Trysalot

I haven't looked at the help topics in a good while so don't know if something like Inquiry's answer is somewhere in them. But, if not, I think BBO should take what he said and put in there exactly as he wrote it to explain that situation. It was excellent!

There have been times I have "left" like that in the middle of a hand. It is not necessarily a hand that I know will give me a bad result. One time it was a clear slam for my side the minute the bot's declarer hand showed to me as the lead to the 6 level contract was made. So, yes, occasionally, and sometimes several times over the span of a week, I will just stop playing and let the timer run to get me out of the table within a minute or so. But, unless I am at a table where chat is disallowed, I always send chat to my human opp telling him/her that I am stopping to let system figure the result and why. Opps have ALWAYS said TU, NP. And, when chat is disallowed, I will within a few minutes of leaving like that send a mail message of apology to the opp to read later. My reason for departing that way is ALWAYS the same. Since we can receive and send private chat from money bridge tables, which we cannot do in ACBL, BBO etc. masterpoint tourneys, people who have me marked as "friend" will see me in money bridge and send me proposals to play the next ACBL tourney. If the person logged on just before game time and I accept the proposal and send chat asking how many minutes to start time (because the schedule is not exact; start of pairs and speedball are staggered) and the answer is 2 minutes, I have to get out of the money bridge table immediately. In such a situation, I have already accepted the proposal, the system will not pull me from a money bridge table as it will from a table in the main bridge club or other social play room and drop me to the ACBL tourney table, and if I am not in a lobby at start time to be delivered to the tourney table then the partnership is cancelled and my partner would be disappointed at not getting to play. If we are at an ACBL table and I am disconected, a sub can be gotten for my partner. But, as I found out one night when it happened, I was disconnected at the time the system started to put people at the tables, and when I got back I found out we were not in the tourney. So, similarly, if I am still in the money bridge table at start time because a bot stopped several times to do its scan to decide its next play and the hand is taking longer than usual to finish, I have done a great disservice to my partner by having accepted the proposal and might not get to partner that person again because he/she will be angry with me. The lesser evil is to insure I get out of the money bridge table by not making my next bid or play and letting the time run out to close the table. So I do whatever I have to do to get to the ACBL tourney for which I just accepted a proposal. But I am careful to NEVER leave like that without telling my human opp I am doing it and why. The only time I ever leave without saying anything is when I have a disconnect which of course is beyond my control and does happen sometimes as a dialup user whose ISP has an occasional connection problem.

Sorry I missed it. If another one is scheduled, I will try to do better about getting to it.

I voted for the X which is definitely to me a reopening X since it is in the balance seat. I would be with the X asking P to bid longest suit while promising support for both unbid suits and a good hand points-wise with shortness in pre-empter's suit and inviting P to convert to penalty if has a trump stack or good trump honors. Yes it can be risky sometimes when the silent opp has a decent hand and your P has nothing much. That happened to my opps once on the Worldwinner site when my RHO opened 1 heart vulnerable and I bid 4 spades non-vulnerable holding AKQJ10xxx -- xxx xx. The auction went 1 heart 4 spades pass pass X pass pass pass. I don't remember the other hands except that my partner was void in spades and LHO held all 5 of them to the 9 and the diamond Ace and that my partner had the opener's AK of hearts in which suit I was void and the diamond K. A heart was led which I won, sluffing a club, took the other high heart, sluffing the other club, led a club and ruffed small, played spades from the top, and when I led a small diamond LHO rose with the Ace so I made 5 on the hand.

Ego is one thing. It doesn't matter whether there is any prize, the beating of the others in the game is the goal, the person wants to WIN and, if he can only do that by cheating, he will cheat. Self-satisfaction is another thing. For this person it isn't cheating to win. It is cheating to have the self-satisfaction of getting away with something, of doing it and not being caught doing it.

This comment I just saw is in my opinion one of the best I have seen after reading all the posts in this thread and others where Wayne makes his points in the same argumentative tone and without regard to the points made by others continues in the same vein over and over: Brothgar: "In all seriousness, the reaction to your posts has been almost uniform and very negative. You might want to consider that the source of the problems has something to do with your own behaviour rather than projecting some grand conspiracy." My compliments to Brothgar for saying what I believe many here are thinking as I am.

"These are just that, suggestions... take em or leave em." I vote to leave them.

Thanks to BBO for the gift of free entry to ACBL tourneys on Christmas Day and for having a wonderful bridge site with so many choices of activities and useful features. Best wishes to Fred, Uday, and everyone else connected with the operation and maintenance of the site for a wonderful new year.

Sympathy on the loss of your loved one -- not the very recent loss of the physical body but the one years ago of her soul. Deaths such as the ones described above are what my mother calls "the long good-bye" and in recent years she asked for and was granted the promise of my younger sister and me that we will not allow medical treatment to "save her life" if she suffers dementia and becomes ill again with something treatable like the double pneumonia she had at 86. I am primary agent on her health care and life support directives and the holder of the little card that says she has willed her body to a medical school so I know that at some point the decision to refuse medical treatment will be mine. Yesterday my husband and I took my mother to lunch. She resides in the moderately independent living wing of a nursing home that has graduated levels of care for Alzheimer's patients ranging from a wing for moderately impaired residents to locked wings for those whose dementia is severe and some of them are violent and abusive if not controlled by drugs. My mother has some short term memory issues now and is very aware of it. She will say to me that her "forgetterer is much better than her rememberer" but that the psychologist on staff taught her some exercises to do that is helping and that she has started writing down things she wants to tell me when we chat on the phone so that she won't forget to tell them to me. I cheered her up immensely when I told her that she wasn't losing her mind but instead that her thoughts were bypassing short term memory and going straight into long term memory and to just wait a day or two and what she wanted to talk about would come back to her. How I found that out was that one Friday morning she told me a tale about someone on her hall but didn't know how the situation was resolved, that night I asked her how it ended up, she didn't remember mentioning it to me that morning, and then, on Sunday morning as we chatted, I asked how that friend was doing and my mother replied, "I told you all about that on Friday morning" and I said "yes but not how it ended" and she said "oh, that night, ...." and explained what she had learned after we had talked. Since then she has not been nearly as worried about the forgetting. But of course the fear of Alzheimer's is I'm sure always in the back of her mind as she has seen people moved from her wing to others over the 15 years since she decided to reside there. "If they go to (name of wing) after coming from hospital, they need full nursing care, most who go there never come back because they are terminally ill and if they go to (name of wing) they don't come back because they have Alzheimers." she says matter-of-factly. She is very fragile physically, bent over with osteoporosis and suffering from arthritis of the spine and hips, but she is mobile with a walker. She reads the paper, watches television news programs, has definite political views, but now needs help writing checks to pay her bills (she decides when to pay and how much etc.) and sorting and storing paperwork and she no longer writes long letters to out of state friends and relatives because she gets tired easily. Instead she writes notes on greeting cards or telephones them to chat. In one breath she tells me she is ready to die and doesn't understand what purpose there is in still being alive as her quality of life diminishes from year after year and in the next breath she tells me how precious life is and how glad she is that she is still aware of everything. Thanks for reminding me with the descriptions above of "long good-byes" how lucky I am to be able to have daily phone chats and spend time with my mother who had birthday number 93 on December 2.

I just discovered The Water Cooler and missed an ACBL tourney here on BBO because I couldn't break away from reading it from beginning to end. What a wonderful group of bridge players you are! I'm too tired to write anything much about myself other than to say I am an ACBL Silver Life Master who hasn't been able to travel much so the only National tournament I've attended was the one in my own city a few years ago (in which I played in the Regional events) and I expect my next one will be when a National is in my city again two years from now. I didn't have Internet access until spring 2004 so compared to most of you I am a newcomer to online bridge. The hours I have spent playing bridge online the past 2-3/4 years have been very enjoyable and I plan to hang around for a long time. Trysalot

I am not on the list because I have (guess) posted less than a dozen messages since joining a few months ago but I read do read general discussion area regularly and some of the others from time to time. I would like to play in the tournament. Please post again what to look for in the tournament list to register for it once my name is on the eligible list. I use trysalot on BBO games server and here. I agree with whoever suggested 2 tournaments 12 hours apart. That way everyone anywhere in the world could have a good chance of getting to play in a forums tournament. My opinion is that 24 board indies, 2 boards a round, 22 minute rounds (time added for socializing with partner and opponents), would give the opportunity for many to get acquainted. Trysalot Trysalot

The disallowing is disabled and kibitzing restored on the last round so those who finish early can watch the slower tables play while waiting for them to finish so results will post for everyone to view. And, for whatever it may be worth to anybody, my opinion is that the allowing or disallowing of kibitzing ACBL tourneys is only a controversial issue here in this forum. Otherwise I would be seeing a lot of lobby chat about it and I am not. (Of course I don't know what kind of chat goes on during the day when I am at work). Trysalot

P.S. I just wish there was a way to stop the bad apple players as easily as it is to stop the kibitzers who help them by simply disallowing the kibitzers to enter the tables. Sorry to have gone off topic sort of and opened another can of worms.

Cheating takes various forms in online bridge. What's the difference between people who kibitz themselves from another computer and people who use Instant Messenger or talk on cell phones while playing? What about people in the same household playing as partners from different computers that are side by side? Can you tell me that never happens? Yes I believe that most players are honest, that most people in the same household who play as partners have their computers in separate rooms and don't communicate any way except in the online game, that most people who chat by cell phone with partners while waiting for round change hang up the minute the move to a new table begins, and that most partners who use Instant Messenger turn it off when the game starts. But that word "most" is the reason I would be in favor of barring kibitzers until the last round in ALL tournaments for any kind of masterpoint or money prizes as Fred has done with the ACBL games and before that with the money bridge games and tournaments which don't let kibitzers in at any time. I don't think we should accommodate the bad apples in the basket whose behavior takes away the level playing field. Many of the free tournaments without prizes draw huge entries and very good players. Let the kibitzers indulge themselves in those tournaments, the team games, the main bridge club, and those public and private clubs whose managers want to let kibitzers in. Respectfully submitted, Trysalot

Try deleting temp files if you don't do that regularly. I don't have IE7 yet but in IE6 it is click options, click delete files. If they are piled up that can really slow you down getting on and staying on the site. Trysalot

Well I definitely understand Fred's and Jason's points, especially the "all or nothing" status, and can imagine the team's shock when the final score changed like that. But I wasn't thinking of the saying "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing!" when I said congratulations. I was looking at the placement and reading the article in Bridge Bulletin from the point of view of an average Flight B tournament player who was happy that Fred and his teammates had beaten 26 other teams. LOL. So I guess I will withdraw the congratulations and instead offer sympathy. ** Trysalot ** But I am still proud of that team's performance even though it didn't win the event.

I couldn't help LOL as I read all the posts in this thread because not one person came up with this simple and very effective solution for players leaving social tables in the middle of the hand that would be easy for BBO to implement. My guess is that none of the previous posters play money bridge games. But I do and so here is my suggestion for Fred and Uday to consider. Have the setup of the social tables in the main bridge club and, if the ones running them like the idea, the tables in the public and private social bridge clubs include the money bridge table feature that the "back" (leave) button is disabled and at the end of each hand the system puts up the selection box "play another hand?". Click on "yes" to stay or "no" to leave. The difference of course would be in the "no" answer. In money bridge games, if one human player says "no" the table closes. If one human player waits too long to make a selection, the table closes. For the social tables the "no" click or the no action within the allotted number of seconds would have to result in only that player being removed from the table by the system so that the table remains open with the other players remaining in place and waiting for a replacement player to join the game. With this alteration to the setup the problem is solved. Nobody can leave the table while a hand is in the process of being bid and played.** **The one exception would of course be the present arrangement that a player who has pre-registered (for an individual or with a partner for a pairs game) and paid for a tournament with an entry fee is automatically taken by the system from the social table and dropped into that tournament just before start time. It has not happened to me in a long time so I don't remember if the system puts a message to the table explaining why the player has left. If it doesn't, then that should be added to the new social table setup because many times at a social table the players don't join and say on chat line "just a couple, system will soon be moving me to tourney".

Congratulations to Fred and the rest of the Ekeblad Team on placing Second out of Twenty-Eight teams in the recent U. S. Bridge Championship. Good luck in turning the 2006 Runner-Up into the 2007 Winner

What I liked about the above discussion was JLall's post. My compliments for a well thought out and clearly stated "map" for handling such situations. (Personal P.S. to JLall: I guess I won't see you face to face until the Houston Regional so let me tell you here that I am so very proud of your accomplishments in the bridge world and that every time I read about you in Bridge Bulletin or see your name in its ranking lists I can't help remembering that ten-year-old boy with the big smile I played against and from then on kept up with as he grew to a fine young adult. Good luck in your upcoming competitions!) Trysalot fka here as PageHouTex