xcurt

I once played a midnight KO where we lost the first match 4-2 all on overtrick IMPs. Partner's comment -- "I was so messed up I couldn't count any hand." We were disadvantaged in that one of our opponents was like 12 so was obviously not chemically impaired. Hmm like I hadn't noticed. There were only 14 entries so as the lucky loser we got to soldier on. Partner's head cleared and we ran the table.

Thoughts: * You probably have no rights here. * You really need to check your scores and the hand records immediately following the session. * If it's still possible to correct the score, the right thing to do if you're the revoker is accede to a correction. * I have no idea whether or not your opponent revoked deliberately but I could easily see how it was an accident. For example, he might have expected you to have a different hand and played the correct card for the line he thought you were taking.

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that. I *would* stop what I was doing to watch the vugraph of the last day of an event like that (and I usually can't watch more than a few hands on vugraph). There's just so much more action at matchpoints than IMPs because every misstep can have a huge cost. Also, the LM pairs in the old days (ie before I was born) had an all-play-all final. If you began with 100 or so pairs, you could get down to 52 (4x13 so play all the pairs sitting the other way and qualify only against players sitting your way) on day 2. Then you could get down to 28 for day 3 and run a complete Howell. This would be an extremely fair event since the only seeding decision that would matter is which pairs sit EW and which sit NS on day 2 -- you would want to balance the strength of the two separate fields. It would be nice if the ACBL BoD even specified that in the CoC -- just like the Reisinger where the fields were always set to 20 and 10 teams for the second and third day (now it seems to be 28 and 14) regardless of the number of entries.

Actually, yes. I'd love to watch an event like that. Sounds a lot like the Cavendish, except not quite as exclusive. Or as expensive.

Just for fun I checked my PP holdings. I didn't think I had any since I last played a NABC in 2001. Guess what, I have almost 5 PPs from session awards (and it would be more except that excludes the session awards I got in events where I made the overalls). Exactly. I'll repeat my earlier assertion: The ACBL, having so devalued their existing currency the bridgeo^Hgold masterpoint, is trying to replace it with the new bridgeo^H^Hplatinum masterpoint. However, they are trapped by their need to prevent a revolt of the peasantry^Hrank and file so they aren't really able to devalue it enough.[1] Any number of textbooks on monetary policy will tell you an insufficient devaluation is bad policy, as they need to devalue at least enough to regain central bank^H^HACBL BoD credibility. [1] Just to illustrate this assertion, I'm more than a quarter of the way to a lifetime exemption after only two NABCs (all my other NABCs predate the existence of platinum points). I consider myself a reasonably good player, but when the PPP was proposed I certainly envisioned something a little scarier than a field of clones of me.

Pass. Pass Pass Pass Pass. You have neither major so preempting is not going to put LHO to any difficult decision since he's almost always going to have both majors and can double, or one major than he can overcall. Sure you might push them to an inferior strain but * you have an ace which severely limits the chances they can make a slam * you aren't playing matchpoints so the opponents can take the safest game-sized plus (any of 500, 600, 620, 630) even if it isn't the maximum plus, and the most they will lose is 4 IMPs (500 vs 630-660) * your call is going to increase the chance they play NT, which is probably their safest game * and you are running the risk that they check 2♦x out for 800-1100 when either of them has 4 of the 7 missing trumps * if partner raises, you are going to throw up Note that I would be much more tempted to preempt with, say, 1462 shape.

All of these proposals still include a big benefit for folks who can attend a lot of NABCs. 50 PP in 3 years is less than 6 PP per NABC if you attend all of them, or an average of <1 PP/NABC-day. I would follow the model golf uses for the Masters -- eligibility is limited to people with, say a top-10 finish in the LMs a top-10 finish in the BRPs make the final day of the Reisinger make the round of 8 of the Spingold make the round of 8 of the Vanderbilt over the last 5 years. No "lifetime" qualifications. I'm not going to go add up the field you get from that, but I bet it's a lot scarier than what the actual PPP will look like when it's finally played. Of course, since the ACBL has a monetary policy problem they really can't signal a significant devaluation of their "currency"* by creating an event that explicitly uses placings and not the currency itself as the entry "price." *masterpoints Edit -- thinking about this a little more this only qualifies up to 98 pairs per year -- maybe top 25 in the BRPs and LMs and round of 16 of the national KOs makes more sense. It would be nice to get the entry list to about 100 pairs actually starting play -- then you could go to 52 for day 2 and 28 for day 3 and play a complete Howell for the final.

Not all the Directors and Governors are complicit, but have a look at recent ACBL budget figures: http://web2.acbl.org/bb/BOD/FinancialForecast83107.pdf. Please note that you need to delve into the board minutes for the 2007 San Francisco NABC, then look at the CEO report, then find the link to the financial forecast to actually find this page. By the way, what other nonprofit of comparable size goes so far out of their way to hide their financials? I'll assume the document I reference is in thousands of dollars since that's the only thing that makes sense. The ACBL has an annual budget of about $10M. Their expenses just for their board run 3% of that (includes BoG). As far as I can tell, this does not include the implied expense for accomodations at NABCs since I think those expenses are netted into the P&L for the NABCs themselves. Despite spending $350,000 on themselves in 2008, the board only spent $283,000 on education. The ACBL made $297,000 in Bulletin advertising in 2008 (which probably includes advertising by regionals and sectionals, which ends up being borne by the membership anyway through card fees) but spent over $1M printing and mailing it. If the board can't turn a profit printing the bulletin maybe they should just get out of the bridge magazine business and leave it to the Granovetters and TBW. I could go on but you get the point. Bridge isn't dying but the ACBL is sure trying hard to kill it. Curt

Exactly. This is how all such bodies work -- by the time something is presented to the full board (of a company, Congress, whatever) the decisions have already been made. If you want to force a change in the ACBL, propose scrapping the 25-member board, replacing it with a 5 member board (northeast, southeast, midwest, west, Canada), have the board meet twice annually in Memphis (and not at NABCs on memberships dime). Or, accept that the ACBL is what it is. Since the ACBL is no longer responsible for determining who represents the US in WBF play, and since you can set up games online at whatever skill level and playing whatever methods you choose, you don't really need them so much any more.

Ken, you're worrying about the symptoms. There are some really dedicated people working in bridge but the ACBL has a big, sclerotic board with tremendous incumbency advantages. The usual political effects follow. By any common measure of corporate governance, the ACBL gets an F.

Or just ask "is this a C&E hearing you just convened in section F?" and if the answer is no then just walk away. Midsentence if need be. Nobody, not even the DIC, has any reason to ask you to explain your bridge actions. If he says otherwise he is de facto accusing you of cheating and you NEED to be in front of C&E at that point so that everything you say is on the record.

While I agree with the gist of this in principle, and while chess is obviously a finite system and a game of complete information, it's still nowhere near being solved. I think all 7-piece or possibly 8-piece endings have been solved, and each additional piece is a substantial order of magnitude; extrapolate to the fact that chess is, in essence, a 32-piece ending from the outset, and it's clear that it won't be "solved" any time soon. How many possible moves are there in chess....if computers are operating at 100 teraflops per second or "if soon" a billion teraflops I would guess we are getting close..soon assuming standard chess time limits. I would think as we approach or exceed a billion teraflops per second even many bridge players may loose to a computer. Nope. The estimated game-tree complexity of chess exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. On the other hand I'm much less pessimistic than some about the possibilities for computer bridge. Partly I think that the bidding databases are still very weak (which also impacts play of the hand because the inferences are poor). Partly I think that even the very best players make a lot of sub-optimal plays, so there is more opportunity for the computer to pick up points.

I don't think these are encrypted. Encryption implies the presence of a key permitting the message to be unscrambled. Pattern-type signaling methods should be thought of as a different coding scheme. Instead of sending, for example, for a count-happy pair: true -> even number of spades and then false-> odd number of hearts you send (count hearts) ^ (count spades). Later you send either count(hearts), or you send count(spades) -- it does not matter -- allowing the first message to be decoded. It seems, at least if you believe the Vinje and Prism claims, that Prism is a more efficient coding scheme than sending count of the suits over one by one. My understanding of why this is is that you frequently have some information about declarer's hand pattern from the auction and when you factor this information in, you can count out more hands after only one signal. The GCC says something about "mumble, mumble, only right-side-up or upside-down coding schemes, mumble mumble." I don't see why this prohibits pattern-type signaling methods as long as high-low ALWAYS means "odd pattern" or always means "even pattern." This does not mean that your local cop^H TD won't enforce the rules to his liking, however.

Completely agree with the pass. If partner can't bid it's hard to see how we can make anything since none of the spots in our long suit are going to take any tricks. If we bid, we have no hope of describing our hand to partner, so we will be forced to bid 3NT to end the auction next time, amounting to the same thing as just bidding 3NT immediately. Bidding 3♥ now seems totally obvious.

It's not enough to know what the key features are. You need to think about the optimal coding scheme given the bandwidth (number of steps) available. You might even need to think about the extend to which exchanging information benefits your side (higher chance of reaching the best contract or a reasonable alternative) versus the other side (letting them defend more accurately or double an artificial call to set up a defense or find a save). In other words, this is a very complex optimization problem. This is very similar to an issue discussed in another thread, what to do holding 6M4m minimum after 1M-1NT (no opposition bidding). There, when designing your system, you need to weigh the extent to which showing more of your hand (2m -> 9 cards shown) benefits you versus the extend to which showing the high-value features of your hand (2M -> 6 cards shown, but the value of a sixth card in a suit is much higher than the value of a fourth card in a suit, ceteris paribus).

This is backwards. The marginal value (in win expectancy) of the last IMP won in a swing is decreasing with the size of the swing. This is true in general, but might not be true for specific situations where you can predict the state of the match with some confidence. Also, the above statement apples to KOs. Playing VPs the payoff function is a little different, when you're significantly behind you want bigger swings since the additional marginal IMPs are benefitting you in the part of the VP table where VPs/IMP is ~0.3, while the first few marginal IMPs are benefitting you in the part of the VP table where VPs/IMP < 0.2.

This is what I tried. Not sure if I was lucky or not. Pard held: Qx, KQJx, AJxx, AJx. Nine tricks was a little over average. If this was matchpoints I would be tempted to sign off in 3♠ and try to get a plus. Even if it's a 5-2 fit I think I will do one trick better than NT, winning the board with any number of tricks made. This action pays off to a 4-4 heart fit, though.

3♦, this seems like a prototypical "overbid a little to get to the best strain" decision. I don't want to try to make exactly 2NT with the long spades possibly getting stranded.

I think you are misunderstanding the use of the word "significant". The post I quoted didn't specify if "significant" meant "0.3 IMPs is chump change" or "significant" meant "0.3 IMPS is a tiny fraction of the variance in outcomes. I read it for the former, but I might have misread that poster. No I didn't mean to insult anyone. I'm sorry if I did. I'm not sure I understand the reference to two people trying to insult Han either. But 0.3 IMPs per board is a meaningful difference (unless swamped by the variance, which doesn't mean that 0.3 IMPs per board isn't worth picking up, just that your simulation hasn't told you much). Also, I think the point of the simulation got lost. In fact I may rerun the simulation myself and post dealer code. I learned something from this hand. I think the point of the simulation is that responder should pass very aggressively in the auction 3♦-P-P-Dble; P-?. If you accept that, this hand becomes much less of a problem since we don't have to worry about partner pulling to a bad 4-3 major suit as often as we might if partner is of the "I take out my partner's takeout doubles" school.

Don't sneeze at 0.3 IMPs per board. In another thread I argued that the difference between a team of, say, 4 Han's, and a top 10 seed in the Spingold, was probably about 1 IMP per board. Getting this kind of thing right is a not-insignificant part of the difference between the pros and the rest of us. Although we're talking about advancer's problem and not balancer's problem, I think this suggests that balancer's hand is a clear double, since we have the most 3NT-oriented balancing double we could imagine, and about the worst defense we could imagine, and we're still ahead when partner chooses to play 3♦x given the set of logical alternatives {Pass, 3NT}.

Agree the chances of 1♦ being checked out are vanishingly small. There's another reason to open 5♦ or 6♦, which is you believe you have little chance of exchanging useful information below that level. If we open 1♦ and partner bids hearts, we're ahead If we open 1♦ and the opponents bid AND raise hearts, we're ahead If we open 1♦ and hear spade or club bids from other players at the table, our next call is a guess I would rather open 5♦ (6♦ feels like a little much, we partner to provide us with 3 tricks and we rate to have very little communication with the dummy) since I think that the most likely scenario is that we will be bidding 5♦ over opponent competition next round anyway.

re the argument about whether 2M promising 5M, and 4+ in a minor, is natural. I expect most pairs playing this have some way for responder to say "I want to play a partscore in your minor." How is this auction: 2♥* -- 2NT* 3♣ -- Pass qualitatively different than a Michaels auction (1♥) - 2♥ -- 2NT 3♣ -- pass. Are you then saying that a Michaels cuebid is artificial only because it doesn't indicate a willingness to play in the bid suit, and not also because it suggests two places to play?

2♣. I would even go so far as to say 3♣ is a clear error. Once upon a time this would have been good enough for 3♣ but a 1/1 doesn't really promise 5 or 6 HCP any more (see any number of comments in these forums). Next paragraph was edited to clarify what I meant... Also, partner is quite likely to have a bad shape for us. If he has 4-2 in the majors and a hand poor enough that we will not reach game after 2♣, he would have bid 1NT (F1) not 1♠. So EITHER we will reach game anyway, OR he's got BOTH a minimum and at least one of 5+ spades or a stiff heart. The spade blockage and lack of heart intermediates will work against us establishing either major at NT.

Jeff Goldsmith looked at this a long time ago, see A Study of IMP Matches. Your ability to discriminate between the teams goes up with log(boards played) so you would to play many additional boards (maybe even another full match worth) to get any significant additional confidence that the team with the lead after the last board is played is, in fact, the better team. I agree with Josh. I once lost a 64-board district-level GNT KO by 2 ******* IMPs (the team that beat us went on to make the open -- back then it was just called Flight A -- national finals that year). The two big missed opportunities were not partscores.

The expected diamond length isn't that much shorter (although it varies according to what hands, exactly, are taken out of 1♦ by other methods). Of course, in ACBLland, once the opponents open a conventional 1♦, you can play anything you want.* You should definitely take advantage of that to see if they have done their homework. * Unless the primary purpose is "to destroy the opponents methods," whatever that means.