DrTodd13

I think that the recent directing lectures were good but the problem with them is that only people interested in doing the right thing attended them. Directors interested in improving their rulings will seek out opportunities like this to improve themselves. They may consult other directors with more experience. The problem is with those who have no interest in following the laws. You join their tournament with the valid expectation that they will follow the rules of bridge and what you get are dictators rather than directors who disregard the laws and do things based on their own perceptions of "fairness." Case in point: My partner and I join a tournament. There are no system restrictions listed on the tournament so we play our normal system which includes Wilkosz. Then, this hand comes up: [hv=d=s&v=e&n=s64hj862dj975cq98&w=skq95hadakt43ck54&e=sajt873hk54dq6cat&s=s2hqt973d82cj7632]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] I open 2♦ and alert as 5-8, two-suiter with at least one 5 card major. West bids 3♦ and then East bids 4♠ which is passed out. After they claim 7 on the opening lead, West complains that I only have 3HCP. He calls director who then asks if I think it is "fair" to bid this way. I do have 3HCP plus a singleton which is around 5 points in my book. In any case, this is certainly not a psyche. It is just a normal aggresive action non-vul versus vul. Out of thin air the dictator decides this is "unfair" and changes the result from +12 IMPs for us to ave==. Not only have we violated no law but the opps have "failed to play bridge" by 1) not discussing a defense when this came up even though we told them they could do so, 2) not doubling 2♦ to start with, and 3) not taking any further action with a 19HCP with 4 good 4 card support plus singleton hand opposite a hand that can jump to 4♠.

One school of thought is that if you have equal length and a radical difference in suit quality then you open the stronger minor. If you had 3♣ and 3♦ and your ♦ were AKQ and ♣ 432 what would you open? If opps end up declaring the hand then your partner may get off to a better lead. He may also be better able to judge whether the hands are fitting if your bidding indicates the position of your high card points. The question is whether KTx is that much better than xxx. I think Goren suggested you should consider using this rule if the suit quality differs by 3+ points so it is on the borderline. Personally, if I have a balanced hand with length in the minors and I suspect we'll end up in NT then I used a mixed strategy. Sometimes I will open the conventional minor. If I would prefer an opening lead of ♦ (into a tenace for example) then I may open a ♣ to deter a ♣ lead and perhaps entice a ♦ lead. I'll only do this if the suit quality is not radicallly different between the two suits.

It is obviously possible to implement an automatic detection of 'illegitimate' undo requests, and the more time invested in the design of this system, the more accurate the detection will be. But is that really necessary, or even desirable ? You'll never be able to differentiate cases where the person changed their mind yet the bid or card played is only one away. Can anyone think of a reason why such a system that prohibited playing anything more than 1 away from the original bid or card would not be satisfactory? If we had this capability then I don't think I'd be asking for an "no UNDOs" options.

I'm not saying that human-caused global warming doesn't exist. I'm just saying that to me it seems pompous to say with certainty that we are the cause. I also find it disingenuous that periodically the "sky is falling" crowd gets a petition signed by so many thousands of scientists claiming global warming is real but what they don't tell you is that only a fraction of these scientists are actually climatologists. Hell, my business card says "scientist" on it so does that qualify me to offer an opinion? I think that according to criminal legal standards, you would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt human causation for global warming. Correlation is not causation. You probably would be able to prove this by civilian legal standards of the preponderance of the evidence though. Largely I think the issue is a political one where the real goal is to cripple the economies of industrialized nations in the name of the environment. I say this because the Kyoto agreement would only reduce CO2 emissions by less than 5% if I recall. That 5% is enough to do serious damage to the economy of the US but would have little effect on the environment. So if you really are serious about believing in global warming, you should be calling for immediate drastic reductions in CO2 and accepting the inevitable world-wide depression this would cause.

1. The earth's cycles of warming and cooling have happened over and over again throughout time and seem to happen at regular intervals. This would indicate they are related to orbital differences, sun cycles, precession, etc. 2. We can't predict weather reasonably well 2 weeks in advance and yet claim that we know that a certain level of carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming? 3. Water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas then carbon dioxide. So what causes increased cloud cover? As in #2, I'm not sure they can claim to know all the factors that relate to the amount of cloud cover. 4. As I recall from looking at this before, volcanos and oceans annually release orders of magnitude more greenhouse gases than humans do. How can they be so sure that the relatively tiny amount we create is making such a difference? 5. We've only had measurements of temperatures at various altitudes for half a century or so and some layers of the atmosphere appear to be warming while others are cooling. 6. So what if the earth is warming? Who is to say that the current temperature is optimal? 7. More carbon dioxide in the air will mean more and bigger plants. More plants is good for people and more plants convert more carbon dioxide to oxygen thus reducing one of the greenhouse gases. People are very mobile. If one part of the earth becomes difficult to live in then you can move to another part that will become more livable. 8. Some people want to build factories on Mars to produce CFCs and pump them into the Martian atmosphere. CFCs are 1000s of times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide and still some climatologists believe it would take thousands of years to warm Mars up even pumping huge quantities of CFCs into the atmosphere. I don't think you can have it both ways. 9. My understanding is that this whole hub-bub about Freon came about when the patent on Freon was about to expire. Coincidence?

How about this idea. If UNDOs are allowed then you only allow a deviation of 1. By this I mean that whatever bid or card you try to substitute has to be only one away from the bid or card that you originally played. So many times someone will, e.g., withdrawal a ♥ and then play a ♦ that you know came from a completely different part of the hand. If the distance is more than 1 then it is a pretty good clue they changed their mind rather than truly misclicked. Same thing goes for bidding, you can replace 1♦ with 1♥ but not with 1♠. Maybe you also allow 2♦ instead of 1♦.

Whether any religion is true or not, I think it would be very helpful if everyone believed in some peaceful religion that gives a purpose to life. If you believe the whole "our existence is a huge coincidence enabled by a random big bang followed by billions of year of random mutations" then the inevitable and rationale philosophy on which people operate would be "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die." I am of the opinion that people who believe that life is an accident must then believe that life is essentially pointless and that deep down this creates a core of misery that you can't shake with any amount of merriment. On the other hand, if there is a creator then perhaps there is a purpose to life that transcends time and space. At the very least, believing in something may enable people to be happier. If I could imagine a disaster scenario, I would envision a world without religion where hedonism and consumerism runs amock. Several major empires have already collapsed from within due to these factors. People forget the long-term and focus on short-term gratification and this is a recipe for disaster.

Innovations and knowledge aren't the same thing. It may be the case that to produce any significant innovation that you require more and more knowledge.

According to his statement, everybody is playing a HUM because almost everybody will pass a balanced 11 count but will open a 5/5 hand with 10 points. This guy has got concrete for brains. It is called judgement. Nowhere does it say that you have to user A=4,K=3, etc. You can evaluate your hand using whatever method you like and some 9pt hands to him aren't 9pt hands to you.

If the tournament organizer can prohibit UNDOs then why can't table hosts? What is the difference? I can argue that you need to prohibit UNDOs more in the MBC because there is no director to help determine whether an UNDO was from a true misclick or a slip of the mind. The laws of bridge also say that you should call director when an irregularity occurs but there is no such thing available in the MBC. I believe that 75+% of UNDOs are because somebody realized they just did something stupid. UNDOs are so readily granted that people get lazy and this just makes the situation worse. If they know UNDOs are not granted at the table then they will be more careful.

I really dislike XX meaning a strong hand. It just sets you up to be preempted having given no information about shape to your partner. I play transfers over 1M-(X) in a couple of partnerships but we don't transfer to NT. NT is NT in our case, 1♥-(X)-1♠ is a transfer to spades. We also play 3-level jumps as showing 5-5 in the two suits not yet bid. So, 1♥-(X)-3♣ is invite+ with ♦ and ♠. Todd

I'd like an option to prohibit the use of UNDOs at tables in the MBC. -- Todd

In my opinion, the general way that online bridge systems are organized promotes a chaotic environment that many find distracting and not fun. People have nothing invested in pick-up partnerships and have a great deal of anonymity and so feel no problem with hurling insults or leaving the table the instant partner does something with which they disagree. Playing a forcing pass system, we experience a great degree of table churn despite our warnings. Sometimes we will go through a dozen or more opps in just an hour. Regular tables aren't quite as bad as this on a normal day but table churn can still be annoying. IMO, what you need is a system whereby people can agree on a system, post a CC and then other people can view another pair's CC before agreeing to playing against them. Then, you would also want the ability to specify a minimum number of hands to be played...just like you can in a tournament. You would always be free to logoff but if you tried to log back in before the match you were in completed then you would be stopped. This options would only be available in "formal" mode though. You would still want to retain a simpler option for people who just want to play for fun. I agree with Hrothgar though. We have two groups of people who are trying to get along in the same space...the small percentage who are serious and want formality and others who just want to kill some time and goof off. The former are so few in number and so difficult to support that I wonder if we'll ever see anything catering to them. As it is, we don't even know who is serious and who isn't.

It appears that the increase in knowledge is following an exponential curve. On an exponential curve, you can't ask how long it takes for knowledge to double in general because it depends on where you are on the curve. You could view each separate field as being on its own exponential curve so medical knowledge may be doubling every 5 years and computer knowledge doubling every 4 years. I don't know if there is such a thing as infinite knowledge...are there really an infinite number of principles to be understood...so perhaps we'll enter a phase at some point where increase in knowledge starts to slow down again. When you get to this point then you're so close to knowing everything then it probably doesn't matter how fast you learn new things. Like all new technology, the cure for aging at first will be expensive. Then the patent will expire in 17 years and then they'll be a ton of relatively cheap, mass-produced generic cure-for-aging medicines. This won't stop you from starving to death or dying from some diseases so maybe it won't help some of these people who today die at 35. I don't see anything unjust in this scenario. I think that people who are born into a hellhole and die at 35 are terribly unlucky but I don't think it is unjust for people born elsewhere to maximize their life potential. My hope is that one day everyone around the world will throw off the chains of totalitarian government and be free. When people cherish and maintain their freedom, they will become successful. It won't happen overnight but eventually it will.

Aubrey de Gray predicts that within 20 years, people will be living around 20 years longer. The exponential growth of technology he claims will provide cures for all 7 causes of aging and that some people alive today will live for thousands of years. Freedom would demand that we allow this to happen and if people are so unwise as to have children and live for thousands of years then you'll quickly end up with food scarcity and starvation. I think people would naturally choose not to have children rather than have children and risk the whole family starving to death. Unfortunately, we don't live in a free world and either government would make the cure for aging illegal or would give you a choice between the cure and not having children. This would only increase the rate of technological expansion because each generation would not have to waste longer and longer periods of time educating themselves to the point where they are useful. We already see stories about robot assistants for the elderly in Japan. Can useful robotic maids be far off? Increasingly, all routine tasks will become automated and perhaps we'll transition to an economy of surplus rather than scarcity where most people won't have jobs and receive the basics of life for free and the few that do still innovate and entertain will be even more elevated than they presently are.

If you hold this hand, haven't you already grossly underbid by only bidding 2♦? So, sure, if you grossly underbid then you can correct it later if you get the chance. I'd say that if you would raise with 3 card support and a singleton that it is tough to find a 12-14 pt hand with ♠ doubleton that would want to take some action. Perhaps not impossible but I would imagine such hands are rare.

[hv=n=sakqxxhkjdjxxcxxx&s=sxxxhatxdakxxckqx]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] You find yourself playing 6N in the south. Opps are very kind and lead ♣A and they follow-up with another club. Still, you have some work to do. What do you think the best line is from this point? Sorry if this problem is too obvious for the good players but it might be interesting for those still learning.

I totally agree. I don't like for_each because it makes the code look ugly.

Purple Twos does multiplex the strong 4441's in with 2♣. Quit stealing my ideas man. :)

Purple Twos Only 3 meanings for 2♣? How puny. Check out the above link.

Friday night rocked on scifi network. I think the Dr. Who coming on the sci-fi network is a season behind. The new season will start on the BBC is the next couple of months.

My favorite sport is the second most popular participation sport in the world...table tennis.

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=sqxxhqtxxxdcakjxx&w=sxxhak9xxdjxxxcxx]266|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Here was an interesting hand. East opens a gambling 3N with no outside A or K. West bids 4♣ which North doubles. East bids 4♦, South bids 4♠, West bids 5♦ and North bids 5♠ which East doubles. What is your interpretation of the final double? What should West lead to trick 1? If you choose to lead a top heart, you get two small spots from both East and South, now what?

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