CarlRitner

Hey Phil, the ACBL Used Book website was taken offline early in the year. The magazine section was discontinued almost three years ago. My personal collection is missing issues, for various reasons.

Yes, please post what you have. I have some issues missing from 2004 to now.

Yeah, I don't think I'd bid it either, unless my Gadget-itis kicks in again. I tend to make wrong unilateral decisions though, so keeping my options open is tempting.

4NT should show a two-suiter, and correcting the inevitable 5♣ to 5♦ should show your suits.

Reserving my rights to read again....

GIB becomes a much better partner when YOU get on the same page as it. Since the other way around doesn't happen. Two partners playing the same so-so system will consistently out-perform two partners playing a superior system, but differently. That's nothing specific about GIB, as you all know. It's just a change in the normal diplomatic approach of 50/50 compromise to more like 100/0.

I'm still stuck at DNE.

For as long as I can remember (Bridge Baron 13 I think), you have the choice to rotate or not rotate the hands when south is the dummy. We're now at Bridge Baron 19, about to be 20 very soon. Jack probably gives you an option too, but I haven't dug into that program yet.

Because it's explained incorrectly here http://www.bridgehands.com/W/Walsh_Diamond_Responses.htm and a few other places on the internet

It is "game strength" and not "invitational plus" hands that will first bid legitimate diamonds and then reverse into a 4-card major. I stand corrected.

The whole gist of Walsh is to bypass diamonds and show your 4-card major if you are only strong enough for one bid (i.e. not invitational). If you are invitational or better, you bid normally, up the line. There's no problem showing a 5-card diamond suit since you're prepared to reverse into your major, thus showing shape and strength. If you do respond 1♦, opener can bypass a 4-card major, knowing you'll show one on the rebid, if you have one. So, 1♣ - 1♦ - 1NT may hide 4-card majors in either or both hands.

That's not Walsh as I learned it from Marty Bergen. You don't bid diamonds unless you have diamonds.

The site was always hosted on Yahoo. When I no longer needed the website, I kept the email address, and so Yahoo has that "marker page" since nobody else can use the name. I'm glad we were able to transfer so many books to new homes.

That was the ACBL Used Book sale which was hosted on my website. It was supposed to be temporary and ran much longer than anticipated. It is no longer in operation. This concept might be revived in the future, probably with a new host, as I am becoming less capable of handling it. Carl

Maybe if you tell us what you mean by the 4 ♦ overcall, we could tell you the likelihood that GIB would agree with that. One of the drawbacks to computer bridge is that you simply must play the computer's system. GIB North is going to react to 4♦ according to what Matt Ginsberg told it the meaning was, or if he didn't specify it, i.e. this is a hole in the bidding database, then the default rules will apply.

What I really wanted to know was if the Bridge Base 2/1 standard opens one notrump with a five card major: never, rarely, sometimes, mostly, always. The information is just not there for me. The web based "app" had a flashing "high school" folder that precluded me reading for long without risking a serious headache. Thanks anyway.

Oh geez. I am going to guess it's the Windows app. There's another way to get there? I'd better wake Rip V.W. in that case, he's probably not heard of this either.

This is all really good stuff. It makes me think hard about what I need to tell my opponents to be fair and truthful. I think a lot of these cases exist where the partnership does not set out to deceive anyone, but over time they fall into a pattern, which then becomes an implicit and often concealed partnership understanding (CPU). If they are still unaware that they are doing this, and/or not revealing this to the opps, it's wrong but not cheating. Once they are aware of the CPU they need to pre-alert or pre-announce this, and even so there's still the question of it possibly being diverse enough to constitute different "systems". I think you can play different leanings and acceptance criteria withing a legal range, but not play two different ranges that happen to overlap. Could be wrong though.

I have a suggestion. When I go to the Useful Links and Information and then click on Bridge Base Standard tutorial/reference, it tells me I can find the convention cards on Bridge Base Online already filled in with these systems. Well, probably others can, but I cannot find these. I believe I have exhausted the menu options to no avail. Browsing the forums here was not productive either. What would be helpful is a link within that text directly to the system cards.

Wow, that's a load. I run my own community forum and I'm 7200 after three years. 10,000 is saying a lot, in more ways than one. If he stopped right on the mark, maybe he'll come back as a secret user....

Perhaps you could elaborate on "this" for those of us to whom the obvious remains somewhat out of grasp.

A few books I read at least once a year are Morehead On Bidding, Albert H. Morehead (and/or the revised "On Bidding" text modernized by Philip Alder To Bid Or Not To Bid - The LAW of Total Tricks, Larry Cohen Bridge: Matchpoints, Kit Woolsey Thinking About IMPs, John Boeder

One possibility is that BBO has made changes to the GIB bidding, and is asking players of a particular skill level to test it out and comment. That's just a random surmise.

Bridgeguys, a rather comprehensive bridge site, says encrypted calls and signals are banned by the ACBL, but a search of the ACBL site finds several references to signals only. Are we pretty confident that encrypted bids/calls are approved, or at least not banned?

So where does Keycard Blackwood responses fall in here? 5C = 1 or 4 key cards (when playing 1430) where responder knows and the asker can supposedly figure it out. We assume the opponents might or might not know the actual answer. That's compression and not encryption, right?