luis

Ben: I have no problem with forced announcement of transfers. JRG: I disagree with every single word you wrote so I won't be quoting everything because it will only help to make this post longer. I think you have a confusion between "being nice" and "playing bridge". You can be a nice player, educated and friendly without telling your opponents what you have. Nice but not dumb.

"I still do not see why 4♦ is stronger than 4♣. " It's not. I think that the 4cl cuebid in this context looks for a second suit (a major) by the overcaller. Without a second suit he just bids 4d. The idea is to make strong balanced hands with a 4 card major able to find a fit for slam or grand-slam. What is 4♣ in "common sense"? An unassuming cuebid also known as "what else pd" What is your weakest hand for a 3♦-overcall? Something like: xx, Kxx, AKxxx, QJx

I will say again that if you have no agreements with your pd about a particular bid the bid shouldn't be alerted. Some players think that because you are playing online you are entitled to know what a player has for a particular bid and I strongly disagree. You are entitled to know a partnership has agreed not what each player has for their bids. I completely agree that it is an unfair advantage to your opponents to tell them something that your pd must figure out. Well I've said this a zillion times, it's not a matter of courtesy it's just what the rules say. Your example is weak because transfers are usually announced, not alerted.

I think an invitational bid doesn't make any sense in this context so I'd take 4d as forcing, slam oriented with support for diammonds. This will start a control exchange sequence ending in 5d, 6d or 7d.

I find the 7s bid without asking for the trump queen insulting. About 2NT in 2/1 depends on your agreements because there're many styles, for example I play that it shows doubleton in the 2/1 suit and stoppers in the remaining suits any strength. Others play that is either 12-14 or 18-19. And others play that it shows 5332 distribution of any strenght. In SAYC 2NT shows some extras as many posters pointed here, I found that treatment horrible but in sync with the whole system.

No, I wouldn't pay because first of all U$S 50 is a lot of money here, I strongly believe that having the same annual fee regardless of where the player is from is discriminatory. It's exactly the same as charging more/less because of your skin or your language or whatever. Having said that I wouldn't pay for online bridge because I only play online to improve my game, meet friends, have fun and entertainment reasons, it's a great tool to have fun and it's a great tool to improve but I just don't think it has any competitive value at all. You can't "compete" playing online and as in any sport I love competition, even when you lose all the time :-) If you win 708 imps against a pair? Is that good/bad or you don't care? I don't care. If you win a tournament are you happy or you are happy when you are playing well regardless of the result ? If you play very well and finish 50th are you happy? I am. In face to face bridge you can play horrible and if you win you will be happy because the competitive factor exists. I can be completely wrong but if you feel competitive playing online and want to "win" things I think you don't know this game at all.

I think you are right about individuals Uday.

This is a "mind" sport: Cards and Computers Displays are just abstract tools. If I had to guess, I'd say that we are rapidly approaching the point at which the predominant way that people play "cards" is via a computer terminal. Card games are card games. Try to play online poker :-)) Impossible. And even when bridge has not as many psichological facets as poker there're many and expert bridge players make use of them at their own risk as a part of the game. For example is part of the game to bid a thin 3NT because you know one of the opponents is upset with his pd, you know that a squeezed may be developing when an opponent is in pain trying to find a discard, etc etc etc. Do you play in the same way against a 15 year old kid and against a 77 year old senior? If you say yes I don't believe you. Do you bid the same agains Meckwell or a housband-wife combination ?

In my opinion trying to make online bridge behave like serious bridge will never be possible and will only cause trouble to the players that enjoy online bridge as a way to practice/socialize/have fun/improve your game. You set-up a candybar as a prize and some strange pair of kiddo-x/kiddie-wiz will win with 95% from Cheatland. You will have to start "Examining" hands, forming comitees, etc etc and at the end the fun and the naive approach of just playing online because you want to play bridge will be ruined. I think it's absolutely impossible to run prized tournaments in a free online club. I also believe that paying for online bridge doesn't make any sense at all so I was very happy with the initial BBO approach, no fees, no prizes, you play just because you love the game. Maybe you will have to split the userbase between paid and unpaid susbscriptors and only allow paid susbscribers to play in tourneys where masterpoints or money is given. Why? because chetaing to earn money should be illegal and you need a way to prosecute the cheaters so you need a way to validate identities so you may need them to subscribe using a valid credit card. Luis

Luis: What part of the following do you not understand: The Bermuda Bowl would continue to be held in a centralized location: All player will continue to travel to Istanbul or where-ever. The event would take place in a large hall, in much the same way that occurs today. Physical proctors would circulate through the hall monitoring play. All the computers would linked together over a LAN installed and controlled by the event organizers. Network monitoring software would be installed on this LAN. I am NOT suggesting that players contesting in the Bermuda Bowl will every be able to do so from the comfort of their own homes. Potentially, over time, it might be possible to distribute players across a set of physically secure sites, however, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess when this might occur. This is a cards sport, you play with cards not with computers. I understand your idea and the advantages but I wouldn't like to see them implemented. I agree with electronic bidding boxes, you just select your bid and the "tray" will show the bids electronically, you can time each bid in case of delays or hesitations, etc. But the players shoule be sitting at the same table with the current regulations and use cards for the play. I just like that as a part of the game.

Of course I disagree. There's no way, I repeat no way to prevent cheating using an electronic environment, if the players are at their homes you can't run a serious torunament, that's a fact. Some quixotic pair / team will win the competition blasting through Meckwell , Zia and the good players. You can put a webcam filming the players you can do whatever you want and there will be a way to for cheaters to succeed and say "hey we defeated the world champions!". Besides this if a small team of great unknown players win the competition everybody will accuse them of cheating and a false accusation is even worst than cheating itself. You can use sniffers, radars, whatever you want and a player can still make a cell phone call to his pd and talk about the hand, they can send a pager, they can be next to each other and talk etc etc. So your "strong" security is the same as nothing and only works to make things harder for players. Furthermore electronic environments eliminate the "sporty" facet of bridge, seating at the table and interacting with people is part of the game. You must be able to talk to your pd during breaks, pat him in the back, buy drinks, talk to your teammates, run across the place with +1660 in a scorecard, hit your head against a wall for a missguessed queen, find other players and talk to them about the hands, where to dinner, etc etc. It's hard to put it in words but everybody who has played competitive bridge will be able to tell you that online bridge is not even close the excitement and the fun that face 2 face bridge is. If you are in City-X playing the Bermuda Bowl you are in City-X playing the Bermuda Bowl and that is not the same and will never be the same as being at your home playing the online bermuda bowl or whatever you want to name it. In fact I don't care about any online tournament and its results but found the face to face Bermuda Bowl final as exciting as the SuperBowl.

Maybe a better interface is to display options depending on the contract and the tricks taken so far by the defense and declarer: Example: if you are playing 3NT and the defense has 2 tricks and declarer has 7. Claim 3NT +2 (11 tricks) +1 (10 tricks) = (9 tricks) down 1 (8 tricks) down 2 (7 tricks) With Radio buttons for each option defaulted to taking all the tricks (+2) here.

Just to add my vision I think that online bridge can never reach the level of seriousness of face to face bridge. I really think NCBOs should refrain from running tournaments giving points for online play. First of all you can't prevent cheating. And second it's not the same game, there're differences in the proceedings and regulations that make f2f and online bridge incompatible. I love online bridge but it's just a way to practice, have fun, improve your play and play hands with friends and many excellent players. It's fantastic. But for tournaments and serious competition I will always prefer f2f bridge. If we focus in what online bridge really is you will realize that there's no sense at all in cheating and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Luis

How right you are Misho, over 1NT I bid 2s and the bidding tray was in the other side of the screen for ages and ages. I started to sweat. Finally pd bid 3h and I jumped to 6d to prevent an accident. LHO lead the cQ and pd said "Sorry I should;ve passed 2s" (!!) [hv=n=sakt943ht963d2cak&s=shkqdakq97654cj62]133|200|[/hv] Play for 12 tricks. I decided that 8+2+2=12 was good enough. So I took the cA and played a diammond, 8 from my RHO Ace from my hand and LHO discarded. Down 1. The d8 was a variation of the Grossvenor gambit, if east plays the dJ/dT you always lose 1 trump but playing the 8 allows you to play the 9 and win but who would do that??? :-))

1. What the hell is 2h ??? Crystal clear 2s rebid. 2. 3d I guess but I object the 2h rebid

Hi Fly: Q1: is 3C right? Yes and no. Based on general principles 3c is an underbid because you have excellent clubs for your pd 1c opening, honors in hearts and spades, singleton in the suit where your LHO has values etc. So with that in mind you should bid probably a 4d splinter. But we can inferr that either LHO has a lot of diamonds and plans to bid 3d next or RHO has support for diamonds and will bid 3d if allowed with that in mind we can "risk" a 3c bid expecting the auction not to end and trying to make an image of our hand as clear as we can for pd. Q2: after 3d, what do you bid? 3h, very simple, a fragment with values in hearts, pd now assumes we have 4-3-2-4 or 4-3-1-5, if he doesn't bid 3NT our next bid will be 4d making the picture clear. Luis

I think the double is automatic. Specially when pd is a non-passed hand, there're a lot of hands with values that can't take an inmediate action over a 3c bid so protecting is mandatory.

This thread degenerated in a very curious exchange of opinions. I think nobody realizes that there're that a booklet can't be used to determine what to bid in each situation. Even playing negative doubles up to 2s if the auction starts 1c(3d) I'd take a double by pd as takeout. If my pd thinks the same we are not "fielding" anything, we are on the same wavelength of serious Bridge.

I think that the problem is that you must understand SAYC before running a SAYC-only tournament. If you think that SAYC forbids a negative double of 3d after 1c-(3d) then you are absolutely wrong. In fact your doubles can be whatever you want them to be because SAYC makes no clear statement about competitive auctions so you are free to play whatever you want. I find this ridiculuous, I understand you want players to play an inferior system for some quixotic reason and I don't have any problem with that but I really can't understand why you are the judge to decide what is SAYC call and what is not and decide when a player "fields" a non-sayc call. There's no way to decide the scope of SAYC you should limit your rulings to opening bids, responses and basic agreements and let players do whatever they think is right when the auctions gets competitive.

The second adjustment is an offense to the gods of bridge.

I will bid 2NT Ogust based on "general principles" the hands that Misho showed are not what I expect from pd. In fact pd can have such a wide variety of hands that asking is almost mandatory in this situation. Then if he has: bad hand, bad suit => 3s bad hand, good suit => 3s good hand, bad suit => 4s good hand, good suit => 3NT

Expert pd, with some history of "funny" bids. IMPS. Problem 1: [hv=d=n&v=e&s=sakqh4dakq95cat92]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Pd opens 3h. (If you bid 4d pd will bid 4h, what else?) What do you bid and what is your plan? Problem 2: [hv=d=n&v=e&s=sakqh4dakq95cat92]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West opens 1s and your pd overcalls 1NT (!). You play "System-Off" in this position. 2c and 2d are to play as well as 2h. 2NT is invitational. 3x bids are invitational and the 2s cue is forcing. Over 2s pd bids 3h. What now ? What is your plan?

Depends on the "x"s in your hand. If you have good intermediates (tens, nines and eights) I'd open 1NT. If not I'd open 1s because the hand doesn't look suitable for no-trump, you have an offensive hand.

I'm too tired but I'm sure I can invent hands over and over again where the system fails. It just doesn't have enough bidding space to show all the likely combinations between the two hands and know how to proceed. I'm sure Richard will be able to explain this with more detail but it's a terrible flaw in full-duplex systems like 2/1.

I dont think you have a clear case Ben. I would have made a signoff in 4♠ I think, maybe a CUE of ♥. You told it was from a tourney - I think you ought to consider a simple misclick not possible to correct. Many poles are playing agressive bidding and I have also met people bidding NT for holding missing aces. I think you ought to withdraw your report to abuse-institution Ben. The case is too poor. If somebody want to spoil the fun for themselves - let them! In that way they cannot spoil the fun for me. I would instead prefer to have those persons who are aut. sucked out of a bridge-table in favour of a tournament to be reported for misconduct. They are ALL spoiling my fun. This is ridiculous, East bidding doesn't make any sense at all. His pd redoubles and with his minimum 1s overcall he asks for aces ? It's one of the most solid cases I've ever seen.