DrTodd13

What question didn't I answer, whether memorization is inherent? To be clear, I don't think the people who made the game sat down and said, let's make a memorization game. Who knows for sure...maybe there's a journal somewhere with the thinking process they used but I suspect that memorizing agreements was just a way to save time. I'm not saying people have to prove why the rule should stay. I think there is room for two variations, one where memory aides are allowed and another where they aren't. I just try to make the argument that the memory rule decreases differentiation amongst players based on bridge knowledge. If you got rid of the memory rule, then those with better bridge knowledge could expand their agreements and improve them and presumably improved agreements would result in improved results which would reward this work and superior bridge knowledge. If you've ever chosen to play an inferior method that everyone else plays for the sake of easing memory load then I can state that you deserve to be rewarded for knowing that a superior method exists. At the moment, something that I think should differentiate you as a better player is totally worthless to you.

I think its pretty obvious what the quote means: Addressing global warming is going to require collaborative problem solving. Its probably too much to hope for anything approaching a consensus, however, it will require a broad based coalition. In turn, this is going to require sacrifices on all parts. The US is not going to be able to say "All of you need to change your behavior, but we're going to do whatever we want" I know this you find this sort of thing abhorrent. Your entire world view seems to consist of "^%&! off, I got mine" and "I should be able to piss where ever I damn well please" Maybe, someday, you'll understand how grown ups behave... The intellectually strong do not go around determining what is right or wrong based on what the international community says. If he wants to fight global warming fine. Stand up and say we must sacrifice and lose our fat asses for the sake of the world even if the rest of the world does not follow. I did not get the sense he was saying that we were hypocritical for telling others to fight GW when we were not willing to ourselves. We should not be hypocritical for sure but likewise he is supposed to represent US citizens and not the world so any reference he makes to the world opinion is a slap in the face to Americans and shows him to be weak. You are weak if you let the opinions of others dictate right and wrong to you. I find your attitude paternalistic and offensive. You talk about being an adult yet you want to treat people like stupid like children. They do not know what is good for them and need big daddy government run by smart guys like you to guide their every move. You are evil. Collectivism is immoral and evil. You have no right to dictate how people should live even if it kills them.

There is no reason why except that's what bridge is. What you propose is a different game altogether, similar to bridge but with that one glaring difference. The game you propose would simply place the emphasis on some different skills, there is nothing wrong with that but most people seem to enjoy the game the way it is. I really think you took the onus on this question in reverse. Why should an inherent part of bridge be removed in order to introduce a different part? Any change in the rules would technically result in a different game. Why is memorization of agreements an inherent part of the game? Because the rules say so? Fair enough but can't we look deeper and ask why the rules were written that way? Was memorization of agreements considered to be an inherent/integral part of the game even before the rules were codified or was memorization a means by which to keep the game from being too slow? So, you think the way the game is now is optimal for enjoyment? You don't think a vast number of players would be happy to use notes to refresh their memory when rare sequences come up, assuming doing so were legal and didn't slow the game down too much? The situation I see now is regrettable. People memorize rules but many never understand the principles by which those rules were derived. If you don't get down to the principles I think you're an incomplete bridge player. If you've ever played transfer openings, you'd be surprised how many people will bid the suit you are showing naturally or X to show the 3 unbid suits versus the 3 "unshown" suits. ------------------- Post 1000!

You didn't really answer my question. You just negated my hypothetical assumption. From your post though, I gather you value speed of game and your desire for memorization seems like it is really a means to the end of keeping the speed of the game up.

Mostly Democratic sweep I would agree but not for the Presidency. I think the country is more racist than it is sexist and Hillary does well in the purple states. Obama doesn't seem to do well in the purple states. If even 3% of Hillary's supporters are racists (and therefore stay home or vote McCain) then that may be enough to swing key states to McCain.

Why do you believe that your agreements should be subject to an "in memory" constraint? I agree the game currently is a game of memory. That is why I'm suggesting a (potentially future) change in the laws. Forget what the laws say for a moment and answer _why_ it should be that way. If there were no time constraints, why should we as bridge players choose to value the ability to memorize versus valuing the ability to devise effective defenses against every system and convention out there, not to mention increasing the accuracy of your own system?

I don't think you have to define rare or unusual. You just set a time limit and punish people who go over the limit. If you like, you can still have GCC and if you exceed the GCC then your opps get more time for bidding when you are in the auction. If they consulted a book with every bid then they would be too slow and would exceed their time allotment. The only way they wouldn't exceed their time allotment is if they used their notes relatively rarely, again against the rare or unusual. I think you are arguing a bit in circles. The only reason a system now has to be a balance between effectiveness and memory ability is because you can't have notes. You can't then say you shouldn't have notes because a system should have such a balance. Keeping the game moving is a good argument for disallowing notes but striking a balance between effectiveness and memorization is not a good arbitrary goal for bridge players. It is a consequence of another rule. In F2F play, regulating bidding time right now would be more problematic. You could do it online. As offline and online bridge start to merge, you'll see more gadgets making their way to the table. There was a thread about the Cavendish using devices to record the scores. Eventually, you'll get tablets cheap enough to replace cards and bidding boxes and then allowing notes becomes possible there as well.

Quote all over drudge yesterday about how Obama said that the US can't continue to drive SUVs, eat to the point of obesity, and keep our homes at a comfortable 72 degrees and expect the international community to say "OK." WTF does that mean? Does this mean he's going to make efforts to curtail these things so that the international community is happy that our standard of living has decreased? I don't think it is his job even if he becomes president to force people to change their lifestyles so that the perception of Americans improve overseas. Certainly, even if the international community is aghast at some supposed luxurious lifestyle we have, what are they going to do? Let them use all the words they want...those are cheap. They going to attack us to make us drive miniature cars, go on diets, and suffer in cold and hot weather? Increasing energy prices are going to do that quite nicely without anyone's help.

By the way, hiding the auto-FD alerts from partners would only increase the cases where FD says one thing and partners mean something else. It is a tradeoff. You can be accurate and thorough in FD and so that is a benefit to opponents. The downside is the occasional case where the meaning of a bid has changed and is not reflected in FD. Making people type explanations every time results in people taking shortcuts and you end up with half-assed disclosure.

So long as it is possible to consult your own convention card while the bidding is active, whether the software makes it easy (way it is now) or difficult (makes you manually trace the bidding sequence in the FD editor) doesn't seem to change the basic nature of the game. I think you should have the same problem with all online bridge because it is possible to talk on the phone or consult notes while playing. Personally, I think the laws should be changed so that bridge is less a game of memorization and more about spending offline-time to devise good and thorough systems. Again, I personally think that understanding what makes a good system and understanding the fundamentals of system creation is something that should be more valued. As it is, most people just memorize a bunch of rules, consider it done and then concentrate on judgement, declarer play, and defense. I think this triad is missing a 4th major member that you can't really focus on so long as everything has to be memorized. The game shouldn't slow down too much though so you'd still have to memorize quite a bit but you would get to use notes for rare sequences and defense against unusual conventions. This would go a long way towards alleviating all the "you can't use that convention because people aren't prepared for it" cop-out.

At least 2 or 3 times a week, I run into some new person who is vehemently against hovering their mouse over an alerted bid to see the FD description in the corner. Some even go so far to accuse me of being unethical because I use FD and don't type the explanation in the regular alert box. Some people are just ignorant and when you tell them about FD and that they need to hover over the bid and look in the corner then they are fine. A sufficiently large number of people are thusly ignorant and so it gets pretty annoying explaining this all the time. So, in terms of suggestions. First, could we have a system message that you get when you login every couple of weeks that tells people what FD is and how to see the alerts. Second, when a regular alert is made, the description of the bid is temporarily displayed above the bid. With FD, you just see the bid alerted but have to hover to see the description I believe. Can you temporarily display the FD description in the corner (or even better directly over the bid) in a similar manner. Third, when the bid is automatically alerted with FD, can you put something in the regular alert field that shows up in the user's native language that directs them to hover there and look for the explanation in the corner?

what does? Nothing Bravo!

With this logic I suppose you could say the door of my house is an arbitrary line drawn by a racist/culturalist/whatever name you wish to call me to deny people the freedom of movement they might wish to exercise. Damn straight. That's its purpose alright. I see it as pretty much the same with borders and with citizenship. That side's your's, this side's mine. Let the name calling begin. You own your property. You don't own your country. That is the difference. If you can't see how fundamental this difference is then you've been brainwashed.

Borders are arbitrary lines drawn by racists (culturalist if you prefer) to deny individuals of other people groups their fundamental right to freedom of movement. I don't have a right to get to decide who can and can't move into my neighborhood. I don't care if it is 1 or 1000 or 10,000,000 people, sheer numbers doesn't bestow the legitimate authority to tell people where they can go.

I'm not in favor of punishing them but the sense I get is most people will say "we aren't doing enough." What I'm saying is that no matter how much you do, you are always going to have the homeless. You shouldn't force people to be productive. If they want help, then private charities are available to provide real help, not just a series of handouts that result in dependency.

Has there ever been a country and a time in which poverty, relativistic or absolute, did not exist? I get the sense that people still believe that if only we fix X, Y, and Z and provide this bundle of free services that we can eliminate poverty. Why is it that many poor people who win multi-million dollar lotteries are broke just a few short years later? Poverty is not due to the Olympics. It isn't due to lack of caring or money or housing. Governments try to make these people productive but for probably many psychological reasons beyond their control, many of them don't want to be productive. Around here, there was a problem at some point with a large gathering of homeless in a tent city. People tried to help them and get them into housing and many of them refused or were quickly back on the streets. So, in short, if you subsidize poverty, you are going to get more of it. Stop blaming people as if they are heartless as if that were the cause of poverty.

It is too bad more people don't use it but there is something called the MBone where you can multicast events like this. It solves the bandwidth issue.

Those are some crazy statements. Nobody shows up in court with zero preparation or training and tries to win a case and if they try it then they'll lose miserably. Take the average person and they would fail at the real training it takes to be a doctor or a lawyer. Sure, everybody gets better at any job with practice. You might hate being a waiter and some waiter might be a lot better at it than you but I bet you or anyone else could get a job being a waiter if you wanted to.

I might phrase it a bit differently. It is a continuum but for the sake of discussion we can divide it into two groups. In the first group are jobs that nearly everyone is capable of doing given little or no training. This group accounts for probably around at least 90% of all jobs. The second group of jobs are ones in which most people are simply not capable of doing them regardless of how much training they received and even those that might be capable may ultimately not realize that capability due to lack of education or other resources. The second group is further fragmented because someone smart enough to be a doctor could probably also have been an attorney but not without significant additional training. Both groups will be competing globally. In the first group, supply of this labor tends to outstrip demand and the pool is so large that competition is fierce. Advances in robotics gradually makes more and more of these jobs cheaper to do with machinery thus further increasing pressure for the remaining jobs and driving down the price of labor. Sure, you create some jobs in robotic design, manufacturing, repair, etc. but many if not most of those jobs will go to people in the second group. In the second group, demand tends to outstrip supply so labor costs in this group are driven up. I expect the have/have-not divide to increase but ultimately human jealousy will render the direction we are going unstable. Perceived lack of fairness in the innate capability toss-o-the-dice will result in calls for massive taxation on the haves. Governments will be walking a fine line of taxing the wealthy sufficiently to appease to masses while not taxing them so much that they refuse to produce.

What got me laughing is the use of the word "simple" in conjunction with Multi. Not that multi is complex but the people who would be interested in an even more dumb-downed version of SAYC would have their head explode if you told them that one bid could include multiple hand types.

We have two conflicting pieces of information. Our opponent with long spades is likely short in ♥ but he is also more likely to hold the queen due to having taken a bid. I agree with Mike though. I thought you were asking for the correct line of play, not the psychological line of play. I thought we all agreed in the end that ♣ pitch was correct.

That would be great. Thanks! And give the answer to that other thread you started about the hand that got away.

What I find odd is that the more narrowly restricted a bid's definition is, the easier it should be to devise a defense against it. Would 2♣ showing ONLY 5♣ and 4M be illegal yet add another possibility, namely 6♣, and suddenly a bid theoretically more difficult to defend against is legal?

Opening Summary: 1C = 15+ balanced (4333/4432/5m332), or 14+ value 5+C/444-1red, F1 1D = 14+ value 5+D or 444-1black, F1 1H = 14+ value 5+H (12+ if 4S), F1 1S = 14+ value 5+S (12+ if 4+H), F1 1N = 12-14, any 5422 ok except both M's, 6m ok, all 4441's (!) 2C = 10-13 value, 5C-4other unbalanced, or 6+C (5C-5S has opened 2C before) 2D = 10-13 value, 5D-4M/4+m unbalanced, or 6+D 2M = 10-13 value, 5M-4+m unbalanced, or 6+M 2N = 21-22 bal 3y/4y = pree 3N = was solid 7+crd minor nothing on side From Dan's page.

What is the current thoughts on the GCC legality of their system? Even their 2♣ bid which is very much like precision I have trouble finding where that is allowed in the GCC. Everything not specifically allowed is forbidden.