pilowsky

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Based on his track record I wouldn't count on Alex Jones saying anything useful.

Is the lesson that lebensohl comes in many flavours and you need to have solid agreements?

I've done both. A good way to practice anti-GIB technique.

Coincidentally, I note that a similar - but somewhat better formed - proposal was posted on the same day in another place. https://bridgewinner...s-the-contract/

Here's a link to the system notes which are more comprehensive than the card. https://bit.ly/GIBsystem They represent (to some extent) what the robots play but are unlikely to represent what others do in an individual.

This is not true. If you pay to enter a robot tournament then you increase the pool of players and increase the masterpoints available. Your entry fee forms a social contract with the other players that you will complete all boards. You would not storm out of a FTF tournament because you were beaten by another pair: this is no different. Actual people are involved. This is true for any tournament where you pay money. When you withdraw you lose your money and everyone else loses the effect of your participation because the masterpoint pool drops. Some would say who cares because it's only BBO masterpoints? But obviously the entrants care or why would they pay in the first place. When you "rage quit" because you get a bad result all the players in the pool suffer. Personally it seems like a scam by BBO to me. If people enter a paid tournament in the good faith belief that the starting pool is the payout pool then it seems unfair that BBO (52 Entertainment) gets to keep your cash and the competitors get bubkas. Either your money is distributed as a refund to the pool who were duped into believing that the prize available was bigger than it was before you selfishly scarpered, or the masterpoint pool is fixed at the beginning on the basis of the size of the original entrant pool. If you personally don't care about masterpoints then why pay to enter tournaments? There are plenty of other opportunities for rage-quitting where your actions only affect you.

[hv=pc=n&w=skqj752hakj642dc7&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=2d(weak)2s]133|200| Playing as a substitute in a local Australian tournament. Agreements are 2/1 1430 and that's about it. Partner opens 2♦ and while you're trying to decide which major to bid, ops bid 2♠. Now what? Provide diagrams and reasons. [/hv]

Happy New Year. - puts the current world order in some perspective.

I've read the same thing. Even though disease severity is less the numbers are so vast that the tail of the severity distribution that requires hospitalisation is very large - especially if you have no vaccination. I don't know why "crazy" is so popular in the world currently. Historically it seems to happen when a large portion of the population is disaffected for some reason. In Australia we would say they aren't getting "a fair suck of the sav." (I'll leave you to google that one). That everyone gets a fair suck of the sav. in Australia - or at least feels that they are - is the main reason for the typically high compliance with government directives. In spite of the very high level of anti-authoritarianism in Australia. I'm still waiting to see published data about disease severity in unvaccinated vs the various vaccination protocols. No doubt this will be available soon.

The game has changed in Australia. It looks like Omicron is now endemic with an estimated 1 in 5-10 positivity rate. At this level of infectivity - the unvaccinated are on their own and no longer the problem for the vaccinated. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the risk of serious illness is low and death very low. I haven't seen actual data yet but the politicians here are now redefining a close contact as a person who has been in the same room as a confirmed case for more than 4 hours! At the same time our Education Minister has decided not to fund 6 competitively awarded grants because he knows better.

Thanks - another problem to cross off the list for 2022

Does this mean that the odds that something like this will happen are 1.25 in 100? About once in every four 24-board tournaments - so something worth being prepared for. If it doesn't happen to you then you will be defending it with the same frequency. Add to that the possible 12 count balanced hands that some people may choose not to open. The hand below was dealt in a tourney from yesterday. It was passed out on 21 of 80 tables. [hv=pc=n&s=sat73h75dk2cqjt32&w=sj854ha62da83ck97&n=sk962hqjt9dq54c54&e=sqhk843djt976ca86&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=pppp]399|300[/hv]

You are the very model of a modern mathematician.

All good points. I don't know what the ratio is between people bidding to an unobtainable level on a hand and then the ratio of them making it or not making it vs the opposite problem of people not bidding to the right level and then making or not making overtricks. The situations noted above are major contributors to the variance in results in what is termed "Bridge". I agree that comparison to "par" on an individual hand may not be the best metric to determine the best way to bid a pair of hands. There are other ways of doing it to make it more objective but then the idea is still to compare your result to others as in duplicate Bridge. Speaking of Blitz Chess, the new world champion (as of a few hours ago) is GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

It means that your system and approach is 100% compatible with... yourself. When the system was introduced if you added your name to a partnership desk you would have 5 stars - suggesting that you know your own system (sometimes true for me). Other people in the list would have a variable number of stars depending on how close their methods were to yours. Sometime ago all the other stars disappeared except mine. Climate change, light pollution who knows? Now I the only stars I see in my eyes are my own.

This is what not natural and mot simple looks a bit like: https://www.bridgeba...at-the-6-level/

I agree with what you (and M.) are saying. Double-dummy scoring is clearly unrealistic in some ways. OTOH DD scoring is not the only unrealistic or hard to understand element of Bridge (laws and rulings comes to mind). In this modern era of comprehensive analytics it seems odd to me that we don't take advantage of all the available information. When computers became better than players at chess it didn't spell the end of Chess (witness the current world championship) what it did was to introduce a new dimension into the analysis and thinking about the game. My point is that it possible and feasible to generate a separate game from the bidding element of Bridge that some players may find entertaining and which doesn't exist atm. It may also help people that are starting out in the game and want to polish their bidding skills - as mentioned in another recent post.

I don't think that your objections are really objections since they seem to boil down to: "people sometimes make mistakes and/or do silly things resulting in a bad score". This is exactly the point I'm making. A "game" of the form I'm describing is basically the flip side of the popular (with some people) "Just Declare" format that BBO has already monetised (hate that word). A "Just Bid" tournament would work the same way but be scored in deviations from par. An important advantage of such a game is that it is standardised against a completely objective goal and is therefore fairer. Sure, people might randomly make bad calls skewing the results, but the same problem happens in "regular bridge." A major benefit (if played as a robot tourney) is that it might help to train people like me out of our naturally over-optimistic outlook. If played as a pair vs pair format it may help to expose advantages/disadvantages in bidding systems without being blurred by the Declarer/defence play. Come to think of it there is no reason why it could not be scored alongside the current system if one of our crafty software developers were up to the task.

It makes no sense. Surely 6♥ is the right bid?

Factors that affect severity of illness with viruses are many and varied. On the host side there is: the amount of virus that you are exposed tothe variety of proteins on the surface of your cells that the virus particle uses to access the cellthe extent to which you are able to mount an immune responseA whole bunch of other factors. Then there are viral factors - how effectively the virus binds to the receptor. How effectively the virus can access the the cell after binding (this calls for a separate part of the spike protein). There is a normal distribution (obviously) in the population for each of these host and pathogen factors. The effect of vaccination (or inoculation when a live attenuated pathogen is used) is to move the population curve so that on average the burden of disease is reduced. If you encounter the pathogen you still get an infection even if you are vaccinated. But you get much less illness depending on the factors listed above. Vaccination with an effective vaccine regime is clearly the best defence. Reducing the amount of virus you are exposed to is also helpful. Another problem is that we still do not know enough about the cell-surface proteins that SARS viruses use to bind to and then enter cells. The system most affected is the angiotensin system. Angiotensin II is an 8 amino acid peptide that operates a cell surface receptor to cause (amongst a lot of other things) vasoconstriction and high blood pressure. Angiotensin II is produced when a membrane bound enzyme called angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) snips it from a larger peptide called angiotensin I. But, angiotensin I can also be acted on by a completely different enzyme called ACE2. The big difference is that ACE2 removes a bit more of angiotensin I and you get a 7 amino acid peptide called angiotensin (1-7). Ang(1-7) has actions that are pretty much the opposite of angiotensin II. The coronaviruses all bind to ACE2 as the first step to get into the cell. ACE and ACE2 are both highly concentrated in the lung, heart, kidneys, (parts of the) brain, blood vessels and testes - and lots of other places. This means that coronaviruses decrease the amount of "good" ACE2 by binding to it and also damage the cells they infect: a double whammy. As an aside the common antihypertensive drugs that end with -pril (perindopril, lisinopril etc) act on ACE preventing the formation of angiotensin II and thereby lowering blood pressure. Unfortunately ACE also breaks down a cough inducing peptide called bradykinin. Which is why ~10% of people taking ACE inhibitors develop a cough. Drugs that end with -artan (eg telmisartan and valsartan) don't have this problem because they act on the angiotensin II receptor. Ang(1-7) works on a different receptor.

Prescribing drugs (any treatment for that matter) works best when there is a clearly defined problem that they are targeting. Depression is one of the hardest things to treat because accurate diagnosis is so hard. Every time the drug is prescribed where the problem is in the mild to non-existent range the useful effect in the population where it is effective is diluted. And the risk of unwanted side-effects rises. This is a particular problem with finding drug treatments for disorders that can cause serious illness (death in the case of depression) but where the severe forms are less common. Obviously much easier to make the case for antibiotics etc.

It means nothing.

Shana tova.

Nothing worse than unnecessary riling.