Huibertus

Every time you come online, your phone then needs to upload (just in case you may be offline a bit later) a lot of boards, all that happened when others played these boards, a bot that plays the other 39 cards any algorithm these bot uses to decide which cards to play, potentially a database in support of the algorithm, and the entire decision tree on which its bidding is based? Allowing you to have all of this on your phone and if you are a good hacker to use it to cheat on BBO or worse to plagiarize BBO. Not sure your phone would have the resources to allow for the upload, but even if it does it might not be such a great idea...

A great tool for regular partnerships! "I need time to think" means you need to do something unusual later partner, or similar agreements...

Find the tournament on your recent tournament list. Click on results and then on the score behind another player, you'll then see his/her results and can open individual boards to check them out.

Within the context of a bidding challenge the interesting bit in the experts discussion IMO is NOT if the 5 level is safe or if this should be enough for slam. In this situation sometimes partner will stretch and 5 or slam might not make. 6♥ will be a lay down contract often enough to NEED to investigate it. Take a perfectly normal ♥ overcall of ♠ x; ♥ AKXXXX, ♦ QXX, ♣ KQJ... The point here is what agreement do you have to show a !h raise WITH serious interest in slam as well as the question which bids set up a forcing pass and which bids don't (or even might suggest a safe). 4♥, Double and potentially 3NT should be available to raise to 4♥, and that is the area contenders may learn from the experts comments and improve their partnership's game.

That rule is ignored by BBO automatically when a claim is denied as the play continues (double dummy for the non-claiming side). The proposed approach is MORE in line with the rule as instead of a referee assessing the claim it would become BBO software doing it.

I have this too, desktop device. It is the ONLY site with this behavior I am aware of.

Fully agreed. With one additional reason, start with diamonds and they bid hearts you can introduce spades at a lower level than when you start with spades and you have to introduce diamonds over a heart bid.

Agreed. That's what I wrote in my own response here. It's also why you need to start bidding suits so you can bid the second before you assess the level as being to high to do so. Just to help partner.

That might work, being down a LOT if you are scoring all diamonds and spades. What also might happen is they make 11 tricks if they decide to stay, where 4 spades is cold. Or the might get to 4 hearts before you can introduce a second suit and you and up in the wrong game or let them play with both sides have a cold game... If you desperately need a swing, yeah ok. Otherwise, nah...

Without a possibility to show these 2 I'd bid 2 ♦ and compete in ♠ at the level they come in with ♥. It will not die out and could easily be game for both. Bidding like that should help partner to judge. A general approach I've played to defend against NT openings, Double either a semi-solid single suiter (opps to have one stop at most) with a side entry let's say XX, XXX, AX, AKJT9X or balanced 17+ 2 ♣ onwards all transfers, the suit transferred to (not qualifying for double) or the next two with two other bids for the non adjacent two suiters. 2 ♣ = ♦ one suiter or ♥/♠ 2 ♦ = ♥ or ♠/♣ 2 ♥ = spades or ♣/♦ 2 ♠ = ♣ or ♦/♥ 2NT = ♣/♥ 3 ♣ = ♠/♦

Assuming the contracts to defend make more sense then the daylong just declare contract than I'm all for it. If they are just as ridiculous count me out.

Switch of auto-complete in your browser (Chrome calls it auto-fill). It will however of course also remove auto-complete for other sites where you actually want/need it.

[should I have bid my Clubs?] There is only 1 answer to this, "It depends on the partnerships agreement about the meaning of double". Although as someone else mentioned the most common agreement is take out, it is not the only one. Penalty and values are two other potential agreements. Because this is a high level double the partner doubling needs to make sure his hand is relatively pure with respect to the agreement. In doing so with your hand; - If the agreement is take out, you have to take out partners double on this hand. And yes, the 5 club bid seems to guarantee a fit, 4 spades might be an option too. Partners hand seems in line with this agreement so is fine now. But having this agreement partner should NOT double with let's say a 3325 19HCP count with scattered values or with 4 sure tricks, as you will do the wrong thing. - If the agreement is penalty, you have a clear cut pass, no reason to bid at all. Having this agreement partner should not double on the hand he actually had, nor on a hand with scattered values again if he mixes up the type for a double you'll do the wrong thing. - If the agreement is "values" (I don't like this approach as it is difficult to assess WHAT values he has and what you then should do), you need to assess your had with regards to your own distrubution. The more balance you are, and the higher the double is, the more often you should pass. If this is the agreement and he doubles 4D, your hand is difficult, I would probably consider biding but pass for the lack of a 5 card major or 6 clubs, knowing it might be wrong, should we have the accidental 5/5 fit in clubs or 4/4 in spades. Again if the agreement is values, partner cannot double with a 4405 16 count or a penalty hand.

If have noted these tournaments recently have intermittend error messages stating something like "currently not available, try again later" and later it does work indeed. This is a recent issue that I have seen a couple of times over the past weeks. They must have updated something without properly testing the change.

Just a simple matter of making sure the pop up window only appears after the database has confirmed the results have been committed. They should hire a programmer for 10 minutes to fix the issue.

Not the solution. Ban them, Identify the culprits and automatically add "Cheater - " in front of their account name. Or whatever else seems fit. No need to have different people in single "tournaments" play different hands, causing rankings to be meaningless. That issue is worse than the problem it is supposed to adress.

This indeed is always the case. It is completely ridiculous. I once had a tournament where on ALL boards I had the shared best result, and still was NOT the (joint) winner, mathematically impossible, but caused by others playing different boards with more % scoring potential. These "tournaments" just are not a tournaments at all.

Fair enough, I did indeed not get it. I know 7 minutes is standard in real life, so yes maybe it is a bit speedy, personally I wouldn't call 5 mins speedball, but ok.

Next step, in individuals, you get a decent score when your partner declares an NT contract and fails to cash his a number of high card and gives the lead to the opps who's hands are also high instead? It's a partnerships game, even when it's an individual tournament. Who knows partner may need his time as for some reason you created a problem on the board by misleading him... Who's the judge in that case?

Well, they are uncapable of understanding their own system too. It's a programmer making them aware, and that can be done for their own system AND for any other system. THe alerting could be facilitated by a drop down box that list all options that were programmed.

Me neither, but the performance of the standard bots is so poor at times I'd never consider paying for advanced bots. I fully understand there must be a performance difference in order to make anyone pay, but surely it can't be big, you have to build trust too in order to make people pay...

I've seen many issues with GF situations ending up in 4 minor playing with Robots. Even when they have made a bid that is annotated as a GF. I believe the robots are programmed to think 4 of a minor IS game.

[There are calls, especially after inverted minor auctions, which are "looking for 3NT, but if I continue, it's a control cue instead".] The answer to this is simple; ANY call that serves a dual purpose is alertable. For instance, 1 club - 1 Diamond being Natural OR 6-HCP, or two way doubles like 1-Spades - Pass - 1NT - Double being either pure penalty or pure information double (assuming partner can work it out by looking at his hand) or any puppet call that may also be natural. All of this is alertable.

For normal rooms there cannot be a system too complex, as long as it is legal. It would be like asking is my car too fast for Formula 1? W/R to acol rooms these will have been set up to facilitate a level playing field for beginners, I can understand complaints there, even if a complicated system actually is acol based.

Yes, that is problematic too. In one of these individuals today i Partnered an "Expert" who bid an ambitious 6 Spades, losing two trumps with KQ9X opposing XXXX. JT had been played in front of him and the Ace taken second round in the other hand. Back on lead all he had to do was play Trump 9 and claim, but he managed to get overruffed for tricks further in the play...