pilowsky

Is it good to be bad or bad to be good? .Still trying to work out the implications for Bridge.

You mean like this? ♥KQJ92 ♦AKQT8

It is a completely bizarre description. Having a solid, strong spade suit AND no spades simultaneously. In all the hands I've played against robots where this odd description appears, it always means a solid, strong suit. It's as if they are creating a Schrödingers cat thought experiment where the cat always survives.

Here's another reason to dislike authoritarianism: the smell

Look at it the other way. What are the odds of NOT finding a hand that looks a bit unusual during any tournament. I'm a terrible Bridge player, and I have it on expert advice that I know absolutely nothing about the game. But sometimes, I get a good result, and it surprises me as well. What doesn't surprise me is that I sometimes get a good result even when the opposition is stronger than me. I've played in many Club games and seen (relative to the others) weak pairs win - it happens all the time. If you read this forum as your only source of information about Bridge, you could easily conclude that it is the consummate game of skill and that because all the cards are dealt, the score that wins is entirely due to the difference in the relative ability of the individual players. This is, of course, ridiculous. The variance associated with skill level is sufficiently smaller than the variance associated with random factors. This leads to the psychological phenomenon of intermittent positive reward, which reinforces participants interest. Can you imagine how many players there would be if you were docked masterpoints when you failed to do the 'right' thing? Nobody would play. One reason this happens is that the scoring system in Bridge is not held to an external standard. If you take a normal exam (in mathematics where there is a 'right' answer), then your result is judged against an external truth. Bridge is also a maths exam. There is also an external truth (the par score from the double-dummy), but the results aren't normed against this; they're normed against the 'truth' that everyone else believes in. One enjoyable result is to make an accurate sacrifice, but this relies on enough other people succeeding and enough other people failing. The outcome (score) has absolutely no relationship at all to 'truth'. This approach to statistics is a self-licking ice-cream cone.

It's just unacceptable.

Swallowing bleach is a surprisingly common method for attempting suicide (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi....h.gov/16885747/). Unfortunately, the lines between psychosis and reality are blurred because of the former thingy's recommendation.

[hv=pc=n&n=sq65ha92dkj52ct75&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=pp1c1d1npp2spp3cpp3sppp]133|200| "It's difficult to describe how the robots defend." What does the North robot lead - after carefully considering the bidding and weighing up all options? [/hv] No peeking.

Yes, but don't count on anyone knowing what it is.

Is anyone else getting tired of people "amplifying baseless claims"? Something I noticed over the past few years is the inability of newstalkingheads to just say someone is lying. In Australia, disagreement is generally a little more robust. Johnathon Swan's interview with Trump is normal. The recent reenactment of the Battle of Antietam staring Australia's Sarah Ferguson as US Grant and Sidney Powell as RE Lee where she claims that a giant octopus controls the pentagon - or something like that.

Australia is now on track to vaccinate the entire (eligible) population before the end of the year (minus a small number of people that others describe better than me). In the meantime, Sydney is locked down tighter than a metaphor about crabs. With delta grabbing hold of 1000+ citizens daily it's a race. All of which highlights the stupidity and incompetence of our political ("we'll be guided by the science" - so long as we agree with it and it doesn't upset our constituents) leaders.

I would like to know as well. My preference is 2♣ forces 2♦ if no interference. Allowing the opener to describe their hand better. I'm aware that others use relays and point/shape showing bids, but the advantage isn't clear to me.

All of the things that you mention are (more or less) true. Having personally witnessed the ability of the Murdoch family to control who gets elected and when I would add that as a key proximate factor. Vested interests are another obvious player. I'm still wondering how someone who is so clearly a mob boss, completely lacking in the usual character traits (negative in most of them) of a President (empathy, intelligence, integrity etc.), can even be placed in a position where they get nominated. After all, one only has to listen to him speak for a few seconds to realise there's nothing there. Every interview with Trump and his followers leaves you with the sense that you are trying to explain why sugar is bad to a two-year-old.

When did it all start? It will soon be the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers, part of the pentagon and possibly - but for the efforts of a few brave souls - congress as well. The Australian prime minister was in Washington on September 11 and witnessed the attacks. Here is a collection of footage from the time curated by the Internet Archive. Is it possible that the weariness associated with the events that followed led to the election of Trump?

I was interested in reading about the legal shenanigans allowing the new confederacy to bypass the Union. The Texas Mullahs have succeeded where others have failed because their Ayatollah decided that: it is nobler in the mind to not suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but instead to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. (almost Hamlet). It's very peculiar times we live in when the nation that claimed to be the apogee of governance - and everything else they happen to think of - is descending into feudal warlordism.

Studies on long-term outcomes following hospitalisation with COVID-19 are beginning to emerge. Here is one from the Lancet. The main takeaway message is that the large majority of people that are hospitalised with COVID and recover do return to normal life. However, some continue to have problems. From my personal experience, we have much less resilience once we get past the age of 60. Repair is rarely complete, and pains niggle on for longer than they used to. Here is the main conclusion/summary:

If there is a quiz, it would have to be done over at least 5000 iterations to make sure that you didn't get the right answers by a fluke. There are quite a few others - one of them asks if altruism is worthwhile. It was - sort of.

but slightly more than the others

I suspect that a lot of the problem boils down to the governance structure. We have the same problem in Australia - albeit not quite so bad. In the USA, as in Australia, every state elects two senators. This means that Wyoming has the same political power as California. A bruise of red runs through the middle of America that illustrates the resulting malapportionment of power. Senators in the USA have an astonishing amount of power compared to similarly organised upper houses. As seen in the past 4 years, they get to decide whether or not an appointment is made to the supreme court (where the unelected Kings sit). This seems to mean that the Senate/Supreme Court and the Prez (elected using a bizarre and incomprehensible 'college' system) get to control all the levers of power. The people get nothing. The only truly representative place (HoR) is regarded as a nuisance to be tolerated by the people that have all the power. William E Ricks referred to America as a totalitarian oligarchy, not a democracy at all. When viewed in this way, America is similar to Iran or the Soviet state - an arriviste nation concerned only with strengthening the rights of certain individuals with no concern at all for the population as a whole. If America were a model for parenthood, with the Government running the household, the children would have to compete for food with only the bigger, stronger ones making it through to adulthood. Sparta redux. What do the suffering citizens do? They wring their hands and complain that they "don't understand". They talk about their "Founders" as gods and refer to what the "American people" want. When Hitler invaded Poland, and my relatives were hauled off to their death, they shuffled along to the trains not because they didn't think something bad was happening but because they had no option - they were just regular people who depended on the good behaviour of "the people". There's nothing new about the problems that America faces. The new Rockefellers and Carnegies wear t-shirts and fly to space on top of giant phalluses while the people that feed them suffer and die in modern sweatshops, dying and hoping.

You may be familiar with the Irish guy on CNN who interviews people at Trump rallies. Here is the (sort of) Australian equivalent.

Pain radiating from the Chest through to the back could be a symptom of many things. The term "Chest" in the notes is typically code for heart-related or at least vascular. Something that would spark alarm in any Doctor hearing, "I have chest pain that is now going through to my back", is the possibility of an aortic aneurysm. Much more dangerous than 'musculoskeletal pain'. Particularly in a person with a known history of high blood pressure, a condition known to damage the heart and blood vessels.

Another big difference is that you can make any crazy bid you want to deceive the robots because there are no directors and basically no rules. Deceiving robots is part of the fun. Except for the Zenith Daylong (and some types of challenge games), robot tournaments are always best-hand; as South, you will always have the most (or equal to) high card points. Best-hand may be a bit of a stretch in some cases when the actual value of a robot hand may be a lot better than yours in terms of shape+HCP. In this topic of the Forum, you will find many threads discussing ways to play against GIB that (probably) don't translate well into normal practice.

Or competitive >> all tournaments and then type 'Zen' in the search box at the top right. For me - Zenith appeared at the top of the all tournaments list.

Agree - this is how it works on another platform I play on regularly. Declarer claims the number of tricks they feel entitled to and both opps must accept. If it's a directed tournament then a misclaim can be referred to Director who will - as appropriate - rectify the accident. If it can be implemented on one app then presumably...