finally17

While I'll trust your memory for the sake of argument, I would be surprised if it applied universally across fields, which is what you're trying to do. I'm sure there's a lot of cultural variation, but driving != bridge playing, and I wouldn't assume that I'd get the same kinds of results. Certainly you can't compare the basically universal (in the US) activity of driving with the extremely self-selective recreation of bridge. As to the original topic, I for one am still holding out for the day that BBO goes to some kind of real rating system. I'm sure it's been addressed on these forums before, but I don't get why they haven't. Even if my rating was only viewable by me, still I'd like one.

Honestly, nothing but 4 gets any real consideration from me. Anything less and I'm going to get outbid to a making 2/3 spades, whereas even if 4H is going down (be honest, it has very reasonable chances unless I need to find a new partner) it's going to score better than the alternative. The immediate jump to 4 also gives partner fine opportunity to evaluate the situation (screams: PARTNER I HAVE JUNK) when opps outbid me to 4S.

Not that what I say matters, but I'm with Helene. Standard is strong, and 7 is too strong for weak. I like my weak jump shifts to say specifically "my hand is worthless outside of this as trump suit" and therefore they promise 6 or 7 trumps (usually 6) NO aces NO outside kings and i'll never have KQ of the trump suit either. that's enough for a simple response. and not more than about 5 pts. I'm stricter than most about these kinds of things, but then I find that they work best when you're strict with them. There you go Helene, I'm still posting for a while anyway :(.

I don't think it includes discards...looking at an ACBL convention card, there are separate boxes for upside down count, upside down attitude, and discard preferences. Seems to me that that's a good guideline for what's included. However, in my experience, most people on BBO seem to think that it includes discards, so I act like it does there, until I'm told otherwise. The other day, someone asked my partner and I what are carding methods were, and I said "UDCA" while she said "odd/even" and our opp responded "good to know you agree" to which we both said something to the effect of "we didn't disagree." But our opps' position seems to be the norm there.

pass, pass, and more pass. if partner really had a hand he could have interfered at his first chance. seems to me best case scenario is undoubled down 2 vs a part score.

I'd like to clarify what card you gave yourself that you're not supposed to have before I vote...right now you have 14 cards. If it's a D that likely doesn't make a difference, but if it's a C that's big.

I have no clue about shubi and shubi alerts...but I was at Borders today and saw this title: The Art of Learning by supposed (I don't know the world of chess) chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin. The book appears to address your question to some degree.

I suppose I could have worded it better...but yeah...

AMEN

I voted 1N. I trust partner to find another call if he had an actual reason to bid, in which case we won't miss anything. Even if he's got 10-11 (and I agree with those who let him have as little as 8), 1N will be high enough.

I guess...seems small enough I'd get a headache pretty quickly, and I have good vision.

Right, I noticed your Y-chromosome was blocked by my internet decency filter. So we will all have baby sloth girls. Except for those who use Lynx. Wow. A Lynx reference. I need to read the bboforums more often apparently. Does anyone still use Lynx? Can Lynx even read/post to these types of webforums?

Wikipedia says the US penny is 19.05 mm in diameter.

Yeah, I know the search exists. And it might have worked. But the only real key word was "hat" and my first thought was that "hat" might have too many hits. Since this wouldn't necessarily work, I figured a quick scan of the most recent pages would suffice. I just didn't scan far enough. And apparently "hat" is too short anyway. But "hats" returns the original posting...oh well.

I don't watch the show (except a couple of episodes of the tryouts) but I'm pretty sure they removed the age restrictions before the last season. I imagine tryouts for the upcoming season are over, but if you're really interested, I think you can probably try for the 2009 season!

This time I went a dozen pages back...Hasn't been posted in the last 3 months anyway. Easier I think, but a kinda cute little geometry type puzzle anyway. You're going to play a 2 person game. The playing field is a circular table 1 meter in diameter, and the pieces are pennies. Here is the game: You and one other person are going to place pennies, one after another, flat on the table (not on top of another coin) until no more pennies can be put down. The loser is the first person who can't put one down. Assume it's a perfect world, where all pennies are the same size and weight and the table is perfectly flat, etc. The standard rules for these types of puzzles. To decide who goes first you, what else?, flip a penny. Devise a strategy to win the game if you win the coin toss.

WHOA. there are 2....black or white...stupid thing to omit as for whether or not it's been posted, i did say i'm not sure, and apologized if it was...but it's definitely not in the first 5 or so pages of threads. Apparently it's about 5 pages back, the dwarves thread...sorry for wasting your time... I have some more I like. I'll look a few more pages back before I post another.

REPOST SORRY FOR WASTING YOUR TIME. PLEASE CARRY ON So, I've been bored this morning, and was spending some time around here, a place I don't normally come... Noticed the puzzles on the first couple of pages, and thought I'd post one that I enjoy. Apologies if it's already around, somewhere beyond the first couple of pages of threads. Again, we have a bunch of prisoners, say 10 this time. One day they are brought together and told that tomorrow they would each be given a hat the color of which they can not see, and then put in a queue. Starting from the back, they'll have the opportunity to guess the color hat they are wearing. Each person who guesses correctly will be set free. Each person who guesses incorrectly will not be. Each prisoner can see all the hats worn by prisoners in front of him in the queue, but can not see their own hat obviously, nor any hats worn by those behind them. Also, each prisoner will be able to hear previous guesses. The night before, they are given the opportunity to strategize. Develop a strategy to maximize the # who will be set free. What is that maximum?

I would be really really shocked if there is single a non-accelerated public high school program math program in the country that covers standard deviations and confidence intervals. Certainly it's covered, if I recall correctly there's even a stats AP, and most people would be surprised at how far some programs go given the general impression of Americans and math, but most public programs struggle to get through algebra. Which poses an interesting question because for the average person a basic stats course would probably be more useful.

So my question is, what's the point in not having this option be universal?

It's nearly a month later, but whatever. I have some time and decided to read the bbo forums like i never do. Bet you won't be back, but no big deal. 1) I could be wrong, but I bet your computer not blinking is something on your end, not bbo's... 2) I just checked, and I'm not really clear on why that "invisible" box under player notes is even there, but if they are invisible at the moment, the radio button next to it will be checked. BBO uses those status options to sort out the player list in the lobby for you, and for whatever reason they decided to include that "invisible" option, but it doesn't seem that there's anything you can do about it. 3) I'm not sure what was happening, but if it happens again, I'm willing to bet all you need to do is reset your default program for opening .lin files. I'm sure if the "open movie from computer" option was working, then this will work too. 6) You could try right-click "join [speaker]'s table" and that should take you right where the TD is, unless said TD has disallowed kibs.

Click "save" and save the hand on your desktop, and then open it up. Now you can GIB it. No new software development necessary, takes 5 seconds.

I would think screen size limitation is always going to make this basically impossible...So much information has to be available that you would have to pare it's existing forms down an awful lot in order to make it functional on a handheld, I would think. You could do it. Instead of using pictures of cards, just use symbols: CA, D5, etc etc. just list board #, and write out # of tricks taken so far (you-3, them-2). Back to the old school days when the only way to connect to OKbridge was via an all text terminal connection (vanderbilt.okbridge.com, sweet, it still works). I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers these days. The problem with this is that it would require special programming to implement, and unless bridge has a serious boom in popularity (I'm talking orders of magnitude here), I can't imagine there will ever be enough demand for that to happen. Unless screens on handhelds are a lot bigger than I'm aware. A couple of inches just isn't going to cut it.

It occurred to me while kibitzing the Bermuda Bowl just now that it might be nice to have Vugraphed events sent to two separate rooms. I understand perfectly why kibbers aren't allowed to chat, but I bet there are a lot who would like to participate in the conversation. You could have one room like normal, and another where kibitzers are allowed to chat. Or are there frequent Vugraph kibbers here who think that would be a waste of effort to implement?

Perhaps now you can figure out why I avoid the forums.