sfbp

Essentially what the data appear to say is that you should use whatever other criteria you use to decide whether to open normally. I may be able to follow up with some more data (if everyone isn't bored and overwhelmed already) but my sense of it is this: if you have more points than average (10), BID, with the exception I noted higher up the thread for balanced hands. One thing that set me thinking about this was a single incident where I played against one of our better players locally who opened last seat on a nondescript NINE count, and she got an excellent matchpoint score. I would personally never do this since I open all 12 counts in 1st, 2nd and 3rd seats, whereas that player might have been allowing for her partner passing a 12-count. I think there might be a "Pearson Effect" but it certainly doesn't indicate you need FIFTEEN Pearson points. Opening 4441 11 counts (with a spade singleton) is probably not a good move, but I wouldnt put it any stronger than that, without further data. Perhaps it's time for you or some others to get wet feet :P Stephen

Here's the chart for 12 points and 2 spades http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/testing/12hcp2s.jpg It's even worse passing here... -0.79 imps is a huge loss. A full 1 imp or 7 MP% worse than opening. To put this in perspective, you should look at all standard, agreed actions by the majority should always end up 0.0 imps or 50%. Stephen

It's all coming back to me. If we believe in Pearson points, something magic should happen at 15 PP. Anyway everyone seems to agree that the 15PP hands should be opened. So here are the interesting cases which are only 14PP 14 points and no spades 13 points and 1 spade 12 points and 2 spades 11 points and 3 spades Clearly the last two are the only critical ones... most people can see the sense of opening a 13 count no matter what. Just for fun I looked at 11 points and 2 spades, and 11 points and 1 spade, as well as 12 points and 1 spade. Anyway here is the chart for 11 points and exactly 3 spades. http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/testing/11hcp3s.jpg These numbers (for opening 1C, 1D, 1H) are hugely in favour of opening. Of course you don't open 1S. Half an imp or 5 MP% is a big margin in favour of opening. Just in case you are wondering (I was) the 20.71 over on the right is the average pointcount held by one side. Not sure which as it depends on where the mouse was, and I wasnt looking at the time. I don't show the variances but as expected with these large frequencies, they are negligible. I'll try 12 points and 2 spades next. Stephen

Ben I have saved for you in the place where you normally upload files for HB a file called ALLPASS.BRD (actually its zipped as ALLPASS.ZIP). You should be able to download to laptop and use as search using the maroon button,, on the 23million+ dataset Good luck! Stephen

Hotshot got it in one. BRBR shows essentially this: if you have more points than average it pays to act. The exception is 4432 or 4333 11 counts because you may get punished. The bidding structure I use makes sure that I open all 11 counts with 5 cards in any seat. When it comes to 4th seat openings, essentially you are guessing that most of the time the first three players have 10 points or less. So if you have 11, you should open, giving your side 21 points versus 19. Stephen

I have looked in vain for the article that I wrote on this. However there's a reference to it in one of my more obscure web pages, and yes I confirm Ben's observations by a somewhat different (perhaps more thorough) route. from http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/day4.html What I did was to pull all the boards that were passed out at least once (ie there is some perception that one should not open) and excluding accidents I think rather like Ben did. With this subset of boards, I then looked at all the possible actions in fourth seat as a function of HCP and spades. Same conclusion, essentially Stephen

You have agreed Ogust (forcing) and RONF (ie everything is forcing). Why should you have no way to bid a new suit NF? Granted it's not a very useful thing to do, but you have so much expressive power with 4 forcing bids (2NT and three new suits), that it seems perfectly logical to play a new suit after ogust to be NF. Having said that, I don't play Ogust. Have no idea what the standard is. I do know that a surprising number of partnerships play change of suit NF (presumably they all have to go through 2NT, whatever it means, if they want to wake pard up and proceed to slam) I have heard this mantra "all strange bids are forcing" (ASBAF). This seems to arise out of the idea that you always have MORE than your last bid told. O for a bidding system where your bids actually get their values on the table most of the time. Then you can play ASBANF

It depends whether I believe he has his reverse or not., and the caliber of the player who is my LHO. Against a poor player I would lead the KD (or QD if this would not fool partner), on the assumption that they bid game because they could see nowhere else to go. Against someone good I might try the 7!H. Why the 7? I play 2/4 leads and pard will not think that I have 4 to the Q. A good player might just be manufacturing a reverse, it has been known to happen. Doesnt look too positive for the defence.

When you give average anything, play ceases and the hand is over. If not the last board then bidding next board begins. Round is over if it was the last board of the round. I have seen players sitting there complaining for 10 mins because NOTHING HAPPENED (remember "Adventure"?) when they clicked... they just weren't looking where it said "Round Complete" (in the "clock"). It sounds like this might have been the case? Stephen

[hv=d=n&v=b&s=s87hk7432d8cj9542]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] What do you think of this 2♥ preempt, third seat? Is it fair game a. in an individual? b. with a regular partner? c. at any time? Does it make it fairer or less fair if this player just sat down? (ie a sub of some sort)

♥AJ for me too, trying not to think too hard sfbp

I would like to know this: if 2 points are added for a singleton, how many points are SUBTRACTED for a singleton Queen or King? Without wishing to provoke a flame war, it seems to me at the very least self-serving to attempt to justify the range used by adding in distribution. Experience from BRBR shows that when we hold the majority of the points, every singleton J pulls its weight. So an un passed partner with 20 points, can they rely on opener having 5 points or not? If not, bidding game becomes an extremely random exercise. When we have very few points, suit concentration IS an issue - and it would concern me if the bid was used on ANY hand of acceptable point range without regard to honours being in the suits being bid. Add to the fact that the suits are unknown, and one starts to see the rationale behind the "destructive bidding" shibboleth used by the ACBL in deciding to ban some of these conventions. Stephen

I think that's a moot point Josh. Peter Cheung measured that a long time ago, using about 24 million hand records (all we had at the time), and found that the actual average number of tricks taken at the table agreed pretty closely with the double-dummy result. I forget the details, but his conclusion was that the two are essentially interchangeable. Stephen

Too bad! XYZ is my favourite convention :P Stephen

Looks to me as if your PARTNER asked the opps what the bids meant, and the opponent simply explained, telling you (for whatever reason - ignorance, guilt &c &c) his hand. Also I reckon partner asked in reasonable time but the auction went quick and opp's first explanation didn't come until he had finished typing it, by which time more "stuff" had happened. Face it, with a Polish club opening, noone has any clue what it means initially, and the hand is not described until at least the second bid by the 1C opener. If his hand was the one he described then the biggest problem was for him not to alert 2C, giving your pd a bit more chance to come in with 2D. Yes of course he should alert all his bids, but it wouldn't have told you much more than it did. You are quite smart enough to know when the 2H bid was finally explained that they playing PC. I like the way lho decided to tell you his hand. I agree that Polish club should be alerted but I wonder whether making the result depend on whether you can make exactly 2D might be a good idea. If 2D makes then adjust to 2D = otherwise leave the result as is... you are big boys and everyone at the table knew that the double was balancing. Would you balance on a hand where opp had bid and rebid clubs and now produces a 2H bid, passed by opp's partner? Even if they were bidding standard, which it seems very unlikely that they could be...... :) Stephen

My 2 cents - this is what we have been playing in Purple (standardised) Precision card for a while... doesn't really fit any of the poll's definitions. 2/1 - 5-card suit, 10+ (I guess this invitational or better!) only game forcing if responder supports opener's major at 3-level on second round with or without jump. Jump shifts - STRONG... (no bergen) - 16 points and KQxxx is a bare minimum 2NT - Jacoby 15+ and 4 trumps 3M - flat hand (3 OR 4 trumps), no ruffing value, pard is advised not to proceed unless he was going to bid 4M over ANY raise 2M - hand which will accept AT LEAST ONE game try (we play short suit game tries, something like reverse Kokish!?) 4M - of course any hand which doesnt need to mess around, this may include 12-counts with 4 trumps as well as 5 counts with 5 trumps :unsure: 1NT - ANYTHING ELSE. May be very good or very bad hand, or hand which wishes to deposit pd in 2M. Also any hand which thinks it might bid 2NT inviting on second round, or any hand which, with rebid from pard showing SIX, will play in game in 6-2 fit. Also any hand with ruffing value that wants to invite by jumping to 3M at second turn. This is essentially an alertable treatment (no lower or upper point count bound) but usually we just say "forcing". Second round non-jump bid of new suit is drop dead, of course. I call this the "i-don't-know-what-to-do" bid. It works because most of the time opener is sufficiently limited - jump shift or rebid by opener is rare and of course non-forcing. 1S - if partner opens 1H, and we have 4 spades, we treat this essentially the same as 1NT, except for the very good and very bad options. If he rebids 1NT we have XYZ which gives the responder lots of choices. Splinters, sure. We play 1S 3H as splinter so care must be taken with 1S-2H since it may have a very strong hand, of course, because no SJS available. And the other major at the 4-level is always natural. Stephen

I think you missed my point. I was merely implying that I think it would be a good idea to have the times in more than EST and PST. I mean, for us who naively believe that there is a world outside the US ;) Roland My point exactly. If they are at 4 am why would anyone want to know? Just as I don't particularly need to be informed about events at noon in Denmark or the UK? (yes I am English and I know exactly what time zone it is in both places). BTW I really appreciate your efforts in putting a tourney (the 2/1 tourneys) at times that we here can attend. It's just not practicable for these BRBR tourneys, at the moment, not least because I needed an uncrowded slot. Stephen

For members who live outside the United States, (some of) the times are: Paris: 04.30 Saturday morning. London: 03:30 Saturday morning. Sydney: 2:30 pm Saturday. Hi Roland, good to hear from you If you look on the website BRBR Online and CoC you will see that I didn't pick this time on purpose - it just happens to be a good slot where there aren't too many other tourneys. Also access from Europe and Sydney not that quick (it's a VERY long way) to my database server, so it's probably best to focus on US and Canadian users for now. In time, I am sure someone will help us to offer these competitions at other times. For now, let's get started. For the record, our winners last night were from Israel. 'Nuff said? Thanks for your interest in BRidgeBRowser Stephen

I think I can see where you are going. I agree that the 1♦ responder simply told what his hand was when asked for explanation. That's a far cry from having an agreement, which your second example seems to indicate that they do not (it's 3rd seat instead of 4th seat but does anyone seriously suggest that's the difference?). This pair looks to me like a candidate for further tracking. Like the pair that alerted the same bid (1♠ 1NT) as forcing and non-forcing in two successive hands against me. Stephen

What I want to know is. what's all this shillyshallying about? In classic precision 2♠ simply shows the hand you ascribe to your pd, 6 spades and 4-7 points. Ok maybe in your system there's only 5 spades there but that is your problem, not mine. Seems to me the less you tell opps about your hands if they are unlikely to be in game, the better! As such it's a simple decision, what cards does he need to have to make game? If he has K or A of ♣, then he cannot have less than 2 spade losers. This is very iffy, and matchpoints you do better making overtricks than risking your neck in iffy games (and slams). So you pass, QED. At imps and desperate, sure give 4♠ the old college try. The revised auction 1♣ (p) 2♠ AP Cheers Stephen

Thanks for the praise, Ben. I am working like mad since receiving the first batch of data from Uday last week, to get the data in some sort of releaseable form. I can only hope he sees fit to continue the practice by updating me periodically. The plan is to have it online almost immediately, with data disks available in a couple of weeks, probably when I get back from my trip. There are 2.8 million hand records from the Main room, and 1.3M from Tourneys and Team Games, so both should fit on a single CD easily. Currently this covers the period May 4 to July 25 but I am sincerely hoping Uday may find a way to go backwards as well as forwards from those date limits. This post of yours gives rise to a thought I had about something similar that occurs in Precision. As such, I recently INVENTED a new convention to deal with this sort of problem after a 1♣ opener on a strong or very strong 3-suited hand. The intent was kind of different, but elements of my solution may possibly be useful and applicable to strong 2♣ openers as well. Here's the deal: in precision ALL 16+ hands are opened 1C. Usually the opener drives the auction completely, but even after a negative response of 1D, the responder gets 1 chance to show a suit. It's a systemic problem that he cannot show TWO suits, because opener is too "busy being Rabbit" and trying to find what responder has that might fit with the 1♣ monster! After a positive response there is a way to do this, documented by Jannersten in his book, no way after negative response. Here's a common sequence when opener has 4441 (any) 16+ in precision 1♣ (p) 1♦ (p) 1♥ (p) ? At this point we have the worst of both worlds, opener has bid one of his three suits, and responder neither of his two suits. So here is the new treatment After 1C 1D 1M, all bids by responder are normal and natural, EXCEPT 2♣ Responder bids 2C when he has a two suiter (at least 5-5, and if he is at the bottom end, at least 6-5) that does NOT include support for the major partner just bid (opener will never rebid 2C or 2D without at least 5 so the problem is limited to 1M rebids). Of course if responder can raise opener's major, whether it was 4-cards or 5-cards there's no big problem anyway. If opener thinks he wants to hear about this shapely bust (see below) he bids a conventional 2♦ and responder now bids as follows (one might make more elaborate responses such as going up a level for more extreme hands): The lowest step (2♥) shows the two lowest suits (minors) The highest step (2NT) shows the two highest suits (the other major and clubs) The middle step (2♠) shows the highest and lowest (black suits or pointy suits) Of course, now opener knows exactly what to do if he has the problem 4441 hand which was forced to rebid 1M on a 4-carder. If he had a 5 or 6-card suit he may well ignore the 2♣ response by bidding anything EXCEPT 2♦ I may say that I noticed this happening several times in the last few months, so it is not a completely rare event. I actually bid without it to a 5C contract on 1 HCP at the NABC, and made an overtrick. With it, perhaps we might have found the slam??? Dream on. I am sure that taking a second round response of 2C for this purpose costs almost nothing in the general scheme of things. This convention is rather similar to XYZ in some ways, in its use of the 2C bid. What this beast lacks is a name. Since the treatment is for dealing with a shapely bust, all sorts of rude possibilities occur to the male writer of this essay. One person suggested "The Camel" (something to do with prehistoric brits making oblique references to the same thing during the days of Empire). Perhaps someone can offer a (hopefully humerous but not offensive) nice alternative? Stephen

Hi All I want to see what anyone thinks about this claim: [hv=d=n&v=n&n=s76hakq9743d2c962&w=sq854ht65dq953ckt&e=sakj32h2dakt6c754&s=st9hj8dj874caqj83]399|300|Scoring: MP[/hv] Bidding (sorry if I didnt do this the best way) West North East South 3H 4S P P P P ♥J,5,A,2 ♦2,A,7,3 ♠A,9,4,6 ♠J,T,5,7 ♣5,A,T,2 ♥8,6,Q,♠2 At this point declarer (East) claims. Note that no card was led to the next trick. The claim is rejected. All have followed to the first diamond (trick 2). Now declarer plays the K of diams, and North shows out, and declarer proceeds to make 11 tricks with the aid of the diamond finesse. In face to face bridge this would not be allowed, I think (anyone disagree?) Is it really the case that declarer gets a double-shot at the diamond position? Thanks for your opinions Stephen

There IS a problem in the software that causes the number of tricks claimed to change if someone manages to play a card while the claim is being made. I say "problem" not "bug". Usually the client software fixes the claim as it is being made. However it is still, IMO technically possible to make an incorrect claim by no fault (not even an error) but only because of some weird sequence of events. Maybe this is even what happened. I doubt it because usually the error is in the other direction (eg you claimed 12 and got 13). But the principle is the same - if everyone agrees that the claim was for n tricks, then n tricks should be the result. This would tend to suggest that unless declarer did his claim deliberately and opponents accepted, the result should stand. Many times I have seen an honest declarer "adjust" his own claim because it was easier than an undo for an bovious misclick (the infamous "double-click" bug) which was obvious but not permitted. Which is the worse perturbation of the matchpoint scores in this case? Cheers Stephen

a quick suggestion (maybe this needs to be cross-posted to the software suggestions/discussions section, as a newbie here I dunno how to do this) there is a genuine problem with rejecting people, especially when a whole BUNCH show up at once (incidentally the close and reject all option frequently doesnt work!), it is one of time. Poor table host cannot do so many things at once. But if he had a LIST of refusal reasons, I imagine it might help. Some people are just rude, and it wouldn't help those. Some players need to be refused, and it wouldn't help that situation. 2 more thoughts: a. good players should be honest about their skill level (it is really silly to reject someone simply because their skill level says "novice" when they are just being coy) b. blacklisted (enemy) players should be automatically rejected - though there is no reason to tell them why. Stephen