junyi_zhu

Well, to achieve certain bidding accuracies, one has to incorporate the high reverse concept. Also, to my knowledge, I don't know any top level 2/1 players who don't play a high reverse showing extra, please correct me if I am wrong. 1NT doesn't have to be forcing in 2/1. The general idea of 2/1 is to make better slam bidding in the sacrifice of the accuracy of partials, which is a very sound principle in IMP scoring format IMO.

The easiest system is probably acol with Strong NT IMHO. Starting from a 4 card major system may help them a lot in their future learning process. Also, I don't want to say 4 card major systems are not as effective as 5 card major systems. The key problem is that few top level theorists study 4 card major systems.

The intrinsic advantage of strong NT is that it's easier to distinguish the difference between 12-14 and 18-19 than to distinguish the difference between 15-17 and 18-19. Suppose a very simple auction, 1D 2C 2N: Suppose you play strong NT, your 2NT can only be either 12-14 or 18-19. So you can easily give another push after partner's game bid with 18-19. So your partner can make a lot of gamebids without disclosing a lot of extra information. If you play weak NT, your 2NT can be 15-19. now your partner has to take care of the possible 15-17 case and make a few descriptive bids with hands with some extra strength that may make a slam facing 15-17, cause he knows that if he bids 3NT, you wouldn't bid more with 15-17 over his 3NT bid. This kind of situations happens again and again and again in natural weak NT systems. No matter constructive bidding or competitive bidding. Another problem is that you sometimes want to distort your shape and bid some number of NT but you can't. Suppose you hold x AKQx Qxxxx Jxx or xx Axxx KJxxx AJ, over 1S response, you really want to rebid 1NT, but you just can't cause it shows strong NT.

Yes, this is a big concern. When players with bad hands leave, they have an unfair and intrinsic advantage, because human players are often better than computers, so averagely speaking, the good hand holder should suffer, either from bad bidding of computer or bad play of computer. The bad hand holder actually don't suffer much at all, because if you hold no HCP, you are actually not quite involved in the hand. The solution is actually very very simple, for those who left, his position should be replaced by a computer and his opponents should be able to continue the bidding and play.

You can play a immediate jump raise as pure preemptive. a simple raise as gf. 1C 2D is inv. 1C 2S as constructive raise.

Yeah it would make more sense to criticize the guy who is 5-6 in the majors than the guy with 8 solid diamonds lol. Well, the situation for 8 solid minor suit to play in 3NT as the best contract is indeed very rare, you need one card in that suit from partner, all suits stopped. Very often, when these requirements all meet, 5m can also have a reasonable play. However, when the situation for 3nt is a very bad contract happens, it can be very wrong when partner holds no diamonds. it only needs partner to hold Axxxx AKxx - Kxxx to make 6D, and when CA is off, 3NT would go down 5 when 6D is cold. Still in the bidding, few systems can really explore all the distributions and honors, so general speaking, to play in 3NT is a decision that can succeed in a few times when partner holds slow stoppers in side suits and at least one card in D, but fails when partner can't guard one suit or holds no D. And there is often no enough space to explore the 3NT possibility when bidding is under 3NT.

If you read him as a sucker, you should 4 bets with all types of full houses which beats straights and would likely induce a call to your final raise. Anyway, since it's not pl/nl omaha, it's never a shame for top full house to 4 bets against suckers, since the chance for quads are too low and for limit games, people tend to call a final big bet in a huge pot.

I think once gib has limited his hand, all jumps-to-game bids by partner should be a stop bid, and the algorithm shouldn't allow gib to bid his limited hand again. This kind of mistakes actually cost a lot of my money. You often observe gib bid something like: 1S 2H 2S 4H p p 4S, which is just wrong in the basic of bridge. Also, there are other mistakes in the program, for example, 1S p 2S p 4S x, usually, gib takes this double as take out, which is just impossible. A simple programming rule would solve this problem, if the pass is at a lower level and the second double is at 3 level or higher, the double should be penalty and gib should never pull the double.

Well, 1C x pass pass is actually quite normal IMO comparing with 1S x pass pass. One really needs very chunky spades to stay the double. Still, I am in the 1S camp, when possible, it's usually good to introduce one's longest suit and proceed naturally.

You partner can raise 2S to 3S, which seems quite normal to me. 1S then 2S rebid certainly shows a pretty good hand (not good enough to jump to 3S, which need about one queen more), otherwise, you can just bid 2S over 1H (which need about one king less). Whether to accept the invitation or not is certainly a judgement call.

Well, IMO, it's just a coincidence that gib pitches the highest card that it doesn't think it may cost a trick, in this case it is the ace of diamonds. IMO, it's very simple to at least implement a counting signal, as wbridge5 does, which is still a significant improvement and also helps solving a lot of defensive problems.

It's usually a matter of trick taking potential and controls. IMO, if one can't count enough tricks or may miss both AKs in a suit, he shouldn't RKC usually.

The simplest way is to play 1S as 4th suit gameforcing, 2NT/3C/3D/3H as invitational, 11-12 total points. Of course, you may have to rebid 2NT without stoppers sometimes, to solve that problem, you can probably bid 2S to show a invitational hand without spade stopper (after that, 2NT and 3C can be signoffs, otherbids are gf). This treatment is probably the easiest to program IMO.

why does gib devaluate Kx? Also, it seems normal to play a simple raise to show 12-15, a double raise to show 16-18 total points IMO, which is also a normal practice in expert's standard. This 12-17 thing is actually not quite playable.

I actually think it's a discrimination to have women's events in bridge. Bridge is game of intelligence, and I don't think women are intrinsically less intelligent than men. The current situation in women's event is due to the historic reasons, and attending a lot of women's events may prevent hopeful women players from achieving the top level in open events.

The first one: this is normal, in Gib's convention, it thinks that your 5D shows 6 diamonds, so gib takes you for 2-5-6-0 shape and gives you a ruff. So basically, if you decide to bid 5D, you may need to bid again to take control. Of course it's horrible bridge. The second one: I just avoid take out doubles. Gib just can't make right bids over partner's takeout doubles. It randomly generates hands, sometimes pass with xxx, sometimes, pulls the double to a 3 card suit with a longer suit of 4 or 5 cards and sometimes, pulls the double when holding 6 cards in opp's suit. Basically, the bidding of gib is still very badly designed, it doesn't understand the advantage to play in the longest combined trump suit, and it doesn't like declaring NT and thinks NT needs more HCP. Also, it doesn't follow the convention, I have seen gib jumpshift then rebid to show a "solid" suit with something like AKxxx for quite a few times. Also, gib often jumprebids a suit with 5 in the suit and sometimes a 5 card side suit. That's why you see gib often make impossible bids. The key problem of gib bidding is that there are way too many conventions in the system, and most conventions are badly programmed. Another problem is that gib just doesn't play any kind of penalty doubles, all the doubles in gib's system are takeout oriented and it would usually pull your double. The performance of gib's bidding would be greatly improved if it only plays take-out doubles at one and two levels, and penalty doubles at higher levels, which also simplifies the bidding system a lot.

Interesting. It would be interesting to see how it works in money bridge IMO.

This is a hand showing how difficult to find 7S....

Well, IMO, a rating system can never be very accurate to measure an individual player's strength in bridge because bridge is a game of partnership. On the other hand, bridge rating for partnerships isn't difficult at all (Certainly, two type of rating should be implemented, IMP and MP). It's just very strange to me that few really want to implement a rating system in bridge based on pairs. Also, a rating for team is indeed the simplest for bridge cause bridge can simply borrow chess' rating system for teams(with some modifications for sure).

There is another factor that is also very important: Some online players spend 12+ hours per day just about every day playing online bridge in ACBL-sanctioned games. If there are offline clubs where it is possible to play this much bridge, they are few and far between. Even if such clubs exist, for most people it would be a lot less practical to spend 12 hours per day playing bridge at the club than it would be to do so at home. I hope nobody will argue with the notion that, if all else is equal, it is reasonable to expect that those who put in more hours and play more boards will win more points. Maybe this consideration will be sufficient to rethink the your use of the word "ridiculous" :) If my posts in this thread have given the impression that BBO or I personally am "anti-club", I can assure you that is not the case. We do not see offline clubs as our competition. We have zero desire to hurt offline clubs. While there are some aspects of online bridge that offline clubs cannot practically compete with, the converse is also true. At the end of the day, we should all be trying to achieve the same thing: the more people who are playing bridge, the better for everyone. Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc. www.bridgebase.com Well, I think that it's rather bad that on-line points have no color. That's a huge discrimination against on line players. Also, the club games are way more expensive than on line games....

Well, it's not very difficult from a counting point of view. All experts don't have counting problems. All beginners don't count. All intermediates sometimes count. All advanced players sometimes don't count. World class is a word I tend not to use just because in my observation, at least 10% players in bermuda bowl and venice cup have counting problems. The difference between top experts and experts is the experience in top level events, but those who can attend top level events don't have to be experts, or don't have to be advanced players.

"It makes more sense to open a quacky hand than one with lots of controls (same hcp), see point 2" Obviously some were selling snake oil at that table.

Of course, transfers are generally better than the current standard treatments, although few play it nowadays. It also allows you to transfer to 3NT with weak stoppers or even not stopper but want to gamble that partner may hold one.

You may want to play 1D 2H as 5H+4S and weaker than invitation if you play a style to rebid 1NT regardless of spade holdings.

this is a normal 1C opening hand to me, regardless positions....