Vilgan

GF purchased a bunch of bridgemaster deals back when she was using windows. Now she has a mac and wanted to go back and do those deals, but we didn't see a way to get to the bridgemaster stuff on the browser applet (only way to connect on Mac I think?).

For such people, bridge was already dead. Poetic statement but not really true imo. You can enjoy/love the game and still be goal oriented. Many people have a variety of interests/loves, and if a better milestone system tilts their interest towards participating in bridge tournaments isn't that a good thing?

Few thoughts: 1) #1 reason I've seen existing players of all ages quit is "I hit LM, and the higher levels seem sort of meaningless". I'm pretty disappointed that the ACBL STILL has all levels after the LM mark be total points/attendance awards only. If they don't feel likely to win a national championship.. there isn't much left for goal oriented people. Video games know this... WoW (most profitable video game I know of in the US) has thousands of milestones for their players to hit. 50+ other milestones that cater to all types of players (lots of gold points, lots of club points, platinum points, etc) should be a no brainer. Instead the ACBL sits around priding themselves on increasing the requirements for the ONE noticeable milestone they have. Blah. 2) A good idea (imo) would be getting bridge recognized by some mathematical accreditation deal for colleges. We've had people try to teach university intermission classes at nearby colleges and the colleges told them to take a hike. Like.. everything is okay for intermission classes here... weaving/baking/singing in a forest, etc. Ping pong is 3 credits but bridge gets laughed at? meh. 3) System - I really really hate being forced to play GCC at the club. I wish I could play midchart stuff at the club (mostly polish club) so I'd be more comfortable playing against it at nationals. I don't think it causes many people to quit though. 4) TV: doable, but edit the snot out of it. Get some good personalities in there (Zia is hilarious!) and cut 64 boards of play down to an hour. Or get Gates and Buffet and 2 other intermediate players to play. Its easier to explain intermediate mistakes/smart things than expert plays. Movie like Rounders would be awesome, but I'm not sure I see it happening anytime soon.

Not sure how Karluk's analogy has anything to do with the original post. Original question is interesting. With a few exceptions it seems like identifying partnerships would be doable due to system/tendencies but it'd be much harder to identify who in a partnership is who. Another interesting thought would be "Identify your partner!". Where experts play with different partners than usual and each expert is told "your partner is in partnership X", based on their bidding/play, which of the two is your partner?

I think you were right Fred in that my first post was a bit instantly dismissive, so I thought about why I disagree more in depth. I agree that the masterpoints formula is probably wrong, but then a motion to increase online points should also adjust the formula. For good or evil, the only 12 board games I know of in f2f (at least in our area) have all been super beginner games.... Easy bridge 0-5 games. The 0-5 limited games already have such a huge penalty in masterpoints, that cutting it in half might be a bad thing. I don't know.. but my personal thought is the whole situation is more complex than "ooh lets get rid of the online masterpoint penalty". My issues with online bridge tourneys being treated equal is that they are not equal. Important differences (imo): 1) Trivial to cheat and find out partner's cards. If my 82 year old grandmother figured out AIM on her own so can anyone. Can't see what opps have on bridgebase (has OKBridge fixed this with kibitzers yet?), but you can certainly ask partner what they have. 2) Quality of directing is less. Not necessarily their fault due to high table / director count, but I think many of us have experienced wtf?!? directing moments online that would have been a lot less likely/frequent in an offline setting. 3) Quality of bridge is less. I think this is only partly because its online.. and also partly because of the low financial investment. As there is little money vested in a match, there is less motivation to be serious. There are also (for many anyway) a lot more distractions available when playing on your computer. I know a variety of people who have sworn off the ACBL online tourneys because it was ruining their game. 4) Somewhat related to point 3, the predictive nature is less. I've had games where I've played well and gotten a 40% and had games where I played meh and still ended up over 70%. While this is nothing new in matchpoints, the randomness is much more dramatic. In the club I am usually within a 10% spread. Online was a 25% spread. That suggests (imo) that the online tourneys are much less predictive and masterpoints should be awarded in smaller amounts as the validity of the award is less accurate. A lot of these complaints are targeted at speed ball. If online play offered 2 day KOs on the weekend, I think many of these complaints would not apply to them. However, they aren't offered and speedball is the majority of the tables.

I'd love to see Robot tourney's stay (altho without the guarantee of best hand). I didn't know they existed until I read this thread today but it sounds like a great idea. I really hope removing the 1/3 penalty from online points is defeated. Online points are already crazy easy to acquire in ludicrous amounts. Not sure how I feel about the Mini Spingold change. It just makes it feel like not an "event" anymore is my gut reaction, but the 4 teams 1 advance did kind of suck. I know the last time I did the mini spin.. our hardest day until the finals (where we lost) was the first day.

Sounds like as long as I go with the percentage action I'm good. Might bid 6 instead of 7 if 80% of the field won't bid 6 tho.

I'd probably play hearts and get to that position, but I'm not seeing a lot of good ways to play it from there other than: A♣ A♠ 2 rounds of clubs (pitching spade on 2nd) If clubs didn't break and I haven't seen the KJ of spades discarded, I now play a diamond to my AKx and hope they run. Would love to see a better analysis tho, as I'm picking that line by intuition rather than logic. Makes when LHO has club guard and either Jx of spades or no spade honor (or obviously if clubs are 3/3). Not sure what other situations it works in if discarding is perfect.

Club play sure would be a lot more fun if people didn't feel the need to lecture their partners over presumed mistakes. My girlfriend lists the constant post mortem nonsense by opps as one of the 2 main reasons she is less interested in bridge these days (other being she is mentally exhausted from work). Disagreements/discussions after the game is over can be fine, but I can't think of many cases where telling someone what they did wrong during the session resulted in them playing any better. Frequently it resulted in them playing worse.

Same, except I think most would open it 1D so I expect to have a low MP score but push the board in a BAM unless Robinson has my hand at the other table. Thank god partner had spaces to support, as I think it would have really clouded the waters if partner hadn't been able to support spades.

Be interesting to see a calculation done with 1000+ hands where responder has that hand and opener has a 1S opener and responder bids a forcing NT. My inclination would have been to pass as responder. I like hearing a red suit, and don't want to hear black suits or 2NT out of partner. Responding works great in this case, but I wonder if its truly the percentage action.

Makes sense, but if asked for an explanation of partner's bid I'd probably forget that its a possibility and just explain it as A or Void.

Between finesse and "looking for new partner" I think I'll go with finesse every time. Unless of course I hate my partner. Or something. Didn't matter if he played in an annoyed fashion or in tempo... declarer and LHO both know who has the A of clubs. I'm kind of confused as to why this is here unless declarer finessed to a stiff K then tried to call the director and claimed flying A was an option but LHO's attitude misled him. I can't imagine any semi competent director giving that any credence though.

I always thought 5 -> 2+void because it used the least space. With 1 and a void it might not be enough to force partner to the 6 level. I know I've responded 5 NT as 2 + void a lot more than 6 odd personally. Serious blah to using 4 NT as keycard for clubs though.. yuck ;) Partner should have something like this: - KJTxx Kxx Kxxxx regardless we are off the A of diamonds or K of clubs so 6NT is a fairly trivial (imo) bid.

A or void. no clue how standard it is tho.

I see people reading but usually its between rounds. Reading while being dummy could result in playing a card a bit slower which would be annoying. If you were able to play dummy as quickly as normal while reading it wouldn't be an issue, but most probably are not able to do that.

patterning out early makes sense to me. One question: What is standard treatment if short suit is a stiff A? What if it is a stiff K? I'd probably not mention shortness there with that the case (too often partner now devalues their holding) but no clue if that's standard.

These bids and thoughts sum up my feelings on it as well. 2♣ seems like a possibly better "ideal bidding" start, but it leaves us more vulnerable to the opponents imo. I don't know that I'd like 3c p 4c ? for example. At the table, 2♠ rapidly communicates what is most likely to matter (imo) to partner immediately. If it goes p p RHO has a high likelihood of balancing back in with 3♣ and I can worry about diamonds then.

X seems trivial here. Of course there are situations where bidding 2♥ ends up working out better, but as you are not psychic, I think its better to just bid your hand.

I lead a low notrump. Erm. blah. Feel like I should lead a ♥ heart in imps, even though I hate it.

South has a clear opener imo. However, passing the south hand is "conservative" whereas passing 2NT with the north hand is ludicrous. Therefore its clearly north, although south should still get bopped over the head for passing the first round.

I would have bid 4♠ over 3♠ given this auction, and shut up over 5♥ but saved over 6♥. From what I expect partner to have, 6♥ is a very likely make and I have no defense. Might as well given them the chance to stop in game though as I've seen even the best have issues depending on how the hands/points are distributed. I don't really like the 3♠ bid though and I think it messes up the strategy after a bit. Only 6 spades is fine.. but there is nothing special about it whatsoever other than "omg I have some spades".

Because its important for a developing player to first recognize what suit key card applies to, and then learn later on that this isn't a key card auction at all, but rather quantitative. This is how most people learn bridge. I suppose there are prodigal types that can immediately appreciate the need to play auctions like this as quant. but they are few and far between. all 4NT bids are an ace-ask, phil (also, so are all 4♣ bids). nm, this is clearly sarcasm. I shouldn't respond when its several hours after I meant to go to bed. For those saying RKC.. huh? Clearly, finding out partner's keycards triumphs the need for actually conversing with partner about the hand.

The 2♠ vs 3♠ is a bit interesting at imps imo. I'd probably bid 2♠ but I'd have no real problems if a partner upgraded it to a 3♠ bid. Anything but pass over 3 NT given the auction is downright crazy though. I personally think its a WTP at beginner levels... what possible bid could you make other than pass? 4♠ is a "bridge is a solo game" bid that tells your partner you think they are incapable of basic human thought.

phew, was thinking I was misunderstanding something with the first few replies suggesting it was RKC. RKC would never have occurred to me... natural/invitational is how I would interpret it with any of my usual partners.