jdeegan

Absolutely correct analysis! My only quibble is that, imo, you shouldn't really need a partnership agreement for an auction that comes up, maybe once a year, if that. Pure bridge logic says that a redouble is SOS. Not redoubling on this hand is simply a commonsense measure to avoid a potential blood bath in 2♣ doubled.

You can argue all you want. My experience is that if the opponents like the contract, I don't. Slide to 1♥ and try (as best you can on BBO) to read the opponents' reaction. I don't want the cheese. I just want out of the trap. Realize, partner's Pass (to quote the late, great Bridge philosopher Gee) DNPA. If you Pass, the auction is over. If you redouble, wtf is partner supposed to do? What if he bids clubs? Try to regain control. It is more important, imo, to appear confident and to force the opponents make the next guess. You tell me just how they can arrange to double me out in 1♥ and collect a telephone number even if it is theoretically available. Pard knows my ♥ suit is a 4-bagger, and he is supposed to know how to play. This is a classic dial-a-suit auction. Have a little faith.

Somebody must have taught Lew. Lew taught Bob. Bob taught Justin. Justin is doing a wonderful job trying to teach others. Just trying to clear away some of the BS.

Nobody should laugh. Goren's support point analysis worked 50 years ago, and it is still a good basis for an initial evaluation. The finer points of the analysis were also known back in the day - eg. lotsa trumps and nothing wasted in the opponents suits is good. This just had not been demonstrated using a computer or codified yet.

It is that 'adjustment' factor for the skill level of partners and the opponents that worries me. BBO Skill 2.0 tries the same thing. It seems to work OK for many players, but if their 'adjustment factor' is very large, you can ignore the result. I know from experience what it is like to be the weakest player in a strong game. You are destined to go minus IMPs or minus dollars. You can try to make an 'adjustment' with a computer program, but I remain skeptical. It is even worse than computerized Power Rankings for college football teams. Granted it may be a good marketing tool for many bridge pros. Still, how can you accurately distinguish between a hard-pressed pro dragging in a weak client in a quality field, versus one with a near-expert client playing in a weak field? Just trying ain't enuf. They need to be reasonably accurate. Don't get me wrong, I like BBO Skill 2.0 and now use it to screen pick up partners for Speedball and other BBO pair games. Properly interpreted, it works very well. Before discovering BBO Skill 2.0 I had to laboriously analyze every player's recent hand records to separate the sheep from the goats.

Just for laffs, I recently tried a session playing against the robot. Imo, it is like going to the batting cage in order to learn how to hit a baseball. Good for practice but not actually the real thing.

When and if you and your friends jump into the world of real life BBO indies, almost without doubt you will get killed for a while. That is how we learn, and the price is cheap. It all depends, ultimately, on how much you like the game.

You are off at least 4♠ and a ♦ unless the opponents are permanently bad. Picking up the ♦ suit boils down to finding the J97 opposite xxx. No muy bueno, but what else is left except ♣ Kx on your right - a virtual non-certainty (imo) on the play. Play the ♣ ace and go for it! You have slim or no chance w/o 3 or 4 ♥ tricks anyway. I hate to give up the ♣ hook, but better the ♥ than the ♣. Good players have a habit of making you guess sooner than you want. Count! You do not have 9 tricks with 2♦, 4♥, and 2♣.

Sorry to hear David passed on.

Wtp? 1♥. Maybe you want to start with 2♥? Not a crazy instinct, but still off percentage to me.

My advice is to ignore free BBO idies. The pay indies cost you approx. $1 USD per hour. For your dollar you get a real duplicate event where about half the players are fairly good and most of the rest can, at least, play a little. SAYC Yellow Card is understood to be the system played - you cannot begin to establish partnership agreements in the time you have between hands in an indie. A real director is there. Cheats and trolls do exist on occasion but are kept under control. In many tournaments well over 10% of participants have a BBO star (almost always a sign they can play, at least a little). Your results will be highly variable since you have no control over how good your partner will be on crucial hands. The flip side to that is that you will occasionally win or do well, AND you will improve your game by actually playing most of the time against, generally speaking, good bridge players. Sure, you can play against a machine anytime, but you can also play against real (and pretty good) bridge players most of the time too. Why go to Vegas just to play the slots?

For goodness sake. Suppose, for the sake of argument, you create a perfect topographical map of anywhere, then you throw a blanket over it. The blanket will reliably do its best to fall into its contours. The same thing is true when fitting a nonlinear curve using least squares. Gauss, Smauss. The more people who use computers, the lower the average IQ of the users.

Doh! Any fool can devise a system to beat unsuspecting opponents. Bridge is, possibly, the best game. Keeping it under control is part of the deal.

You show a hand too good to advertise the most obvious holding for a double, so you must have something better plus at least 4♥, one assumes. You may have already have a proper place in mind to play, but that is your business.

x

Opener selected one [spades}, no surprise. LHO bid 2♥. Partner bid 3♣. RHO passed. Now what?

Ur dealer. Nobody vul. All expert IMP game. 2/1 system ♠AKQ93 ♥65 ♣953 ♣Q104

Lawrence/Wirgren seems to work fairly well even with weird hands.

I am with you all the way, but consider: The original Verne analysis modeled world championship Bridge circa the late 20th century. Your approach is, no doubt, better and more sophisticated than this original work, but you are left with the undeniable fact that you are 'just' modeling BBO minis. This should help you beat BBO minis, but what else? I am afraid that the best you can really do with modeling is to define the kind of game you are trying to beat - both in a time and a place - and figure out the best way to beat it. Social science modeling is not like modeling in physics. The bastards you are trying to model react and keep moving. Put another way, my credit card default model worked like a champ in its time. It even made me some pretty good money for a while. I would not advise using it today even reestimated using current data. As far as selecting just the right kind of hands as a sample for any kind of valid statistical analysis. Welcome to the real grunt work involved in modeling Bridge. Computer screens have to be loose enough not to truncate your sample too much, if at all, and how much is too much, anyway? I think you need multiple screens customized for your specific application. In other words, screen the sample, then screen the rejects using a looser screen, etc., etc. I don't know of any canned programs you might use, but by now, they may exist. Good luck. I am afraid a certain amount of hand selection may end up being called for. P.S. There may a way to use BBO data from 'better' players. Several 'salons' featuring high level players have emerged on BBO. They feature sponsors like JEC and hosts like Susina. Those hand records are available to anyone using BBO software back for 2 or 3 months. You might be able to get more history if you asked BBO and reassured them you would keep it confidential. I can't see why they would object, assuming they trusted you.

News flash! If your equation can be transformed into something linear, you can use least squares. You might want to consider what a transformation does to your error term, though few actually worry about it.

Big problem. When you abstract a situation to a level where you can easily model it, you can easily create a situation that is so different from the reality you were originally concerned with as to be uninteresting. For example. With two 8 card fits, if one is 4-4 and trumps = 5+ possible tricks. What about the other one - a side suit? If it is also 4-4, not so hot. If it is 6-2 and solid = six tricks. Over the years I have modeled many things using statistical methods - credit card default rates, various financial markets, parts of the US economy, optimal fast food joint locations, drilling rig utilization, you name it. I have taught more courses in statistics and econometrics than I can remember. Modeling Bridge is really, really tough, and I have little confidence anyone can get very far with it. Again, there is the underlying problem is that Bridge is not played double dummy.

When LC published his first book called, as I recall To Bid or Not to Bid, Bob Hamman's comment was reported to be "Bid!". The fundamental problem is that with a blind opening lead and with two of the hands concealed, figuring out the number of total tricks in a given hand is not even achievable. Bridge is not played double dummy. Still, LOTT is a considerable aid. Later LOTT 2.0 with adjustment factors was an improvement. Imho, IFTL is a better tool than even LOTT 2.0, but it has its limits. The main thing I got out of it was that honors in the opponents' suits are deadly in a competitive auction. Of course, this is exactly what my mentors were telling me 50 years ago when I was first learning to play. Many trumps are good. More trumps even better. "Purity" of the hand good. 1098762 A109 A32 32 vastly better weak 2 opener than, Q87542 872 K76 K4 Bottom line is that Bridge is a game based on incomplete information.

I am actually South? I have no clue how many clubs to bid, so I guess I have to give up on preemption and Pass, at least for now and probably for good. For me, there is a passable case for 4♣, and even a very weak case for 7♣ just so as to push the opponents into their makeable 7♠.

This is first seat red vs white? Seems like a normal 2♠ opener in all but 4th seat playing SAYC or 2/1.

Hmmm.... My keen analytical mind tells me I have 9 HCP along with a useful 10 and a useful 9. Our combined HCP total should be 24 to 27 HCP. No five card suit in my hand. LHO is trapped with most of the opponents high cards and may be endplay bait. Playing a 4-4 ♥ fit (should it exist) seems oh so wrong, esp after the 2♠ bid. So, we are right on the borderline between bidding 2NT and 3NT. W/o knowledge of the skills of my partner and opponents, I think 2NT seems better. With a good partner versus two mullets, 3NT for sure as LHO may turn out to be easily end played or fooled by a good declarer.