mink

Regarding errors, the difference between a club player and an expert is only the probability. Even experts miscount, just very seldom. But I would expect an expert to know the Laws better than a club player. Those experts I know make a statement if their line of play includes deblocking a suit or ruffing, no matter how obvious. Karl

Thanks for all responses. I do not think that the BBO procedures concerning claims should be changed. Of course, a rejection may wake up the claimer, and maybe it did so in this case, but I really do not mind that this way in some cases that would have been ruled against the claimer in f2f bridge, the claimer is successful when the hand is played out. But I was really astonished when the director first suggested to accept the claim, in a situation where time was no issue - it was the last board of the tourney, and the first board of this round had been passed out. It should not be too difficult for the director to immediately follow the BBO rules and tell players to play it out. At BBO, it is not the director's task to judge if the claim is good or not. Regarding the same claim in an hypothetical f2f situation, I am even more astonished that some would allow the claim. Making an oral statement is easy. The absence of such a statement is evidence that declarer might think that ♣10 is good, unblocking ♦ is not necessary or there are only 2 ♠ cards left in opps' hands, and a ♣ can be discarded on ♠7. Each of these possible misconceptions will cause the contract to fail. Karl

This happened in a BBO tourney tonight, but I would be interested also what the ruling at a physical table would have been. [hv=lin=st||md|1S67QKH37JQDJAC26T%2CS38H68D259C589JQA%2CS59AH259KD36KC47K%2C|rh||ah|Board%2015|sv|n|mb|1C|mb|p|mb|1H|mb|p|mb|2H|mb|p|mb|4H|mb|p|mb|p|mb|p|pc|C3|pc|C2|pc|CA|pc|C4|pc|CQ|pc|CK|pc|H4|pc|C6|pc|D7|pc|DJ|pc|D5|pc|D3|pc|H3|pc|H6|pc|HK|pc|HA|pc|S2|pc|S6|pc|S8|pc|SA|pc|H2|pc|HT|pc|HJ|pc|H8|pc|HQ|pc|S3|pc|H5|pc|D4|"]400|300[/hv] I have deleted any cards that were played after the claim. I was West and rejected the claim. Declarer played ♦A, but then refused to continue and mentioned something like "an advanced player should see that the claim is good". I called the director. In table chat the director judged that the claim should be good. I objected in private chat and stated that BBO rules require the play to continue if a claim is not accepted. Eventually the director ruled that we shall play it out, and declarer made all remaining tricks. I asked the director if he had allowed the the claim if it happened at a physical table, and he responded that most players he knows would get it right. Therefore he would allow the claim unless the declarer was very weak. I doubt that the director did inspect the previously played tricks, where in trick 5 declarer in forth seat used the ♠A to win the trick instead of the 9. Karl

When I play a daylong tourney, next day I receive a message informing me about the results. This message contains a link labelled "Show Board". This produces a myhands-like table of my results in the tournament. There are some minor differences to myhands, however: The columns "Traveller" and "Movie" are exchanged When clicking on Movie, the handviewer is displayed in the same window, replacing the old content (In myhands a separate window with a suitable size is opened) If I invoke the handviewer from the traveller page, at least a new tab is used. This is not a big issue of course, but I think that changing the daylong display to the way myhands works should be really easy. Karl

I played the jukebox tourney tonight with my partner, and while waiting for the tourney to start, I played 3 boards of the MP daylong tourney. When board 4 was displayed, I quit the tourney as the jukebox was about to begin. Some hours later I remembered that I should finish the daylong tourney, so I logged in again, entered the tourney and board 4 appeared as it did before. North became declarer, I was kind of unlucky in the play, and soon I claimed for down 2, -200. I expected the next board to be displayed, but to my surprise I had won a replay: I saw the same South hand like before, the robots started the bidding the same way they did before, and it was still board 4. Of course this time I passed instead of the takeout double I called previously, and the West robot became declarer and scored only -140. This replaced the old score, and I continued with board 5. Here is my suggestion: Please publish the conditions that must be met in order to win a replay! Karl

In this daylong tourney board (MP 2016-12-29) I misclicked in the dummy (South) in trick 7 and should have been down one now if the opp robots cash their tricks. However, the West robot plays a club in trick 9, thereby returning the trick I lost. West should know at this point that declarer has only one non-trump card, which will be discarded on the good ♣Q. So it cannot cost to try a ♥ instead. Even if West thinks that East might still own a trump, its fruitless to try to give him a ruff, because this trump must be the good 10.

It seems they were not started today, either by accident or they were abandoned because they were too successful.

I used portait mode, no animation, auto play singleton, no cards but symbols on a Samsung Galaxy S, first edition. Once, while kibbing, the ♠ and half of the ♥ suit of the North hand was obstructed by the chat, but this did not happen again. Checking an incoming mail while kibbing made it necessary to login again. I guess this happens in case of incoming phone calls as well, and if I use any other app while kibbing or dummy. Response to user input was slow, sometimes very slow. As mentioned by somebody else, it is no good idea to require 2 taps for initiating a chat message. Finally, having played a few hands, everything nearly froze, and after some time Android reported that the app did not react, and when I selected to close the app, a reboot happened. Some years ago, with the same device, the app worked fast and stable, and I was able to use it at a rural camping site utilizing the GSM net for hours without any problem. Maybe the ads are causing some of the problems. Maybe it is a good idea to disable ads with animation. It might be also a good idea to disable ads on old devices completely. Karl

I know the BBO-Names of two of the cheaters. One of them still has his star, and the other does not have a star anymore.

It is possible to give only e.g. 9 cards per hand to handviewer, and if I provide an auction, the play button allows me to play the hand. However, as there are 4 tricks already played, it should be possible to specify which hand has the lead to the next trick, and - maybe - how many tricks each side has won so far. Currently, handviewer assumes that the hand which - according to the auction - would have the lead to the first trick also has the lead to trick #5. Karl

There is other mail apart from tourney results. Users want to know about mail in their mailbox then the log in. If you are not interested, you can get rid of the message with one click and later invoke the mail when it is more appropriate for you. Tourney results are already shown under "My BBO - Hands and Results". They are not such important to grant them a new tab on the right. Maybe the BBO window is minimized when the message occurs - then the sound is really useful if you like to stay logged in.

I cannot see why it is likely that the opener thought that the auction was over. By removing the bidding cards she made clear that she wanted to pass. However, the pass did not really happen, and therefore she can make another call. However, I would inform the opener that a contract other than 4♥ will very likely be subject to an adjustment if the result is favourable for the offending side compared with the probable result of 4♥.

The TD interface has remained unchanged for a very long period of time. However, since some time ago for players the "other Tables" table has been provided with data as boards were finished and not only after the tourney as it was before. One effect of this is that each player can see who had an ave in the last board of the last round. The only person who cannot see this is the non-playing TD. Maybe you could make the "other Tables" visible for the TD, too, so that he can find out more easily who needs an adjustment. Karl

For East, the 2♥ bid is not a superaccept, but simply executes the transfer. West, thinking he bid natural ♦, will never think about superaccepts as there was no transfer from his point of view (disregarding the UI). So I fail to understand what your writing about superaccept is all about. Karl

The 5♦ bid was never cancelled. The auction continued after it. Law 12A reads: The word "may" makes it clear that the TD is not forced to award an adjusted score based on some specific infraction. A valid reason to disregard some infraction is that some other infraction causes more damage than the first one. Karl

3♦ and 3♣. Pass is not an LA, because nobody wants to play in a 4-2-fit when opp likely has 5 cards in that suit. In the poll, the question was either not asked the right way, or the players who wanted to pass did not pay much attention to the problem. The UI suggests bidding 3♦, so the correct bid is 3♣. East thinks that West has ♥ and ♣, so 3nt is not an option, as there seems to be no ♦ stopper. East could bid 3♥ or 4♥. If the 3♣ is only inviting to game, 3♥ seems right. If it is inviting to slam, I bid 4♥. W 5♣x-5. West must think that East's second ♥ bid agrees on ♣, and as there seems to be no ♠ stopper the final destination must be 5 ♣. Never. Karl

Defenders are allowed to ask each other if they revoked (Law 61B3). (Except if, like in Germany, the Regulating Authority prohibits this.) So a question about a revoke (at a place where this is not prohibited) is not subject to Law 73B or 74C4. This is clear to everyone, and nobody would expect that the fact that Law61B3 overrules Law 73B an 74C4 needs to be stated explicitly in Law 61B3. This is different in the case of the footnote to Law 25A: here, the notion that one partner asks the other is not mentioned. Therefore, I would expect that this footnote does not overrule Law 73B an 74C4 unless this was stated explicitly in the footnote. Furthermore, there is no indication that the phrase "no matter how" does include something illegal done by partner. If something illegal has an unexpected consequence, the Laws state this instead of leaving it undiscussed. So I conclude that some illegal action by partner can never trigger the "no matter how" clause. Consequently, as a TD, I would forbid the change of a call if the player becomes aware of his error by partner's remark, and award a procedural penalty for the remark. If the player was really allowed to change his call based on Law 25A after such a remark by partner, then the remark could not be illegal, and there would be no basis for a procedural penalty or an adjusted score via Law 23. Karl

In a ♥ contract North will win his 3 aces and one trump trick. This is not only the double dummy result, but also the most likely result. Like ggwhiz said, if 5♦ is an infraction, then 6♦ is an even bigger infraction. With the 5♦ South has already told his story more than once, and there is definitely no reason to bid the ♦ once more. The double by East is also no reason, as if North thinks that he better likes to play in 6♦, he can bid that himself. I would therefore adjust to N 5♥x-7. Karl

In the "My Table"-list of a total points tourney the columns usually used for IMPs or MPs are empty. Maybe you could use them for displaying the average total points in this boards. So I would have a clue if my result is above or below average. It is not so important to have this information while the tourney is running, but I would like to have it when I study "My Hands" later.

I open "My BBO" - "Hands and Results" - "Recent Tournaments". Then I click on "My Hands" for some Daylong Tournament I have played. The list of "Other Tables" is simply too long to extract relevant information. It would be much better if for each result there is only one line where the number of occurrences of this result is displayed in addition to the current columns, and the bidding and play below is just an example of a table where this result was achieved. Maybe this way of displaying other tables should always be chosen above a threshold of 500 tables or so.

I do not think so, this would not be normal play. He wins trick 1 in the dummy if East does not ruff. Maybe SB was aware of the misplaced ♦3 from the start and would have given the same explanation for his claim if the Chimp's interruption did not take place. But even if he originally thought that ♥K was opps' only ♥ card (which we cannot know and cannot prove), he would certainly take the finesse when East produces ♥2 in trick 2. So the Chimp's remark fortunately did not cause any problem. Nevertheless, he should receive some disciplinary penalty.

The idea about this suggestion is not to fastplay an opponent, but to avoid that by a claim an opponent who revoked gets enhanced opportunity to recognize his revoke. Even worse, in my example maybe the dummy objected the claim as he knew that the ♦Q had not been played yet. The probability that the revoke is recognized is simply much higher if the non-offendig side claims. I agree that barmar's suggestion is a change too big, and it is not necessary to avoid the claim problem. If the revoking player cannot win the revoke trick by a correction of his revoke, we have no problem, and everything can be handled as it used to be.

This is true. However, it is also true that a player should not suffer a disadvantage from a apparently valid claim. I think this should have more weight. There is an alternative solution for the problem that does not touch Law 63A - simply append Law 62A with the following text: If the correction occurs after the offending player has turned the revoke card face down, the replacement card does never win the trick.

Even if North has a clue that the ♦Q is still missing (I doubt that), it is only human to believe to have overlooked it's play, rather than expect declarer to have revoked.

Recently in a German club tourney: [hv=pc=n&s=sq982hdc2&w=sj75dqc8&n=shd76432c&e=sak6hdckj]399|300|West is declarer in an nt contract. North leads ♦7 and declarer discards a ♠ in both hands. Now North claims the rest. Declarer objects. As the revoke is not established, it is corrected: ♦Q wins the trick with the ♦7, and dummy has the rest. If North had continued to play ♦, the revoke would probably have been established and N/S would have won at least 2 tricks: the ♦7 and the revoke penalty.[/hv] Of course, N/S considered the law to be unfair, and I agree. So I suggest to add a case 4. to Law 63A. with the following text: [A revoke becomes established] 4. when the non-offending side wins the revoke trick and immediately claims or concedes, and the correction of the revoke might cause the offending side to win this trick.