Trinidad

Update for the Netherlands: I (and all other members of the Dutch bridge league NBB) just got an email from the bridge league that the government has decided that from July 1st bridgeclubs are allowed to open again. This is under the provision that there is no increase in Covid-19, leading up to that date. Local authorities will have to approve the venues and the measures taken to see if they meet the criteria. Bridge clubs are encouraged to talk with local authorities before investing in plexiglass, etc. Transfer of the virus through bridge playing materials has been studied at the University of Rotterdam: The risk is considered small, but not zero. I think that in practice this means that bridge will start again in the new season that starts September 1st, unless... Rik

I was talking about the situation in the Netherlands, where society is opening up. Other than the student bridgeclub that I started my bridge career in (maximum number of members: 16), I don't think that I have ever played in a bridge club that had only 4 sets of boards. I have more boards at home. Rik

That is what you would need in a barometer tournament. In some parts of the world, they are very popular. In a team event, it is not uncommon to have a set of boards per match. That is one set per 2 tables. Given that the amount of tables will be reduced to about 30% of what we would normally have (because of the distance requirement) I am pretty sure that our bridge club will have sufficient sets of boards. The guy who runs the duplication equipment will have to spend more time duplicating, though. In our case, he is bridge crazy enough to do that. And in the Netherlands, 99 % of the clubs meet once a week. (People do have other things in live too.) Rik

I don't know what face to face bridge club you have played in, but at a normal duplicate bridge club people keep their cards. Other players do not touch them during the play of the hand. Under normal circumstances, those boards pass to another table to be played 15-30 minutes later. Only then new players are touching those cards. However, if you duplicate the board sets, so that every table has their own cards, the cards will be quarantained for a week before they are touched by a new player. According to the studies I have seen, the virus cannot survive on a surface for that long. So, the cards and bidding boxes do not need to be the problem. I do agree with Cherdano that sitting 1.5 m away from someone for half an hour and then sitting 1.5 m away from someone else for half an hour is a bigger problem. However, this is also what is happening in restaurants. In a typical restaurant, there will be four tables closest to mine. If all guests stay the same amount of time, all four tables will have "refreshed" before I leave the place. That is equivalent to four rounds of bridge. In the Netherlands, the restaurants will open on Monday June 1st. That is three months before the start of the bridge season. Gyms and saunas are likely opening on July 1st. Of course, we do not simply say that we will open bridge clubs on September 1st. But we will have plenty of time to see what the effect of the opening of restaurants and gyms is on the spread of Covid-19 before the bridge season would start. If these events do not lead to a surge in Covid-19 cases, I think that opening bridge clubs on September 1st (3, resp. 2 months later) will be reasonable. And if they do lead to a surge in Covid-19, we should not even think of opening bridge clubs. Rik

Some people like to meet people too. Bridge is a social game. You do not merely play with opponents, you talk, drink and (sometimes) eat with them too. People meet there life partners at the table. It is hard to do that on BBO. In addition to the social aspect there are aspects to the game that make face to face bridge a different game. Table presence is key in successful face to face bridge. It is fairly worthless in internetbridge. You can focus exclusively on bridge and you can rely on it that the other players are doing that too. (If they don't you can see that.) You can explain your system ... and make sure that the opponents understand it too. Explaining a system is tedious in internetbridge. Most people don't type as fast as they speak and there is no non-verbal communication. It happens often in internetbridge that people explain something but the opponents don't understand the explanation. In face to face bridge you can see whether an explanation is understood. I am very grateful to BBO, but internetbridge is no subsitute for the real thing. Rik

I don't think that there is a lot of difference between a restaurant and a bridge club. In the Netherlands, restaurants are opening on June 1st under some conditions: Reservation is needed (so we know who is in and when) One family per table or 2 individuals, otherwise everybody 1.5 m apart The first part is not a problem for bridge. The second is also doable by using bigger tables (and having less players in the room than normal). The problem may be in the transmission through the cards. This can be solved by duplicating large amounts of boards. Everybody can walk around with his own bidding box. Convention cards can be plasticized and cleaned after each round with alcohol. So, if we do not hit a second wave now that we are opening up things, I think that there is a reasonable chance that face to face bridge in clubs will be allowed in some form after September 1st. The board of my club is preparing for that. They want to rent the venue for two evenings instead of one, so they can spread the players over the two evenings. Of course, this does not mean that the members are going to show up in large numbers, since many belong to the high risk category. Rik

Chas, It is not just that Biden would have been a better president. Trump is managing this so badly... Even you would have been a better president. Rik

Here are my 2 cents on this... This is not the method for beginning players. But if you are a beginner, aspiring to become an expert, this might be something for you. It may sound odd, but I do not primarily memorize cards that have been played. I use a different mechanism to know how the cards lie. And I think that many experts use it too. Memorizing played cards is way too tiring. So what do I do then? Instead of memorizing after the fact what cards have been played, I imagine ahead of time where the cards are. This is easier on defense than as declarer. As a defender, you usually have an idea about the entire hand. Declarer has made some bids, dummy has made some bids, you can see your own hand. In this situation, it is possible to create a rough picture of all 4 hands around the table. The first thing I do, before I lead and before the auction is even over, is determine how many HCPs I can expect in partner's hand and how the suits are distributed in the other three hands at the table. This doesnot require many memory skills. It does require that you know possible suit distributions and that you can quickly add up to 40. When dummy comes down, I make the first adjustments to my expectation. About 20 years ago, I wrote a little program that showed 3 numbers, e.g. "1-5-4". The user (me) had to type in the number that made them add to 13 (3 in this case). Of course, I added a timer to see how fast I could do this. If you play this little game a little while, you will be able to picture distributions rapidly. Later, I wrote a piece of code showing 3 hand patterns. Now, my job was to come up with hand number 4 (e.g 1345 - 4342 - 5512: 3244). That didn't work for me until I made the screen layout look like a bridge problem: 1 5 3 5 4 1 5 2 4 3 4 2 I don't claim that I have mastered this, but I am getting fair results. These are skills that you can practise (when you are young enough ;)). Once you have these skills, keeping track of cards doesnot require much memory. After all, after the auction, you already have an expectation of the distribution around the table. The only thing you need to do during the play is to adjust your expectation. I play a lot of IMPs. That makes defending relatively easy. You don't need to worry about overtricks. You simply need to get the contract down. Then, you mentally fill in the high cards that partner can have that give you a chance at beating the contract. Against a game contract, there are typically about 1 - 3 possible permutations of high cards and there is some uncertainty in the distribution. You watch your partner's signals and look at declarer's line of play. Pretty soon, only 1 permutation is possible and then you play for it. If it materializes: Great! If not: The contract was cold. Next board, please. As declarer it is much harder to create a picture of the two closed hands when the opponents stayed quiet. Nevertheless, in this case I also start by assuming distributions of cards and high cards. I count the cards that I am missing. I look at who has denied an opening, that player doesnot have 12 HCPs. I look at the opening lead: Does it say anything about distribution? Does it imply or deny a high card? I initially assume that suits are breaking relatively evenly. (If the distributions would be be wild, someone might have bid something.) If I am sure that I will make my contract when they break evenly, I look what I can do to avoid going down when suits break poorly. So, again, rather than keeping track of cards that have been played, I create an expected distribution fo the cards around the table. The only thing is that as declarer, this picture is less accurate than as a defender. Rik

Considering that with that hand you have 3 tricks that are 100 % guaranteed (losing 7 side suit cards + 3 trumps), the opponents (and your team mates) must have had pretty darn good cards that are lying very well for them to take 8 tricks with spades as trumps. I consider it likely that they were able to take 12 tricks with another trump suit. Perhaps you should have won a fwe IMPs (if your team mates would have come with a score of 920, or higher). If they couldnot produce a slam (possible, but unlikely), you were very unlucky. Rik

From my, Western European, perspective: It started in Poland with Solidarność. It was followed by Gorbachev realizing that there were more ways than the communist ideal and that individual freedom was important too. He saw that the cold war was: a) stupid madness and b) not sustainable. Gorbachev simply decided to reform the Soviet Union and he realized that for that the cold war needed to end. So he decided, unilaterally, to stop the cold war. That meant that a big reorganization was needed in the Red Army and military industry where quite a few people profited from the cold war. So, he used all the power he had to realize this reorganization. In my view, nobody won the cold war. Two sides lost it because of all the resources, including human life, that were wasted on building and maintaining this conflict. In addition, I think that in a few hundred years the history books will look a little bit different at the 20th century. I think that school kids will learn "World War II: 1939-1991". Rik

I think that you can figure from the OP's name that English is not his native language. And the English language has a very peculiar way of dealing with the word "few": "Few" means "practically none". "A few" means "some". "Quite a few" does not mean fewer than "a few", no it means more than "a few", as in "a decent number". So, I guess that Danailov really intended to state that "3NT has a few advantages" (or perhaps even "quite a few"). It's only one letter, but it's an important one. Rik Rik

That is an entirely different data set... Rik

No, that won't be necessary... I just wanted to point out that soooo many more deaths than officially reported (as death that tested positive) is not a sign of mismanagement. It can also be seen in places that were managed well (which does not mean flawless) under the circumstances. And I think that you are right in your interpretation of shyams' post. I probably put too much weight on the shown discrepancy between official numbers and excess mortality and too little on the absolute numbers. Rik

The fact that there is an excess death rate that is higher than the official corona deaths is in itself not a sign (or even an indication) of mismanagement. In the Netherlands, we also have a factor of 2 between excess death : official corona deaths. It simple says that there are quite a few people dying and that this is correlating with the death rate of patients that have tested positive for corona. Of course, this means that the true corona death toll is much higher than the official corona death rate of patients who tested positive. But to conclude that this is an indication of mismanagement is wrong. Ratios of excess mortality to death rate of corona tested patients are meaningful data, but they are not informative regarding the quality of crisis management. Note that I am of the opinion that the UK sh/could have handled the crisis more responsibly from the start, but I would like to base that on observations that indicate that (e.g. shaking hands by Boris Johnson). Rik

I am not saying that I like Chas_P's political ideas, but this is simply data mining on a sample size of 3. You should know that this is ridiculous, but you imply that it "could be significant". I could make a similarly bold statement that Chas, despite his emphasis on the letter 'P', has a remarkable preference towards presidents that have a name starting with 'J' (regardless whether it is John or Jefferson). There is no basis for an association of Chad with the letter 'J' and there is also no basis for the association of Chad to the "relational behavior" of these three presidents. Rik

It is not a goal in itself to keep the R value as low as possible. It depends on the strategy that is chosen to get through this crisis. In my opinion, depending on the characteristics of a country, there are two feasible strategies to take. They are supposed to be separated from each other and certainly not mixed and they have different consequence for the desired R value. For completeness, there is also the third strategy. A) Wait for a vaccine We keep R as small as possible. We do so until we have controlled the spread of the virus close to 0. From then testing and tracing is doable. After that we carefully open up and test massively. Outbreaks lead to an immediate quarantine. We keep doing so until a vaccine is available. In this strategy, the value for R needs to be as low as possible. It is followed by countries like South Korea. It works well with countries with a disciplined population where health information is shared with the authorities and who have a large test capacity. B) Controlled herd immunity We are not waiting for a vaccine, we are developing herd immunity. This means that we will have to get through the wave of the virus. It is important to flatten the curve to make sure that health care doesn't get overwhelmed. But we need to realize that the total area under the curve needs to be the same: this is the amount of people that have had the disease. We need people to have been sick and survived to reach herd immunity. The higher the value of R, the faster we can get through this. The lower the value of R, the longer it will take us to reach immunity. In this second strategy, the damage to the economy will be larger with a flatter curve for two reasons: The measures will be tighter and they need to be in place longer. This means that we want to have the curve "as steep as we can afford". We want the hospitals fairly full, so that the time span is as short as possible and the measures that are taken have as little consequence for the economy as possible. For this, we first want to take away any overloading of hospital and when we have achieved that we want the value of R as high as we can afford: 1. The consequence is that as we proceed, we can slowly but steadily release the measures. After all, with a steadily increasing degree of immunity in society, the number of contacts between people that are needed to lead to an effective transmission will increase. This is because part of those transmission will be to people who are already immune. Without a change in the measures, R will decrease by itself. This strategy is followed by countries with an excellent health care system, such as Sweden and Germany. (The German R fluctuates a little bit around the value of 1. Could the fact that they have a physical chemist in charge of the country have anything to do with that?) And then, for completeness' sake, there is the third "strategy": C) Let it run In this scenario, the hospitals are overflowing. This is the way to get through the health crisis as quickly as possible. Within a relatively short period of time enough people will have had the disease and society is immune. Unfortunately, a large part of those people will have died unnecessarily. Of course, this is dramatic by itself for the needless loss of life. The economic consequences will be bad too: People that could have been saved are taken out of the economy. We have invested in their education and upbringing, but will not get the return for that investment. But there also is a mathematical consequence: Those people who are dead and buried do not contribute to herd immunity as they would have if they had survived. They are no longer part of our herd. So, apart from being immoral (if your ethics would use this qualification for the needless loss of life), this scenario is bad for the economy and it doesn't lead to herd immunity (until a significant part of the herd has died). You can figure out which countries are following this scenario. Rik

Well err ... on the one hand there is Science and on the other hand is ... "It could work... It could not work... I believe it works." The problem with me is that I trust Science. But that trust is not universal, particularly not in the USA. Rik

The institute that coordinates the intensive care units in the Netherlands, publishes data on a daily basis. One of the graphs that interests me shows the cumulative amounts of patients that have left the intensive care. There are three categories: Deceased Left IC alive, went to regular hospital care Left hospital alive Today for the first time, the total number of IC patients who left the hospital alive outranked the total number of IC patients that didn't make it. You have to keep in mind that the patients who die on the IC, do so relatively early, after about two weeks. IC patients that can leave the hospital alive, do so after a few weeks in the IC and a few weeks in the hospital. The curve for the cured is lagging behind by a few weeks. Rik

I would definitely not compare the response in the European countries to that of the USA. At least here, there was a response. However, I do feel that in Europe we are going in the wrong direction. The mathematicians tell us to hang in there for an other 6-8 weeks or so and we are in the test-trace-isolate regime where we can open up the economy (almost) completely. Meanwhile the pressure from lobbies and social groups is enormous to open things up immediately. But if the general population has no understanding of how an exponential function behaves, it will be difficult to implement the right policies. Rik

Thanks Barry! Rik

Hi! When I am playing (Windows 10, Edge, Playing solitaire, free game) I keep getting these messages: "Are you sure you want to leave? You might lose any changes youve made on this page." With a "leave" or "stay" button. When I click "leave", the browser opens a page that seems to be a phishing message. Is this a BBO problem or my problem? Thanks for the help! Rik

This would mean that in Maryland, the death toll is at about 170 per million inhabitants. The Netherlands has 17 million inhabitants. Since March 1st, the Covid-19 reported deaths are 260 per million. These are people who have been tested positive. They typically died in hospitals or at home after they had been diagnosed in the hospital. However, in that period the excess mortality is 520 per million. (The excess mortality is the number of people who died in that period more than you would have expected to die, based on the average in the same period from the previous 5 years.) So, in the Netherlands roughly half of the corona victims were tested. (Some people will have died from secondary effects of the corona crisis, think of heart attacks due to stress). The number of hospitalizations (people who are or have been in hospital beds with confirmed or suspected corona) is now at 638 per million inhabitants. These numbers are also available on a local level. The region where I live has been hit hard. There is county nearby (about 25 miles from us) with 3247 hospitalizations per million. We have 1784 per million in the county where we live. The Northern part of the country is hardly affected. (The distance from North to South is about 200 miles.) The national number of hospitalizations has increased with 5 per million (+ 0.8 %) in the last 24 hours. Here, we are definitely over a peak. We have very little data on test results, because we don't have the testing material. Typically, health care workers are tested, as a sample for the population, and the data are collected. Some of the blood donations are tested for antibodies to collect data on (possible) immunity. My estimate is that roughly 5-10 % of the population has antibodies now. To me this means that we will have to be in our "intelligent lockdown" for another 1-1.5 year. (3.5% immunity built up per month, 60 % needed - 7.5 that we have: 52.5/3.5= 15 months) The lockdown could be lifted gradually in this period, working similarly like an annuity. This would mean that the output numbers (casualty rate, hospitalization rate, etc.) remain constant whereas the number of contacts between people gradually increases (but the number of contacts with people who are not immune stays constant). So, I have prepared myself mentally to have to deal with this for 1-1.5 years. I guess that this means that face to face bridge will start again after the summer of 2021. Rik

Could someone please delete the last 20 or so posts (I didn't bother to count) so we can discuss the corona virus here instead being hit by a hate virus? I would be interested in seeing how various countries are opening up, if they are getting into that stage, and what the consequences on the numbers are. Here, in the Netherlands, stores have been allowed to stay open. People are supposed to stay in, unless they have to get out (to work or to go shopping or even to go walking, running, or biking). In that casse, a distance of 5 ft is necessary. Visiting friends and relatives is out. Mouth masks are not used by the general public (also because we don't have them and need them in health care). Since a few days, kids under 12 are allowed to go to their sports practices. In about 10 days, the elementary schools will open again. So, I can't say what the impact of these chages are yet. But how are things where you live? Rik

I know, I get it... When Mike Pence visited the Mayo clinic in Minnesota and said that he didn't need a mouth mask because he was tested often... he was using sarcasm. Rik

I will make some other noise: If RHO had passed, this would be an automatic raise to 2♥ for my partner and me. We are well aware that this hand is flat and that the honor placement is... err... horrible. But, then again, we describe our raises as destructive. With RHO bidding, it would not be automatic anymore, since they have conveyed information, but it pays to be bold, particularly when it won't surprise partner, since she is used to this style. So, it depends on style. There is a strong pair in Stockholm (Sweden), Göran Hammarström and Mikael Arnberg, who go as far as using this principle in response to an opening (admittedly in the context of a strong 1♣ system). 1♠-Pass-2♠ means: "STOP right here, partner!" The raise can be made on 0 HCPs with 2 or 4 card support or with 9 HCPs and a doubleton spade. These are all hands where the opponents are supposed to figure out what to do. I have played against them and I will tell you that it is not easy to figure out what to do. They win on these auctions. (On other auctions they win too, but that is because they are strong players. Here, they win even more.) Having said all that: 2♣ would not have occured to me. Rik