Sigi_BC84

NB it could be a void as well. I shouldn't have written Splinter in the first place, that was misleading. --Sigi

OK before more people jump on this train: I wrote splinter to make it clear that it's a small singleton. 3♠ was not limiting my hand, it simply showed shortness (not stiff honour) and presumably slam interest. --Sigi

Hi, I've got a general question concerning captaincy which is a big issue for my main partnership at the moment. I'm not sure if it belongs in the Advanced/Expert forum, but I've got disagreeing opinions by different Experts already so I'm posting here to get some more ;-). We were playing in a serious event and the following hand came up: [hv=d=w&v=b&n=s1095hk102dakjca642&s=s2ha8dq8632ckqj73]133|200|Scoring: IMP p-1NT-p-2♠(1); X-3♣(2)-p-3♠(3); p-4♣... (1) transfer to ♣ (6+♣ or 5+5+ minors) (2) shows 3+♣ (3) shows a ♠ splinter Edit: shortness, not limiting[/hv] I was South. Usually we play 4m if natural and uncontested as RKCB for that suit, especially if a fit in the suit has been agreed before (which is clearly the case with this hand). Accordingly, 4♣ could be RKCB here. Also it should deny substantial spade values in any case (quite likely anyway given the lead directing double from West). Now I was wondering if partner was really asking for Aces at this point. After some pondering I decided that it's not really useful for 1NT opener to do this so I decided it must be a waiting bid and cuebid 4♥. Partner, however, thought I was showing 0/3 keycards and signed off in 5♣ (I assumed we are lacking ♦ control and passed accordingly). Slam in either minor was cold so we lost many IMPs on this board. I admit that this was on the verge of masterminding, because I should have kept it simple since I could have known that he is asking for keycards since we had never discussed this situation. We then had a discussion where I took the position that 1NT opener should never ask for anything and leave that to responder regardless what he holds. Actually I can hardly imagine a situation where opener is actually in a better position to ask for keycards than responder. Partner disagrees, claiming that this hand is a good example to support his position. According to him it is clearcut that 4♣ must be RKCB in this sequence. Now I have asked a few people about their opinion. Gerben said straight away that 4♣ shows a positive hand for slam but is not KCB since opener never asks and that 4♦ could be played as KCB in this sequence, alternately responder starts cuebidding. Unfortunately the strong players from my club I usually consult are disagreeing, claiming like my partner that 4♣ is the one exception from this rule in this case so should be ace ask. Partner refuses to talk about this at the moment because he's getting emotional in no time when the issue comes up. So it's major problem for me and I need your opinion. 1. What would you have assumed at the table playing with your regular partner? 2. Was I really that far off (or even masterminding) when assuming that partner can't be asking but 4♣ must be waiting and positive? 3. Does it make sense at all for 1NT opener to make any asking bids, ever? Thanks in advance for any comments. --Sigi

I'm interested in hearing some of the reasons you have for calling 4♠. Repeating your votes in the thread is not very valuable :-). What is more likely: double game swing or -100/+100 swing? I have no idea, is there a good rule of thumb or something that comes close? I've been told that it is rarely wrong to keep bidding at goulash boards esp. if holding spades. --Sigi

I agree with all you said -- however I think the potato labeled "amiability ranking" is too hot for the ones running the service. It might give an impression of problems with rudeness and discord if there is such a label in the profile. I can imagine that BBO wants to avoid this at all costs. I'd really love the hear the position of Fred on this one, considering the solutions that have been proposed so far. Apart from all that, as I said, I think you are 100% correct. --Sigi

You are right about this. At the table, usually the jumps are made swiftly and then there is a pause when the next player needs to consider what to do over the jump. If you are disciplined with the use of the stop card, this problem is alleviated to a great extent. The longer I'm thinking about it the more convinced I am that the best solution is to enforce a pause after a jump bid. No magic screen functionality and the likes. So I'm voting for the auto-stop-card feature mentioned in my original post. --Sigi

My experience in the matter is quite different indeed. BBO abounds with "Experts" who are in fact average club players (and often bad partners and masterminds), this not even being an exaggeration of the facts. Certain not to be named countries are obviously quite prone of producing this kind of player... I also think that BBO is very friendly (I have no first hand comparison to other services however), but I don't see what this should have to do with the self-rating system. Being able to rate others and actually having an incentive to be nice because your reputation is on stake might make BBO even friendlier. The players who are amiable already will not turn into jerks because they're being put into a position where they can rate the amiability and strength of others. However, some of the individuals who bail out on you at the first opportunity might start to reconsider their position when they find out that their bad amiability rating prevents them from finding pickup partners. You won't be labeled unfriendly just because one or two people on the service don't like you. This won't happen unless you really try to get ostracized. Nonetheless I don't think we will ever see something like peer-review of likeability, it's simply too sensitive a topic (if I was running the service I would certainly be very wary). As for the pinpointing of playing strength: needless to say any attempt to do this is futile for reasons already discussed on this thread, but still I think it might be more precise if many others rate you than yourself doing it. The ratings will average out and they will be less biased and deluded... But peer rating the strength is possible I think and more realistic to actually happen on BBO (you might make it an opt-in service so people who don't want to be judged by others would not have to be). Now back to where it all started: New Player Definitions. The current definitions are indeed not very good. Firstly the actual defining text is hidden and most players don't know it. There are too many levels, too. IMHO you'd need only four: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Star. The latter is given only on application. Then everybody who thinks of him/herself of a strong club player will be "Advanced", the more modest ones being "Intermediate". What more do you need? In order to find out what's true you'd have to play a few hands first anyway. So if we stick with self-rating my proposal is to trim down the set of labels to these four. --Sigi

Curiously enough, I think that these two issues are related, since often the 1♠ hand with slam interest opposite a 2♠ raise will make some kind of game-try first in order to see if the hands fit well enough for slam. --Sigi

I'd be happy to run a simulation, but please tell me what contraints you want for the hand and for the raises. This is not as easy to specify as you might think (the opener is not the problem as long as you assume everything above x HCP will be opened somehow differently, but if you start to talk about borderline 2♣/1M openers things get quite nasty -- you have to be able to quantify every important aspect you want to consider). What contraints did you use for your quick survey? --Sigi

Sigi's reply is true but another reason you don't want to show all 3 at once is again the speed issue. If you see two bids at once then you have some time to interpret them while waiting for RHO to bid. Hmm, I guess you are on the wrong track now, Todd. My idea is to hide the fact that a bid (presumably a jump bid) by LHO might or might not give trouble to partner. So you can't show LHOs and partners bid at once (because that would hardly hide the fact if or if not partner needed time to think -- the jumps are usually not the calls that are hard to make :-). What you want to show at once is partner's and RHOs bids, therefore you cannot start interpreting partner's bid before RHO has acted. That is the lag issue that Richard mentioned. What you can do is ask LHO about her bid right away, which you couldn't if you'd see batches of three calls. So that might save time in some cases compared to the "full-on" variant of the method. So in a way what you'd have is some weird "magic mirror screen" where you can see the person on your left but not on your right... --Sigi

The reasoning is easy: If you can see RHO hesitating, this does not give extraneous information to your LHO (i.e. RHOs partner...). Now, as soon as you have made your call, LHO gets to see both it and RHOs (== his partner's) call, thereby hiding the information about how long RHO has pondered... I hope this finally get's the idea across :-). --Sigi Yet another addition: of course you wouldn't see RHO hesitating with the new method, because you can't tell after getting the "bidding tray" which side took up how much of the thinking time. So in hindsight I don't quite understand your remark about seeing RHO hesitating. My mind starts to tie itself into knots, so I better stop posting on this thread for a while ;-). --Sigi

Regarding stuck players: You can still display the red dot. If there is no dot I don't see many drawbacks to the current method, where you also have to chat to wake people up or see if they are stuck. Only difference would be that there is one less person to be in the position to do that (namely partner of the stuck player). But since the feature would be for advanced/serious sessions where players are supposed to know eachother I guess it shouldn't be too much of a problem for opps to ping partner if she is not responding for a while (a problem might be opps trying to be polite and partner of stuck person not noticing)... Regarding this slowing down the auction: There are two possibilities here: a. Partner's bid gives you problems but not RHO (who, let's say, passes quickly). Not much time is lost in this case compared to the old method because you'll get to see partner's bid together with RHOs swift pass. b. Partner's bid gives you problems AND RHO, too. In this case, RHO will take her time, then you get to see two calls and take your time. This will take longer than in the older scheme because at the moment you can start thinking as soon as you see partner's call (but you also get the UI that it gives RHO big trouble...). Now if BOTH sides have problems all the time such an auction could indeed be notably slower, but there's no such thing as a free lunch, is there? Even relay systems shouldn't take much longer since there the intervening passes are usually very swift. Also several people have already noted that games behind screens aren't that much slower because screens are used (I can't speak of first hand experience, however), so why should it be such a big problem online (where much of the overhead such as transferring the tray and opening/closing of the screen is removed). Regarding showing three bids in a batch: I don't think that's really necessary and it will add to the additional lag induced by the method. But it's nice to see you are starting to think the method through to it's extremes already :-). --Sigi

The reasoning is easy: If you can see RHO hesitating, this does not give extraneous information to your LHO (i.e. RHOs partner...). Now, as soon as you have made your call, LHO gets to see both it and RHOs (== his partner's) call, thereby hiding the information about how long RHO has pondered... I hope this finally get's the idea across :-). --Sigi

Maybe Luis and/or Gerben can comment on this (since they play a Fantunes derivative). Thank you for the comprehensive answer Josh. --Sigi

Thanks, but that doesn't answer my question about the general performance of these openers (swings)? I'd be very interested to hear. --Sigi

*Cough*. What exactly did you mean by "for the most part" and "fair indication"? What is that online service called where you are playing? --Sigi

Not that but one could display the average IMPs and MP %s for every player with the profile (since this data is publicly available anyway on the web). I think it gives some impression of player performance. This has been suggested already in this thread. Maybe that was meant by "tournament perfomance". Attendance ratings suck, of course. --Sigi

Um, this is actually what I'm suggesting (the "virtual tray" thing). Alright, it is not exactly a virtual tray with screen, but what you said is what I meant. Thanks for pointing it out anyway :-). --Sigi EDIT: Please ignore the above. Read on below instead...

Alright, you don't like rules but you present stuff as being "written in stone". At that very moment you are presenting a hard-and-fast rule to your students (which they might keep as a nursery rhyme for a long time, especially since you seem to know quite well how to hammer things down). So you are clearly contradicting yourself here. I think that rules are good for the beginning player, if they are presented to him/her in a context that explains the whys and hows and (importantly!) hints at possible exceptions from the rules that may be made. But we do not disagree in that point if I understood correctly what you said about teaching a single topic in depth and then make the students apply their knowledge (== the new "rules"). I think it's obvious that Richard (hrothgar) is a very smart and considerate individual; most of his contributions to this forum are of tremendous insight and quality in my eyes. Same applies to the system notes he has published (well, publish might be an exaggeration :-). Most importantly he usually gets straight to the point where it is due (i.e. most of the time). You are doing him very wrong with your remark. Hannie, please apologize my brown-nosing... --Sigi

This looks somewhat similar to the Fantunes two-openers. Do you have many swings after opening 2M (i.e. how high is your variance)? What does happen more often: missing a game/slam or going for a number? Do you ever open with a 5M on the two-level? What is the system in 3rd hand? --Sigi

Hi, as already mentioned in another thread, I'm making the following suggestion for a new feature: Since hesitation during bidding often gives the same kind of unauthorized information on BBO as it does playing f2f, it would be beneficial for serious sessions to have either of: The equivalent of the Stop card; this would mean that bidding ceases for a short time (might be adjustable by the table host) if a jump bid is made by any player A virtual screen in the middle of the table, with the simulation of a bidding tray. This would mean that the bids of N and E are not being displayed to S and W before both players have made their call (same for S and W). That way you would not need the Stop functionality, therefore bidding will proceed quicker but still you'll have less information from any hesitating during the auction (this was a somewhat verbose explanation for people not knowing the screen principle). Should be easy enough to be implement and might benefit the online game! --Sigi

I guess we agree that the current method (self-rating) is useless. Many people (those with regular BBO partners and friends for example) do not need any ranking scheme. So know we can remove ranking entirely from BBO and assume that it would not bother that many people at all if we did. Alternately we can assume that there are a few players who actually care for some kind of ranking method that is more accurate than the current one. Todd has proposed one and I guess we should give it (or a similarly promising approach) a go. BTW a part of Todd's algorithm takes care of disabling the vote button until enough boards have been played with a partner. In the end, everybody is free to ignore any rating figures that appear on a players profile - I for my part would like to have something a bit more valuable than the current self-tagging. --Sigi

Imagine how they would feel if everyone else rated them as such......and not themselves. I mean,it does open up a whole new set of "feelings".... most players have some bridge-pride in what they do, at any level The nice part of the prisoner's dillemma approach is that you would not be rating your peers on an absolute scale, but compare them to your own skills instead (better, equal, worse). Your pick would not be displayed to the other person, it would only be used to recalculate the new rating for both players. This will provide a global peer rating of some sort without the problem that you could blame anyone of your former partners for giving you a bad rating. Maybe it would merely turn out to be a major failure, but I'd really like to try it out. Todd has put a bit more thought into his own ideas, and maybe one could combine it with the above (NB it wasn't my idea but somebody else's in this thread). --Sigi

Playing SAYC: we respond 1♦ with (5)6-7 and 1NT with 8-9 when balanced and holding no 4M. When holding a major and diamonds, we always respond in the major unless we have enough values to reverse into the major over openers rebid. So the cutoff should be GF values (12 points or so, depending on how sound your openers are) as a reverse into the major is forcing to game in SAYC. I don't know the implications for 2/1. --Sigi

Off course you can see the meaning of your bid you are about to make ( as long as you select under Automatic display options - Of bids you might make ), just mouse over the bid that you are about to make, and you will see it. Say you want to know the meaning of a 2D bid that you are about to make, click on 2 and then before clicking on D, you can mouse over C, D, H, S. NT and see the meaning of 2C, 2D, 2H, 2S and 3NT. Sigh. Maybe you should read through the thread again before replying. This is not a discussion about what you can or can't do with FD at the moment, it's a discussion about what should be possible in the future and what not -- and which parts should be restrictable by table hosts. So what I was suggesting is to add a function to disable the bidder to see what his or her own bid means in advance. --Sigi