Sigi_BC84

Actually my main motivation for the post was to share an entertaining story. I appreciate you having looked it up, it was interesting after all to see the facts -- and it would have taken me probably much longer than you to find the relevant rulings. --Sigi

LOL; Frederic, I think you would make for a great lawyer :-). --Sigi

We've got the rulebooks in the club, and I've got them at home as well, I was just being too lazy to look it all up :-). Usually other people in the club care about such decisions... Anyway this is an interesting case that could be used in a TD examination as well, probably :-). --Sigi

In the first board it's a clear-cut case, because the opps didn't check properly that the information that was recorded on the traveller was correct. Both sides have their share of responsibility for correctness of that information. Apart from that I think that it can be expected that such an error doesn't go unnoticed. Either you or your partner didn't count their cards, or dummy comes down with too many/too few cards or declarer is the only person with a card missing (fell under the table etc.) and there is an early claim. That last possibility is the trickiest, I think in that case the defending pair shouldn't be punished, unless there was something really obviously wrong with the claim (because of missing card(s)) that they didn't notice. But that's just my common sense evaluation, I don't know the exact laws that apply here, maybe an experienced TD can shed some light on this... --Sigi

Hi, from a local club tournament this afternoon: In round one, where the boards had not been shuffled yet, the best pair in our club (one being a true star player) sit down against two senior players. The deck is shuffled and the cards are being dealt. Uneventful auction leading to 4♠, a few tricks are played, then a claim for plus one. So far so good. Result and distribution are recorded on the traveller and the board goes back to the counter. Next round, next pair, picks up the same board. Uneventful auction, 4♠, claim after trick five, result written down, you know the story. During the third round, the next table getting to play this board notices that one side has 14-12 cards, the other side having 13-13. Investigating the traveller they find that this actual distribution of the cards has been written down on the traveler and both pairs before them didn't find anything unusual about the hand at all. The board got scored 40/40 for all four pairs playing it in rounds one and two and redealt for the rest of the field. I think that's quite a priceless mishap, to say the least... --Sigi (To the defense of the star players it has to be said that they both had 13 cards.)

This is one of the cases, where in my eyes, you should simply call the TD and have him (or her) explain to the opps what they have done wrong. Make it clear that its not you offending them but simply that the Laws of Bridge require you to take steps against possible unathorized information being used. If that position is upheld by the players knowledgeable enough to know when and where there is the time to take such measures, offending pairs will simply stop passing information of that kind -- at least when they are playing against you. Actually you can't do much against people getting mad at you because of such matters. If you don't take any steps and always swallow your anger, that's only hurting your own enjoyment. I don't think it's being selfish or ignoring rules of good conduct to be a little bit competitive and serious about it all. Smart opponents will understand, regardless of them being bad players. --Sigi

Agree 1000 %. Only if playing against another experienced tournament pair would I ever even consider calling the director for UI (because they should know better). Well, many of the so called "social players" are experienced tournament players -- after all, they come to the club several times a week to play "social bridge". I have found that, among them, there are quite a few who deliberately use unauthorized information gathered through several means during the auction and play. Others do it subconciously, because never anything bad happens (i.e. they are not penalized out of courtesy). Now I'm certainly not one of the purists who are trying to enforce the Laws during each and every hand, regardless whom I'm playing with. In that regard I agree with you: if they are basically just clueless and I consider them friendly and honest players, I will not call the TD in many cases (Arend has put it quite well). The problem is that if you keep such an attitude (and many ambitious players do that in fact), you create an atmosphere where using UI or even blatant cheating will become fashionable, because calling the TD is perceived as an offense. This is in my eyes a good argument to be consistent about your attitude towards the Laws; because if everybody follows you and the TD is called also for minor issue, general discipline among all players is created (or at least encouraged). Of course this is a delicate issue. Many clubs (including my own) live off the "herd" that gathers there for social play. These people might go play somewhere else if you start creating an environment that is "too competitive" for them -- and your club will suffer from it. --Sigi

For the reason I (and Jason) already mentioned: Using Butler, the extreme results are not going into the calculation of the IMP base, so if somebody puts a -7600 up or something like that, this does not skew the results of all the hands. Or can one tweak the existing Cross-IMP setup accordingly (at least for private tables I haven't seen such an option)? --Sigi

I am with Jason when he's saying that having the hands played more often will be beneficial (I'm also with Arend regarding getting a borderline hand will give you a good result if you bid it properly). My suggestion: the possibilty of enabling "Butler scoring" for my own table, so that the most extreme results are disregarded for calculation of the base score. I'd also like to have that option for tournaments. Is there any chance we will see Butler scoring in the near future? --Sigi

"640k of RAM will be enough for everyone." - Bill Gates (SCNR)

Certainly not but I will grant you this backdoor. I read your other contributions to this thread in that way - make sense to me. Actually I was serious about everything I've posted, except for the "booting" and the "good bridge" button... --Sigi

No one doubts that comments on the play and defence are valuable and that people want them. I guess Richard didn't deem it necessary to reconfirm that. Let's keep in mind that the main motivation for holding this match is the exposition of a bidding system, not showing off the card wizardry of some top stars. So indeed it will be of paramount importance that some top experts on Moscito and relay methods in general will be commenting on the following: what do the bids mean? why did the player choose (not) to relay? what could happen if he did relay now (i.e. lead directing doubles, preemption etc.) which inferences are/would be given to the oppos? relay specific issues, i.e. right/wrongsiding of the contract etc. Of course there will be commentary on the actual play of the hands as well, but this goes without saying anyway, doesn't it? Edit: I know that Moscito is not mainly about relaying, but about having quick-in-quick-out auctions. There should be plenty of commentary on that as well, of course. --Sigi

I don't think we should take the competition as an attempt to find out which system is superior -- of course in the end the "better" team will win, if not randomness will decide matters (since it will be a fairly short match after all). To make this an interesting and worthwhile event we only need fairly balanced teams in terms of playing (carding) strength and, most importantly, good commentators who are giving some in-depth explanations about what is happening (like Arend has pointed out very clearly). What I'm looking forward to is, firstly, seeing Moscito in action in a "serious" event where each side is giving their best. Secondly, I'm hoping to see at least some boards where both methods will show their merits, respectively. Who is winning in the end doesn't matter that much to me. --Sigi

Apparently you didn't get the slight touch of irony in my previous post... This will be my last reply regarding this matter, as I don't see much common ground between us here. Let me say though that in my opinion you are on a completely wrong track. None of your "problems" will be solved by adding several "disallow-this-or-that" buttons to the BBO software. You said that you have lots of online friends who like to sit down at your table to play with or against you. Why do you need all kinds of restrictive features then? Don't you trust these people to continue to well behave like they reportedly did before? BTW I have seen your tables and they quite closely resemble a fortress -- yet apparently you're still drawing problematic pickup partners. This is kind of a mystery to me, to be honest... --Sigi

You might not have the flexibility of enforcing your table rules via the software, but you will be able to tell opps and partner about them. You can even boot them if they are not willing to obey (there is a button for that...). The CCs you can't enforce because most people don't have one and it's much too cumbersome for 99% of the BBO population to enter their own CC into Full Disclosure. Again, you can enforce these for your table but don't be surprised if interest in games against you will strangely drop afterwards... How about a button to enforce "good Bridge" at your table? I'd certainly like that, would probably make me play much better :-))). --Sigi

Oh, this is nice. I usually don't setup our team matches and the person who does has told me he didn't find a way to upload hands. We've been overlooking this. This certainly helps with the league games (although some additional software support wouldn't hurt here). Edit: On second reading that approach seems quite awkward, especially since if you want to emulate a league doing this, you'll have to distribute the hands upfront and designate table hosts and rely on the hosts setting this all up properly, within the "time limit". Sounds nasty. --Sigi

At my table you will have that option once - and once only! I'm sorry, I don't get what your problem is here... If I'm dummy on your table you won't even notice me doing something in the background. I might well want to register for a tournament that is starting later. Apart from that, you really shouldn't impose on others what you might or might not want them to do while they are playing -- I'm sure your opps and partners will respect your wish that they focus on the game while at your table. You're not enforcing this by making the BBO software single-threaded (you might have noticed that everybody can easily run other applications in parallel to BBO, e.g. a web browser...). --Sigi

I'm not very fond of that idea -- it should all go directly into the client. Having said that, some additional functionality for team matches is badly needed. At the moment you can't hold competitions with more than two teams without teams having to sit out or arranging it all by hand if the number of teams is even etc. Also, league play is not possible because one cannot use predealt boards in the events. So, the following should be added: Swiss and KO mode for 3+ teams Ability to inject hands for all tables in the tournament simultaneously A league mode (i.e. the hands are the same on all tables, but the TD picks the pairings upfront) --Sigi

I guess it goes without saying that there is quite some interest in this. The idea of having regular exhibition matches of this kind is wonderful. Maybe this will catch on, would be really awesome. --Sigi

Wow, thanks for all the comprehensive info, I didn't expect that much. Really appreciated. FYI, this is what we are playing after 1x-1M-1NT at the moment: 2♣ puppet to 2♦, then: ..pass..weak with longer ♦ ..2M....inv+ with 5M, no side suit ..2♥....inv. with 5♠/4♥ (if first response was ♠) ..2NT..nat, balanced inv with 4M ..3x....inv with 5M/5x ..3M...inv with 6M ..3NT..5M, choice of games ..4x....6M, GF+, chicane splinter So most invitational sequences go via 2♣ puppet. 2NT puppet to 3♣, then: ..pass..weak with longer ♣ ..3♦..GF+ with supp for opened m (4M) ..3♥..GF+ with 5♠/4♥ (if first response was ♠) The direct bids: ..2♦....exactly inv. with longer ♦ (because of Walsh treatment) ..2M..any weak hand with 5+M ..2♥....nat (if first response was ♠) ..3x....5/5 distribution, GF+ ..3M....6+M, no shortness, slam interest ..4x....singleton splinter, 6+M, GF+ I hope I got it all right. --Sigi

OK, having Fred in the equation will certainly add many kibitzers. There is another advantage of playing in a normal team room, which is that the players can alert the calls (are self alerts possible in the vugraph theater, too?) or that Full Disclore could be used (probably the best option, if available). --Sigi

I didn't say it was easy or that I could design it properly within half an hour. I've got some ideas, however, and I've already promised to Fred to send him my propositions after I've thought it through. At the moment you are mostly single screen, but a multi-screen (concurrent) design is already seeping through at some points: For example one can have a slice of the lobby view above the chat window, or a list of the tourneys. Unfortunately, that's about it -- you can see the tourney list, but you can't do anything with it. I guess that's what should be changed next. Maybe some kind of tabbed view would be nice, cf. OKBridge (I know that Fred deliberately designed BBO not to look like OKBridge, but some ideas are simply too basic and too good to be dismissed for such reasons IMHO). Well, as I said I'll come forward with this as soon as I have some more clear and conrete ideas. --Sigi

Let people voice their opinions if they want. I don't see a major problem here: a. The big star matches with 500+ kibs that I've watched were totally OK in this regard so far. b. Moscito vs. Natural might not draw as many people as Fantunes for example; that will keep noise lower, too. c. Also I expect many kibs to be quite interested in the matter (i.e. less "random" kibitzers), leading to a higher expected discipline in my eyes; also it would be convenient for these people to be able to talk about what's happening. So I'm voting for having an open chat and rely on people not chatting into the room. --Sigi

Actually we do have a comprehensive checkback structure already that covers most cases. I was hoping somebody has already come up with a modification of Heeman or Keri that would nicely apply to the 1NT rebid -- apparently it's not that easy, and if the deviation from the standard sequences are getting too high one will end up with two different structures again, which would eliminate the main benefit of the approach (reduction of memory load). About playing Heeman over the rebid: apparently that was not such a great idea of mine to begin with, I start to see that it's simply not effective (Free pointed out one pretty obvious example already). Josh, could you maybe summarize the x-fer checkback approach? I'd like to compare that to what we are currently playing. Chances that I'll get hold of TBW from June 1991 are pretty close to zero... --Sigi

I would not restrict this to team matches. I've often wanted to browse/register tournaments while I was dummy or kibbing somewhere. It is very annoying having to browse back all the way to the tournament menu to register (this leads to the issue that the navigational structure within BBO could use a major overhaul...). At some places you are too restricted in what you can do because of the lack of multitasking. Non-conflicting actions should always be possible at the same time. However, this is often not easy to implement, especially if the software hasn't been constructed with these use cases in mind. So that might be one of the reasons why it hasn't happened yet in BBO. I also would like to second Richard when he's saying that it's not a good idea at all trying to educate users through restraining them in their possibilities. --Sigi