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Let's assume that with the correct information North always makes 10 tricks in a spade contract. Now, would you still assign a weighted score because maybe 4♠ will not be reached with the correct information? Karl

Geht nicht. Karl

Kann man nicht. Karl

Hi Pran, I do not mind that you just repeat with other what you said in your previous post in order to defend your dogma that several irregularities have to be handled in the same order as they occurred. But I do mind that you incorrectly cite a law in order to support your flawed argument. Law 9C reads: Please note that there is a difference between "offender" and "offending side". In our case, the offender (North) did not try to correct anything prematurely, and therefore this law is just not applicable here. Karl

I thought it matters what the law says and not how an individual thinks the game should be played. So far I got the impression that especially you, David, often emphasize this. About "induced" and "reasonable": One of the first things a beginner learns is that the dummy only plays cards ordered by the declarer. Everybody knows this, no matter how inexperienced. Therefore I expect nobody to assume a statement of the dummy could cause the game to end, and I expect everybody to know that cards in hand must be hidden until the game ends. This is so basic that I cannot believe it needs to be discussed. Karl

Hi Anne, when the web interface started, there were a lot of reasons not to use it, though for basic playing and kibbing it has always been suitable, and the number of reasons decreased with every new version. Today, there is not much left where the windows interface is better or has features that are not available in the web interface. Here are some: Your chat is saved to your local disk. The hands you play are saved to your local disk (they are saved in the web, too, no matter what interface you use) You can chat to lobby, but only few people will hear you, as most have lobby chat disabled The list of kibitzers at your table is accessible more easily Some lists update automatically, while you have to click a button for the same list to update in the web interface Player's profiles are always displayed without delay you have the option to use GIB's double dummy analysis when kibbing There is a library, chat rooms and a lecture hall On the other hand, there are a lot of features and advantages exclusively located in the web interface. One of the main advantages of the web interface for BBO is that it generates much less internet traffic than the windows interface. Karl

I am quite puzzled by this thread. About the dummy claim: This idea is esoteric. The wording of Law 68 is irrelevant. If it was possible for the dummy to claim, this should be mentioned in Law 42, and as it is not there, it is not possible. About the UI by the dummy: If we believe the declarer that he knew the ♠10 was still out there, we must conclude he knows that the dummy's statement was wrong, that means, it contained no information for him. And I clearly believe the he knew the dummy was not good, because he had been thinking, and there is no reason to think if he believed the ♠10 had already been played. And why did nobody comment on the fact that LHO displayed the ♠10 after dummy's statement? Was it correct for her to do so? Did she think because the dummy, who - as all know - cannot take part in play, said something, the game is over now? When looking for a law that addresses this action, I can only find Law 49, and it is legal for the declarer to see this card. So the declarer cannot go wrong now. However, for the dummy's infraction I would chose a PP that is higher than what is gained by the additional overtrick. Karl

I do not think that the solutions presented so far by pran and mjj29 are appropriate. Pran wants to cancel the 3nt bid in case that the 2nt bid is not accepted, but he fails to quote a legal basis for this cancellation and just states that it is "logical". mjj29 thinks the 3nt might become a insufficient bid. This cannot be right, because at the time when the bid was made it was clearly sufficient according to Law 18C: The last preceding bid was 2nt, and 3nt clearly supersedes this. Anything that North or East might bid later is not preceding. Taking into account blackshoe's finding that the order in which two or more irregularities should be handled is nowhere specified, the TD should decide what he handles first. I clearly would chose the bid out of turn and would first ask West if he accepts the 3nt bid. If he does, he implicitly accepts the insufficient bid by North, too. Law 29A supports this as it states that any rectification is forfeited by a call by West. If West does not accept the 3nt, this bid is canceled according to Law 29B. Now I ask East if he accepts the 2nt by North. If he does, it is his turn to call, and for the offending side Law 31A applies. I West does not accept, it is North's turn to call, and therefore Law 31B applies, forcing North to pass. Law 26 applies for the 2nt and the 3nt bid if canceled. Karl

In the windows client, you can get yourself a sub while your partner is red. This seems to be not possible in the web client. Karl

If West did notice the alert for north's first double but nevertheless gave the wrong explanation that 2♦ is a sound ♥ raise, it is likely that South would not bid 5♣, because in case of a ♥ raise North is likely to be void in ♥ and 5♣ looks makable. Considering the situation with the correct explanation it is more likely that both 4♥ and 5♣ will be down. So I adjust to W:4Hx-2. About the unseen alert, my first guess is that West would bid 4♥ even if knowing about the alert. However, I would like to know what West said if and why she would have bid something else. Karl

If partner had really 25, then there are only 2 points left for both opps. This is too unlikely for me so I rather assume he has 20 and bid 6nt, provided that I have received no UI so far. Karl

jdonn, you would be right if the question what was suggested by the UI could be answered by looking at the bid that the receiver of the UI makes next. But this is not the case. It would mean that whenever my partner thinks for a while and I am not sure if he thought because he is too weak or too strong for his bid, it is impossible for me to something intelligent. This is obviously nonsense. If there are 2 possible ways to interpret the UI and these ways exclude each other, and they are more or less equally likely, then nothing is suggested by the UI. If way A is significantly more likely than way B, any bid that supports way A is suggested, and bids that are only good if looking at it in way B are not suggested. Karl

Not sure that is accurate. What we want is to do what we think is best for BBO and its members. If and when someone figures out how to implement a rating system in such a way that we are confident it will be an improvement over what we have now (which we admit is far from perfect), I suspect we would implement it. I am not holding my breath waiting for this to happen. Note that I am not referring to finding a great method of computing player ratings. This is mostly about policies about when/where/how to display playing ratings. Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc. www.bridgebase.com Hi Fred, this is my idea of what could be done: Compute ratings that nobody can ever see, maybe not even publish that they exist. Use them when a player clicks on "Take me to a free seat" to select among the available partners the one with the best fitting rating. Maybe for pair tourneys introduce a new button "suggest a player to invite" located below the partnership desk list: the profile of player with the closest matching rating is displayed along with a button to invite him. Both functions could exclude players if one is in the enemy list of the other. These functions could be enhanced the following way: Extend the players profile with a set of check boxes for the most common systems, conventions and carding methods. (This should be displayed on request only, maybe a button in the profile.) For each item, one can check "I do not know this", "I know this" or "I like to play this". When matching players, take this information into account together with the rating. When a pair is established, compile a convention card from the methods common in both profiles. The whole thing could be extended for team games: Create a function "I like to join a team game", where a player can say how many boards he likes to play and optionally who shall be his partner and teammates. When 8 matching players are found, an automatic invitation occurs. Karl

An Example W - E 1♠ - 2♥ 2♠ - 3♦ 4♣ - 4♦ 6♠ - pass Opps are silent during the bidding and ask for the meaning of the bids before the first lead. Everything up to 3♦ is explained as natural. 4♣ is explained by East as 4th suit forcing. West however thought that it was agreed to be Gerber. Though opps are not entitled to learn about the partnership misunderstanding, they likely will learn about it now as West has to correct East's explanation even if he is unsure what was agreed, as they play both Gerber and 4th suit forcing and it was never discussed what should be the meaning if both interpretations are possible. I think in only few cases of misunderstanding a player who chose a wrong bid is so sure that his partner's interpretation of their agreements is right and documented that there is no obligation to tell what he thought it was. Karl

A lot of beginners in their first or second year of duplicate bridge were playing in this club, and the skill level of the other half who have played longer is not very high. But even if the contestants were better, what crime have they committed when not noticing that there was one suit with 14 cards and another with only 12? Which law instructs players to recognize this? And even if there was such a law, in order to find out if it really applies I would have to do some research to find out if there was really no claim so that all players had seen all 52 cards. I think in order to award less than 60% to a pair they must have really done something wrong. Thanks for your comments. Karl

Recently, I was called by a player who had the ♠3 in his hand, and he saw another ♠3 in the dummy. Each player had 13 cards. The traveler already contained 3 scores from tables who had not discovered this. I abandoned play and told them to shuffle and deal a new deck. I awarded 60/60 to those pairs who had already played the board. After the tourney, all boards were searched and another board was discovered that contained 2 ♣3 cards and no ♠3. I changed all scores of that board to 60/60. As the board were shuffled and dealt prior to the start of the tourney, it was impossible to determine who was responsible for the problem. I think Laws 13 and 14 are not applicable here. So I simply based my decision on Law 1, 6D3 and 12A2. Was I right or did I overlook something? Karl

I assume that South's explanation of the 2♠ was really misinformation, and the agreement was it meant something artificial not showing anything about ♠ (maybe a relay), and East got the correct information. Maybe the OP can alert me if I am wrong. Was West's double really a bad call? Maybe look at it from a different point of view: N/S bid a game, and not a slam. I do not see any evidence in the bidding that they even tried for a slam. Not bidding a slam means that they expect E/W to make 2 or 3 tricks. However, they did bid under the assumption that the ♥ will behave, and could not foresee a 5-0 break. West's ♥ suit are 2 extra tricks. The 5-0 break does not make it less likely that they get the 2 or 3 tricks that they should get anyway. Therefore, without looking at other evidence, West can expect the 4♥ contract to go down 1 or 2. A little uncertainty is, however, the question if the ♣K will make a trick or not. Maybe, if there is a finesse for this K, and Partner has only one defensive trick, 4♥ can still be made. Therefore, West is interested to know which opp has the clubs, because the ♣A is more likely to be where most of the clubs are. If North has 4 ♠ cards, his likely distribution is 4=2=4=3 or 4=2=5=2, and it is quite likely that ♣K makes a trick. But if 2♠ is a relay and West knows nothing about the black suits, a defensive trick with the ♣K is significantly less likely. Another point is East's double over 2♠. If West knew that 2♠ was artificial, he would also know that his partner has spade honors as the double was probably lead-directing. For a double West would like East's honors rather be in some other suit, maybe ♦, where the likelihood that they succeed in making tricks is higher. Conclusion: West has good reasons to base her decision on whether to double or not on the information that 2♠ was natural, and the double was neither wild nor gambling, not even close. It is irrelevant how West reasoned for her double, because a bad reasoning does not turn a sensible call to wild and gambling. Besides, I suspect that the OP did not do a great job when presenting her reasoning. The fact that she asked a second time if the 2♠ bid was really natural is strong evidence that she was going to base her decision on this information, whatever her true reasons were. This means, the offending side got a better score by the misinformation, and this is all what Law 21B3 requires. And as I pointed out above, the double was not wild or gambling, so this is not a case of Law 12C1b. Addressing bluejack's question if, assuming the double was wild or gambling, at least N/S should get the score without the double: I would say yes, because I would still believe that the misinformation made a difference for West when deciding about the double. Karl

[hv=n=sa2&w=s54&e=sk3&s=sqjt9876]399|300|[/hv]South is declarer in a notrump contract, and he has no entry to the hand. It is Dummy's turn to lead, and declarer choses the A, desperately hoping to find a stiff K, but West, who thinks he had won the previous trick (he is wrong), simultaneously "leads" the 5. LAW 58A transforms this lead out of turn to a premature play, and declarer wishes that East plays his highest card. Is this harsh, or not? Karl

Looks like the only way to play ♥ is to pass and hope that West doubles. Then, South can run to 3♥, and North is allowed to pass this, since the 3♥ does not make sense if South really had the spades. Karl

The "no splinter in competition"-rule is easy to remember, so I think it is more likely to be a fitbid. In this case, 4♥ is not such a bad contract, so I pass. And if 4♥ was really to play, this is the best solution anyway. I do not think it is a good idea to tell the screenmate about your partner having gotten this wrong in the past, because you got the idea that it happened again from your hand, and because you mislead the opp in case it was really to play. If it turns out afterwards that partner really had forgotten the system, you can still tell the director and he can take this into account when adjusting. Karl

You can open a partnership bidding table or a teaching table. At the teaching table, the table owner can sit on more than 1 seat and see all cards. At both types of tables, you can either load predealt hands constructed by yourself or take any hands you encountered in BBO. Or take random hands and restrict the type of hands for each compass direction individually, ie. North shall get only weak-two-hands an South at least 15 HCP. Welcome to the forums. Karl

Hi Staro So I assume you are using the version of bbo that runs inside a browser with FLASH. This version has no lobby chat, and I do not miss it. I can display the tables list by "show tables" perfectly well, no matter if I am host or not. However, it would be nice if the tables list was displayed automatically when the tourney starts, so that I immediately see the sitouts and have tourney chat available. At least this should be the case if I was watching the registration page for the tourney before it started. I can only talk to players in my own tourney if I use the FLASH version. I remember it was different in the windows version, but the need for it is very rare. Karl

Splits in very small sections occur only in clocked non-swiss plair events. In all other events, the sections are much bigger. Karl

There should not only be a timelimit for a non-responsive host but for any non-responsive player if it is his turn to play. There could be an automatical question asked by the client short before a player is auto-booted. We need it for players, too, because otherwise a table could still be blocked if both the current player and the host are non-responsive. I have encountered blocked tables far too often, so the problem should not be ignored. I do not think that an intentional 5-minute-break occurs too often. And, if there is really a need for it, it is easy to abandon the table and start a new one after the break. Karl

3♠ is a reasonable bid if West assumes that opps have a ♥-fit. If West knows the NS-system, he will of course not bid 3♠ but double. Though North has the UI that South thinks the 3♥ was natural because 2♥ was not alerted, he knows that 3♥ doubled cannot be a good contract, so he is allowed to run in 3♠, which for sure West will double. So this is the contract to adjust to. Karl