Echognome

I would also like to know what some other bids mean in our system. If I play that 3♥ is the only way to bid Michael's, then I would tend to pass here, as I need a way to show a stronger Michael's hand. I play both a direct cuebid as Michael's (intermediate) and Leaping Michael's (strong), then I can bid here to show my extra distribution.

I'm fine with other choices to Goren. I definitely do not think his book is the do-all or end-all. I just felt a lot of the early recommendations for books were too advanced for someone just starting out.

I definitely agree that there are improvements to the original system. I certainly wouldn't consider a one point change in the opening 1NT range as a "hole", but that is semantics. The entire response structure to 1♣ has also been improved. I am not worried about unusual positive versus impossible negative. I think the whole treatment of semi-positives has been much improved since the initial system. However, my main point is in answering the question, "Where is the best place to start?"

I personally think a lot of you are way off base with your suggestions for a beginner to Precision. Going from having never played Precision to a fully thought out system is a lot of steps. I personally think the books that are being recommended are too advanced for going from zero to the next step. I am grateful that I started with Goren, because he presents the system for those that have never played it. He explains the rationale behind the bids and you also learn what the original C.C. Wei system was. After all, modern versions are all variants from this original system. As such, I would rather tell a beginner to begin with learning the basic system and only later start learning the more modern treatments. Needless to say, this is just my opinion.

Fair enough Mike. I was just mentioning that I think that it solves this particular problem. I can certainly understand that there are other tradeoffs involved and you would prefer to deal with this problem.

You clearly are not hearing this right. Mike has not mentioned anything at all about disclosure. He will of course inform the opponents with an announcement or alert as appropriate.

I don't believe what you read, but it doesn't matter, since Mike doesn't play in ACBL-land.

What about just switching the NT ranges, so you can bid 1NT over 1♠? You will not have the same problem after a 1♦ opening. You will just have to open (41)=4=4 hands with 1♣.

There are many, many varieties of Precision. I started with Charles Goren Present the Precision System of Contract Bidding. I know it is outdated, but I thought it was a perfect book to start with. Basically, it was a book that took you from natural bidding system to Precision. If you read that with a grain of salt, knowing that there have been many advances since that time, I think it gives you a good foundation. From there, I think any of the other books are good. I would definitely not focus on the asking bids. I personally think that the other options (natural follow ups or relays) are superior. However, I'm sure others love the asking bids. Edit: I do not know of any good online resources, but you can probably get the Charles Goren book from a library or buy it used for cheap. It looks like you can get it for a few dollars on Amazon, for example.

It would be fun to win the trump in hand, play the ♠T to the A, then a low spade off dummy. Please note I said "fun" and not "smart".

Much prefer kickback, but only in a very serious partnership. Otherwise, I'd stick to keycard.

Rain, Thank you for your reply. If the google chat works, then it is not an issue to leave things as is. I am not sure how effective it will be, but am willing to try it. In addition to just letting people know that chatting will be difficult/near impossible for me, it is sometimes nice to just log on to play and not chat. It is somewhat akin to logging in as invisible now and being able to play in a tournament without people disturbing me. Most of the time, I do prefer being able to chat, I just would not want to do so on my tablet. I do think there are added benefits to having such a mode as it is an additional option for a table host and may resolve some issues where table hosts do not want kibitzers to chat. I know I would rather watch the top players and not be able to chat than not be able to watch them at all!

One thing I noticed while playing on the tablet was that it was extremely difficult to type. I don't put any of the blame of that with BBO. Tablets are just not great devices to type on. Phones aren't really either. When I logged on, I had several of my friends instantly start typing to me. To be fair, I had not been logged on in awhile and it was nice that they wanted to say hi. The problem was that I was on BBO trying to focus on playing with the tablet. That lead me to the idea of having a "gagged mode" or "tablet mode" option when logging in. Under this mode, players cannot type. In addition, if other players try to chat with these players, they are given a message that these players are in "gagged mode" so will not be able to respond. I think of this as being similar to the messages that are sent when players are in tournaments, so am hoping this would be relatively easy to implement. I thought another benefit is for certain team matches or tables where the hosts could have the option of only allowing silent kibitzers.

Option 1 easily. It is so much better then some of the other ones. Compare it to option 4. 1♣ - 1♦/♥ - 2♠ vs 2♣ - 2♦ - 2♠ In the first auction, I have gotten across that I'm strong (I've game-forced), I have at least 4-5 shape, I'm unbalanced. In the second auction, I have now lied about my shape and only shown that I'm strong. In both cases, we are now at the same level in the auction (2♠). Of course, that was the easiest one to beat up. I actually think treating this as a balanced hand is not unreasonable, it's just unnecessary. I have pretty strict guidelines for opening 2♣ and rebidding a minor. This hand does not meet those guidelines.

Whether this bidding sequence should logically show 6-4 depends entirely on your Michael's agreements. Some play a split range Michael's (Weak or Strong) with the intermediate hands overcalling. This is not a style I play in any of my partnerships. Therefore, if I overcall and then bid again, I will tend to show 6-4 (or perhaps a 6-5 with a bad minor). However, that is my style, so completely understand Arend's comment.

I personally do not see how pass could be forcing. All our side has done is bid and raise suits. Only opener has shown strength (as in having an opening bid) and south has made a simple raise. My point is that I can understand that South may need to work out if pass is forcing in this partnership. The follow up question is whether that is a bridge reason to think (I think it is). If so, then the remaining question is whether pass is a LA for North. For that matter, we have procedures. If not, then I think of this situation akin to the situation of hesitating on the play of the cards as defender without a reason. The classic example being leading up to KJx(x) in dummy and LHO holding Qxx hesitating. By the way, I have one time been awarded an adjustment when a defender did this to me (I needed only one trick). The particular player's partner came up to me after the hand and said "Thank you. She does that thing all the time, so I was glad to see her finally get caught for it." It is still a wonder to me why the guy played with her if he felt that way.

Seems like a good hand to poll without presenting the UI.

A couple of things. I do think that we all exhibit some "consumption smoothing." We overspend some when we are young and save when we are old. Do we do it somehow "optimally"? I don't think so. There are many reasons for this, in particular that we do not have a really great view into our future to do so. There are also "time inconsistencies" with ourselves. We may expect our future selves to act in a certain way, but then have a completely different mindset when we get there. As for the rational/irrational discussion, I will add the following points. 1. I think most economists believe that humans exhibit constrained rationality. The constraint coming from the fact that they do not have perfect foresight, perfect memory, or complete information. 2. There are models, that do not assume full rationality. Several macro models have a certain percentage of consumer make decisions based on a "rule of thumb" rather than rational expectations. There are micro models that utilize limited memory or limited information. 3. How does an irrational agent act? Irrationality is not the same as random. As such, there are an infinite number of ways to model irrationality. There is only one way to model full rationality. Of course there are varying degrees of rationality.* * In game theory it is pointed out that assuming that all agents are rational does not often get you very far. Instead you need to assume all agents are rational; all agents know that the other agents are rational; all agents know that the other agents know that they are rational; ad infitum. This term is called "hyper rationality" or that strategies are "rationalizable".

1. I would bid 3♦ showing a 6-4 in my book (5-5 or better and willing to bid to the 3-level would have started with 2 spades). 2. I would bid 3♠. I can understand passing 2♠, but I have suppressed KQx in support and my defense is not that great. I interpret partner's double as a DSIP double.

I always thought people were just misapplying the Permanent Income Hypothesis and had grand notions of their "permanent income." It's not just some crackpot economic theory. It was developed by Milton Friedman.

I'll muddy the waters even further. In statistics, the usage of "likely" is a derivative of "likelihood", which I believe to be synonymous with "probability". Here's a quote from a statistics book: "There are six faces on a die, and on a fair die each is equally likely to come up when you throw the die." Here, the likelihood of each event is 1/6. The term "equally likely" can be viewed as "having the same odds" or "having the same probability". I agree that it would have been much clearer if there was a more descriptive phrase, such as "more likely than not". But there isn't and it is gray. I will throw my own interpretation in with Wayne's. Another way to view "equally likely" is "equally probable". And if the law book read "would probably won the trick" then I associate that phrase as having a meaning of the cumulative probability of being greater than 50 percent.

Happy birthday to the both of you!

I've had on/off problems with logging in. The letters did appear and vanish, but worked anyway. I think once you log in and save your password, you are ok. Am trying to find an equivalent to notepad where I can type in my full password, copy it, and then paste it into the box. Maybe this will help me access the site on another browser. Posting pics is a bit of a process. I take a pic with my phone, email it to myself. Open it in Paint. Reduce the size of the picture. Save it. Then upload it. I will do it, but give me a little bit. The basics of chatting, as far as I can tell, is that you click on a user's name. It opens up a dialog box. You click in the chat space and the keyboard pops up. The difficulty is that the keyboard then covers the chat area, so you can type and hit enter and it works. However, you cannot see what you are typing. My wife went to Verizon on the first day the Xoom was released. There was almost no hype like there has been for the iPad. She told me there were two people in front of her when the store opened. Both of them were there to pay their bills. So she was the first person to buy it from our store. As per the stylus, I have not used one on the Xoom, but thought I could without anything special. My son has a few stylus' for his Nintendo DS. I will see if those work. They only cost about a dollar or two to buy.

I took a picture of Vugraph next to a dollar bill, to give some perspective on the screen size. Obviously a 10" screen is not large, but certainly a lot larger and more playable than a smart phone.

Oh and even though I rented robots, I still had the ad bar on the left (as you can see in the pictures). Given how precious real estate is on a 10" screen, it's painful to lose any of it.