sfbp

Bleeve it or not, my favourite machine (the one on my desk) is still the one that runs windows98 and refuses to die despite many attempts..... I'll try windows95 with 4.9.4 :)

That was the good news The bad news is that 4.9.3 has gone back to crashing on exit running under Windows 98. I bet its something to do with the ads......

I installed the upgrade on Vista and it (4.9.3) works just as well as 4.8.3 In both cases GIB is just fine. Anything else you want me to test? Stephen

Right on. And BIL provides one place where it can happen. Its exactly a political issue. Shooting at them in BIL is just not cricket. Nor rounders/baseball/<insert ball sport of your choice>.

I don't agree. Why can't you teach newbs precision?

There's no reason why non precision bidders won't be going on to 5 spades. The vulnerability was not shown but I'd expect lots to bid one more. Isn't that "just bridge" - I don't see what the defenders' hands have to do with a discussion on systems. The attitude that people, especially beginners, should be dissuaded from learning precision by punishing it whenever possible. WRONG! You cannot learn 2/1 playing against the blue team club, either. BIL provides an ideal environment for learning whatever systems. Sure, encourage BIL members to work on "defences" to precision (ie by using it against their fellow BILlies) - they will end up stronger. However the overriding attitude you appear to support (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the best way to stamp out forcing club is to mess with it. BIL is *not* IMHO the right place to stamp out anything. Funny thing, since I started playing precision every time I play locally, it's now at the point where at least 3 pairs you meet will be playing something like that. I think they saw that it worked. Not to mention the fact that many top pairs play some variant. The problem was that the gap (between club level and the top pairs) was too wide, and nasty opponents similar to the ones in the other thread on physical assaults at the table tended to make it a very scary experience for learning players to use many of the ancillary strategies (eg NFB) that work well with precision. I had to practise a lot of assertive director calls, including a number of times that the TD tried to tell me something was illegal when it wasn't, as the old guard (like you?) attempted to fight anything different. So, the BIL IS a great place for Oliver and others to teach this way of bidding. Don't spoil it just because it's "stinkin' precision" (yeah, I know you didn't say it but I bet you and my pd would agree). And it wouldn't be "stinkin'" if it didn't succeed much of the time. Keep it up Ollie :) Stephen

I couldn't disagree more. 1. In the BIL it makes perfect sense for them to get their methods right. (the rules state NO advanced, except as mentors, ie no advanced pairs) 2. Generally the more the opponents bid (and this goes for any bidding system including strong 2♣ openers) the more information we have. The cost of making high level intervention against 18+ point hands is just that, a cost. Hopefully a telephone number. 3. When there is interference against a minimum 1 club opener, both players of the forcing club need a system which indicates us/them, ie do we have the balance of the points? It's called..... er ..... DOUBLE 4. On the example hand 5 spades makes. WTP? I really think that suggesting that advanced players are entitled to a lottery to try and dissuade intermediates and beginners from learning precision (we'll punish them and they won't try *that* again) is doing a huge disservice to the game of Bridge. Stephen PS the defences I use against 2♣ strong work FAR better than the non-defences Jack is suggesting here, and I only know about them because I got sick of people preempting to try and punish precision ("stinkin' precision" one of my 2/1 pards calls it to this day), and worked out my artitificial defences to strong club(s).

Not only that, but control C at the table is Claim.

Precision (purple) with asking bids I agree with 1C opening. 1♣ p 2m p positive response forcing to game 2♠ p 3♣ p spade suit, partner denies Hxx or xxxx spades, but shows 4+controls 3♠ p 4♦ p ask again in spade suit, partner shows King (lowest step no honour, next Q etc) 5♦ p 5N p asking control in side suit diams, response shows second round (K or singleton) 6♠ ap No diam control, so small slam only.

If you have someone who is a seeker, make their table green until it is filled. Stephen

1H and then 3H over anything except 1S There's no point in reversing, partner will never take me for 6.

Why so? I noticed many moons ago that if you have a suit with 6 cards missing, the chance of it being divided 3-3 appears to be *higher* when the other suits break badly. I'm not sure you are right. Even if you are right and some adjustment is needed, how far wrong is your number? I would guesstimate in excess of 60%, even if not 72%. I like this slam. <edit> Whoops Ben is right, some of the hands where both suits are 3-3 were included in the first lot. And hands where trumps are not 3-3 or 4-2 dont make at all regardless of the state of the other suit <end edit>

You're going to miss a lot of games just to avoid getting to what is not that bad a slam. The amount of extra structure to ensure that 10 or J is not worth it IMHO. Precision is a simple system on auctions like this.... in fact it's usually simple. I agree totally that the suit quality should be better. But opposite singleton J the suit is still pretty decent. And opposite any TWO spades, this hand makes game in spades on a wide variety.

1 out of 2 3-3 splits seems like decent odds? "Far better" we are arguing about the J? Life's not perfect, i think this hand is way too good for 2S, we do a lot of passing of "strong" bids. I agree that blackwood is not preferred - but here it does look like what responder wants to know.

My related agreements are: 1. 2/1 is *not* GF 2. 2/1 does *not* promise another bid by responder 3. rebid of opener's major (or for that matter minor) *does* promise 6 4. 2NT rebid by opener does *not* promise extras 5. responder will never do 2/1 with a 4-card suit ie its about 100% natural with no assumptions except max 15 HCP for opener, and about the same for responder (since he has SJS on most hands stronger than that) - mind you SJS is not to be used randomly What we do is to put a lot of emphasis on 1NT forcing, it's a catchall. This seems to work pretty well with limited opener - when pd doesnt know what to do (and a few cases besides, lol) he bids 1NT.

1S - 2C 3S - 4NT 5H - 6S No, i am a purist, I don't need to bid 1C on this hand. Plenty of expressive power to bid jump shift or jump rebid at the top of the 1S range, without getting into asking bids or anything else.

Looks great! I would like the option to show "players seeking a game" regardless of whether they are friends, enemies, worldclass, hosts etc. This might have some very positive social effects. Not "only seeking a game". Stephen

How often have you** played 5NT in online bridge, Josh? How did it work out? Stephen **or of course, partner

Ok i set it up in DF Initially it makes. After heart to J and club back, declarer now must make the brilliant play of leading the JD. It's not good enough to play the spades off, he has to do it before knowing if the spades break. So not so easy.

I came (very) late to this but at first sight is pretty tuff for declarer if partner switches to a club at trick 2.

If you follow the other thread you may notice that I advocate non 4th best leads (Paul Marston was right, I say). In particular the middle card from three to the J or better, and high from a small doubleton (assuming it's an unbid suit). I can speculate on reasons, but when someone does it to ME, part of the strength of leading a middle card is that it defies all known rules for working out what was led, and declarer gets it (and the overall play of the hand) wrong. This topic has not yet been alluded to. I have been seeing this for months now, and the data that appear to be emerging from BRidgeBRowser despite certain individuals' best attempt to squelch them now appear to support my view. I'm really happy if you don't believe me. (note added in proof: it seems that heart to J and optional heart back allows whatever switch to beat it by either player, rather than the guess-and-die approach of ♥A and jump-off-a-cliff)

Perfect for a 0-6 NFB, I believe.

Yes, I find your attitude offensive. Certainly not to be answered in its current truculent state. I recall when you were one of the biggest advocates of this idea. I hope others who believe your grand plans for the future of bridge note how you seem to behave when you get tired of *their* idea. Caveat Fred!

tch tch Frances, I can't leave that one untouched, an actual numerical claim with easily testable hypothesis :P My measurements show it's in the 65-68% range. I checked the bbo main room, bbo tourneys, okbridge main room, okbridge tourneys, and this number is consistent to within 1 percent. bbo main room is about 68% bbo tourneys 65% okbridge main room is about 68% okbridge tourneys 66% The only exception was the world championship data (very small data set) about 63%. Here it may well be that the data is woefully mucked up anyway, as the PBN files were rather disorganised, and frequently the full hand data was not available. So this one should be taken with a grain of salt. I never released this data set, there were far too many oddities and irregularities for it to be useful. (added about 2 hours later) I realised over supper that this 1/3 was a bit too high. Of course programmers make errors, I had been expecting somewhere in the 80's but not 99 and not 69, to be perfectly honest. The problem was in a nutshell, there is more than one long suit in certain hand patterns - 4432 4441 5521 5530 and 6610 to be exact. And I'd saved the "longest suit" years ago without ever using the data, and without ever thinking about this problem. Anyway it's fixed now, and 14% is a lot more than the 1% you postulated, Frances. Sorry for any head scratching that may have gone on. (end of edit) I invite anyone to try it who has access to BRBR data. Stephen

I don't bid 3N over (under) the double. On auction B i pass because LHO has no clue that I have an 18 count, so all kinds of good things can happen. I once raised partner to 3D on 1 point and opener bid 3NT. He made his contract. Meanwhile i had a heart attack.