pilowsky

I defer to Mikeh on this, obviously, but having just read the Bird Anthias books it seems that the same logic applies to a weak NT opening as a strong NT opening. The B&A simulations were based on the best outcomes with simulations after 15-17 NT openings. Still, in both cases, there is an implication that the Declarer will be looking to make tricks in minor, not major suits. They suggest that after an Auction of this type (1NT-3NT) the Declaring side will have 'on average' only 5.8 major suit cards between them BUT defenders will have 7.2. This means that their analysis favours a major suit lead since that is the likeliest source of tricks for the defenders.

I think that with Limbaugh dying of smoking-related lung cancer, and Trump being tossed from the White House, we could be witnessing the start of the Decline and Fall of the Loman empire. I think that's what happens to salesmen in the end. As for C and D, If Ingraham has a soul she stole it from someone else, and Hannity's moral compass only points in one direction.

There are many factors that affect whether or not you will suffer disconnections. e.g. Your device (phone tablet, PC - old or new, Mac)Programs running in the backgroundYour internet providerYour internet planNumber of people using your internet service at the same timeServer problemsProblems with the program itself.The number of people using BBO at the same time.Activities that BBO may be running at a particular time of dayActual bugs in the software. (. ) - Oddly, the German lyrics are quite different. All of these different things can - alone or in combination - cause major problems. It may help if you specify which systems you and your friends are using so that BBO and other people can search for common 'threads'. Yesterday, a tournament was suddenly cancelled for no obvious reason in the middle of a board. No idea why. Never happened before. My partner (in London, England) and I were suddenly 'booted' (opposite of started) - go figure. An opp once said to me "I like the cut of your gib". Perhaps GIB just didn't like your cut.

For reasons that opaque to me, the DNC has decided to bombard me with requests for financial support. They are also sending me daily request for me to donate and become a member of the DNC. This last offer interested me strangely. Could I really become a member of the DNC? I filled out the form, and when I arrived at the spot that said 'donate $x', I typed in 0. $0.00 is the maximum amount of money that a foreign national can donate to any politician in the USA. Once you donate the money you are apparently entitled to 0, so I thought that my offer was reasonably priced. In Australia, when you join a party (as opposed to a 'committee), you can attend monthly meetings. You can influence policy. Decisions made at your local Branch are sent to the annual State convention (which you can attend as a delegate if elected by your branch). If supported there, they move on to the National Conference. At one of these state-level meetings, I was able to introduce a no-smoking in the workplace motion. Decades later, smoking is not permitted in Australian workplaces. (I'll tell you the story about how I induced a question about nicotine metabolism at a medical school viva voce some other time - ashtrays were commonplace at the medical school I attended in the 1970s). Why do I bring this up? Today I was sent a letter from Joe and Kamala detailing the miracle of Universal health care in America (pro-tip - there isn't any). I was so excited I immediately attempted to see how wonderful health care is in America - it isn't. Here is what the Healthcare.gov site responded with When you look at it remember that in Australia, Rupert Murdoch (if he were still a citizen of Australia - he relinquished it so that he could buy Media companies in America), could walk into a public hospital with any medical problem and get treatment valued at >$250,000 for no payment whatsoever. Zip, nada, nothing. That's what universal health care means in the Biden era. If you are poor, hungry or in need of urgent medical help, it can be yours for a $1000 co-payment. Income calculator USA: https://www.pewresea...n-middle-class/ Health care calculator USA: https://www.healthca...-medicaid-chip/

[hv=pc=n&s=st94ha752dj65cj86&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=ppp1s2s(Michaels%20--%205%2B%E2%99%A5%3B%2011-%20HCP%3B%209-12%20total%20points%3B%20forcing)p3h3sp4sppp]133|200[/hv] Tales from the Prime Hands played in the Prime Club have started to show a little inconsistency of late. Here is a great example. From the bidding, what do North, West and East have? In your experience, how often does bidding Michaels result in a successful game contract for either side? How would you bid this hand after looking at what happened? Here's what happened Here are the makeable contracts

When applying for jobs - something I had to do every four years in the Research Fellow biz, a common question was: Who's your favourite scientist (other than yourself hahaha)? Mine is Ronald Aylmer Fisher, born today 17th February 1890. Fisher is someone familiar to most people on this Forum, without him, many of the Discussions that we have here would be just guess-work. In common with some other members of the Forum (and other great scientists), Fisher was prone to harbouring ideas that were somewhat unacceptable. We sometimes take the good with the bad. RA Fisher was a statistician but was also a eugenicist. Of all the famous people born in 1890 (DD Eisenhower, Ho Chi Minh, Groucho Marx and 'Colonel' Sanders) My favourite is Ronald Aylmer Fisher. On the list of famous people born on the 17th of February, Fisher ranks at 67. (https://www.thefamou...bruary-17th.php). Paris Hilton ranks number 5. Rene Laennec comes in at 106 and he invented the stethoscope. The other Colonel (Oberst) Sanders (later General) Otto Liman von Sanders pops up at 121. (Yes, not German - Henry Oakley Howard (formerly Sanders) was born in Surrey.) Fisher worked with and argued with luminaries such as Gossett and Pearson. He also examined Turing. In his final years, he worked and lived in Adelaide. In fact, he worked at the Waite Agricultural Institute (of the University of Adelaide). Also situated in the same block of land was the last school I attended Unley High Scool. Fisher was not the only 'great' to have had brushes with strange, even criminal, ideas. Two others were: Carleton Gajdusek 9 9 1923 Nobel prize for prion disease, Child molester Kary Mullis 28 12 1944 PCR, climate change and AIDS denier Without these three, Alan Turing and JCR 'Lick' Licklider, modern medicine would not exist as we know it. Whenever I think that I've thought of something new or cool I usually discover that (at least) 10 others have thought of it first. Statistical thinking is the most important element for any rational discussion - and even then there is considerable variance in the outcome. I searched a bunch of Library sites and here are a couple of documents from Fisher's correspondence that you may enjoy. In one he lavishes praise on Turing, in the other he obtains a photograph of Sealy Gosset from Gossett's widow Marjory.

Did anyone ever see the 'Aliens films'? They should remake them as "Republicaliens". They mostly come out at night, mostly. Starring Kamala Harris as Ripley.

Here is a list of qualifications needed to join the Police (not the FBI etc) in the USA. You must be older than 18, have no criminal record and (mostly) have a high school education. Military experience is "well-regarded". You do not get tested AFAIK for adherence to peculiar ideologies. https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/police-officer/#:~:text=Most%20applicants%20will%20need%20to,their%20offences%20were%20very%20minor.

Really? I played one yesterday with 206 participants at 103 tables. #67469 T05 Everest One before that 116 tables. valentine. Before that 194. Blonde Magic

Unless things have changed, support_bridgebase.com can take a while (>1 week) to respond. A common response is "make a post on the Forum".

I am getting this pop-up quite commonly. The username is not me. The password is mine. Any thoughts? It typically happens after I click on someone's name. This one happened when I logged out. When I checked "wpo" they had 3 logins since 19 Sept 2005. Clearly not very keen on BBO.

Hi Diana This approach works most of the time ~75%. But for some reason, it does not always work. Sometimes I get an "unable to upload" error message. Is someone looking at this - can it be fixed?

Akwoo discovers humour!

at least! Even better, you can turn on the double-dummy while you play. When I do this, I sometimes also make the contract - mind you, it's touch and go.

If you sit on a teaching table (this works in Prime) You can put yourself into the East and West seats. I often do this when I want to 'force' a seat to bid in a particular way. If you want a different computer program, then you have two choices. Write your own, or go elsewhere. GIB only does what GIB does.

Without commenting on what every American thinks or believes 'on average', there are some noteworthy elements to the Figure you have abstracted. Although it was published by the Chicago Council, it was produced by yougov. The Chicago Council is an organisation that is funded by wealthy philanthropists. It claims to be a vehicle for informing Americans about international affairs on the grounds they were rather ill-informed about them after WWI. Yougov is a British polling organisation founded by two conservative men. Yougov uses an online system collecting their data from a pool of people. The findings in the poll above closely represent the views of conservatives in the USA remembering that the proportions are somewhat similar to the number of Senators that voted (or wanted to) impeach Trump. Paul Keating called the Senate in Australia (which is elected on the same basis as the US Senate (a set number of senators per state) as 'unrepresentative swill'. It turns out that the Republican Senators that voted guilty represent larger numbers of Americans compared with the larger group that did not. The Senate - no matter what Mitch thinks - is not there to legislate. Its only job is to make sure that the bulk of the population (House of reps) do not do things that crush the less populous states. They are a house of review - nothing more. In many countries, bi-cameral systems of government are found to make governance cross-eyed and dysfunctional. That's why the British eliminated the powers of the Lords. It's why half the countries in the world are unicameral and others want to be. One rural member of parliament in the state of South Australia once remarked: "How can you talk about one-vote one-value in a State where 10% of the population gets 90% of the rainfall?" This single comment (during a debate about whether or not to more fairly arrange electoral boundaries) demonstrates what is wrong with a parliamentary democracy where the setting of boundaries is left up to small partisan groups. You end up with Senators from Kentucky and North Carolina deciding how a country should be run. The Minority Republican leadership is now represented by Senators from Kentucky, South Dakota, Wyoming, Missouri, Florida, Utah, Idaho and Iowa. The Majority Democrat Leaders are from New York, Illinois Washington Michigan Virginia+Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont West Virginia, New Jersey Wisconsin and Michigan). Or, to put it another way, the Democrat Senate leadership represents 26.39% of the USA while the Republican Leadership represents 12.64%. I think that these weightings ought to be considered when looking at percentage data of the type presented by YouGov. Decades of systematic disenfranchisement of the majority non-conservative voices has brought the US to its knees. Edit: This means that 304.8 (go figure) of the 1048 people sampled agree with the proposition. Or 21% (14+7 of the 'overall'). Add up the dark blue bars to get 100%. In most countries, even if a candidate reveals that they believe that genocide is an appropriate way to manage the population they will still get around 30% of the vote from 'rusted-on' supporters. To that extent, a figure of 21% is pretty dismal. A line that I heard attributed to LBJ was that he told an Aide to say that the opponent f***ks pigs. The Aide said, "I can't do that - no-one will believe it". LBJ replied "Yeah, but he'll have to deny it!".

The point about points is that they are just that: a collection of barnacles on the ship of knowledge. The more you play, the better you get and the more stick to the ship. A very 'intelligent' Bridge-player once wrote: "In addition, because the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) does not rank the bulk of its players in meaningful ways, it is difficult to compare the strengths of competing programs or players." In other words, Bridge is one of the only sports I know of where there are no dynamic ranks. Like sharks, Bridge-players keep playing and accumulating MP's until they stop. The number that they have tells you very little about their ability to perform at any given moment. I agree with the idea that points mean little. Many on this Forum in the short time that I have been reading it have said something similar at one time or another. One very highly 'pointed' player once remarked something along the lines of "Masterpoints are just advertising". Many of the very best players that write regularly on this Forum such as MikeH, Nige1 cyberyeti and many others have relatively few, or no, BBO points. I still value their opinions and comments highly. They simply seem to prefer a different form of the game. The fact that I am not an expert player does not detract from my enjoyment of the game. So long as it invigorates and teaches me new things I'll stick with it. Collecting BBO points vs GIB compares your performance against other humans, so it is still satisfying. When I succeed in the Club, my pleasure is as much derived from any accurate play that I might make as it does from the pleasure it gives my partner in our joint success. The obvious downside comes from disappointing your partner - which is why nobody likes to have their (obvious) errors pointed out to them in technicolour unless they ask. People will say all kinds of things too intimate that they are better than you - presumably to gain a psychological edge. A few of my favourites - in no special order are: I've been playing for twenty years.I'm an ACBL certified bridge teacher.You're doing it incorrectly because (insert any well-known player) says you should do it this way.Your preempt was too heavy/light (delete whichever applies) after you went down or made too many tricks. As you gain even a modicum of expertise, you quickly recognise the fallacy in each of these. So yes, points are pointless, but on the other hand, if you have collected a few, it does mean that you have played well in a number of competitions. Sure you can play in lots of tournaments - but everyone needs some sleep. At some point, you will tire, get old and your faculties will dwindle. All of which is a little nihilistic - everyone dies eventually. But, there is a way to see if you are improving if personal satisfaction is what you want. 1. The DL number one and now the Zenith tournament both have a very high quality of candidature. Do well (or improve) in these, and your play is getting better. 2. Use the free Challenge format to 'Challenge a Star'. I like the 8 board IMP format. These are sets of deals that Advanced-Expert players played. If you start to do better, then you are improving. 3. Now that you have made a post here you should be able to play in the weekly Forum challenge. Then you can see how your abilities playing GIB ranks against the people here - many of them play it. You will often hear it said that BBO points are worthless and that playing robots is not "real Bridge" - but you still have to learn a reasonably complex system. You still have to learn shapes and hand evaluation, and you still need to learn to remember where all the cards are and which ones have been played. It is wrong to claim that playing with GIB has no heuristic value. Anyone that tries to say otherwise doesn't understand what it's like to learn something entirely new from scratch, or perhaps they have forgotten

It's a well-known problem - not just Mac. After you import them do you get the 'successfully ...." message? If so then the import was successful - you just can't see them Click onto another folder then back to the new one - usually works. Rarely it can take a few minutes.

Well Ken, they've never seen you play Bridge.

No, the ACBL daylongs (12 boards) are divided into sections as well as being stratified. I haven't played one of these for a very long time. The maximum number of ACBL points that you can get playing with robots is limited (because the pool of players in the section is limited) BBO daylongs are different - there is only one section. I choose the DL1 because it has >1000 participants daily, so the points pool is much larger (see above). More importantly, you are competing against a very high-quality pool of candidates. Imagine if 1000 people walked into your club to play a tourney (some on the roof, some in the basement); clearly, this is going to be a difficult tournament. It is not limited by 'section' because there is only one section. The limiting factors in tournaments that 'award' points or prizes are the number of entrants. More sections are 'bad' because it limits the maximum number of points you can get, but 'good' because you are more likely to get something. Stratification is different. Players at all skill levels play the same boards and are split according to their number of MP's afterwards. Chess players are familiar with this strategy. It's the same as 'rating' groups in large Open tournaments. Again, you are right in saying that the more you play, the better your chances of getting points. On the other hand, if you don't temper it with some learning in between, you never improve. That's why I pay for Prime membership. It means I can practice endlessly for a relatively small amount of money and check my play and bidding quickly on the Teaching table. (BBO doesn't pay me btw). I find the Prime facility to be one thing that has improved all facets of my play more than anything else. I figure if I can at least get my head around one (so-called) simple system, that would be a good start.

Sure, you're pardoned. There seem to be a few users that are happy (and grateful). I'm one of them. Possibly the only thing that bothers me is that when a comment, suggestion or issue is raised either via support@ or here on the Forum, it is rarely acknowledged as being noted. Mind you, there are so many complaints that it's easy to understand why a response of 'Thank you for your comment, we are investigating it / added it to our priority list" is so uncommon.

It is always hard to encapsulate an idea into a single phrase. I would also add that our inactions determine our lives. What we do not do, what we stand idly by and allow to happen, is just as telling in forming our future as the actions that we do take. When I was a child, I was bullied because of my 'otherness'. Being Jewish was not so easy in the 1960s and 1970s as it is now. In 2021, thanks to Trump and the people that support him, it isn't easy to be anything other than individualistic and self-serving. Trumpism transcends race colour creed religion and level of competence. Like Dirty Harry, Trumpists are very fair-minded - they dislike everyone who isn't the same as them. People look at the Trump White House and say -"Well, Jared is a Jew, and Stephen Miller is a Jew." or "Trump has black people and Hispanic people in his team." Therefore he must be a solid guy. Yesterday in the street I met a man and his wife. I recognised the man's accent as complained about something, and I said "Ag shame." This expression is so instantly recognisable to South Africans that we fell into conversation The man turned out to be - like me - a South African Jew. (I was 1 year old when we left). This man- who had "married out" and converted to Christianity, was a Trump supporter. I was not surprised, I live in an area that is heavily contaminated with such people. The malignancy of American culture has spread like cancer into Australia. Why was he a Trump supporter? Not because Trump permitted the death of countless people throughout the world. Not because Trump had destroyed countless alliances that protected the helpless throughout the world. And not because Trump had enriched himself and his Family whilst lying like a loon about it to everyone he meets. No, the reason that he thought Trump was wonderful is that Trump had moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This single act is reported as follows by ABCnews. "Documents filed with the official database of federal spending show that the State Department awarded the Maryland-based company Desbuild Limak D&K a contract for $21.2 million to design and build an "addition and compound security upgrades" at the embassy. These updates will be made to the former consular building in Jerusalem -- the embassy's temporary location. "We're going to have it built very quickly and very inexpensively," President Trump said of the embassy back in March, while sitting beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office. "They put an order in front of my desk last week for a billion dollars. I said, 'A billion? What's that for?'" "We're actually doing it for about $250,000," the president said." I personally don't care where the Embassy is. For all Trump's lies about peace in the middle east, this pointless and egregious waste of time and money that could have been spent saving lives disgusts me. Of course, it wins him votes. But it's "all lies and jests and we disregard the rest" to paraphrase S&G.(http://bit.ly/TheBoxerSimonBaez). Trump has destroyed any trust or affection the world had for America. Australia has a history of supporting its allies with unwavering loyalty. Our Prime Minister (the staunchly conservative) John Howard watched the plane smash into the Pentagon on 9/11. He then provided unwavering support to the US-led mission. Australian conservative politics is now so intertwined with Trumpism it will be impossible to shake it off. My statement that WE control our lives stands in contrast to the two core lies perpetrated by Trump and his base: 1. Anyone can achieve the American dream. (insert country of residence). 2. If you fail, it's Gods will. Not everyone will get everything they want, and it is not because God says so. These twin towers of conservatism crush the hopes and aspirations of the people dying in gulags and concentration camps throughout the world. They are a transparent excuse for people that live in cosy homes in safe enclaves policed by retired white military men that target 'other people' throughout the world. When I get off the plane from a long-haul flight from Australia, I'm the guy that gets pulled into a small room and interrogated by police because I look like a terrorist. Insisting that I'm just a little annoying doesn't help me at all.

Ah grew oop in Sheffield - used t play on road. So I know what you mean. It seems you are accommodating (pun intended) to the visual problem. I started doing the same thing when I noticed that I was mis-playing diamonds more often than other suits when I was tired. Of course, the way I play normally, this could have been an artefact.

I would have been 383 :) but it doesn't seem to work on Chrome on my mac. When I searched via the 'extensions' symbol it didn't appear. I found it by googling then installed it When I started to play a hand and then clicked the extension it opened a new tab - the chrome web store. Then I tried 'managing it' allowed full access Same problem. So I removed it.

The main difference is that BBO tournaments are not stratified. This means that if you play in a daylong tournament with around 1000 players, the entire pool is combined and the points then awarded (from the top down) on a Log scale. The daylong matchpoints number 1 is a good example. In the DL1 that I played a couple of days ago, I had my best result since I started playing with 61.15% I was pretty happy. I ranked 164/1059. I scored 0.96 masterpoints. The maximum MP's you can get in the ACBL is about 0.9. The reason is that in ACBL tournaments you are not competing against the best players in the world, you are competing against a small pool within your masterpoint bracket. If you do really well, you will still only get a maximum of about 0.9 to 1.0, but if you are a player with few masterpoints your chances of getting something are higher - because you are competing with the players in your section. BBO tournaments allow the outstanding players to get large numbers of MP's because they demonstrate that they are better than the whole pool. In the DL1, the top 10 players share more than 100 MP's each (ranging from 12.29 down to 10.68). The players ranked between 50 and 60 share only 25 MP's and the players in my 160 to 170 group shared about 10 MP's. Normally I get zip. By the time you get to 457 (52.58%), there's nothing left. Imagine playing in a regular tournament and getting nothing for scoring >50%! The total number of MP's available that day was 790.54, but the top 58 players got 472.3 of them - that's logarithms for you. To put it another way, BBO points are 'capitalist' the rich get richer. ACBL points are somewhat more socialist - 'to each according to their ability'. This means that when you pay the ACBL $1.35 to play in a Daylong, you are more likely to get something even if you are not one of the world's best players. If you pay BBO $0.39, then your opportunity to win MP's is much higher - but only if you are a consistently good player. To get better results in the BBO Daylong, you can form a team with a friend and combine your percentages at the end . This encourages you to do better for the sake of the team, but sadly, you will not get any MP's when you score more than 100%. Not something that happens very often! Most of the time, I get less than 50% and get nothing. But it is cheap, and I am competing daily in a tournament with more than 1000 opponents. At one point things were looking so grim that I suggested to my partner that we add another member to the team. If you are cut from a more competitive cloth, select one of the regulars like 'leftfoot' or 'punxsyphil' and try to beat them. Obviously, the more you play, the more you get, but the Daylong structure is the main reason for your discovery.