morecharac

How cruel is BBO that day?

With the teacher I had, it would be 1♣ followed by 2NT every time. Unless she was bidding it, of course. With experience, 1♣ and probably 4M over a 1M response, 2NT over 1♦, muttered imprecations over pass if playing online.

I'm too rusty at directing to give a perfect answer, so I won't. Your question reminded me a time where p opened 1♥, my RHO overcalled 1♦, which I accepted so that I could show my 3-card support despite having 0 HCP. Nobody found it as funny as I did.

What makes sense to me would be North having a tweener, something like 11 HCP and six hearts and an unwillingness to open light in first or second seat. Maybe it's a 2=6=2=3 quack with poorly placed honours or someone who's had weak jump shifts drilled into them by a poor teacher.

Classic tweener. How frustrated/manic am I that session, and how much do I loathe the opponents?

Ignorance or lack of practice. I've given what's a blindingly obvious statement of claim (to my Aspergers mind) and had it rejected often enough that I now just play it out until it's impossible for me not to win all the remaining tricks even with playing errors. It's just not worth wanting to strangle the director.

I think you have to be such a person to understand their motivation.

3NT - AKQ in the suit (I played Ogust for years before reading this; I've never seen opener have that hand) Min/max is lower/upper half of HCP range; good suit is 2/3 top honours or 3/5 for the more manic adventurous players like me. It's a great convention for finding major-suit games where all the honours are on the short side, which happens suspiciously often in predealt hands.

I can't remember where I read that psyching against weaker opponents is unethical but it's something I agree with. I've actually had to issue an excessive psyching warning against one club member. As you might guess, a strong player using it against weaker players several times in a few months. He's one of those players who stopped showing up when I was directing.

I'd put inconsistent as my level if BBO allowed it. I already have it at the top of my profile.

A combination of frustration and mania.

Even at the virtual club level this seems to be a problem. I can often tell from the first round if it's going to be a session of 5% layout after 5% layout. A waste of time and money that sucks the fun out of bridge that has adversely affected my bridge game.

I cohabitate with my bridge partner. I like cohabitating with my bridge partner. So no, I would not open this hand in first seat.

I may have come close for telling a bridge bully to ***** off after a particularly nasty round. It's no wonder he's missing so many front teeth despite claiming to get along with everyone. EDIT: BBO used one asterisk too many.

In several years of directing twice a week at the club level, I saw exactly one hand passed out at every table.

Oops. Turned out to be a NoScript issue.

So many of these know-it-alls wait until they know BBO will whisk them away before making some damfool pronouncement. One recent example criticised our use of "bad 18" in our 1NT range because he claimed that meant something heavy on QJ. We play it as the sort of lousy simple LTC special that comes up on BBO without regard to probability. Try as I might I can't construct a QJ-heavy 18 HCP that comes up worse than 6 LTC without a lot of fine-tuning LTC; I have seen a few A and K heavy 18s that come up at 8 LTC, but only on BBO. I'll take KQJ KQJ QJ QJ over Ax Ax AQ KJ any day when deciding whether to open a suit instead of NT.

Jerry Helms, at a small regional near where I now live. In a Swiss Teams match, where we lost by 1 VP.

The computer voice from "Deeper Understanding" by Kate Bush would work.

I don't get this one. Why do I have to use my mouse to accept claims when I'm on defence? Doing so requires that I then click on the playing area to restore the ability to use keyboard entry of bids, cards, etc. A simple Y/N and enter should be sufficient. Still one of BBO's biggest flaws for keyboard users, having to refocus after absolutely anything other than bidding and cardplay.

The aphorism I've read is count length to open, count shortness instead once you've got a fit. Simple enough for beginners to remember. Simple is generally better when learning which hands/situations are common and which are rare.

Little know fact: God and the machine had a relationship but they eventually agreed to go their separate ways. Don't believe me? It's a classic adage. Deus ex machina.

We'd play it as almost enough strength for 3NT, stoppers outside, and no desire to look for 4♥. With trump support, 3♥ jams the opponents much better than 2NT does. (Yeah, yeah, good players don't look at minors. Repeat ad nauseum.) We're primitives, sticking to bidding what we can (usually) remember.

A month or two ago our TD told us that BBO will sometimes kick off a person who doesn't have sufficient BBO$ for the game in their own account, even if their partner is paying for them.

Ogust for an idea of where's and what p's points are. I really want to play 7♥ but it could easily make only 5♥ opposite a bad hand with spade honours and too many clubs or have a mack truck drive through any NT game.