GreenMan

If someone's going to pout and pule because I didn't follow them back, why should I care what they think?

Seems to me that if you'd rather play bridge than "bridge," you're wasting your time on "Bridge" Base Online. If you don't want to play in the online tournaments because slow pairs can't delay the whole field, that's up to you, but it seems silly to me, even more than your goofy "can't lead trump" distraction.

My impression of the BBO speedballs is that it's not the director who pulls the boards in progress, it's the computer, which has zero tolerance for playing past the end of a round. The director then assigns a score to unfinished boards. That's part of the CoC of those tournaments, surely.

I don't see any indication that anyone can tell who's on my friends list besides themselves. If I "friend" BridgeGoth or Ennovy then there's exactly one person who I know is or is not on their respective friends list: Me. I have no idea whether they are friends with each other, or with anyone else.

... 3rd place in an ACBL instant tourney pays 0.45 MPs.

The original instant tournaments do indeed award BBO MPs. I'm trying an instant ACBL tournament to see what it does.

Indeed, and I only feel I can take the liberty of playing with the stereotypes because I lived in Texas for 12 years (and liked it there).

A "positive defense" or "affirmative defense" is basically a justification or circumstance that precludes legal repercussions -- surely the lawyers here could explain it better. E.g., if you're accused of defamation for something you publish, in the U.S. it's a positive defense to show that what you published was true. (This is not true in all countries of course.)

In my circles we say, not entirely unseriously, that "He needed killin'" is a positive defense in Texas.

Love it. I once made 7♥ by getting a ruff-sluff at trick 1. The interesting part of that deal was that some pairs sitting the other direction made 7♠, also on a ruff-sluff at trick 1.

Agree with ArtK: If the strong-clubbers are sitting NS then North should know right away that the opps are close to game values, so when 2♣ gets passed around to him he should be more than happy to let them sit there.

The committee's goal is "compelling" matchups, whatever that means; the committee has said it also considers geography and not repeating matchups from this season or recent bowls. Also, some bowls have conference contracts.

In some circles gto = "Get Thou Out."

Indeed; West continues a fourth diamond.

Interesting, I can't get that line to succeed; I made it on a completely different line. EDIT: Tried again and made the "official" line work. Interesting that the alternative worked too, though it was probably influenced by knowing the defenders' cards.

Tofurky! I'm semi-serious here, it's tastier than most non-vegetarians would expect. I was once in a similar position and I made baked acorn squash with a stuffing about which I can't remember details. It went over well.

Not related, in fact I didn't know DOTA existed till just now. But I'll bask in the reflected glory since that one sounds like a good person to be mistaken for.

I enjoy when they do something amusing; one online forum automatically changes one particular racial slur to "attractive and successful African-American."

Only one South opened 1♣. Three opened 1♠ and GIB overcalled 2♦ every time. The rest opened 2♣ and LHO passed every time. I don't see the inconsistency.

I bet they do.

When a real-life dummy is on the user's left, the trump suit is nearest the user, at declarer's left, analogous to being at the bottom of LHO's hand diagram. But in BBO the trump suit is always at the top, which is visually analogous to being farthest away, at declarer's right. It doesn't seem to me that having the trump suit appear somewhere besides where it appears in F2F bridge is the optimal display. Perhaps you disagree? Sounds are all-or-nothing. I turn them off because the constant card sound is like Satan scratching at my window, but then I also don't hear alert sounds such as when a private message comes in; if I don't happen to be looking at the BBO application right then, I could well miss it. Having the only options be "all sounds" and "no sounds" seem to me not to be the optimal experience for the user. Perhaps you disagree?

A conference can only have a championship game if it has 12 members; the Big 12 has 10 after all that shuffling of the past few years. So it would have to actually add two members or get the NCAA to approve a waiver, which I suspect it would be unlikely to do. What all this means is we'll now have the spectacle of one of the major conferences going begging for members so it can be in the new playoff system. This is just what the system needs to appear legitimate. :blink:

There's precedent for that sort of thing. Not long ago Oklahoma lost its conference championship game by 28 points to Kansas State and was still selected for the championship game. The selectors might well decide that letting Missouri into the playoffs ahead of more highly regarded teams will be a bigger blow to the system's credibility and success.

And then there's the changes in behavior that such a rating system would create. Once rating points become valuable, people will do what they can to acquire them. We may expect that the system will only reward and reinforce behavior we want more of, but unintended consequences always lurk.