pilowsky

I used to work with engineers (software, wireless, mechanical, biomedical; you name it). I recall sitting at a table with about 15 of them (all very experienced but from different branches of engineering). One after the other, they carefully explained how the part of the project that the other engineers were working on was 'straightforward' (not trivial, this was a polite University sitting, not a Bridge club. , also certain forum members weren't there). The remarkable thing was that every single one of them knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the component of the project that they had to deal with was fantastically complicated. I concluded that there was a 'spectrum' of difficulty. Appropriate in so many ways.

Awesome - ty! Cruel but fair The best part is that I'm starting to understand my mistakes.

An activity where there is no reasonable basis for comparing your skill level to other people is not a sport; it's a game. The 'Bridge' that is played around the kitchen table is entertainment. The 'Bridge' that happens in shady dens of antiquity, online tournaments, or against robots is practice. The 'Bridge' that people play in major tournaments is the real thing. When I learned the basics in the common room, I was in category 1. Now I'm in category 2. At my age (and skill level), I don't expect to get to category 3. Masterpoints only apply to category 2. Within this group, it would be fun to have a sense of how you are performing. Masterpoints don't say anything about performance. Masterpoints exist to enable the owners of the retail outlets to make money.

To say nothing of the purulent "the Director has adjusted board..." etc

In my quest to become the best Bridge player in the world by next week at the latest, I decided it would be a good idea to learn about squeezes. It turns out that Sterling and Nygate (1990; Python: an expert squeezer; J Logic Programming 8:21-39) had discovered that even invertebrates could squeeze. So, I wondered: How hard can it be? After trying a few books and articles, I came across this hand in an excellent series by Inquiry (Ben). He only provided the North and South hands and avers that 7NT is available with a squeeze. To better understand this, I reconstructed the hand on the teaching table. Using my favourite bidding system, "Optimistic Pilowsky," I reach 7NT South. I have 12 winners and possibly 1 loser. Here's the problem; my understanding of advanced play methods is minimal. Still, I gather that if a squeeze is available, it is independent of how the remaining cards are arranged in the opponents' hands. Is this a false belief? Please let me be misunderstood (http://bit.ly/NinaMisunderstood). Here is the hand, West leads the ♥K. Is it possible to make 7NT? [hv=pc=n&s=sq82ha2dakq8ca542&n=sakjt976h3d32cq63&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=7nppp]266|200[/hv] Here is the layout that I produced to test it. Here is a copy of the first part of the original post:

It's showing you that there is a way to do it that does not depend on which opponent holds the King (for example). I invented the term "Schrodingers King" to describe this situation since you don't know where the King is until the box is opened and the poisoned King is revealed, or not as the case may be! It has a similar 'flavour' to the idea of a poisoned pawn in chess, but it would be strange if I were to string you along.

Some people randomise which card from equals. Say at trick 6 I have a JT8 in a non-trump suit and signalling is not relevant. I will play whichever of the JT my cursor arrives at first. The robots do the same thing. Against good players (better than me) this will make it hard for declarer to use 'restricted choice' to work out where the remaining cards are. By the same token, I now also randomise tempo (slightly). Sometimes I will play a card quickly - sometimes more slowly - this is intended to prevent opponents from 'imagining' which cards I hold on the basis of timing. More problematic in face-to-face bridge is that some people always arrange the cards in their hand in a particular way. This made it possible to work out the opponents holding from where in the hand they selected their next card. This is one reason I much prefer online Bridge. Turning on autoplay singletons is handy in 'robot race' where you really want to play quickly, It creates all sorts of problems in non-robot Bridge. Oddly, I seem to recall that 'on' was a default in earlier iterations of BBO, but that was a while back so I may have misremembered.

Other work has shown that atheists tend to know more about philosophy and religion than people that claim to believe in a supreme being. I put this down to a need to "check the evidence". My Atheism is hard-core. I am certain in my disbelief of things that do not subject themselves to rational explanation. Bridge is a synecdoche for life in this sense. From time to time, I harbour incorrect ideas about bidding and play. I know they are wrong because my results are bad. So I constantly test these ideas to check which are right (useful, give positive results) and those that are wrong. On top of that, there are advanced methods that I know exist, but I haven't conquered - that's a different problem, Regarding what I should appear as in different countries. I was always advised to introduce myself as an Australian in Europe in case they took me for British - or American. Luckily, because of my upbringing, I'm quite good at accents.

Just out of interest Mr 66, what is your personal opinion of all these quotes that you post?

The solution is to use magenta instead of red - this solves the problem. Which side is easier to read?

very true - Luis Rooten wrote a little poem about it Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit d'un petit Tout Gai de Reguennes

That is exactly my point, master, it is still possible to derive useful metrics - even from a system as bonkers as masterpoints which are sold wholesale to coffeeshop owning travel agents who then retail them to customers. The EBU uses the NGS - it seems to have something like Elo's system behind it. The ABF uses inter alia an improvement index, which is not completely useless. To put it algebraically, masterpoints are just a numerator in search of a denominator. Elo - as in Arpad Elo

Or, to get with the times, a load of Markle's?

The USA is constructed on the central big lie that everyone "believes". E Pluribus Unum. From many comes one. This tiny phrase suggests to Americans that anyone, no matter their circumstances, can rise "like some rough beast, its time come round at last, and slouch towards Bethlehem". To paraphrase. As a sidebar, the word 'bedlam' comes from the name of a major psychiatric hospital (my sister worked there) called Bethlehem (contracted to bedlam. I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the occupants of this hospital also thought that they could become President at one time or another. Of course, this is BS. Less than half of the people legally present in the USA can become President. And that's just based on citizenship and age. The reason it's called the American dream is that it's only present in your dreams. The Australian dream is to own a house. This is a much more achievable objective - around two-thirds of the Australian population have owned their own domicile. It's similar in the USA. You don't lose your home in Australia if you have to pay medical (or electricity in Texas) bills. I had the same sense of existential anxiety when living or working in the USA when visiting Iran. At least the white people in the USA don't have to worry about being picked up on the street and imprisoned for no good reason by other white people. I suspect that people develop these crazy notions because they watch too much television or other forms of entertainment that have no aesthetic value. Someone once commented that the difference between art and pornography is that in a porn film, there is no story, 'actors' move from one scene to another doing things - alone or in groups. The same applies to much of the 'product' in books, film and song. There is no aesthetic value; the action just rolls past your eyes like a duck (so to speak).

For what it's worth, and this may help some people get a sense of what all these points, titles and rankings mean, is synthesised data on the numbers of players (active only) that sit within each ranking? The data would be even better if further normalised by moderating it by the (at least) number of years they have been playing? Even better would be to normalise by the number of deals they have played. For example, are there 1, 5, 10 or x% of currently active players within the 1000 to 1500 points category? It still would not give a true picture of a person's playing ability at any one time, but no ranking system does. In Chess, for example, people obtain titles - e.g. International Master or International Grandmaster based on scoring well in certain highly rated tournaments. Rankings in Chess are titles that mean something. Titles are independent of playing ability which is measured by their rating (a fluctuating measure). The combination of the two: rating and ranking, help you when you sit down to play with someone. You are less 'adventurous' with a stronger player (say a US master) even if their current rating is lower than you might expect. In Bridge, it is difficult to tell if a person's "point count" means much for all sorts of reasons, but it would help to know if they were, say, in the top 5% of active players in (your club, state, Country or the world).

fewer bad jokes

For a moment I thought you said 'fighting' - pretty sure BBO doesn't fight either.

I have pointed this out in detail with references elsewhere. 5% of all men are red/green colour-blind. The data did not say if that included Bridge-players but I have no reason to believe it would be different.

Will you issue a Warrant if I tell?

After West opened 1♥, I took the advice from the forum to heart and decided to upgrade my hand to 1NT. Why not? It only had 8 losers, and the queens and jacks were very appealing as a source of tricks. My partner bid 2♣ with 11 HCP and 4♠. At this point, I felt a bit squeamish and tried to cop out at 2NT by bidding 2♦. Too late; North was overwhelmed with confidence and went straight to 3NT. West led the ♥J - clearly a singleton, so I marked West for the ♠A and East for everything else. Things got off to a reasonable start. Then, I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: Here's the North and South hand - ♥J led by West. Contrive to intrigue 9 tricks from this lot. [hv=pc=n&s=sq74hkt965dkj8cqj&n=skt82h73da94ca742&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=1h1np2cp2dp3nppp]266|200[/hv] Here's how I cleverly captured 8 tricks. Stumbling at the final hurdle.

It turns out (naturally), that the place of atheists (like me) in society is a well-studied topic. This quote is the conclusion of the following study. Do You Believe in Atheists? Distrust Is Central to Anti-Atheist Prejudice; GERVAIS, Will M ; SHARIFF, Azim F ; NORENZAYAN, Ara Journal of personality and social psychology, 2011, Vol.101 (6), p.1189-1206 It turns out that although 97% of people - when asked - will identify culturally with a group that has belief in God as part of its oeuvre, 14% of people respond 'no' when asked if they believe in God. I know it's a personal thing, but I call this 14% group 'grown-ups'. Grown-ups have individuated from the concept that all of their decisions are governed by an 'external locus of control' and that so long as they appease this 'external locus' they can do and say whatever they please. I achieved this state when I was about 12 years old. When I was 13, I had a Bar Mitzvah - my Bobe was very happy. Undertaking this ritual meant that I was now responsible for my own actions.

Your "response" speaks for itself.

I am explaining why you are having trouble finding substitutes. Saying "there are rude people in other places" will not solve your problem. I have played in and substituted in Sky club on multiple occasions. I will not be doing it again. If you do not monitor the rudeness in your club and manage it then that is the likely reason subs don't help you. Whether or not you choose to do anything about it is not my problem. You may "always find substitutes" but, like me, they will only help you once, maybe twice if they have absolutely nothing else to do. Try to remember that the sub is doing you a favour. Your failure to manage the behaviour of your regular players is the root cause of the problem.

You could try prayer.

Generally, the robots provide alerts for all their bids - sometimes even for 'pass'! Could you please provide the original file. so that we can better understand what was going on. I'm guessing that after you raised the robots sign-off in 3♠ it took you for being much stronger and started a control bidding sequence that you were unable to escape from. I would be interested to know what would have happened if you had bid 4NT over 3♠. It's worth remembering that the robot is completely immune to your psychic entreaties. It just follows down the path that is set, like water running downhill. No amount of King Canuting will stop it. Some people are like that - they just blast away to the 6 level if they 'think' it's the right place to be. Here's an example. Looking at this auction, I imagine West was wondering why East did not stop at 4♥.[hv=pc=n&s=s4hkj6djt964ckj74&w=sj862h52da83cqt98&n=sq953h8dkq752c532&e=sakt7haqt9743dca6&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=1hp1sp4d(splinter)p4hp6sppp]399|300[/hv]