Nadreck

As a poor Australian who was kept up to the very early hours of the morning for the past few days watching the coverage of the USBC I would lie to offer my congratulations to all those involved in the coverage of this event . After being used to see the poor coverage offered to most major ACBL events it was a pleasure to see a presentation that matched the quality of the bridge being played. The bridge played, the commentators and the results service were all superb and were a tribute to this great game. Nadreck

It would be possible by using the PocketPc to remotely access a normal PC with BBO installed. Various options are available to get remote access One simple option (not free however) is www.gotomypc.com Their software can be accessed from any Internet enabled PocketPC

Richard Pavlicek also has a Bridge File convertor that will convert between various bridge formats including LIN to PBN The file can be downloaded from http://www.rpbridge.net/rpbr.htm#11 By the way the results format looks very nice

The multi with an Acol 2 in minor allowed the amusing auction (for opponents) of 2D - Pass - Pass - Pass making 7 when partner forgot to allow for Acol 2 in Diamonds Perhaps this is one reason for its demise :)

The Bridge World article from September 2001 is about deceptive card play, not escape mechanisims after 1NTX. Need to look elsewhere for info

As an Aussie who has both played and played against transfer openings I found most of the justifications and arguements around approving optimal defences laughable. Almost all tournament players in Australia will have played against these openings and will have coped quite adequately without needing a 40 page defence that details every auction. The defences used may not be "Optimal" but then most defences used against conventional bidding will not be optimal. For example look at what people play against a 1NT opening. I have seen at least 40 different defences and seen numerous discussions/arguments about which is best Suppose the ACBL was just now considering allowing the Diabolical Strong 1NT opening. This opening can routinely have somewhere between 14-18 points and may have between 2 and 6 cards in any suit. Futhermore almost all responses to this opening are artificial! Before this convention could be allowed the users would need to come up with the optimal defence to 1NT. This may present a problem as nobody in the world can easily agree on just what is the optimal defence to 1NT They will also be required to provide opponents with a defence that covers the bidding to at least 4 levels of bidding. This will ignore the fact that at least 95% of partnerships have never discussed any defensive bidding to this level of detail. In the interim the bridge world seems to cope quite adequately with very detailed discussions such as "DONT over their NT?". The level of preperation required by professionals such as Fred Gitelman or Jan/Chip Martel are quite different as they are seeking any extra edge that they can obtain. They should never require or want a written defence prepared by someone else. These players or their coaches are perfectly capable of creating a resonable defence that matches their own style and required level of detail.

From my reading of the articles the idea is to use the intermediate step as a form of negative The 1♣ and 1♦ bids are forcing and unlimited so the option to clarify strength will be needed. The articles do not go much into the followup bidding or structure as they were more about why you may wish to interchange the bids and also the ridiculous situation that doing so would make the System HUM. One possible structure would be: After 1♣ 1♦ negative 0-8 1♥ GF relay Higher bids as if opened a 11-15 Precision 1♥ After a 1♦ negative the bidding can be developed in numerous ways to show extra strength. In particular the 1NT rebid is avaliable as the hand is unbalanced. The suggestions were serious as the intention was to play this system at the New Zealand National trials. Also the Author is a former NZ representitive and also one of the creators of T-REX ( a real system for Non-natural system freaks :()

In the New Zealand Bridge Magazine April-August 2005 Andy Braithwaite wrote a series of articles about using a strong heart opening The articles discussed the theory behind using this structure and also some of the problems The basic structure suggested was 1♣ 5+ ♥ 11+ points unbalanced (forcing) 1♦ 5+ ♠ 11+ points unbalanced (forcing) 1♥ 16+ No 5 card major unless balanced 1♠ 11-15 Precision diamond style hand Higher bids as per what ever form of precision you are playing The reasons for using this structure were: (1) Remove the overloading of the 1♣ bid as it can no longer contain a 5 card major. Obstructive bids over the strong opening are now less dangerous as the hand is better defined. (2) Allow the use of a forcing major bid with an intermediate step availiable to responder. The bidding can go: 1♣ - 1♦ - 1♥ which could show 11-15 with 5+♥ The major problem is that the structure is considered HUM in almost all countries. Most system regulations will allow using a Strong ♣ and short ♦ but not a strong ♥ and short ♠. Also ACBL land will not allow transfer openings

Is their any site or link with the running scores , hand records etc. This information was easily obtained for the Bermuda Bowl but the ACBL site seems very limited apart from daily bulletins. The results for the Vanderbilt appear in the bulletin but not in the results link. Based on the coverage (not the bridge standard) then if the Bermuda Bowl is the Wimbledon of Bridge, this surely is a local school competition :D

Continuing the vain of transfer responses I was kibitzing Paul Marston at the Austrailian trials and noticed that he is now using transfer response over the 1♦, 1♥, 1♠ and 2♣ bids in Moscito. The structure appeared to be: 1♦ (showing 4+ ♥ 9-14) then 1♥ Game interest Relay or 6-9 NT reponse 1♠ natural 1NT transfer to ♣ 2♣ transfer to ♦ 2♦ 10-12 balanced with 3 hearts similar responses apply after 1♠ or 2♣ It appeared that after the fist relay response the cheapest bid is used to show a NT raise and the next step is then Relay but I did not see enough examples to be sure of this.

While creating a Lin file from old hand records I noticed a problem if a name is 20+ characters long If a player name (other than East in Closed room) is entered with more than 19 characters then the next name is deleted or ignored.

Hi This thread seems to be going down the same silly path that a similar thread on the rec.bridge newsgroup did. Philosophical debates about Open source etc are irrelevent. The basic fact is that BBO is a fine piece of software developed mostly as a labor of love by Fred and his team that we all get to enjoy for free. The software is created and maintained by him and he has no obligation, requirement or need to share or disclose how it works. Fred has kind enough to explain the reasons why he is not interested in being involved in any Linux port and these should be accepted and respected. Even the most rabid linux fan should be able to respect someones right to choose what they spend their time doing. Lets just let Fred and his team get on with doing what he seems to enjoy doing which is to develop and improve the software. :)

Ron Klinger and Bruce Neill play a very similar idea and have had a high degree of success. Below is their convention card from the Seniors BowL http://www.ecatsbridge.com/documents/files...neill+notes.pdf This current version has the club hands in with the 1C opening but most previous versions had 2C as single suited clubs or weak both majors.

The article in Australian Bridge clearly indicates that this is a simpler option than using Keri. Quote "The following is an alternative and simple structure" While it does not refer to Keri by name , the book Bid better, Much bettter is where Klinger details the Keri structure.

I can understand and accept these comments . If competing explanations are being offered then the situation is probably worse than no information. :blink: In an ideal world we will see each pair apperaing on Vugraph supplying a Full Disclosure file of their system so that the commentators can have sufficient info to fully discuss the bidding and play. :lol:

Hello As an aussie who watched the entire 4 segments mainly for a chance to see 2 of the leading exponts of Moscito (Marston-Thompson were also playing ) I had no difficulty with the bidding. Most Australians who have played a resonable level of bid will have played against Moscito and had very little problem. The implications of the relay structures may be a problem but grasping the concept of transfer openings is not difficult. I understand that the commentators are all volunters ( and do a wonderfull job!!) and will not necessarily have the time or sufficient information to explain the bidding but I am sure that their would have been plenty of kibitzers watching that could have explained the bidding. As an aside if the third placed team had gained two more victory points you would have got to see a much more complex relay system that is played and understood only by the pair playing it. :D

Adding the sk|S| or sk|N| etc can actually be done before any of the deal records (the qx| lines). The easiest place is probably to insert a line directly after the first line in the file. Just insert a new line at row 2 and type the tag sk|P| where P is either N, S, E or W The applet to view the LIN files is actually very forgiving of bad data. If you do enter a wrong value is is usually ignored.

In last nights Vugraph from the Senior Bowl - Round 4 - Bd 3 the Danish pair were defending 3 Spades. West lead the KD and East had to signal his partner from J 10 4. Playing Reverse Count he had the choice of playing the J and giving away a trick or playing low and giving the wrong count. He played the 4 but his partner continued with the A (assuming an even number) which blew the defence. My partner claims this to be a classic case of why Reverse count does not work and refuses to consider them. Does any one have any examples of where normal count would give similar problems or advice on the advantages or otherwise of reverse count and attitude. Thanks

While playing with the new Defensive Carding option I have noticed a couple of minor bugs. 1. Multiline comments in the Description box are not handled correctly. Second line is written without the % tag 2. Changing only the Defensive carding does not trigger an option to save the file Saving is triggered only while closing files Nice improvement to software however.

The home page of Kaj G Backas at http://www.kolumbus.fi/sackab/kgb/ has a program that will convert bridge files from one format to another. Duplimate is one of the options. It is a free windows based program

Hi I have a copy of the notes that were on Daniel Niell's bridge page. I can email you a copy if you would like.