Rossoneri

Agreed. What is SAYC? Many of my fellow Singaporeans put SAYC in their profile, but if I was to compare it to the real SAYC, I doubt we are really playing SAYC... jtfanclub has probably given a very good example of the comparison between the SAYC 1♣ and Polish 1♣. Having played a bit of Polish club myself, (though not WJ, I am using mickyb and davidc's polish club notes) I find that the system is more intuitive than sayc in a few ways. After partner opens 1♦ and opponents interfere, I can safely compete with 4♦s in my hand, or even try to compete with 3. (Since partner is more likely to have 5) My 1♠ is limited to 11(or 12) to 17 HCP. I can easily distinguish my hand as 12-14 HCP or 15-17 HCP to my partner. The limited range also makes it easier to explore game/slam. The 2♣ opening serves to have some pre-emptive effect. I gained quite a few imps just from playing 2♣ AP in a tournament last weekend. The 1♣ opening may seem hard to distinguish at first, but wouldn't you have the same problem in SAYC? Having 1♣ as a possible balanced 12-14 is probably a more useful bid in competitive bidding/defending. Besides, many sequences are repeated in polish club, e.g. 1♣-1M-2♦ is gf, so is 1♣-1♦-2♦ (albeit the opening hand is different, but both auctions are gf). If you still aren't convinced, you could try taking a look at carrot club first.

The Rose by Bette Midler. Lyrics

Interesting. This thread especially caught my eye because I just finished playing a handicapped teams tournament last weekend, and during the round which I sat out (partner had something on, and being the team captain I chose to stay a bit to give teammates some moral support) I was looking at the results from the first 2 rounds and trying to make sense of the handicaps given. Of course I couldn't really make much statistical sense out of it, but one thing that struck me was that individual handicaps might be inaccurate when two unfamiliar people partner each other.

Maybe we all could contribute to have a better idea how different countries are heading with regards to youth bridge. For me, I feel quite lucky to be in Singapore as the bridge calendar is packed with events, of which quite a lot targeted towards youth players. This weekend there's a national youth team championships, and half a year back we had youth pairs, schools pairs and schools teams. In addition, there are at least 2 other tournaments organised by schools/unis for youth players. A usual night at SCBA (our NCBO and biggest club locally) can easily see youth players occupying half of the field or more than half of the field. Usual field is around 6-8 tables. Sometimes more. In addition, I must add that we have a very enthusiastic club manager who openly encourages youth players to join events, a recent example would be the number of youth players she managed to find to partner older players for a special pairs event. We ended up having 19 tables, of which around 2/3 of the partnerships contained a youth player.

Very!

Yes, Sumo wrestling is my specialty. I am happy to learn that you got women involved in the UK. My only wish is that they are bit slimmer than the guys in Japan. Roland I thought your speciality is the pole vault. Once you said to kibitzers, you achived 1,24 m in pole vault, and that is a great result if we know that the best among the chessplayers jumped world record = only 1,09 m :D :( Robert Oh dear then, one of my regular partners was a pole vaulter in school so he can pole vault about 3 times of 1.24m....sorry to burst your bubble roland!

I personally wouldn't bid a grand under such circumstances unless it is near cast iron. (probably >90% or 95%) I think the slam should be better than the break even point calculated, because if you want to play differing points against strong/weak opponents, you probably have to factor in the fact that you only play 8/12/16/24 boards against them. (Statisticians correct me if I am wrong?)

! shubi alert!

What if Donetsk pulled off a ManYoo and scored 2 in injury time? :P

Teaching table is good as well. The stars really take the effort to bring you through your mistakes.

In Singapore it is taught in the GCE 'A' Levels, though I am not too sure about GCSEs in the UK...iirc my friend told me you can get by without any stats, correct me if I am wrong. I must say I am a bit surprised it isn't taught in some places.

I watched the 2nd half of the milan-celtic match. Was quite worth my getting up at 4.30 am I must say. Benfica refused to follow the script and managed to win 2-1 at Donetsk, which the commentators were saying was quite a feat since Donetsk has a rather different climate from Portugal. So the 1-0 scoreline in Milan turned out to be inconsequential to the champions league qualification. Benfica did manage to haul themselves into the Uefa cup though.

Wow, is this forum my 20th birthday present from BBF? :P

I agree. Result should stand. E chose to kept his call.

Wrong forum.

I liked the post about Germany and penalties. Any idea how are the countries selected in the pots? At least in champions league they have coefficients to seed (though some will argue about that as well)

Using Polish, yes, if one decides to treat the North hand as a strong GF. With 4 losers, that should probably be true. After a club cue by south, north can probably push to slam. Basically I think club systems fare better here.

The comparison with chess is unfair.In all chess tournaments there are clocks and if a player thinks for long he loses time. If he excedes time limit he loses even if he can checkmate his opponent on the next move.If he unnecessarily thinks for long he is the one to suffer.Opponent will in fact encourage him to do so.After all the former world championship contender Victor Korchnoi once lost a game as he thought for more than 1hour befor making his 1st move. :D Bridge is the only game in my opinion where Referees that is TDs consider the level of players before giving rulings.In all other games the authorities try to frame rules in such a fashion that there is no room for subjective decision.Not so in Bridge.That is why perhaps in no other game is there an appeals committe.The umpires decision is final. Whether you consider that a good thing or bad depends on your nature. :) Maybe I didn't word that clearly. Chess was an example. What I was trying to state was that the point that bridge ethics does not necessarily come with intelligence, as novice players might not be acquainted with the nuances of the game.

Thanks a lot! I knew I was asleep but I didn't know I was THAT asleep! -11.8 imps, so that's a lot of damage if we had made 5 or 6♥

[hv=d=w&v=n&n=s73hkqj87dcak9876&w=sqj9ht95dat72c543&e=sa652h6dkj86543cq&s=skt84ha432dq9cjt2]399|300|Scoring: XIMP[/hv] Bidding went P-2C(Precision style)-4D-P-P-4H-P-P-5D-P-P-X-AP Should S have X 4D? (Undiscussed) Should S have pushed on instead of a penalty X?

Sorry, I don't agree with you. Like what Justin and some others have said, things that seem second nature to us may not be for them. Hence decisions which are very easy for us may seem difficult for them. Your 'absolutely no reason' may not be a novice's 'absolutely no reason'. Your argument about intelligence and ethics is flawed. Do you know about Dr Gene's background? What if he came from a chess background? In chess you are allowed to think and reconsider your options over and over again if you so wish. Let's say he chose to apply it to this situation. Does this make him unethical? In a club game, it would be wrong to give Dynamite a good result simply based on this. Would the other pair be happy? If you were a novice and your opponent received a good result solely based on your 'long hesitation' which you saw no wrong in, would you be encouraged to return to play bridge? The only thing which I am in full agreement with you is that there is a need to teach beginners about ethics, make it part of the first rules that they learn. I am amazed that with the amount of emphasis on tempo and time in the game that none is this is really ever taught formally to beginners from the start.

Well said by Justin. I personally think it shouldn't be right even for a player to ask the director for an adjustment. Simply state your case and let the director decide.

An idea I had as well, but given my very limited experience with Matlab, I have no idea where to begin.

My gut instinct was 3♠ looking at length purely...but the ♠suit is crap. Either pass or 2♠ for me.

Good idea. More than enough to share around the whole world.