pilowsky

The best strategy to play that hole is by putting a sock in it .

Clearly, you are watching too much television and sourcing your information from tabloid newspapers and science fiction novels. If you want to get your information from people that don't know anything at all that's fine by me. btw, testing positive could simply mean that a person has antibodies to the virus but does not have active disease. But since you are an expert on immunology as well as bridge I'm sure you knew that already. perhaps you could help Jared and Ivanka advise Deborah and Tony. They seem to need some of your help. Don't bother replying - you don't seem to know anything about anything.

Tabloid

We have a saying in Australia "Is it true, or did you see it in the Murdoch Press" We have been saying this for more than a 100 years. It dates back to the First world war when Murdoch's father tried to stuff up the worlds best General -John Monash - in a fit of anti-semitic rage. Using a reference to a Murdoch paper to back up your ideas and then coupling it to your lack of qualifications in Medicine does you no credit at all. Basically read what I wrote. I was publishing on this ***** in the Lancet before you went to University. Or is 'have studied' a euphemism for 'didn't actually gain qualifications in'?

Words matter. In bridge forums (or fora in pre-Fowler years) the word 'disaster' is thrown about with gay abandon. It is an exaggeration used with almost comic effect. People are called incompetent and stupid all the time. In my world where really serious things happen the overuse of such words just sounds silly. In medical terms. a disaster has a very specific meaning. Here is an excellent link. The whole point of a disaster as any anaesthetics specialist will tell you is that things go wrong in seconds and you have to be thoroughly prepared to react at a moments notice. It is a 'disaster' by definition if your well-prepared for resources are nevertheless overwhelmed. The Twin Towers were designed to cope with a direct hit from the largest airliner OF THE DAY crashing into them. But planes got bigger. The White House forgot all the lessons of the influenza pandemic until they were reminded by AIDS and then Ebola. Tragically in a fit of pettiness, John Bolton (remember him) and Colleagues figured that the Pandemic preparedness unit was pointless - presumably because it was an Obama initiative - and even though they saved no money at all, they subsumed it into other parts of the civil service. What happens when you drain the swamp of experts? That's right folks, no experts. Meanwhile, there may well have been mismanagement at the British Home Office. Parkinson's Law suggests that some waste is almost certain. There was/is certainly incompetence at the White House. In time, it may be concluded that there are better words than incompetence to apply to the actions of the occupants of Trump's White House, I couldn't possibly say. As for other jurisdictions, it is hard to say the extent to which criminal mismanagement or negligence is occurring or not. Certainly, the profit motive that seems to be present at the White House to manipulate the management of the disaster response would not seem to be present to the same degree elsewhere. COVID-19 is also still in a highly plastic and pleomorphic phase: we have not even suffered a full season of it. I suspect that now is the time to be kind and supportive. Altruistic and empathetic. The time for allocation of blame will certainly arrive, but I don't think that we are there yet.

Just to be completely clear: you just explained that the person holding the office of President of the United States of America is making insane remarks, and the unfortunate thing is that somebody else's comments about sunlight which were also pretty unimportant compared with the remarks of Birx/Fauci and Redfield about getting your 'flu shot didn't get enough airtime? Did I get that right or should I be watching Faux (makes you sic) news?

There is no requirement for anyone to accept a claim. Just keep playing. In the online environment, all kinds of technical problems occur that are not faced in a club. just keep taking tricks. There are only 13 cards. Also, you have no idea if the person you are playing against is strong or weak, sees the situation as you do or not. Meanwhile, it's your time running away - not theirs. Just try to be a little kinder. Online directors have better things to do with their time than listen to pathetic rants of the form "I claimed - it's obvious I only want 5/6 tricks etc etc" for crying out loud. Nobody wants a bridge lesson from you.

Nice work Zelandakh. It was a test. You just failed. Better luck on the next challenge.

hilarious - barry - remove this please even the water cooler should have some limits

A lot of sociable people enjoy individual contests. Just go to the races and see people gamble on who will win a race. Bridge is much better because the individual is engaged. Each contestant can simultaneously play the hand, the results are revealed there is no fighting or blaming and the best player wins, Then everyone has a friendly beer at the end. What's the problem?

LOL - AF's

Op's post is correct. It is an annoying thing that sometimes happens during play when opps continually hit please explain during play. The same thing happens at the club when you are trying to think and opps continue to ask questions about your leads and bidding in order to make declarer play difficult.

Here is a little bit of chat I just recorded. LHO→Table: Glp Partner→Table: wdo RHO→Table: typ LHO→Table: tyo RHO→Table: Wdp →Table: gwo LHO→Table: tks →Table: i'm starting to talk to people in tla's →Table: iva Partner→Table: What is tla's or iva →Table: its very annoying! →Table: three letter acronyms Partner→Table: especially when you don't speak that language. try Swedish →Table: tak

Charming Chris! Is a stupid idiot smarter than a dumb idiot or cleverer than a stable genius? What percentage of the population are stupid? Does it change over time? The Janitor and I have decided to share the honour on a daily basis.

Really Good Bridge?

It's obvious Seakayaker gets the most points because that's what happens when YA SEEK an ARK

I would be interested to hear from the Senior TD's about this. I haven't played for as many years as you guys, but I do play a lot. I cannot recall a penalty being awarded because of failure to alert a Jacoby transfer or to announce the meaning of a 1♣ opening or most of the other bids. Mike Lawrence writes that it's better not to ask (in the club of course) because you'll just remind opps of their system. The one time that I can recall was when my partner bid a natural 2 ♦ (my partner was new to the system) overcall of 1NT once and I alerted it as Cappalletti: majors. When dummy came down with opps in 3NT the TD was called and we were penalised 40/60. LHO later became my partner. Most of the time it seems like a game of trivial pursuit. "Shouldn't you alert that" when everyone knows perfectly well what's going on. Particularly annoying nine when the clock is running and it's eating into your thinking time for play. It reeks of a tactical manoeuvre. What are the actual penalties in the different jurisdictions: UK, Australia, USA, Online etc For 1) Failure to alert multi 2) Failure to alert 1 club opening 3) Failure to alert meaning of special calls eg splinters, doubles redoubles where they have non-natural meanings 4) Failure to pre-alert 5) Others that I don't know about

When you don't know something it is easy to have an opinion about it. Recently I asked a Director "why do I have to announce my 1♣ bid" his response was "because it's in the rules". This person is in charge of training Club Directors in NSW but was unable to give an intelligent answer to a simple question from a Beginner. The same lack of knowledge about medicine and clinical trials seems to be leading people astray here. My very first clinical scientific study was on the topic of neural tube defects - spina bifida and anencephaly - devastating birth defects that used to be extremely common. They are much rarer now because of improvements in antenatal diagnosis and because of a randomised controlled clinical trial (RCT): not that I had much to do with it. Without the statistical methods that underpin RCT many bridge players would not be alive today to be worrying about COVID19. They would be dead from end-organ damage caused by hypertension (heart attack, stroke etc) or they would have died from curable cancers. None of these disease would be treatable without RCT or the preceding trials to establish safety. Without statistical evidence you know nothing: opinion is completely worthless. Any pharmacologist will tell you that: any drug can be toxic at the wrong dose or in the wrong individual - even water. Opinion based thinking works fine at the bridge table but not when dealing with human lives. You cannot just shuffle the deck and get a new grandmother. It doesn't work like that.

I'm pretty sure that all of us who have been playing online for any time at all are offering as much help as we can to anybody that wants it at no charge at all. I know that I have.

Thank you. What I mean is that as a beginner I need very clear guidelines at the start to help me. Later as I get to understand better I can grasp the nuances and make better judgements. Your points are very helpful in that regard. I have also doubled in exactly the situation that you mention.

Hi Paul As you know, I am just a beginner at bridge but I do know something about learning. To help someone that doesn't understand that there is a difference it is often helpful to start with some simple aphorisms to help them find their feet. Just knowing the differences is helpful for experts but not for a beginner. Ron Karr from Palo Alto provides an excellent Table. The main message I got was: be crafty and sneaky at IMPS but be bold and forthright at matchpoints. Don't double at IMPS. Try to make overtricks at matchpoints but make your contract at IMPS. Bid the safest slam at IMPS. Bid the best slam at Matchpoints. Partscores: don't be too aggressive at IMPS. At matchpoints try not to let them play below the 2 level. In defense take risks to beat game at IMPS. At matchpoints avoid giving up overtricks. It seems that two bad boards will destroy an entire session at IMPS but not at matchpoints: this is the main thing that I try to remember. Two -11's and you are gone. What do the others think?

Not how medicine works. First you need a safety trial. And then a bunch of other stuff. And finally you can use it on sick people.

In psychology, there is a thing called 'learned helplessness'. Imagine you are in a cage and every now then the floor gives you an electric shock. You try to escape. But the wall is too steep. There is no way out. There is no escape. Eventually, you give up. That's learned helplessness. So when you see the following screenshot where I double the robots in 5♥ and lead a ♣ to my partners waiting Ace you might expect partner to take the trick? Here is what happened. At least one of us is trying! Perhaps North is actually working for West. The most I can do is give up on this tournament since I've blown my lousy $0.39 cents and have a bit of fun. Of course, Since this is bridge world, I got a message afterwards from the robot saying it was my fault for not leading the King, after all, why should North be expected to deplete his stockpile when he's just a back-up. Taking the contract down is a local problem and he takes no responsibility at all.

So at most 12 loaves then 😁.

In case you were wondering why it's so eerily silent over here, all the highly qualified tournament directors are having a super important discussion about 'at least' and 'at most' over at the water cooler. Most likely that's what they're worried about, and it's the least and the most I can do to make this important public service announcement so that you can rush over there before social distancing ends and you miss out on your chance to kibbitz the conversation. Full members can kibbitz for free but guests will have to pay at least $0.29/hour.