mink

Both yesterday and today at the hour of this post accessibility of BBO is severely limited. All users are affected as far as I can tell. This problem even extents to myhands, which should be on a different server I would have guessed. Please do something about it and communicate what you do!

Thanks Barmar, it worked now. The browser interpreted the second and third field as login fields and filled them automatically with "mink" and my password. So it appeared to me that there was only one field to enter the address.

Today I decided to change the email address that is used to alert me about new forum posts. So I selected BBO Discussion Forums > Your control panel > Settings > Change Email Address and filled out a form, only to get the error message "The entered email addresses do not match." This sounds like I had to input the new address twice, but there was only one input field in the form. BTW, the reason for the address change is that the old address is a gmail address and gmail does not deliver any notification emails for new forum posts anymore. This is a problem since several years.

[hv=pc=n&s=sakj2ha754dak842c&w=s84hj96d9ckqt8653&n=st976hkq83dcaj972&e=sq53ht2dqjt7653c4&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=1d3cd3sdppp]399|300|3♣ was not alerted by West. East alerted and explained both majors 5-5. West asked about North's double.[/hv] South knew the E/W partnership and was quite sure that 3♣ would show the majors. This was also stated in the E/W CC. So either West forgot to alert his 3♣, or he misbid, having forgotten the convention. South refrained from asking West about the bid as he feared the question might wake up West. If West had bid natural clubs, North's double would be negative and show the majors. If West bid artificially, the double would show clubs. South decided to comunicate the latter meaning. East could not make any trick, so he went down 9, 2600 for N/S. At the other table N/S also won all tricks, but the contract was 7♠ by South, 2210 for N/S. When West became aware of what happened after the play, he felt that he was misinformed. Clearly his question about the double was asked in the context of his Clubs being natural. Therefore, the correct explanation should have been "majors" and not "Clubs". He had been strongly considering bidding 4♣, but finally did not dare as he was told that North held clubs. What would have been the correct explanation for North's double under these circumstances? If South did not know the meaning of 3♣, did not look at the CC and regarded it as natural, consequently explaining North's double as "majors", would this be the meaning of the call that West is entitled to know, or would it be a false explanation as there cannot be 2 different meanings of the same call? This is an artificial case with a constructed hand, but somehow related to a real world case.

When playing with a robot, a description of a bid is displayed when hovering over the denomination of my next bid. If this description does not fit in the box, a scrollbar is provided. But it is not possible to utilize this scrollbar, as trying this means moving the mouse there, but as soon as the cursor leaves the denomination, the box containing the description disappears.

After having played a few tourneys and Main Bridge Club hands with the HTML5 client using Firefox under Linux, here are my observations: 1. In the history of played hands, the columns are not we/they, but NS/EW, like in the app. The we/they layout provides an easier understanding which boards are good for us and which have a bad result, especially if we sit on different compass directions in different rounds. 2. Like in the app there are no sums of the IMPs won and lost in the boards played so far, probably due to issue #1. 3. Several times when playing in a tourney my first chats went to the lobby, and sometimes I did not recognize this so my opps did not receive my greetings. Chat destination should change to table when the tourney starts. 3a. There seems to be no "chat to opps". I use this seldom, but sometimes it is really useful. 4. In some lists, e.g. the tables of a running tourney, the scrollbar is so small that it is virtually invisible. 5. In the Flash client below this list there used to be a button that enabled me to volunteer as a sub for this tourney only. There is no such button in the HTML5 client. BTW, in the app I did not even find a button to sub at all. 6. There is a limit for the number of participants for each tourney, but this number is nowhere displayed. Again, same problem in the app. 7. Below the display of an historic board, there is no GIB button. 8. The German translation sometimes needs more space than the English original. This is especially awkward with the Round Clock, that was correctly translated to "Rundenzeit". This label word exceeds the box and is truncated. The digit(s) that show the time are visible, but they override the label, sharing the same background, which makes them difficult to recognize. In general, I prefer the HTML5 client over the Flash client, especially as it loads faster, does never stall when I accidentally right click, an displays what I type immediately, while with the Flash client I had to type blind most of the time, and the text would appear some time later (Flash issue under Linux).

Barometer tourney with 16 tables, 30 boards to be played. At our first table, we have only one opponent. Her partner, she says, could not arrive in time as the local train she intended to ride had been cancelled. She had told her to take a taxi, but the taxi driver was not aware that a road had been closed some time ago, so the ride took much longer than expected and she arrived at the end of round 1 with no time to play any of the 2 boards. What score should be awarded according to the Laws? Law 12C2a seems to be relevant: While, if anyone, the delayed player was "responsible" for being late, it appears to me that it was not her "fault". NBO (Germany) regulations suggest that average minus should be awarded for the pair as being not at the table, but the terms "responsibility" or "fault" are not referred to in the regulation, and reasons for the pair being not at the table are not considered by the regulation. What I know from the practice at other tourneys is that there are no penalties for players arriving late due to delayed trains.

E.g. I cannot set the threshold how new topics must be in order to be displayed, using chrome under android. This used to be possible with a desktop computer.

In diesem Forum wird dieser Hinweis niemand auffallen, der etwas daran ändern könnte.

If declarer really knows that he has to care for the ♣10 and does not like to talk so much, he can easily play ♣8 from the dummy and then claim immediately. Claiming without playing any card and without saying anything can have 2 reasons: He thinks that it is obvious for everybody that the 8 must be played now. He fails to see that a 5-0 break of ♣ creates a problem. The second might occur due to euphoria about having bid a grand slam that appears to make or by just miscalculating the ♣ cards that are left for defenders. Evidence for the failure to see the problem is that he does not mention the possible 5-0 break and does not play a card from the dummy before claiming. If he really fails to see the problem, ♣Queen is a normal play, as others have pointed out already. I do not accept the idea that the fact that a claim was made is evidence that problem was envisioned by declarer. This is just nonsense. Regarding the class of player involved, of course the probability of not seeing the problem becomes smaller the smarter the declarer appears to be. But it never reaches zero. So even if I truly believe that this declarer, whom I know and admire as a bridge player, should see the problem, I shall rule against him at this occasion. But I doubt that such a player would make such a claim without statement. Karl

I also considered this line of play, but found that West can still discard a ♦ on the third round of ♠ - no squeeze.

Yes, but nevertheless SB was in a worse position than he would have been if the COOT did not happen, even before he called. If he bids, this is technically an opening bid, but semantically an overcall. But there are usually no methods agreed for this kind of overcall. A nice idea for example would be to bid 1♠, showing takeout of ♠. But how can he know that partner would interpret it like this? Would double by North now be a comparable call or not? And if North passes, there is some risk that tt on the East seat might pass, too, without bothering to consider the auction carefully? If West bids 1nt, does this promise a ♠ stopper or not? There is a lot of potential damage for E/W from the start, and the law refuses to compensate for this in case of a non-comparable call, other than silencing South for one round (not clear which side will find this to be helpful). However, I agree with the majority here that Law 12B1 is only descriptive and does not authorize the TD do make an adjustment. Law 12A1 grants an authorization, but only if the infraction in question is not covered by any Law. This is not the case here - BOOT in handled by Law 31, and this mentions explicitly the Laws 16C, 26B and 72C. This means that Law 23C applies only in case of a comparable call. We see the same principle implemented in Law 27 (insufficient bid), so this is wanted by the lawmakers and not an accidental effect.

Edit: The following was written when the contract was 5♦ according to the OP. By the missing alert North has 2 UIs: South is stronger than I would expect him if he alerted. South thinks that I am weaker than I am. Both UIs suggest that I should bid more. However, there are too many Aces and Kings missing, and in general a jump to 5 of a minor should deny interest in slam. As usual I would make a poll to learn what players would call when not knowing this hand and hear an auction that includes an alert of 2NT. The defenders were not misinformed if the card reflects the true agreements of N/S, so their error is not compensated if the poll results in the score not being adjusted. I also cannot see any clue why they would play differently if the contract was 6♦. So even if the poll suggested that the score should be adjusted to 6♦, this adjustment would not take place because it would be unfavourable for the non-offending side.

When RR led the ♠ for trick 10, he had been made aware that ♥ was trump. With this information I could imagine a weak player might play a ♦ and ruff it. If RR had not been informed and was still under the impression of playing nt, a ♦ would have been not a logical alternative even for a player like RR - he started with a singleton in this suit and now is void. It is possible to be unsure if a 7 is high or not, but if he was not aware that opps have still ♦ K and J, he would not play bridge at all. So in trick 10 a ♠ is played to Q and K. ♠ continuation is futile for SB, so he plays ♦K. My guess would be that RR now again "discards" ♥5 rather than ♠5 and makes 10 tricks, provided anybody cares to tell him that he has to lead for trick 12.

If the daylong used the same hands for everybody, I would not complain, but giving this hand only to a small fraction of the players is clearly unfair. Maybe browse through the hands before the tourney starts and remove hands like this manually.