onoway

I guess I will have to stick with the role of godmother looking out for the Cinderellas of IAC, and giving them the opportunity to participate in things that others would try to deny them :P

Bob: If you read the initial post, you will see that the "whining" had to do with people committing themselves to showing up and then not doing so, and asking for suggestions on how to deal with this. The only thing I believe I have said about the workload is that I am not willing to take on any more, and if others wish to see more done, they are welcome to go ahead. If that is whining, then you have a different take on the meaning of the word than I do. To my mind, it is whining when people want things arranged differently and complain when people choose not to adapt to their ideas.

First of all, I appreciate Dee's comments, I don't believe she suggested anyone should not be a member of the club if they didn't play in team matches. She was trying to make a point which I have also been trying to make, so far with stunning lack of success it seems. What I believe Dee was trying to get across was that if you are looking for a very structured team match situation with ratings and standings, then you may well be discontented with the current format for IAC team matches. From what I read from Babalu and Rq4mulae this seems clearly true, as both are advocating something quite different from the way the matches are currently run, with no carryover and many teams shifting memberships from session to session, as well as week to week. It depends on your priorities. My priorities are to try to organize the team matches on Sundays so as to allow the participation of anyone who wants to play. I am not going to be hijacked by people who want this to become a ladder event only , especially since neither have teams currently registered to play this week and neither had teams play last week.

Well if someone wants to do the bookkeeping, I dont see the problem with teams who want to do a ladder thing going ahead and doing it. I am not prepared to put that amount of time in, frankly, although I think it's a great idea. I don't know if there would be some way to tap into Ray's Bridge Ladder, and still host the things or not, but that site is set up for tracking this sort of arrangement. However, as I said before, I am not prepared to abandon the singles and pairs who like to play team matches and for one reason or another do not have a regular pard or team. It may not be ideal for a "first date" but on the other hand, it may give a somewhat better idea of whether or not a potential partnership has promise than playing with random partners and random opps at a random table. Some of the pairs may be using the matches as practice for their partnerships, the other pair on their team is of little concern to them. Others are looking for partners who may have the same interest level or expertise that they do. People play in these things for different reasons.. It isn't always easy to find a compatible partner, much less a team. Hopefully, after a while this will tend to sort itself out into more settled teams forming from the people who come in alone or with a pard, though probably there will always be some. This seems to me to have value and I don't really see why it has to be one or the other. One thing to consider, is if there even are enough settled teams at the moment to make this even feasible. Certainly there aren't in the advanced section. I can't see the advanced getting a great deal of satisfaction playing the intermediates week after week, which is why we divvied them up. And, sorry, Bob, but I can't see forcing new people to join a functioning team, it wouldn't be fair to either the team or the newcomer. If a team won't play because one member is unavailable, how happy is that team going to be to have someone who may not even play the same system foisted upon them, and how much play is the newby going to get? It makes much more sense to me to put the newcomers together and see if they can make something of it...that has happened , but also had everyone scatter asap. The thing is, that if only a structured competition is ongoing, new teams would have no place until after the competition was done, and that is absolutely not the idea for the Sunday sessions. However, if someone wants to take on the job of bookkeeping the teams who DO want to play in a ladder style competition, I will be happy to have them play in the Sunday sessions. Perhaps after they have got one series under their belt, a club challenge could be made to other clubs??

A round robin or full team tournament is a great idea for settled teams, and probably would generate more interest for some of the teams. It would require someone else to do the "bookkeeping" as that is beyond what I am able to do, for both time and expertise reasons. This arrangement would require a good deal of both, as far as I can see. It would also mean that this would have to be a "subgroup" of the IAC TMs as these things have no provision for people who cannot or don't wish to have a regular time commitment, or who don't have regular teams. If someone else wants to take this on, it is certainly something which we can discuss. We certainly have no problem if teams wish to do something of the sort and use our Sunday sessions in which to play, and we would be happy to help run them. But at this point at least, we are not prepared to abandon the individuals and pairs who like to play in team matches and otherwise would be unable to do so.

Lots of good ideas, thank you all. So, what we have looks something like this: The teams CAN set themselves within the sponsorship of the club and I think that is the direction we will be going. Right now, it looks as though we will be asking each team to have at least one person who knows how to set tables. I will be online 45 minutes before the match to walk anyone who is not familiar with doing this, through the process. Fifteen minutes before start time, teams will be asked to go to the club and open a table with their team name, so we can see which teams are ready to go. Then the designated reps of opposing teams will set the table, one setting and the other providing the player names from his/her team. Director will either be one of the IAC volunteers or someone mutually agreed upon who is NOT playing and NOT connected with either team. We will continue to ask teams/or pairs/OR individuals ( if not part of pair or team)to confirm that they intend to play by the Friday noon deadline, and will probably start to enforce that. That would solve the problem of looking for 3 more pairs on Sunday morning to fill out a match. We will also continue to do the matchups between the teams and post them in club news Saturday night or Sunday morning. It would be extremely helpful if teams would bring their own subs, even if the subs just stayed until the match is underway and it seemed they would not be needed. It would be appreciated if the subs were consistent with the level of the other players in the match. Right now, we have set a limit of one advanced per playing intermediate team. The advanced can have anyone they want. This would leave us free to help where needed, both before and during the matches. Have we missed anything? Does this sound better?

Theoretically we have a mandatory 15 minute lead check in time. In reality, when a team is there except one member is finishing a tourney elsewhere, or another has one person late, and another has gone to get a last minute coffee so they seem to be there but aren't it creates a good deal of difficulty..in two of these scenarios you don't know that someone is missing until the match is set and someone rejected by BBO. This problem would be dealt with most effectively by having one of the two teams set the table for the match as then it wouldn't mess up all the other teams waiting for tables....when there are 5-10 matches waiting to set up it doesn't take much to cause a traffic jam

One of the suggestions made privately was that someone from each "team" be responsible for coordinating with the captain of the opposing team which one of them would set the table for the match. Another suggestion was that teams be responsible for finding their own subs. Both would be enormously helpful in that the teams functioning as teams could then proceed and those of us presently involved with setting ALL the matches would be free to help with problems. We are presently trying to figure out a way to do a group session on how to set up the tables for anyone interested..It isn't hard but there are a few points to go over and it takes too much time to do it individually. The question still remains as to what to do about no shows for the people who may not have a large number of BBO friends to tap for subs. Yesterday I ended up looking for subs for the SUBS, which is just ridiculous and was when things were brought to a halt. To be fair, this is more of a problem for the advanced and advanced+ teams than for the intermediates. Few of the advanced groups are structured into any sort of team setup, but are mostly pairs who float as they are needed to fill the match, and a number of single players who get arbitrarilly tossed together. This makes it difficult to assign responsibility to anyone, but I am reluctant to say people HAVE to have partners or HAVE to have teams to participate. Part of the idea of these matches was to provide a place where people without either COULD be involved. Is this not a reasonable plan? Should we insist on at least a partner? Looking over the no shows it does seem as though they mostly are people who didn't register with a pard, but then some of the most cooperative people we have came in without pards, and would have been unable to play had that been a requirement.

I'm not sure if this belongs here but it looked the closest.. On Sunday, the IAC club ran two sessions of team matches. Both had had a fairly good number of people confirming they wished to play. However, when it came time to set tables, at the early session almost a third of the confirmed players did not show up. This led to a great deal of chaos and delay and two teams never did play, for which I apologise. The later session was better, but still 2 players were no shows, one of whom has since apologised and explained. Now, we need to get some input as to how to deal with this, because obviously what we are doing now is not satisfactory for anyone, but since we have had such positive reactions from those who have played, we hate to cancel them. Part of the problem may be that we were trying to make it possible for people who may not have even a regular partner, to play in team matches, in the hopes that partnerships and friendships would develop. In a few cases that has happened in just two weeks. In other cases the groupings have not been so fortunate, but in probably 70% of the groups people are still looking to find their niche and the "team"membership is fluid. So no'"team captain" exists, because in fact, no team exists. I don't know if that has a large, little or no impact on whether or not a player turns up for his/her match. so..if anyone has any ideas about how to deal with the absenteeism (why do people sign up, later confirm they are coming and then not show??) suggestions would be very welcome. I would hate to abandon this`whole effort and shut the matches down, because of a few .

Just curious..it seems as far as many of the men in the forum are concerned, it is pefectly ok to make sexist remarks. Most of the posters appear to equate the remark made with being asked if they have balls, and nobody seems to find this offensive. I agree, this expression is part of common use (which the title of the thread was not, I certainly have never run across such a reference in this context before). However, if the remark made to a man was something like "what are you, a queer to bid like that???" I wonder if their gut reaction would be quite as relaxed...or is it just in my part of the world that THAT expression would be considered hostile and unacceptable? ( and now I hope this doesn't start a new trend in pseudo insulting partners..) ;)

I think that a large part of the question has to be if the person using the expression is doing so to be offensive, and if someone said to me what size are your tits I WOULD be offended, because the comment at the very least was designed to embarrass and/or offend and when using such gender specific comments has to have sexist overtones BECAUSE it was designed to offend.I cannot imagine anyone other than someone doing a brassiere fitting having any other reason than being an ignorant ass**** to make such a remark. My work involves being around a lot of men, most of whom are not particularly well educated and there are probably few words I have not heard . However, even there, it is generally considered gauche at the least to use most of these words around the women who work there. This is not to say it doesn't happen. But I haven't noticed using such words as adding anything to the conversation and usually conversations studded with them are truly boring. (pun semi-intended) My mother used to say that people who swear a lot are simply showing a lack of a) vocabulary and :D imagination. I agree with that, except that (sometimes) women use them to show how liberated they are and (sometimes) men use them to show off or with intent to offend. Then I tend to react to the intention, not the words as such. I think uday does a great job and has excellent judgement. I would hate to see the forum language deteriorate to the lowest common denominator just because it is not politically correct to have any standards anymore.

Hi. I can also suggest http://www.bridgesights.com/hondobridge/ It is a very comprehensive site. Hondo (BBO name) runs open mentoring sessions in the BBO Intermediate Advanced Club every Tuesday night and he is very helpful if you have questions. Also, there are a number of people who are working on learning 2/1 in the (same) club, so you should be able to find people there from time to time to play and practice with. Good luck.

This series of posts frankly bewilders me. I used to be against capital punishment for the very reason that mistakes ARE made. Also, one (to me, thoroughly evil man who had kidnapped, tortured and murdered a number of children) was given not only a life sentence but a lot of money by the government which allowed them to put him away for the rest of his life, when otherwise they did not have sufficient evidence to convict..he apparently wanted to provide for his family and it also allowed frantic parents to have closure as to what had happened to their children. If there had been capital punishment I think it would have made no difference as the police did not have enough evidence to convict even without it. However...when semen from a father is found in the torn vagina of a 6 month old baby girl...or almost any of the examples given above..to me that person has given up the right to be called human. I know of animals which eat their young, but none which brutalize other members of their own species for personal enjoyment and gratification. There is no question as to guilt, and that is crucial to me to the discussion as to whether or not capital punishment should be considered. The person who suggested that anyone who thinks capital punishment must also be in favor of torture etc. is insulting . I cannot imagine anything more repugnant as then indeed you are lowering yourself to the very lowest level of humanity, if indeed you can still claim to the term, imo. However, examp;es such as have been given should not be allowed the right to be a societal burden ...we have others in society who are needy and who are not being looked after. When the hungry, the old, the crippled, the children, the mentally, physically and emotionally infirm who do NOT commit horrific crimes are all being taken care of, then put the resources left over into trying to rehabilitate these people. Until then, I think when there is NO question re their guilt, to put them in jail for the rest of their lives is stealing resources from people who are suffering and imo much more deserving of society's help than people who DELIBERATELY act in such extremely antisocial ways.

I liked the colour scheme on the front page but that was about it. I don't like how restricted the choices are for where you can go. Often I do not know exactly who I want to play with or even if I do want to play, and very very often I do not want to kib only a table with lots of kibbers or lots of stars, but how do you see the table to know who you do want to kib? It looks like it will be much more cumbersome to move around in unless you are focussed on where you want to be. Also, I absolutely loathe the teenytiny little chat space. It seems to say to me, SHUT UP AND PLAY BRIDGE< THAT'S WHAT YOU"RE HERE FOR . I kib a lot of lessons and the idea of trying to follow them with that chat window is depressing to say the very least. Speaking of which, where are the places that right now cater to people who want to take lessons or play in TP tournaments or such. I didnt see anywhere to access such places. Are they all going to be axed in the interest of efficiency or some such? :P I dont see the value of having the profiles on display all the time either. Right now, if you want to see someone's profile you can access it easilly, but most of the time it is totally immaterial and stays out of the way.this just takes up space and creates clutter. A small point but why all the exclamation points? I may love the game but I am not going to be in a state of extreme hysteria every time I move or log on. ALtogether it seems to me as though this is another example of something being improved to the point that it loses many of its advantages...ease of movement, freedom of choice, relaxed atmosphere...I am dreading when this comes into force. Sorry to be so negative, I understand how very hard everyone has worked on it, but when your first instincts about how it should be were so good, why change the things that made it that way? :(

just a suggestion to go into the mix..I know there are at least a couple of players in BIL which are of similar age. They generally appear playing at first with a parent, and have their age on their profile. BIL members tend to be very supportive so this might be a place for you (might have to explain the situation to Maureen) to take her when ready to tackle playing with other people. Good luck

I have the assumption that I am going to be alive tomorrow and next month etc. because it although it is perfectly logical that I may not be, it makes no sense to order my life otherwise. I have to proceed on faith that I will be around. Some people are able to have the same faith that there is a god who takes a personal interest in them and their endeavors. I wish , sometimes fervently, that I was one of them. Otoh, it makes no sense to me that the universe is a sort of random event. Our universe may be the speck of dust on someone's jacket but it is so wonderfully ...I cannot think of a word which does not suggest an intelligence behind it...designed? organized?...before man ran amok, balanced? that it becomes a matter of faith for me that there is an intelligence behind it. Maybe we are someone's science experiment. How much understanding does a fruit fly have? The question of what to teach kids is I think to a large degree an academic one, kids pick up an understanding of their parent's true values in or outside religious situations. The kids will grow up and mostly find the niche that suits them, and often it is not the same as their parent's was. Of course that does assume that there is a choice...for some, religion is not so much a matter of faith as of desperation, perhaps. If a person has faith, no matter how logical the arguments you are not going to change her/his mind as it is embedded in who they are...

not sure what it means when you can easilly see her change direction and either not rotate at all but reverse at 180 degrees, or rotate for a few spins and then reverse and spin in opposite direction for a few before going back to the half rotations...haven't counted to see if there is a predictable pattern to this, for me, but it is very graceful

I wasn't particularly referring to the production of zombies for the harvesting of parts, although I think it is optimistic to think that something of the sort would not occur should the technology allow. A group from Quebec (Canada) claimed a few years ago to have successfully cloned a human but was unwilling (unable?) to produce proof. They also claimed to have only the highest of motives in trying to do so, such as replacing an only child who died and so forth. Since a short while ago the papers announced that some scientists see no reason for people not to live to 200 in the foreseeable future they had best get busy as most of us would not be very happy without at least some parts replaced long before half way there. I was more interested in the idea that IF this research eventually leads to being able to replace virtually anything in the body, as it seems it should, then what changes would happen to social systems. If there is no physical reason for death beyond getting squashed by a loaded cement truck or some such, then what shape would society take. Imho there are quite drastic implications and it seems odd that none of the questions which arise immediately seem to be considered important. Random thoughts...do scientist try to develop replaceable brains for people who have, for example, inoperable and malignant brain tumors? Would the replacement brains have their own thoughts or would they be the "blank slate"that people years ago considered newborn children to be? It feels too late to consider some of the questions that have already arisen out of the engineering that has gone on in agriculture (such as the loss of diversity) and the lack of challenge there will perhaps come back to haunt us (or our grandkids). It isn't to put a stop to research that I think questions need to be considered. It just seems sometimes that actions need to be considered within a larger context so as to plan for the effects they will have. This doesn't seem to be happening, everyone is just euphoric about the good things they will be able to do. I don't buy the idea that none of this will be possible/probable. Imagine trying to explain to your great great great grandparents about space shuttles, cell phones, computers (and heart transplants ) etc.

Spare parts, anyone? Since we have already had Dolly the sheep presented to us, can it be long before we have people manufactured out of someone's old skin? All the stories I have seen have lauded this as a breakthrough which puts an end to the ethical questions of using human embryos...this may be true, but doesn't it raise a whole host of new ones? This is not to suggest I am anti the research at all. I just thought it was interesting to see how fast people leaped to the conclusion that the only question worthy of note was resolved.

hi I thought people might be interested in this site, which suggest evolution may not always take such a long time.. http://www.livescience.com/animals/070712_butterfly_evo.html

over the past little while I have had a couple of problems here and I want to know if anyone else has experienced these and/or if anyone has any suggestions about what to do about them? The worst one in "freezing up" while playing, sometimes in a tourney, when everything just stops happening for me. I seem to be there but no cards appear to be played, no chat comes up and I cannot move excpet to log off. Sometimes if I wait, there will eventually be a surge of activity, with things happening in quadruple time until caught up, other times I get disconnected The other thing is that sometimes (often after an event such as above) it takes a LONG time to log in, as either nothing happens there either, or I get INTO BBO and then the player list starts to load and then stops. The only way around that that I have found is to go out and try to come back in again. At times it has taken up to 10 minutes to get back into BBO. This is beginning to make me very uneasy about playing in tourneys (not fair to the others or the TD AND I dont want to get banned) but it is also giving me a complex every time someone stops to think...I worry that I am frozen as there is no way to tell except by the onging lack of activity and it is happenning so frequently. generally about once a day or more. I have talked to my server people and they have adjusted my settings a couple of times, I have done search and destroy for spybots and tried generally to clean the computer and am at a loss to know what to do now? I t is casting a definite shadow over amything I do here now, so any help /suggestions would be hugely appreciated. :P

In regard to choices I very much appreciate the fact that the "classic" view of the BBO site is still an option. Although some of the later pages have been refined and work excellently, I find the new initial page for BBO cluttered, unwelcoming, confusing and hard to read. In discussion with several friends, they have also resorted to the classic view...one with relief after not noticing it as an option. This is not to say there werent things on the new page which were improvements (like the sliding bar to navigate who is online) but imho the new first page is too aggressive and trying to do everything all at once. Also, black is not a particularly welcoming colour, and to be confronted with several large black bars when entering the site is disconcerting the first time you see them and discomfitting thereafter. On the other hand, I am not a computer person, so perhaps this has something to do with my rapid retreat to the old view. Thank you so much for maintaining it as an option and for the site in general, it's wonderful!

Is time really that much of an issue? Even in many of the tourneys time is a bit flexible for disconnects and frozen players and looking for subs and such. If wanting only to play with fast players why not so specify at your table? Or if someone is consistently slow, mark the name and choose not to play with that person again.It would seem a shame to have some sort of mandatory time limit to apply. Often friends are combining bridge with a social evening and conversation tends to prolong the hands from time to time. That should be curtailed? What I have found much more of a problem (and I HATE sitting waiting for people to bid or play, if it is prolonged I tend to fall asleep from boredom) are the flitters..people who come to a table and sit for half a hand until they see their contract will not make and abruptly leave. This is especiallly rampant in main. They are imo much more of a disruption to a good evening of bridge than the occassional wait. It is distressing to see how many people seem to want rules and laws and restrictions applied to every conceivable situation, Betcha ants never have to worry about anybody behaving in other than speciified ways - but who wants to live like that?

well I would be sorry to think that everyone would jump to the same gruesome possibilities as you did..I certainly never suggested any such thing as auctioning off body parts...would be a bit difficult to restore a person to society in the event of wrongful conviction if you had chopped them to bits for the highest bidder. a question..would you WANT to have Ted Bundy's liver? or anything else?

the close ties and shared goals...which now are requiring Canadians to have passports to fly into the States (first step) which has demolished thousands of small companies in Canada as a result of "FreeTrade" and which unfortunately we tag along with because we have now "leaders" with a golden retriever puppy mentality in regard to the States.....heaven help us poor canucks if we can't recognize empire building aimed at us with the finesse of an old fashioned cannon. It would seem that our "leaders" are either too busy sucking up to Bush to notice or are incapable of learning anything at all from past interactions with the States.