pilowsky

The Zenith daylong is what you seek! It is now the most popular daylong on BBO. It isn't "best hand". Also, there is the opportunity to earn unimaginable wealth.

So, now the truth is coming out. Trump and his associates lied about everything. Redfield (CDC head) claims that he was pressured to change the MMWR. This means that the Trump administration tried to get the CDC to lie about the number of deaths in the USA. And much more from Birx, Giroir and Fauci. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/health/covid-war-doctors-sanjay-gupta/index.html There's a word that is used when a political policy is the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Let's be clear. A pandemic is an entirely predictable event. They happen all the time. Not just once in a hundred years. Failure to be prepared and act appropriately caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. Does anyone think things will be better next time?

I didn't know that 12-14 NT range was available in 2/1. Could you provide a link, please?

You can go to the BBO myhands site on any browser tab. It is separate from the playing area so you need to open a new browser tab/window. You can search for anyone. Here are your games from the past month. https://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?username=cjobson&start_time=1614690000&end_time=1617109200 If you click on BBO points from this tab you can also get anyone's masterpoint record.

Chess clocks don't work in the way that I imagine you are imagining they do (he said carefully). In most computer Chess clocks (playing the Blitz/Lightning form of the game - which is how tournament Bridge works) it is common to ADD some time when you make a move. This means that every time you move, you gain 5-10 seconds. Naturally, you get to think while your opp is thinking. The main difference is that because Bridge is a "semi-closed" game in that you can't see half the board, but you are entitled to know "approximately" what every bid or call means. This means that there are sometimes calls for further explanation. The call may be reasonable or unreasonable - it's up to the Director to decide. The clock can be stopped in these cases until the Director deems that a satisfactory answer is given. In the "long" form of Chess, the DOP (Director of Play) has complete control of the clock. I believe that there is a similar arrangement in games where people hit round objects with sticks (or specified parts of their body). I understand that similar arrangements work with these games too. Bridge is the only game that I know that allows Trump-like people to lawyer up endlessly until their opponents give up in despair - no matter how baseless the claim is. With a clock, it is always possible to determine that the questioner is behaving in a manner inconsistent with ethical behaviour and be awarded a negative score. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour in any form of any game.

About 20 years ago I saw one that allowed you to try open-heart surgery. Every time I tried it the patient died. I checked a moment ago but the only version I could see needed Flash.

[hv=pc=n&s=shakq953dqcaqjt73&n=sq76532h84da9c852&d=n&v=b&b=13&a=2sp3hp]266|200| From a Casual table: "Main Bridge Club" There's me, my partner North (Advanced), East (Expert) and West (Private - but Advanced). After the dust settled, opinions differed about how North (and South) should bid/call. I was not too fussed since it was four random people at a casual table, but all the same, What does the panel think? [/hv] What happened

[hv=pc=n&s=s4h875dqjt97ct752&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1hd2h4d(Jump%20in%20competition%20--%205%2B%20%E2%99%A6%3B%2010-12%20total%20points)]133|200| Taking MikeH's advice to glean as much as possible from all the bids and calls that my partner and opponents make I found myself South in the recent BIC free practice number 5 Board 1. Not best hand - obviously. My partner bid 1♥ and after the East robot doubled I decided that with my meagre 3HCP, 3♥ and a 9 loser hand in Hearts, it was reasonable to muster a 2♥ bid to be A) supportive, and B) annoying. What does East have for the double? It's important to note at this point that I was advised by West - or East - that the double meant the following: "Takeout double -- 3-5♣; 3-5♦; 2-♥; 3-4♠; 12+ total points" [/hv] The full hand

Thanks for that. Noted.

The person that runs the BIL has been doing it since the dawn of time. She has put an enormous amount of her own funds and energy into it. She lacks the technical resources to change it at this stage. It is a one-person operation - not the National Security Agency, the CIA or anything else that is packed to the rafters with incredible people that can instantly redesign websites. Not everything that has a web interface is a multi-billion dollar tech. conglomerate. All the same, I'm sure that she is apologetic for the effort that you have to go through with your DNS record search. Nobody is forcing anyone to sign up. If they don't want to. Don't.

I have experienced all of this and worse playing on BBO. For some reason, people playing "anonymously" on the internet feel completely comfortable acting like 5year-olds. Personally, I think the use of a person's real name and real country of origin should be a requirement. I've heard all kinds of specious arguments about why this would be bad. Including, but not limited to: the player might be really famous, or the player might be a woman. All of these arguments make no sense at all. If you are ashamed of who you are, what you say and how you act, then avoid normal society. Similar stuff is condoned in face-to-face Bridge Clubs where I live. That's why I will never return. Who needs to pay to watch people behave badly? If that's what I wanted, I would start watching television again where it's free. Everyone is sick of it; nothing is ever done about it.

In 1975, I arrived in Hobart (Australia - obviously) to compete in an Australian Junior Chess Championship. Hobart sits on the Derwent River with the Tasman Bridge connecting the mainland to the Island where the tournament was being held. Travelling to Australia in 1966, we stopped in Capetown, where I watched the "Seafarer" crash into rocks and break into three pieces. I've never been to the Suez canal.

So, on top of everything else, someone jammed a ship the size of the Empire state building into the Suez canal. Mind you, how hard can it be to steer one of those boats? You try! Steer through the Suez I don't know what all the fuss is about.

The other guy, and I, were trying to iron out some bidding issues on the teaching table when we noticed this result. On the one hand, we were pretty happy with the result, but on the other hand, it would be nice for everything to score up correctly - even on a teaching table. It looks like the lin file reads the colours according to the board number and not the vulnerability indicator in the imported file.

It would not be such a problem if all pairs were required to post a convention card. Sure, you could argue that many tables on BBO are "pick-up" pairs, in which case the only meaning that one can discern (guess) is from their profile - not usually helpful. OTOH, if every tournament specified a default system and players knew that if they didn't pay to it - pick-up or not - then the incentive to either play to the default system or to post your own card would be much greater. There is absolutely no point in asking for an explanation that only means something to the person explaining. Who cares what they think? Clearly, 'playing to time' is another issue that will not be solved until Bridge catches up with Chess and introduces clocks. But then, Bridge is a new-fangled game that is still getting its house in order. I'm not holding my breath though. I was taught to play Chess by an International Master in Correspondence Chess - pre-internet of course. I just wish the PTB's would hurry up.

I suspect that one of the problems is the use of the word "gross". It conjures up all kinds of inappropriate imagery. Unfortunately, I think the colourful language tends to disguise the real meaning. People - like myself - who are relatively new to the game - think (thought) that a psychic bid is one that so wildly misstates the content of my hand that when someone else sees it, they will run from the room screaming - so to speak. I'm coming round to the idea that the definition of a psychic bid is more nuanced than that. In the sense that Bridge is a game of empathy, I now try to imagine a psychic bid as one where if I am planning to make it, I ask myself the following question. Suppose I make this bid, and afterwards, when we get a terrible score, will my partner look at me dolefully and shake their head before saying something to the effect of: "Look, I can see that you are a great player, but to be honest, I'm just not up to your standard; I think I better let you find someone else who is of a higher calibre to play with because clearly, I'm holding you back."? If they say yes because they understood my bid to mean something that led them to make a bad decision, then it's a psych. If it leads my opponents to make a bad decision and we get penalised, then it's a psych. One of the wonderful things about playing with/against robots is that the answer to this empathy question is always 'no'. Robots are like goldfish - they have a really short memory. People are different. What I'm getting at is that it doesn't matter how some person writes the 'rule'; what matters is how a reasonable person would interpret my bid. If they would imagine, based on the information provided to them, that a bid means 'X' when you have 'Y', then it is a psychic bid because you have caused them to believe something that simply is not true. Even if they pass because of your misstatement, it's still a psych when they might otherwise have bid. That's what Bridge is all about when played with people: truth, integrity and empathy. Someone writing about something that may not seem completely clear to me or in a way that they could interpret in another way doesn't affect this operational definition. As Nat King Cole said, "straighten up and fly right" (http://bit.ly/FlyRightNKC).

Now you're cooking with gas (or wind power).

That's harsh. The only sentence I want to read about Trump is his sentence: I'm hoping it's a really long one. You can include all his friends and children in that sentiment.

1NT not forcing over an opening of 1 minor using 2/1

I can certainly empathise with that story. As an international man of mystery myself (married at 19), dating practices are a bit of mystery to me - then and now. Did you know that there are two types of vole in America? The prairie vole and the Meadow vole. The Prairie vole is a monogamous animal. They mate and bond for life. The meadow vole, on the other hand, is a louche animal who enjoys multiple partners. I often think about voles when I observe couples and their behaviour towards each other. I think there may be at least one more type in humans - the serial monogamist. Perhaps this represents incomplete penetrance of the prairie vole gene? Alone once in an Italian restaurant a few years back, a couple was sitting next to me. The conversation seemed a little strange. He would talk about his accomplishments for a while, and then she would do the same. After a while, she went to the bathroom. I started chatting with the man who explained to me that they had met on a dating app. "Yes," he commented, "I score about 1 in 5". - Meadow vole for sure.

[hv=pc=n&e=sq72haq8543dacaj6&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=p2h=?]133|200| I was dealt this hand in a friendly tournament today. As I was pondering what to bid, and which contract we might end up in, West passed and North opened the bidding. I have a pretty fair idea of the shape of North's hand, but my question is; what would the experts do? [/hv] The Hand What happened (to us) and the possible contracts.

A man in possession of such fortune surely has every right to use it...

This was reported > 1 month ago, https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/84853-bug-login-screen-shows-password/page__p__1015734__hl__password__fromsearch__1#entry1015734 I've never seen this on Chrome.

It was a little over 20 Years ago today (http://bit.ly/20AgoYrs) that the human genome was first sequenced. The findings were published in Nature (the publicly funded group) and Science (Venter’s outfit) on February 15 and 16, respectively, in 2001. This breakthrough drove much of the success in human genomics research. It was the medical science “moon-landing” of its day. Without this work and the excitement that grew around it, the Moderna vaccine would have been impossible. When people say things like (as they often do) “Why don’t those University types in their ivory towers get out and do some stuff that is of practical benefit?” or worse “, Those scientists are wasting our money, we should decide what projects they work on.” They should remember that the people who work for and in those companies that produce vaccines and the like had to be educated first. It is no surprise that many companies co-locate with great universities (e.g. Research Triangle in North Carolina), which houses UNC, Duke and NCS. Those companies go to places like Research Triangle so that they can cream off the PhD graduates without having to pay for their education. Imagine the social dividend if employers had to repay the taxpayer for the education that state Universities provide them for nothing.

It is possible (for other people) to do it within BBO, but I find the user interface at playbridge.com is the easiest. Here is a presentation that explains how to make your own deals and then import them onto a teaching table for practice. It mentions the Prime area - which I like - this is, of course, optional. http://bit.ly/LinFilesPilowsky If you prefer, you can learn how to do it using the inbuilt system provided by BBO. I find that difficult to use. There are quite a few youtube explanations out there as well.