GreenMan

Our 1♥/♠ are 8-14, could be only 4 if 10-14. But change a K to a Q in the example hand and it's a pass; 8-9 requires more shape. I don't know if it's a theoretically sound system, but I've had some good results and a lot of fun with it.

Too true! Last year I was prepping for the NAPs with an actual human partner, and I had to cut myself off from the robot tourneys because I was picking up too many bad habits. FWIW that partner and I played a strong-club system with light openings, and that's an easy 1♠ opener. But without having spent hours with P learning and practicing a system that supports bidding on such an airy collection, I wouldn't dream of it.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that no one who uses the Rule of 20 ever has or ever will apply any other hand evaluation adjustments. And you're not the only one who says this. Where did this idea come from?

It's tricky because you'd need both an invisible transmission method and a source of information. If partners are communicating at the table, then both the sender and the receiver are in full view of their opponents, so the degree of difficulty is high. Vibration devices in the shoes, for instance, may be visible or audible. In-ear receivers have been pretty small for some time, but even there you still need an accomplice to send you the information. That means either someone with a view of the table, or someone with access to hand records or watching on vugraph. The latter may well have been done. I wouldn't be surprised to see or hear of wireless jamming devices in the playing areas at some point.

I used to do some editing for a magazine aimed at nonprofit organizations with an emphasis on arranging events such as annual conferences and conventions, and a sister magazine concerned with venues for competitive events, so I know a little bit about how these things generally go. I expect someone more knowledgeable will correct anything I get wrong. The WBF does organize its own tournaments, in the sense that it hires the directors and arranges for equipment and scheduling. The tournament site will have people traveling in from around the world who will pay for hotel rooms, restaurant meals, taxicabs and so forth. This is a financial boon for the host city, not as large as a Super Bowl or a World Cup but still worth competing for. The host city, Sanya in this case, pays the WBF a fee for the right to host the event and expects to earn it back and more in room and food taxes, plus it may sell sponsorships or other rights, which is where Ourgame probably comes in. These arrangements have many moving parts, and I wouldn't want to guess at any of the details. But that's the general way these things happen IME.

The movie rights contracts for Marvel comic-book characters revert back to Disney/Marvel if X years go by without a movie being made. It's already happened with the Punisher, for instance. Word is that Sony/Columbia hasn't been happy with the box office for the last two Spider-Man films, and no wonder since that ground was still so recently trodden, but they'll keep at it because they're still making money and even the smaller paydays are better than just letting the rights expire.

Sometimes a movie's suckage is a good reason for a remake. Example from TV is Battlestar Galactica, which was pretty bad the first time around and remarkably powerful the second. Most movies don't get remade because they're addressing some common theme in a way slightly (or not at all) different from what came before, and it's just as easy to start fresh with your own wrinkle, especially since you don't have to negotiate a license to use the previous characters or what have you. I read somewhere that the Spider-Man movies are getting remade just so the rights to the franchise don't revert back to Marvel from Sony.

Don't know about the whole series, but I'm told reliably that the movie version of the first Twilight book was better than the book by orders of magnitude, because the book had lots of rambling inner-life passages that the film, perforce, skipped to focus on plot. Internal dialogue can make or break a novel, and in this case it broke it.

I hate when we run out of peeves.

Two teams tied for third-fourth. Three SEC teams in the top 4. No paradox there.

Haven't seen it, but I'm told the Guardian called it Burns' masterpiece, at least equal to The Civil War.

I was starting to worry I might not be on BBO Forums, but now my mind is at ease. :D

Throw the horse over the fence some hay.

I work next door to the B&N in Union Square and went over there shortly before 7, and they said they had reached the room's capacity some time before, so I didn't get to go in. I'm glad the book is doing well.

Well, so was yours.

The situation in question probably happens more with driveways. It's not against the law to be in front of one if you're not parked. ETA: Also, it's not against the law to drive through an intersection, even though you're briefly "blocking" the side road.

The CCs I'm familiar with only note which card is led from the suit selected -- things like 4th vs 3rd/5th best, which honor from a sequence, which card from three or four small, etc. They say nothing about which SUIT one leads. Until the CC has a box for "4th best from longest and strongest vs. NT [ ]Always [ ]Not Always" then that's not any sort of solution. Though I remain unconvinced that there's even a problem.

The posts demanding disclosure said nothing about "if asked." Looking at the posts they were replying to, I can come to no conclusion except that they want "disclosure" to come unasked. Something like "We don't always lead 4th Best from our Longest and Strongest against notrump"? Or "We lead our suit unless we think we should try to hit partner's suit, or we decide a passive lead is called for." If this sort of thing requires pre-alerting then the world has gone mad.

Similar dynamic with Univision in the U.S., which was a few seconds ahead of ESPN.

I've enjoyed the couple of times I've played in the JEC match :) and would gladly do it again, but I don't have a regular partner these days, and as I understand it the JEC folks prefer practiced partnerships. At any rate, these recent weeks I have been much too busy to devote the time or I would likely volunteer to fill out a team if need be. But I'd prefer that BBF be represented by established pairs.

David Burn wrote about this or a similar case here.

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs. --Peter Ellis

ISTR someone quoting Meckstroth (maybe a comment at the table relayed by the VG operator? Can't recall) saying the possibility of a diamond switch swung his choice of play.

It can be dangerous to comment much on defensive carding, because operators sometimes get the spots wrong, especially if the play is fast.

Plot twist: The Bronx lover is a man. :rolleyes: