Sigi_BC84

I am really glad to hear that, and of course I agree, BBO sorely needs a rewrite instead of patching it over and over again. I think I have mentioned before that Java would be a great platform, haven't I? :-) I'm looking forward already to testing the new thing when the first betas are released. --Sigi

Yeah, now we've got WoW mentioned on BBF. Thanks for that ;-). Your suggestions regarding the chat systems are nice, I've had something similar in mind for a long time. Actually what I was thinking of was not WoW (or similar games) but IRC (Internet Relay Chat) which happens to be around for ages (way longer than ICQ or the like) and naturally does handle chat quite well... IRC, too, has a system based on channels. Every participiant can open as many channels as he/she likes. After opening a channel you are alone in that channel and automatically marked as "channel operator", which means that you can make other people operator, kick them etc. (sort of like after opening a table in the MBC). I'd like to see something like that in BBO. Do not constrain the system in terms of rooms or room names. Keep it flexible and let people open their own channel. The community will very very quickly converge on a few popular channels which will be kept open (e.g. #teams for tourney ads or #bidding for bidding questions etc.). Furthermore, tables will be their own channel, as will be tourneys, vugraph arenae etc. etc. Also, the GUI should be revamped. Make the chat line a permanent part of the main window, instead of displaying a detached window on demand! Many people are chatting all the time anyway, and that chat window is constanly hidden or popping up and covering part of the text you want to read, it really has to become part of the main window. You could have a look at popular IRC clients (for example XChat) and mimic them in terms of chat functionality. Something like this will make BBO sexier than ever! Thanks, Richard, for bringing it up, now I've finally gotten around to writing up some of my ideas (I'm aware that I mostly repeated what you wrote, but it just turned out that way, sorry :-). --Sigi

Partner sees the posted card by clicking "ours", oppos see our cards by clicking "theirs". Only one player of each pair has to post the card, it is then distributed to the other three players automatically. This also applies to the new style cards if I'm not mistaken (therefore this may take some time for larger FD files). --Sigi

This is not different in other popular sports, though. The national organization sends the team, not the players who are playing in the country in question. To stay with the soccer analogy: the federal coach picks the players for the national team, this is not decided by a popular vote among the players (or the fans, even though they certainly would prefer that :-). Accordingly the organization decides on the mode being used. If the players want a change they have to go through the democratic means the organization provides. Now maybe here something is wrong in Poland (Robert used the word "postulated", maybe he can shed some more light on what exactly happened). Also from the figures posted further up in this thread, not many players seem to be actually registered with the Polish bridge union -- this would mean that a large number of players have no democratic powers in that organization anyway, they can postulate whatever they want, if they don't join the org they won't be able to vote for their choice. From a democratic viewpoint the Polish scheme may be worse, but in terms of sending the "best team" having some captain nominate the players probably works better. Also I would not equal trial matches with a democratic solution -- trials are not elections, and luck may be involved etc. Just my two cents. --Sigi

I can't supply any figures, but I've talked with an expert from my club who is watching a lot of Vugraph and apparently has a good grasp of the general performance of the Polish teams. He has told me that the general level of play in Poland is very high and that they have to play several qualification rounds just to select the best from the best in order to put together one single team to send to international events. It could well be possible that they would be able to have two or three top-notch teams playing everytime if they were allowed to do so. To me it seems like part of the problem lies in the fact that you have competing countries and not, say, competing transnational teams. Soccer analogy: Brazil could easily send two national teams and probably win every FIFA championship that way. Germany couldn't... I'm also very interested in actually well-informed opinions from Polish players. --Sigi

What about (1♥[♥])-Dbl-(Rdbl)-?? if "Rdbl" was a transfer to, say, ♣ (in a 2/1 context)? That is unfamiliar and opps won't be prepared to it but I guess (?) it is allowed without having an suggested defense. The kind of problem for the defender that you mentioned arises everytime if the opponents do anything that is not widely perceived as "standard" (not only when the opening was unusual). To me it seems like you open Pandora's Box if you require suggested defenses multiple levels into the bidding tree. --Sigi

Well, I've gotten yelled at on BBO for opening 2♣ meaning Wk2♦ or strong. The accusations were something like "this is an ACBL club and your bidding is wacky and you are both ____". (Edit: NB this did not happen in an ACBL event.) So apparently I'm to a certain extent within the sphere of influence of the ACBL, if I want it or not. Furthermore I'm acknowledging the fact that most of the world's influential players are in fact US Americans and/or affiliated with the ACBL. This and the general experience that the US are quite influental not only concerning sports makes me concerned that what happens in the ACBL could quite likely affect my own Bridge experience as well. To put it another way: I'm pretty sure that if, suddenly, a strong group of US top-players decided that HUMs are in fact not evil and induced a change of regulations within the US, the world would follow rather sooner than later. So please let me be concerned with the structures of the ACBL and decisions made within the ACBL to a certain extent. About your remark regarding hauling fruit and then walking away: what do you expect? Fred Gitelman more or less admits that the system in place might be inappropriate, that he himself actually doesn't care too much about the mid-chart and that the likes of Meckstroth/Martel are experts and should know what they are doing? If even Fred (whom I have perceived as very open-minded, smart and generous so far) displays such an attitude please forgive me if I start to be inclined to walk away in frustration. If you take offense about the "old fart" bit: that was a polemic remark nobody here hopefully takes too serious. I regularly play in clubs with lots of senior members and many of them are friendly and I enjoy their company. However, Bridge has a serious image problem because of the majority of senior players and my somewhat disrespectful remark only reflects how I think Bridge is largely perceived by the hip young crowd that we are missing. Lastly, I'm aware that Jan Martel is actually listening and I appreciate a lot hearing from somebody in her position about all this. --Sigi

What would be a good definition for "artificial system" in your eyes? Of course it's silly to label Polish Club artificial as long as Precision or, say, Recursive Diamond, are not artificial per WBF definition. Strictly speaking almost all Bridge bidding is artificial (except for actual sign-off bids). Opening eg. 1♠ doesn't mean you want to play 1♠ or even any number of ♠. You merely transport a conventional message where part of the message happens to be the suit symbol that is printed onto the bidding card. Now take the 1NT opener: very artificial to everybody who doesn't know what it means. It has become ingrained to us that a certain shape and range is associated with this bid, but artificial it still is. Who even thinks "artificial" after a Stayman or transfer over NT? And these bids are truly artificial, only they look natural to us because they naturally occur in most partnerships. So assuming that we need some kind of systems regulations for certain classes of events, what are good definitions for the "non-evil" category? That is the category that should be used for short matches and events that don't allow for advance submission of methods. The approach taken by the ACBL to positively define what is allowed and not allow the remaining methods per default is clearly wrong. You need easy to grasp definitions of the system categories that are not based on making exceptions. There are horribly unusual methods which are completely GCC legal. It just doesn't work. What is completely beyond me is the reason behing the fact that those players in the midchart committe continue to waste their time there instead of putting some lobbying/whatever effort into establishing better systems regulations for the ACBL. If the likes of Jeff Meckstroth instead prefer to hold on to the present, clearly dissatisfactory body of regulations, they should not be surprised if others are wording suspicions that they in fact only cater to their own interests (as bridge professionals and national players). About Bridge organizations memberships: I don't think that all of this regulations stuff will affect memberships or Bridge popularity as a whole significantly. As a new player you're learning something standard and simple anyway, and by the time you are seriously into Bridge (when you might realize that you can't play the methods you might prefer), silly regulations won't stop you from continue to play (even if it's merely online). So I don't think changing the regulations will have a significant influence on the influx of players in either direction -- it will, sadly, remain low as far as I can see. About pampering the ACBL membership, serving their water with ice and whatever: apparently, the ACBL is a big bunch of old farts. Cater to their needs but don't be surprised if Bridge remains a terribly unsexy undertaking. I don't really care, I won't ever be an ACBL member and the situation in Germany is not much different anyway (BTW any old farts reading this don't be offended). I've pretty much given up hope for a positive trend outside of online bridge. The Polish example shows that Bridge can be hugely popular without many restrictions to the game. Also keep in mind that having arbitrary conventions with partner is part of the rules, and if that should really turn out to be a problem in reality (I doubt it) then admit that there's something wrong with the game instead of inventing braindead regulations and bullying those who try to apply creative methods. I'm sorry this has turned out to be a rant, I hope I have been slightly coherent. I'm not gonna proofread. --Sigi

Question to those playing (2♣)-X as stayman: what if 2♣ showed both majors? Do you still show/ask for majors or is X something else then? To Andy: I think Mike's explanation of Rubensohl was quite comprehensive already. You can google the web for more. Here's an article by Marc Smith about Rubensohl that is quite good (the suit symbols come out wrong but you'll figure this out). You should also keyword search these forums here for Rubensohl, I'm sure there will be some threads going into quite some detail. --Sigi

allowed are: Green (natural systems, or systems like Polish Club or "Strefa") Blue (Strong Club/Strong Diamond, where one club/one diamond is always strong) [...] allowed are: Green, Blue, Brown Sticker [...] allowed are: Green, Blue, and it is possible to use Yellow & Brown Sticker if the opponents are agreed. So apparently they use WBF color codes. Is the Red category not being used at all? I find it a bit odd that they allow Yellow on mutual agreement in the lowest category but Red isn't even mentioned. --Sigi

Here's a document describing it in some detail (and the rest of the entire system in quite some detail :-): Marston/Thompson Moscito 2005 (your question is answered on page 11). Maybe Richard plays it differently... --Sigi

Now for the most interesting question: What system regulations are typically in place in Poland? Edit: I'm also interested in the average age, and why it is so popular. How do new players get introduced into the game?

I've seen a few members updating their avatars lately. What about you Luis? I think your decision to stay should be celebrated with a new avatar (I'm voting for the PHP book cover). --Sigi

To me the opposite of 100 is clearly: 4294967195 I'm going to revise this when the 64 bit version of BBO is released. --Sigi

That is huge. I'm interested in some commentary from the Dutch. Not bad either, and they're all playing the same system (you have to alert 12-14 notrump!). Ugh. VERY surprising, I've been told there is a lot of Bridge in Poland, that there are lots of huge players and we all know that BBO is filled with Poles. I'm strongly suggesting something is wrong with these figures. Probably many people are not registered members or there are different organizations. Also very surprising. So many Turks on BBO (well, not all of them being huge players...), I can hardly believe there are only around 2000 members in their national organization (or it's a young organization and basically all of them play on BBO as well). These clearly include those who emigrated from the US in order to play proper Bridge. At least it shows you can have healthy memberships while allowing many conventions and systems. Very interesting figures after all Richard, thanks. --Sigi

Asking again about this because it somehow fits into this thread: Apart from the options the robots are run with, what are the bidding system settings for the robots? I guess it's 2/1, but with which conventions enabled? I'm interested in setting up my (full) version of GIB at home in the same way as the robots on BBO so I can practice for MBTs. --Sigi

Being a technical person I'm quite curious how many resources are needed at the moment. Which machines are you using, how many do you need per MB table and how does your load balancing work (roughly)? From a technical perspective, this could be very interesting. A problem that I'm seeing will be the vast difference in computational power on the client machines. I guess quite a lot of BBO's users are using really old machines. GIB takes his time even on high end CPUs (like Athlon64 3000+ or comparable). --Sigi

That's true and I think it's safe to say that Justin comes across way mature for a 19 year old! (and not that arrogant at all -- we're all losing it sometimes and this is an emotional issue for Justin after all) --Sigi

In which way is that version specialized? I could not find any substantial differences from the official release (apart from it trailing a few minor releases behind the thing you can purchase). --Sigi

You can make it display a lot of information if you're running it in a console window. There is a fairly comprehensive description of it under http://www.gibware.com/engine.txt --Sigi

A bunch of people taking sides,and a few in the middle is getting to the bottom of it? I was simply talking about the reasons Rain had for deleting the posts. She did not explain why, but in this thread it came to light. There is not much more to it, really -- the moderator could have been a bit more careful and Justin could have been a bit less emotional. No big deal to me. I'm now reading the website that Justin was about to link. In a way, this entire thread was the best ad for the site you could imagine. --Sigi

Can you describe your methods in more detail? I would be interested. --Sigi

Exactly! Also a few words explaining to the public the reasons for the deletions would have been appropriate. Without Justin's angry "good-bye" message we would have never gotten to the bottom of this. Now Rain please don't be offended for pointing this out. It's great that you are volunteering to do all of this. --Sigi

My briefly stated opinion on this farce: 1. After I've found out about the blog in question, I must say that there is a lot of interesting reading on there and it took me a while to find the part of it which is apparently offensive to some. Somebody certainly gets ridiculed there, but if the quotes are authentic I must say that is for a reason (sorry dude...). The blog certainly is not about bridge in general, and if Justin likes it I think you should not disallow his link because somebody might be offended by a small part of the site. 2. IF you think you had to censor in this case, it should have been done more carefully, i.e. by providing some explanation in the edit about the reason. Also the replies by Justin should not have been edited out completely. 3. Justin, take a time out and return after a while. A lot of people would miss your contributions to this forums. I've seen worse things happening on public forums (being partly guilty in one case even), this issue is being taken a bit too serious in my eyes. After all the other heated Water Cooler discussions about really serious topics now this gets turned into a major issue. How ironic. --Sigi

A few years ago I was on a bus in downtown Sydney to go to UTS to hear an interview with once-famous writer/director Paul Schrader. On the way I saw John Travolta pleasing the crowd before the Australian premiere of "Swordfish". My reaction was quite jaded but two girls behind me went "John Travolta Oh My God" and got off the bus right away. I was much more interested in seeing Schrader so couldn't care less ;-). If the city where I'm living had someone like Travolta visiting it would be on the front page of the regional newspaper. --Sigi