Quantumcat

I understand perfectly why BBO don't want to have too many free tourneys - they want to offer just enough so people can have a go playing in a tourney and see if they like it before they spend their money, but not too many otherwise people would just play free tourneys all day and never give BBO any money. However, it is obvious people are willing to spend a small amount playing tourneys even with no chance of any reward - 25 cent games seem to attract way more people than the more expensive ones where you can get 1.5 times your money back. Is it possible to have some sort of subscription to play as many "free" tourneys as you want? Then BBO still gets money, and people can play in loads of tourneys if they want (which they might otherwise not want to, since they have to risk $1 or so each time). So when you subscribe, there would be a tab to show you the "free" tourneys you have subscribed too, and there would be a new one like every few minutes (or more or less depending how many subscribers there are - need to fulfill the demand but have at least five or more people per tourney on average). There could be a low subscription amount - say $5/month, where the tourneys give no prizes or masterpoints. Then a more expensive one - say $10/month, where you get very small fractions of a masterpoint and no prizes, then a really expensive one (say $50/month) where you get normal amounts of masterpoints and small BBO$ prizes for winning (not big enough prizes to come close to paying for your subscription though). So people that want to farm for masterpoints are going to have to commit to giving BBO lots of money. While people who just enjoy playing tourneys for their own sake can do so. They would much rather take out a subscription (and have a guaranteed amount spent on tourneys) than constantly having to fight to get into the 25c or free games. If it turns out people are very willing to spend $50/month to farm masterpoints, you can always introduce a more expensive one later, and reduce the masterpoints and prizes of the $50/month subscription. Also the REAL free (no quote marks this time) tourneys can be used for what they are there for - letting people try out tourneys so they will realise they enjoy them, and then want to spend money playing them. Currently you need lightning-quick reflexes to get into a free tourney, so the people who just wanted to try it out aren't going to bother and then won;t give BBO any money in future, when they would have if they'd gotten a chance to find out how much they enjoyed tourneys.

Thanks a lot Diana. I will try this next time I play.

If you used an opening 3NT to ask for specific aces, you'll get to the right spot (assuming the little diamond isn't an issue - hopefully pard has a couple so it is a long trick, or he has a shortage and a couple of trumps, or he has the jack, or the jack luckily falls): - if pard bids 4♣ - you bid 5♣ (no aces) - if pard bids 4♥ - you bid 5♣ - if pard bids 4♠ - you bid 6♣ - if pard bids 5♣ - you bid 6♣ (ace of clubs) - if pard bids 4NT showing two non-touching aces, this must be hearts and clubs so you bid 6♣. - if pard bids 5♥ showing heart and spade aces, you bid 6♣ - if pard bids 5♠ showing spade and club aces, you bid 7♣ - if pard bids 5NT showing 3 aces, you bid 7NT (ace of hearts being a discard for the little diamond).

I think it would be nice to have the option for two or more frames inside the existing chat bar - each frame has a different recipient. So you can carry on a private conversation with a person, and follow the table chat, at the same time. It might also reduce the incidences of accidentally typing a private message to a table (you click the frame you want to chat to).

No matter what I type (and I am typing correctly - on the old BBO I never use the mouse if I don't have to), it goes in the chat bar. Clicking on the main window or pressing TAB rarely works, the cursor moves back to the chat bar 1 millisecond - 1 second later. I can take some video footage if that helps.

After reading posts by people that sounds like they know what they are talking about, I would suggest you learn how GIB or Deep Finesse works first (and read their source code), figure out what their weaknesses are and find out if the programmers know of them, and have reasons for designing their algorithms the way they have (more efficient), then when you have a holistic understanding of GIB and could program it yourself from scratch with no references, THEN you can go about designing your own bridge playing software. Otherwise you'll end up making the same mistakes people did when they designed the very first bridge program, and you've got about 30 years worth of mistakes to make and fix before you get to where GIB is now.

The cursor always moves down to the chat bar, so you can't really use the keyboard for bidding and play. Disabling chat does not work - the cursor just moves to the now-invisible chat bar. Am I missing something obvious maybe? Somehow old BBO manages to perfectly balance chat and keyboard bidding/play - I don't know how it does it, but whenever I want to chat, the keyboard chats, and whenever I was to bid or play, the keyboard bids or plays. I never need to think about it. Can part of this perfection possibly get moved over to new BBO as well?

Regular partnerships are like marriage - you don't go up to people you are only casual friends with and ask them to marry you. Rather, you date different people with no expectations of staying with them, but when you find someone you like and are happy continuing to be with (and they feel the same), then you decide to get married. With bridge partnerships, you probably ask someone you know is a decent player to play one particular event with. You practice together for a few weeks beforehand, then play. If you both enjoyed the experience, then one of you will ask the other to play a different event later, and the other will say yes - thus beginning a partnership. There's also no rules (like marriage) that say you can't have more than one regular partner - most people I know have two or three regular partners, that they play different sorts of events with. So there's nothing wrong with asking someone you want to try playing with to play, say, the pairs section of an event if they are only entered in the teams section - maybe their teams partner can't play the pairs and they couldn't be bothered asking someone just for the pairs. But they would say yes if asked. If you don't mind playing solely online, I can probably find a couple of Australian youth players for you to try out. If you developed a good partnership, and you have a bit of money, you are welcome to come to Australia for Youth Week - an annual get-together for all of our youth players, a couple of kiwi ones and one or two internationals. It is ostensibly for selecting the Australian Youth Team, but mostly about drinking, partying, playing games and having an awesome time with people we only see a few times a year. It happens in late January in Canberra. This should be a drawcard for anyone in the Northern Hemisphere - January is our hottest month. The week after Youth Week is the Summer Festival of Bridge, our second-biggest national event. If you have some free time (i.e. you don't have a serious full-time job yet) you can also stick around for the Gold Coast Congress in late February - this is also a lot of fun, because you'll be staying near the beach and there are lots of parties every night of the event, and also good bridge, it is our biggest national event and it attracts many, many internationals.

I wonder if it would make a good postgraduate computer science research topic? Making a bridge program that plays more like a human? It wouldn't have to be commercially viable (would probably need a supercomputer to run quickly enough), but perhaps it could compete in the computer bridge championships ...

I really hate agreeing with the hog, but I'm not going to be rude like him. The problem with not opening these hands in NT is that you have absolutely no rebid when it comes back to you - you are forced to either overbid (by jump-bidding NT and showing more HCP than you have) or underbidding (bidding the same level of NT as the response). When you have a 19 count and a nice six-card club suit, you are really worth much more than opening 1♣ and rebidding 3♣ or 2NT. But what else are you going to rebid? Better to upgrade your hand to 20 or 21 in the first place.

I reckon I would have had the best most scientific auction with my regular pard: 1♣(1) 1♦(2) 1♠(3) 2♠(4) 3♣(5) 4♦(6) 4♥(7) 4♠(8) 4NT(9) 5♣(10) 5♠(11) 7♣ 1. Forcing (denies 4 spades unless 6-5 or 21+HCP) 2. 4+ hearts, 0+HCP 3. 18-19 balanced, or wrong-way-round reverse in ♦ and ♣, or any 21+HCP with clubs, not balanced, DENIES 3-card heart support unless 21+ 4. Transfer to 2NT - forcing to game (invite would have bid 2♣, weak would have bid 1NT/2♦(invite to 4♥ opposite the 18-19 bal)/2♥(absolute sign-off)) 5. 21+ with 6+ clubs and not 3-card heart support(18-19 or ♦&♣ would have just accepted the transfer) 6. Blackwood 7. 1 or 4 8. Do you have queen 9. Yes - either with no interesting cards worth asking for, or more than one 10. What do you have in diamonds (game is an asking bid, not to play, when 3 or more keycards have been shown) 11. K, 3 or more cards (can show king doubleton on a different step) Now responder can count 13 tricks - 6 clubs, 3 spades, 1 heart, 2 diamonds and 1 diamond ruff. Not even needed if pard has seven clubs, or the jack of spades, or the king of hearts (he did say after all he had more than one card worth asking about - he has a decent chance of having the king of hearts) Edit: Ah, I did not notice that South was dealer. In that case: 1NT(1) 2♦(2) 2♥(3) 3♣(4) 3♠(5) 4♦(6) 4♥(7) 4NT(8) 5♦(9) 5♠(10) 6♠(11) 7♣ 1. 10-12 bal 2. Game-force stayman or balanced with 5-card major or slam-try in a minor 3. Answering stayman 4. Slam try or better in clubs 5. Accepting, showing some values in spades 6. Keycard 7. 1 or 4 keycards 8. What do you have in diamonds 9. Doubleton or queen 10. What do you have in spades (no point asking in hearts - opener has denied anything of use by skipping 3♥ - will be able to stop in 6♣ if he has the queen and no king) 11. KQ Now can count 13 tricks - 6 clubs, 1 heart, 3 diamonds (either AKQ or AK and ruff), and 3 spades. Worst case scenario is ♠KQ doubleton and no ♦Q and only 3-card support, but then he probably has the jack of clubs if he is going to call it a 1NT opening let alone a slam try acceptance (meaning you can ruff 2 diamonds high if you want, after drawing 1 round to make sure they are at least 3-1)

There's no harm in rebidding 2♣ - the opponents have ten hearts or nine very good hearts at minimum, they would have to be incredibly dopey to not balance. Then you can bid 3♦. Now assuming he only fakes this bid when he has a decent hand (maybe he doesn't want to bid 2NT or the like without both majors stopped) - he should have a good idea of the sort of hand you have (you would probably double with 3 card diamond support - and a bad hand with 4 card diamond support would have bid 2♦ the first time) and place the contract appropriately.

Never even noticed that. What does it do exactly?

Easier if you are a bit stronger - you bid 3NT in a really annoyed fashion, indicating you wanted pard to make a take-out double. This annoyed fashion can also be used after a weak two opening, when pard bids a suit but you wanted him to double :-P

Play with GIBS - you can always hover your mouse over their bid to find out what it means, and you can hover your mouse over your own bids to find out what they mean. As long as you have a general idea of the principles you can learn the specifics doing that. You could also learn by watching vugraphs - most people playing anything non-precision is at least loosely based on 2/1. Ignore their 1-club auctions and wait for a 1-major opening - watch what they do and ask yourself why are they doing that?

I should have added, wireless scoring is really only useful if you have lots and lots of tables, and players usually have to wait twenty minutes or longer to get a result after the game. If your players just go home and wait till next week to see the result, wireless scorers would be a waste of money. They can also be used by players who want to improve - for instance after a pairs game I usually check on one of the machines my matchpoints on each board, then write that down next to the hands on the hand record, so then I can figure out why I did badly on some boards. But if you don;t have hand records it's unlikely any of your club members would be interested in that, even if it was available, since they just aren't used to it. If you end up getting them, I like Bridgepads over Bridgemates. Bridgepads use more of their surface area on their buttons, old people have an easier time using them. And you can scale the text up or down, so if you have mostly old people in an event you can scale it up, otherwise scale it down and have more info fit on the screen. Bridgemates (the new ones) use the screen as a touch screen but I don;t klike the software and don't think it's as user friendly as it could be.

If this was Facebook I would click 'Like' on the above.

Whenever the bidding is forcing to some contract, bidding it immediately is the weakest bid. Here you are forcing to 5♥, so that's the weakest bid - you have no particular interest in slam nor defending. I would say pass shows mild interest in defending, (I will if you will), redouble says I am really quite interested in defending (probably based on singleton/void club, ace rather than queen of hearts, that sort of thing - and/or a nice 3 or 4 card spade suit that will be wasted on offence - mostly to discourage partner from hoping you have a perfect hand for him and bidding a non-making slam), 5♦ is some kind of slam interest, whether cue-bid or side suit, however you will have a club fit (or you wouldn't have slam interest).

If pard has a strong balanced hand and you don't have a very unbalanced hand, you should probably be defending them doubled. If pard is unbalanced, or if pard is balanced but you are very unbalanced, you will get a better score playing in a trump fit. With this is mind, here is my suggestion: X = takeout, with any strength hand, or balanced positive (strength going up with the level of the bid) Suit = good quality suit that doesn't need any help from pard to be a non-terrible trump suit (e.g. AQTxx, QJTxxx) Cuebid = good positive (i.e. slam interest if pard has a fit) with two suits that aren't the interferer's Pass = negative Pard will bid over your takeout double with a one-suiter or two suiter, or pass with a strong balanced hand. If you bid a suit, if pard has a tiny amount of support (e.g. Qx) it will be trumps If you pass, pard will double with a strong balanced hand, allowing you to bid a bad five card suit that you have, or pass if you also are balanced.

You can do this on a normal simulation program, just write down every type of hand that can make that bid. For instance, if a 1♥ opening, you'd write down 5 hearts, 2-4 of the other suits, 11-14 HCP or 18+ HCP, and 6+ hearts, 0-6 diamonds or clubs, 0-5 spades, 11-19 hcp, etc. Now you just have to translate what you wrote into the right syntax for the program. You can also do this on the new BBO. If you are doing a Bidding table, and select deal source, you can select what sorts of hands come up (2-5 clubs, etc), and if you click the "odds" button, it tells you the odds for the hand type you selected. So if you choose 0-13 of every suit, 0-37 HCP it will say 100%.

Dealing machines are vital - any club without one is totally backwards. I think I heard something about grants available to help clubs buy them? I'll look it up.

I started writing a suit combination solver recently, using uninformed search algorithm, and I'm sure I can improve it a lot by the time I finish this semester, as one of my classes is Computational Intelligence which is mostly about designing algorithms. It's not too useful if you own a copy of Deep Finesse, but perhaps it will be useful for some if they want to win an argument with a friend about a suit combination in isolation and The Encyclopedia of Bridge doesn't give a good answer.

Hi, it should only cost about $20-$30 AUD. You can buy it direct from the Grand Slam Bridge Centre (which Paul Marston is the owner of), or from Bridge Gear, owned by Paul Lavings. You can email Paul Marston at mail@australianbridge.com, or find the Bridge Gear shop on the net. If you contact Lavings he is often very helpful about recommending appropriate books.

Open 1♦, rebid 2♦. Presumably the opps will keep bidding - there are 26 black cards lurking out there somewhere. Continue competing and you will eventually get doubled. As long as you know your doubled scores and can make sure that your contract scores more than game (and hopefully closer to slam than game, so you can do better than any +500 or +800) - you will get a good result whether or not 6♦ makes. Edit: On reading the spoiler my plan seems rather ruined - but I would rebid 4♦, hopefully this shows an invite to slam, without the HCP requirement of a 2♣ opening, and encourages pard to make a cuebid, or sign-off with no aces or singletons or anything else useful (he should realise he may as well throw ♠KQJ and ♣KQJ in the bin for all the good those HCP will do you). Superficially you'd think you then wouldn't get to slam when pard has a nice JT doubleton heart and a few small diamonds, but in this case you don't want to be - it will go ♥A ... ruff. If he doesn't have the ace of hearts (which he probably doesn't, given you have the KQ and someone bid 2♥) you really want him to have a singleton heart AND a couple of trumps. With this he will gladly oblige you by cue-bidding hearts.

I would have raised hearts right away if I had hearts, therefore I do not have hearts. Our rule for redwood is 4♥ is only natural if we have never previously had any chance to raise or give preference to hearts prior to the 4♥ bid. Here I did have a chance. However if he had bid a new suit 4♥ would be natural, as it is my first chance to give preference to hearts.