pagehoutex

I doubt there would be enough traffic to warrant a forum of its own. But why not just have a thread here in general discussion that goes on and on about the topics mentioned and others we think of as time goes by. To find it easily in the list we could name the thread "MONEY BRIDGE FORUM #1 and when it has a bunch of chat in it someone can say "too many posts, I'm opening #2" and start MONEY BRIDGE FORUM #2. If we get enough traffic to open #2, that's the time to start asking for a separate forum outside the general discussion area into which the two threads here would be moved to start it off. As for what we can discuss in our thread (forum), #1 is Arrows' idea and I propose #2 and #3 for your consideration. Please notice that nowhere in this list is a suggestion for "I won X" or "Phooey I lost X" posts. :-) 1. How GIB Works (including how to exploit its power and deal with its weaknesses). 2. Problems With GIB (including HOW GIB LIES to partner**) 3. Tall Tales About GIB (all the fun stuff, share stories of hands won or lost with or without the help of GIB, etc.) ** I was at a table just now where GIB did a second X and the explanation to partner included "3+ clubs" in describing the hand. My human opponent bid 3 clubs. Hand passed out. (I was NOT about to X it with Kxxxx of clubs). The dummy GIB put down had a singleton club! GIB lies. LOL.) :lol: :lol:

I thank you also. They were very distracting. I felt I was looking into a glare.

Miles and miles of smiles and hearty congratulations to Justin and Helmut Lall on their GNT win. As a casual acquaintance who first met Justin at a bridge tournament in my city when he was 10 and already a very worthy opponent, I have watched his progress through the years since then and enjoyed my occasional chats with his mother, Jan, about his competition results. In addition I not too long ago suffered the agonies of defeat in a swiss team match against him at a local Regional (last year or the year before) so I saw for myself how superbly the young adult plays the game. Needless to say, I am bursting with pride in his latest achievement! I'll be eagerly awaiting the write-up in Bridge Bulletin about your GNT win, Justin, and wish you much success in the future.

After downloading and installing the latest upgrade I discovered a new feature in Money Bridge which I have quickly fallen in love with! It used to be that at the main menu you would see how many tables were playing in each room and how many untabled players were in the room. But you had to click into each room with a stake acceptable to your budget to see if there were any open tables needing a human opponent if you wanted to check that before starting a new table. Now total population stats are at the top of the screen and the column that used to list the number of untabled players (which was useless because there was no list of them to send a message asking someone if he/she would like to play at a table you would open) SHOWS HOW MANY TABLES ARE OPEN IN EACH ROOM BUT NEED AN OPPONENT IN ORDER TO PLAY which is GREAT because you can see the stats of playing and non-playing open tables in all the rooms at the same times and decide which room to enter instead of going in and out of each one to see if people were waiting for opponents. THANK YOU BBO FOR THIS ENHANCEMENT! It is marvelous. :rolleyes:

Transferring "real money" (i.e., withdrawable funds) from the Money Bridge Account to purchase BBO$ (non-withdrawable site dollars) is very simple. Just send an e-mail to moneybridge@bridgebase.com stating the following information: 1. Your player name 2. Your password 3. The amount you want to transfer from MBA to BBO$ When I made my initial inquiry whether this was possible to do, Rain answered promptly with the above instructions. I think she told me to allow 24 hours before asking why no acknowledgment of receipt of the instruction and transfer having occurred had been given because it could take that long to process. But the one time I did it she must have been checking e-mail because ten minutes later I logged on and was greeted with system messages showing me the new balances in both accounts.

Well, then, I certainly hope that Uday never decides to end his relationship with BBO and that he finds the Fountain of Youth and lives forever. :)

I am a little concerned about the misuse of terminology in this thread. This is NOT a gambling site. It is a gaming site. The games are games of skill not chance (other than the chance we each take that the random deal will be good to us instead of opponents in the number of cards with AKQJ on them LOL) and the vast majority do not involve any money and a goodly number award masterpoints rather money. Furthermore in the games that do involve money the player is NOT making a bet on the outcome but simply winning or losing money based on the number of plus or minus scoring points on each individual hand in Money Bridge Games and on total plus points at end of Money Bridge Tournaments and on final score in Individuals that pay BBO masterpoints which convert to BBO dollars. The money acquired is not the result of betting as on a gambling site such a poker site. Instead the money is the prize for doing better than the rest of the field in tournaments and better than the human/gib pair in the money bridge games. Respectfully submitted

Please include the explanation of the Money Bridge game also. Some people get confused between BBO$ (not real money to spend anywhere else) and Money Bridge Account (which is real money that you can withdraw on request).

Thank you for the welcome. I am a believer in getting acquainted with the topics and tones of a discussion group before jumping in to participate regularly so I have just been reading threads for the past few days whenever time permits. But I just couldn't resist posting in this particular one.

P.S. What I meant when I said all I would do this time is type is that I had a hand I was going to share but haven't figured out all those buttons for showing a hand and in the middle of the night am not going to even try to learn how to do it. Suffice it to say that the other night my GIB thought a long time after I bid 4NT asking for key cards (searching its databases I guess) and then leaped to 7 hearts instead of answering me. Opponent X and I made the contract (don't recall which mbg I was in but the win earned me more than $30!). The reason GIB didn't answer the 4NT was because it had key cards and 2 voids!!!

I am new to Forum and this is my first post so I won't attempt to do anything more than type. The money bridge games and tourneys are very enjoyable and it appears that they will be funding my entries in the ACBL tourneys for a while unless I lose all of my recently acquired gains in one bad night. :D I set some criteria for myself when I started to play money bridge. When the $25 stake was gone, I would quit. That criteria went away the second session. Another $25 stake, a few days later a $50 stake. By then I had figured out some things about GIB and was starting to stay out of the hole. A few days passed. Then came the upgrade that told me how GIB would take my bid. Voila! But then I dared to try the 2 cent game and after opponents bid and made 2 slams in a row suddenly the system said I didn't have enough money for that stake. What????? So I sadly retreated to the 25 and 50 cent games and then back to the 1 cent game. My stake grew and I tried the 2 cent game again. And now that I've figured out some more things about GIB I am happily looking at my stake that after those ups and downs has grown from that last credit card payment of $50 to over $160. Here are some of the things I've learned. 1. As someone else said, GIB does not understand cue bids after a suit raise. It expects that to be another suit. My conclusion is that, no matter what the explanation is of how GIB will interpret the bid, at a low level many GIBs treat the bid as a help suit game try and at a higher level as a slam try and will leap to the contract if it likes that second suit bid. So I never cue bid a short suit Ace to my GIB partner! 2. I have learned that GIB has excellent declarer play most of the time and I get good scores when I let it play the hand instead of trying to finagle the bidding to let me play the hand. 3. I have learned that quite often GIB will not return my opening lead and wants to take command of the defense. So now when GIB does that I say "ok, you lead, I will follow" and quite often GIB is right. 4. And the main thing I have learned from playing less complicated robots on another site and GIB here is that, if I bid conservatively, we will usually end up in the right place but, if I do anything strange like cue bid a short suit, or if I take the position that this nice 11 looks like a full opener and I will open it in first or second seat on the rule of 20, we will end up too high and go down. All I can say about the GIBs here after playing more "vanilla" ones at the other site is that I am impressed by how much they do know about playing bridge. So while some are complaining about what GIB is doing to them, I respectfully suggest that it is sometimes the consequence of what they are doing to GIB in their bidding.