dlbalt

Why does BBO allow scareware advertisers to run ads on the mobile software? I can't log in without seeing ads that tell me there are viruses on my phone, I am running out of memory, and that the world (or my phone) will come to an end if I don't act fast to buy some product to protect me from problems that I haven't got. How low can the BBO organization get? How do they expect anyone to have any respect for the ethics of the game when they sell ad space to two-bit hustlers like they do?

How do you know that the (VAST *8) majority of established partnerships do not cheat? I wouldn't say that they DO cheat, because I have no evidence. Apparently you have some evidence that they don't cheat. What is it?

Competitive Chess has had an effective and efficient rating system for decades. It's worth a look for anyone who seriously wants to generate a rating system for Bridge. If my memory is working, this is how it worked 25 years ago: 1) Ratings run from a low of about 1200 (beginning players) to roughly 2800 (National Masters). Above that, a player's FIDE (International) rating is more important, although it is calculated in a similar fashion. 2) Each recorded game contributes to a player's rating, except as noted below. Typically, a tournament player will play 3 or 4 games per day in a local tournament. 3) A player's rating increases by 16 points for each win, and decreases by 16 points for each loss, plus or minus 4% of the difference in the players ratings, up to a difference of 400 points. So, if you beat a player who is 400 points lower in the rankings than you are, the effect on your rating is (16 - (.04 * 400)) = 0. Similarly, losing to a player who is ranked 400 points higher than you, you don't lose any rating points. If you beat a player who is ranked 200 points higher, the effect is (16 + (.04 * 200)) = 24; 4) As a corollary to (3), players never lose rating points as a result of winning a game, and never gain points by losing a game. A player can never lose more than 32 points or gain more than 32 points as a result of a single game. 5) Ratings are provisional until a player has some number of rated games - 24 I think. There are some grumblings about the chess rating system (of course, since there are grumblings about everything), but it has worked well. Bridge players who want a rating system should take a look at it.

West should realize that not only is his hand light for the takeout, but the cards are in the wrong places. S figures to be short in the majors, and hence there will most likely be ♥ and ♠ honors over his spindly suits. If his partner has any ♦ honors they will be in the wrong place as well. If there is anything in the hand for E-W, East will reopen.

Windows 7 Home Prem, 64 bit.

Good idea. Along the same lines, when a player is about to leave for a tournament, put some sort of visual marker up.

I have had the same problem several times now. The Flash client won't allow me to play a card or cards. Typically, it is a sequence of cards at the top or near the top of a suit. Today I held ♠AK987. After my P led a low ♠ I was able to play A but not K, and could not lead K at the next trick. Throughout the hand, I couldn't play K♠ or the card next to it (9 I think). I'm using Firefox with Shockwave Flash 10.1.53.64

If the motives of BBO for the don't tell rule are entirely non-commercial, you have my apologies. My point was, and is, that BBO (and online bridge in general) is missing the social atmosphere that works to enforce the mores of bridge in the offline world. As a result, it suffers. It may be unavoidable, but it suffers. At your local brick-and-mortar bridge club, agonize over playing a singleton and you'll be noticed. If a new player does that more than once, one of the senior members will take him aside and make some friendly suggestions about ethical play. If the player continues his errancies, it won't be long before he can't get into a game or find a partner. (True, there are a few Charlie the Chimps who are tolerated here and there, but my point is valid in the main) The same is true for player's ratings, as I said earlier. If you like fancy terminology, you could say that the social contract of the offline bridge world tends to correct the extreme aherrations of its members. In online bridge it's a different story; the social contact is missing.

Sorry, I guess that's another of the many skills I'll never develop. I just don't have what it takes to sit there and watch a self-styled expert throw away one obvious hand after another. How do you handle it? I try and find a quieter way to express my discontent. I've heard many players criticize partner's play during the hand in question (before play is over), tell declarer to claim when they are dummy, and so on. I haven't done that in the years I've been here. A statement of fact, made after the hand is over - partner, no expert would play that hand that badly - may not be NICE, whatever that is, but it's within the laws of the game and it's based on fact. Best I can do.

Agreed. I would call myself an average (intermediate) player in most large bridge clubs or US sectional tournaments; on BBO, however, most of the intermediates cannot count to 13. So I stretch my rating to advanced. I notice that BBO considers it bad form to tell a player that he has overstated his rating. That's understandable: BBO is in the business of making money, and if the wannabes keep getting told how bad they are, they'll go away and won't buy those BBO dollars. In a real world club, or on the tournament circuit, the self-deluded bad player gets steered into class-A games, beginner's clinics, and the low-end flights of large events. Sooner or later they get the message (and, perhaps, move into online bridge where they can resume their delusions). That leaves a void. How to tell a player he isn't as good as he wants to think he is? Most of the WBEs (pronounced WIBBY, for wanna be expert) on BBO seem to be men, by the way. No surprise there. To tell a player that he is not an expert, without telling him he is not an expert, I have a few favorites: For the hand hog: You played that hand every bit as well as you bid it, p On the hand below, declarer (a true WBE) drew trump (♠) , played off ♣ winners, and was left trying to make 5 tricks with the lead in dummy. ♥KQJxx were still out, along with A♦, and there was no good reason to place A♦ over K♦: [hv=d=n&v=n&n=s98hatxdxc&s=st5hxdkxxc]133|200|Scoring: IMPs[/hv] A simple ♦ lead to K would have worked, and at least had the advantage of not requiring the opponents' cards to do anything impossible. From dummy, WBE led a trump to T, ♥ to A, ruffed the low ♥(hoping to drop KQJ, apparently) and lost ♦A and ♥ quack for -1. (from me) I have to admit I don't understand the expert game. I guess experts like you just don't feel constrained by normal concepts of probability and combinatorial mathematics, p. Finally, when a bludgeon is needed, there's always It takes a real effort to go down on that hand. Well done P..

No one laughed the last time this was posted. I suppose that in the modern climate, it is necessary to spell things out. It didn't make that statement for laughs, although I am glad that at least one other BBOer feels the same way I do. Using Suck as a pejorative is an implicit (or explicit) anti-gay insult. I object.

I find the terminology offensive. To Suck should not mean To Perform Badly. Sucking can be quite a positive experience. It all depends on what you're sucking, and who it belongs to.

Paying attention is part of the game. If a player plays the wrong card, or makes the wrong bid, it is the player's problem. Imagine a baseball player asking the umpire to nullify a strike because he swung at it by mistake. Generally, an undo should not be granted. Players should pay the penalty for failure to pay attention to the hand, and granting an undo is simply encouraging sloppy play and lazy thinking. If we all stopped granting undos, there would be far fewer requests for them. The quality of the game would improve all around. In addition, unless there is a technical problem that makes the wrong card jump out when the mouse is activated, it is not a misclick. (I've had technical problems like that happen once or twice since I started playing bridge online years ago. I've probably made a few hundred truly bad plays or calls because I allowed myself to be distracted. I don't ask for undos.) While I am on this rant, the word misclick should be banned from the online bridge lexicon. Maybe players who use it could have a large M appear next to their names? Or is that too much to hope for?

This is the internet, where you can make yourself into a Roman Emperor, Dragon-slaying Knight, or a blue-skinned Elf, if you desire, by simply calling yourself such a thing. Do you really expect people NOT to make themselves into World Class Bridge Players?

Pass or bid 3,4,5, 6 or 7 diamonds. No action is correct. First of all, there's a good chance you have to go to 7 to buy it. Bidding 3-5 ♦, somebody is holding spades and you will be outbid. Two of the other hands are void in ♦ and they will feel obligated to bid, which is an argument in favor or passing. If you come in after passing they may think you are saving, and let you play the contract. The real problem is that partner will try to rescue by bidding ♥ or ♠.

I object to that terminology. Sucking isn't always bad. It all depends on what you are sucking, and who it belongs to.

Am I missing something, or doesn't there need to be a partnership agreement before an opponent has a basis to object to your bid? Was there a no psyche rule in effect? Was your partner a regular partner, who might be used to over-strength weak jump overcalls? If not, and your (possibly) abnormal weak jump forces the opponent to misplay the hand, that's the fortunes of the game.

The problem is that "profile" can be garbage. Or, perhaps worse, "SAYC" by players who don't know what that means "Weak 2 except 2C" "short club" and so on. I doubt if the software is strong enough to tell a meaningful profile from a meaningless one.

It's bad because it didn't take usability into consideration. For users playing in the big room(s), as opposed to tournaments, it's quite common for an established pair to set up a table, and not at all uncommon for one of them to leave for a while, to return. If the table is open, the odds are good that one or more of the new players will be abusive, have a highly inflated sense of his own skill, or leave the table without logging out by closing the browser, for example). If that player has become host, you've got a bad situation. It could be improved by making the most senior player (not kibbitzer) the new host. While we are on the subject, why not institute a polling system so that dead tables can be avoided? A common problem (if you play in casual games using the 'find me a game' feature) is that often, the host is not responding (and thus cannot be removed). There should be a button that says something like 'report a dead table'. After it's been hit a few times, the table should get flagged so that users and the find-me-a-game routine can avoid it. If the host comes to life by bidding, playing or speaking, the flag can be removed.

I wish I could tell my partner which card to play, but the rules have this silly prejudice about dummy not playing the hand. One factor that gets lost when discussing claims by dummy is the negative inference when dummy doesn't tell partner to claim. [hv=n=sakhqjt98xdxxxckx&s=sqjtxxxhdaxxxcaxx]133|200|[/hv] You get to 6♠ after LHO overcalls in ♥. You ruff the A♥ lead, take 2 trumps with both sides following and run ♥ winners while RHO sluffs minors. Eventually you ask yourself, why hasn't partner told me to claim yet? There's a trump lurker, and LHO is going to take his ♥K and give his P a ruff in a minor suit. So you wake up (finally) and draw the last trump. Since partner is in the habit of telling you to claim, he didn't have to say a word to alert you about it. In fact, on this hand, he hasn't done anything the opponents (or the rules) could object to. In effect, he committed that infraction on previous hands, when he told you to claim.

I am always surprised that there are people who need the score reset at all. How can you play the game if you can't do the simple math of adding the scores on a few hands? Why not change the display so that for each player, it shows the score since they came to the table?

That's an ethical violation. A serious one, in fact. When you tell your P 'what a moron he is', and do it during the play of the hand, you may as well just say 'The last card you played was a blunder, p!' You should at least have the patience to wait until the hand is over to insult your partner. Dummy is not allowed to comment on the hand being played at the time, in any manner. That's not a custom, it's rules of the game. I'm all for allowing the table host to restrict dummy from speaking during the play of the hand. It may be a way to keep the dummy-claimers and hideous-hog-wannabes from ruining a lot of good tables.

Some of the problems involved in getting users to use accurate skill descriptions: 1) Some players only play online. Using terms like "club" and "tournament" is loaded with problems. The only tournaments I play in are at BBO. 2) Ratings are inflated on BBO, and won't be undone. Many of the self-described experts simply don't care that they don't qualify as experts. Since the "expert" tag is diluted on BBO, all the ratings below it are also diluted. A player like myself who might call himself either Intermediate or Advanced pretty much has to use the Advanced tag. I can count out a hand most of the time, manage a squeeze or an endplay on many occasions, and I defend reasonably well. If people who call themselves "expert" cannot do those things, shouldn't I call myself "Advanced"? If I call myself "Intermediate", how did I end up in the same rating as players who can't count to 13? 3) The US bridge club system, with ACBL masterpoints, has resisted a real rating system for some time. Compare it to competitive chess, where players' ratings go down as well as up; a rating is a reasonably accurate assessment of skill in the chess world. In bridge, in the US at least, a player never loses a masterpoint. As a result, there is no general experience with honest rankings, short of the world level. You have no idea how good (or bad) a player is until you've played a dozen boards with them as partner or opponent. If bridge players were required to earn their ratings, as chess players do (even at the beginner level), they would find it much harder to call themselves experts when they are not.