without effective treatment or an effective vaccine, only palliation (ventilation and similar support) is available. Currently, Social distancing IS the vaccine. What the graph in the image shows is that the number of cases has fallen because of social distancing. Not because of effective treatment. If people rush to return to mingle together then the problem will return. Just as it did with influenza. This stuff is not new. Displaying numbers in different formats will not change this. The other huge problem is that an enormous proportion of the population seem to believe that the virus will go away by magic, with prayer. I do not fall into this group, but I enough people do to destroy our chance to keep the disease suppressed until an effective way of managing it can be devised. I have absolutely no idea why I am writing this on a Bridge forum. I suppose it's so that somebody will improve my spelling and grammar! I suspect that I have just about reached an equilibrium point where I am about as good a Bridge player as Trump is a President. That would be ~40%. On average. Not very edifying.

Using chrome, click on the the three bars where the hand is then click 'export' 'handviewer link' and click on the link that appears in the middle of the screen. It will open in a new tab. Sometimes it threatens to close the program. But not often. Then you have to right click, copy and paste the link into a new tab. Now you can see the hand in a big window! If you add the Bridgesolover add-on you can get all the makeable contracts as well. If you want you can then collect both links (right click copy) and put them into a spreadsheet or document (use cmnd 'v'- mac or cntrl - windows 'k' then v to paste them onto a word) and shout at, or celebrate with your partner, later. Not sure about other browsers or windows. This works so well that I can do it in seconds during a tournament while waiting for a round change. I hope this results in less sucking, and more sustenance.

Just for info, here is an advisory from the Australian government about 10 minutes ago. It's interesting (to me) that despite the lack of any effective treatment or vaccine and the continuing trickle of cases since the first wave, as the country is now rapidly reopening. As an aside, I wonder how DT would cope on the Forum given his recent stoush with Twitter .

Here is something that may be of interest. It has to do with the lived experience of people in pandemics. It was originally a Masters thesis by a Vanderbilt (the guy that keeps giving to Bridge players!) English student. "THE 1918 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC IN LITERATURE AND MEMORY" by Caroline Hovanec It concerns literature written at the time of the influenza pandemics between 1918 and 1935. The thesis was written before this current pandemic. It makes a fascinating read. I think it was then published in the journal 'Literature and Medicine' 29:1 Spring 2011. as "Of Bodies, Families, and Communities: Refiguring the 1918 Influenza Pandemic" Here is a link. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/449360/pdf It refers to some excellent works of contemporary fiction. She makes the point that despite the pandemic being a much more significant cause of death, it is not the stand out feature in contemporary consciousness. I suspect that a bullet is easier to comprehend than a virus. I found it an outstanding piece of work.

Just as well Ken, look what happened to Cassandra!

Bridge clubs are a very long way from restaurants, bars and gyms. If you want a realistic comparison, think of retirement villages. or the dining room in a nursing home. The expert that runs the club that I started playing at talked about the "rule of 160". Meaning that if the combined age of your opposition exceeded that number then you were in big trouble. Many of the people that I partnered were in their 70's, 80's and 90's. Most of us have multiple medical disorders ranging from heart transplant, obesity, deep vein thrombosis, asthma, hypertension, cancer and a whole lot more besides. At 61 I was considered a callow youth. Back in March when I rang clubs and suggested that it might be a good idea to close I was told that clients at risk would stay away of there own accord! I could not believe that both of the club managers that I spoke to (although one I knew to be a Donald Trump supporter) did not realise that almost all bridge players fell into the high-risk category. The only club in Australia that has continued successfully and without interruption is the Adelaide-based online ABF club Stepbridge which has its server in the Netherlands. It is almost certainly the largest bridge club in Australia at present. The suggestion that, from an infectious disease perspective, Bridge is a safe game for the geriatric population in its current format is ludicrous. It is not. Slippers of cards are passed from table to table where people with unknown sanitary habits touch them with their bare hands. You have no idea at all about what sort of potentially lethal viruses given the right host is being passed around. If you were hosting a dinner party at home, would you pass the cutlery around along with the food? There is a reason that many diseases are spread by the faecal-oral route. It is the same reason why nobody likes to eat from the buffet on a cruise ship. When I suggest that Bridge clubs should modernise, what I mean is they should get rid of the paper cards. You can still sit around at tables and scowl at opponents if that floats your boat - although why it would makes no sense to me. But even simple computer technology will allow for a safe game to be played in a social environment. What exactly is it that you think that you gain from FTF? A flickering eyelash? A millisecond pause? It won't help, the king will still be wherever the king is. The TD's will have a much easier life as well.

Not being an expert, can you explain why you would not prefer the safer 7 spade contract?

8.7%

It's 226 years since Cornelius Vanderbilt was born. Cornelius Vanderbilt was born on May 27 1794. He was not a nice man and he despised women. He was also pretty tight with money. Nevertheless, he did leave a little of his huge fortune to his wife and daughters although the main beneficiaries were his male heirs. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cornelius-Vanderbilt-1794-1877 Harold (Mike) Vanderbilt was the great-grandson of the misogynistic railroad tycoon, and as we know also seems to have harboured a dislike for women since he stole the term 'vulnerable' from a female passenger on the SS Finland when Contract Bridge was apparently formalised. The identity of this woman remains unknown to this day. The irony of her providing the term vulnerable to the game and then being taken advantage of has not escaped me. I have no idea if this Vanderbilt was a nice person or not. Rich people write history. Reading between the lines it seems unlikely. He left us a wonderful game, but I am glad that we are more tolerant of all members of society in the modern era. Or so it appeared until quite recently. For what its worth, Harold was born in 1884, 90 years after Grandpa, and died on July 4 1970 - 50 years ago. This article was published in the NY Times July 12 1964. I won't reproduce the whole lot - here's the first paragraph. "HAROLD S. VANDERBILT, the father of contract bridge, celebrated his 80th birthday last Monday. He earned world‐wide renown as a yachtsman, winning the America's Cup three times, but his most enduring fame is likely to come from his contributions to bridge."

Also, are you sure that this is true barmar? This is a quote from the BBO terms of service: "You may use this Software on a single computer, and you may transfer it to another computer so long as it is used on only one computer at a time." http://online.bridge...com/v2/tos.html This seems to imply that if somebody were to have a second user name and login on a second device then that would be a breach. For pretty obvious reasons! It seems to me that the advice that a person can use two or more usernames ought to be taken with caution. But then I'm not a lawyer, so what would I know?

As I say, "If they insist on the old format". It's time for a revolution in the way Bridge is played.

Almost immediately after I started playing duplicate bridge in February 2019 (I had to give up fun at 17 to go to University so I learned a little Bridge in the common room) it became obvious that it is really a video game. The use of dirty torn paper cards in plastic slippers and antiquated bridgemates with chalkboard lessons from people that don't understand computers is impossible for me to comprehend. Even when I didn't know what a transfer was and everyone in the Club laughed at me (with good reason) it astonished me - and still does that they are so excited by paper cards when it can all be done safely and so much better on cheap laptops with real-time results. Baffling really. Hopefully, one good thing that emerges from this terrible crisis is a reconfiguration of Bridge. I for one will not be returning to a Bridge Club at least if they insist on the old format.