pilowsky

I learn something new every day! Sometimes more often.

All robots at this table. What's the best way to describe the 3♦ bid?[hv=pc=n&s=sak762hk2dkt85ca5&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=pp1sp1np2np3d]133|200[/hv]

This might be the cause:

Doctors are just people. For every Fauci there's a Rand Paul. Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with 'personality' - Chess taught me that when I was a kid - Bridge reinforced the lesson.

Today is Dr Fauci's last White House press conference. He suggested that people get vaccinated. Good advice.

That comes to 174% - proving your point.

Is Argine having a rest? No Daylong today.

At this rate he'll be the only one there.

This syllogism is the reason why Bridge makes so little sense to people new to the game. This kind of logic if applied to everyday life would mean: Driving while holding a mobile phone is ONLY illegal if there's an accident. Driving while drunk is only illegal if you crash into a pedestrian. The average person who starts to play Bridge is baffled by the idea that: There are multiple rules that change whimsically and are different at different levels and in different countries. The rules - even when available in an easily readable form to the players - are not actually rules because you are free to break them unless damage results. You don't have to understand the rules to play the game. Bridge appears - to the newcomer - to be a game designed by Kafka and implemented by George Orwell.

Here we go again...

Keith Levene the a few days ago.

The fact that Trump exists in a "democracy" governed by the "rule of law" suggests a fundamental flaw in the experiment. If you design an experiment to determine if 1+1=2 and the answer keeps coming out "I'm going to appeal to a higher court", surely the experiment isn't intelligently designed - so to speak.

I just hovered over a bid and Argine told me "...2+♥...etc" and then added the rider "this bid is not allowed". I was so concerned I bid something else. Argine is much stricter than GIB.

A senate majority - who would have thought?

Not everyday I get to see 'pfui' used in a sentence - thanks for that.

In Australia a 2NT opening could easily be weak with both minors.

OK, I get it, you are hoping that after a stern telling off, the offending party will religiously adhere to the rules, fearful of your wrath. What happens when they do exactly the same thing on the next board? You write that "...this one instance does not provide enough evidence to rule that something untoward went on here...". This seems to mean that alerting is basically a guideline, a custom observed more in the breach if you're to the manner born.

It's problems like this that cause enormous difficulties for people trying to understand Bridge. The director is called to the table because someone made a bid where it is required that the partner makes some kind of comment (alert etc depending on the jurisdiction). Instead of making a ruling about the legality or otherwise of failure to alert/comment etc., the Director instead makes a ruling about whether or not the other side was 'damaged'. Does this mean that alerts and announcements are optional where no damage occurs? Is it incumbent on the party that calls the Director to be able to state a possible situation where damage may have occurred (e.g. I missed the opportunity to do 'insert xxx here') before the failure to follow the rules attracts a penalty? This seems to be the case quite often in the swamp where I play and most stuff just slips through to the keeper. The failure to have a consistent set of penalties for failure to provide adequate announcements or alerts for bids that mean more than either a natural suit or a non-forcing willingness to play at that level, appears to be unique to Bridge. Every other sport that I can think of has prescribed penalties for not adhering to the rules: why is Bridge different?

GIB plays all FSF as forcing to game including 1/1/1/1. It's in the system notes. In my (limited) experience GIB will not bid diamonds over clubs if it has a 4CM - unless it has something like AKQxxx - and even then... I'm guessing the successful Souths bid 3NT and not 4H.

Only 4% skepticism intended. After the election of Trump, political discourse throughout the world changed dramatically. When the elephant in the room starts dancing the whole house shakes.

Good luck America.

A lot depends on what is meant by 'plasticity'. During development (especially early childhood) there is an astonishing amount of organising in the brain with different neurons making connections with each other. At this time of life brains are capable of quite a lot of re-organisation if there is damage - up to a point of course. The earlier in life, the easier it is for the nervous system to organise itself to cope with injury. When we reach adulthood it is much harder - often impossible - for the brain to cope with physical damage - severe stroke, or prolonged loss of oxygen, concussion etc. If an adult has an injury - say from a bleed in the brain or a blockage in an artery - there will be a loss of function. Recovery in this situation is not because of plasticity so much as resupply of oxygen as swelling settles down after the acute injury. Basically, recovery in adulthood works mainly by existing pathways becoming stronger by increased use. This is a type of neuroplasticity but it's quite different from what happens to children where completely new pathways are forming. This is (probably) why things you learn as a child are not easily forgotten, but if you try to acquire new things as an adult it's much harder. Teleologically (and actually I suppose) it makes sense since the formation of brain pathways is what generates your 'mind' (another big question). If you have a major loss of nerve function when you are an adult it's hard to imagine how a therapy that caused new pathways to form in the same way they did when you were a child could do it without changing your entire personality. The effect of 'mind-altering drugs' gives some insight into this problem. Getting the average person to change their mind about anything is a more typical example of how it works (or fails to) in normal life. The ability to change your mind in the face of evidence is a mild (and often hard to acquire) form of neuroplasticity, because as everyone knows, they're always right about everything. This is why I like Bridge and Chess. There's always a better way to do it, so perhaps this type of game does help to improve cognition after all, even if the evidence is hard to come by.

The list of reasons for alterations in brain function - almost always negative - is extremely long. Unfortunately, as we get older - say past 18 - the wiring in the brain becomes fixed and the ability to learn new things becomes extremely hard. The reason is a loss of plasticity. If you remove half (or even more) of a person's liver, the remaining liver will simply grow back and restore the missing organ. Each liver cell in the organ does much the same thing as every other cell. The brain is different. After childhood, every single neuron has a very specific function and an incredibly complex set of connections with other neurons. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel won the Nobel prize for discovering (amongst other things) that there are individual nerves in the brain that are activated when an object moves from left to right but not from right to left. An example that is much easier to understand is that we acquire language and speech at a very young age. This results in our accent and speech pattern. People that change location before the age of about 14 are able to acquire completely new accents. After that age it's nearly impossible. Similarly, right-handed people have a very tough time switching to left-handedness. It follows from this that any damage to the brain in adulthood is very hard to reverse if it is caused by destruction of neurons or their connections. If the problem is a drug or a metabolic disorder (for example) then reversibility is possible. The most obvious 'metabolic' problem is lack of sleep. It turns out that every hour of wakefulness past about 16 hours is equivalent to an increase in blood alcohol level of 0.1%. (one example - there are lots of papers about this). Then it becomes very complicated because if you are sleep deprived, and drink alcohol, and you have any metabolic problem that interferes with alcohol metabolism, things get bad quickly.

The diagrams don't match.

It's a handicapping mechanism to prevent you from winning all the time and give the rest of us a chance.