pdmunro

I would suggest that the US imports the talent it needs. When I was working in a US university research lab, my personal observation was that about 2/3 of the researchers were foreigners. Half the scientists were from China. There were also a number of Germans, South Americans, etc. Of my flatmate's class from a top Bejing university, over 90% were working in the US. I wonder what will happen when the Chinese are able to get jobs in their own country?

My favorite rule comes from Culbertson (I'm guessing he adapted it from the game of Whist): The Rule of Two and Three "For all 'defensive bids' ... you must be able to win, in your own hand, all but TWO of the tricks you bid for if you are vulnerable; or all but THREE of the tricks you bid for if you are not vulnerable." Source: Ely Culbertson (1954) "Contract Bridge Self-Teacher" Faber and Faber, Price 6S. 6D. (U.K.) As the blurb on the front cover says, "Teach yourself! All you need is this book and a pencil." OK The above rule was all I took from the book, but it was worth the price, $6.98, a slight increase from the original. Another rule I have found helpful comes from Sylvia's Rules of the Rock (1997): "New suits at the three level are game forcing." http://jeffgoldsmith.org/sylvia/bridgepro.html It's strange but I have never seen this rule written elsewhere. Maybe I should read more.

A recent article, Pirates of the Caribbean, points directly at the duplicity of politicans. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/taxhavens.jpg (I'm not sure for how long access to the newspaper file remains public.)

Another part of the mix: fraudulent use of credit default swaps. Am I missing something? I don't read much about this use of CDS's. A quote from http://seekingalpha.com/article/73060-why-...t-default-swaps (with my emphases added): "III. Third, and the most important use of credit default swaps, there is strong incentive to book the next 10 years'profit today. Credit default swaps offer banks with the so-called negative-basis trade another accounting loophole besides the earnings smoother discussed above. Using the same example: Take a CDO with a 50 basis point spread over US Treasures. Banks will buy credit default swaps costing them 20 basis points, but by doing so, even they seem to make less profit (50 vs. now only 30 bp spread), banks can actually book the difference in spread for the whole life of this CDO instantly, something called negative-basis trade. If this CDO life is 10 years, banks can book the whole 10 years of phantom profits this year, even if this CDO defaults sometime in next 10 years. And I don't need to mention its implications for the bonuses of the structured product groups at Wall St firms, or hedge funds with 2/20 fee structure. In other words, who cares whether this CDO defaults next year, let us just realize the next 10 years of bonuses today! "

Below is a quote from William K. Black's recent article in The Huffington Post the worse the nonprime loan quality the higher the fees and interest rates, and the faster the growth in nonprime lending and pooling the greater the immediate fictional profits and (eventual) real losses the greater the destruction of wealth, the greater the (fictional) profits, bonuses, and stock appreciation many of the big banks are deeply insolvent due to severe credit losses those big banks and Treasury don't know how insolvent they are because they didn't even have the loan files a "stress test" can't remedy the banks' problem -- they do not have the loan files

A question I have always wondered: Do all players in Robot Races get the deals in the same order? Re Lall versus The Donn What chance a tie? An extra statistic? The number of times the lead changes.

http://www.goldmansachs666.com/ (these guys are not happy) http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/04/incr...-liquidity.html (this guy never sleeps, writes in a foreign language, and posts hourly) http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/ (in english)

Former S & L investigator speaks out William K. Black, a former investigator of the Savings & Loans crisis, has some strong words to say about the present crisis: "calculated dishonesty by people in charge ... make really bad loans ... creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years ... that makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced ... The FBI publicly warned, in September 2004 that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud." http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

Just a suggestion If just teaching one person, how about having that person set up a GIB table on BBO, where the player has GIB robots playing in the other 3 seats. The price is very reasonable. Then kibitz the player, setting your profile so that you can see only your student's hand, not all four hands. Now you can discuss their cards, their possible bids and their play strategy. Your chat might be "text chat", or better yet "voice chat", using, say, MS Messenger.

'In memory of Grant, reprinted below is his 1996 update to his original "The Rules of Bridge" article. Included at the end are links to more articles by and about Grant.' Karen Walker http://home.comcast.net/~dist8adv/

Bridge Baron can display large cards, but the bidding is a bit small: http://keepcount.net/images/deal1.JPG

I am in Brisbane, Australia. All my disconnection problems have been traced back to my ISP (Optus cable). Three different callouts & three different hardware problems. Once it was due to a splitter, some technician had put in, that shouldn't have been there. Another time, the repair technican said that I was "at the end of the line" and he needed to boost my signal. Whatever that means. Basically, I would experience drop out, that I simply ignored, till it got so bad that I could ignore it no longer. And then I rang the help desk, who was invariably in India somewhere. The last one hoped that I would "feel completely satisfied" after he had finished dealing with my problem. (I wondered whether I might have inadvertently rung a phone sex number.) Occasionally I read http://whirlpool.net.au/ looking for advice, or checking to see if some underground cable has been servered somewhere. On the whole though, once the cable hardware has been fixed I have had a couple of years of problem-free connections.

A great word! The following is from www.answers.com ******************************************************* hodgepodge Dictionary: hodge·podge (hŏj'pŏj') n. A mixture of dissimilar ingredients; a jumble. [Alteration of Middle English hochepot, from Old French, stew. See hotchpot.] ******************************************************** hotchpotch n. A hodgepodge. [Middle English hochepoche, alteration of hochepot. See hotchpot.] Food Lover's Companion: hotchpotch [HAHCH-pahch] Each country has its own version of this rich, layered, vegetable-and-meat stew. Scots usually add barley and the meat is mutton or beef or sometimes grouse and rabbit. The English call it hot pot and their famous Lancashire hot pot contains mutton, sheep's kidneys and, when available, oysters, all covered with a layer of potatoes. The Dutch hutspot uses beef, whereas in France and Belgium the dish is referred to as hochepot and the ingredients include pig's ears and feet. ***************************************************************** hotchpot Dictionary: hotch·pot (hŏch'pŏt') n. Law. The gathering together of properties to ensure an equal division of the total for distribution, as among the heirs of an intestate parent. [Middle English hochepot, from Old French, mixture, stew : hocher, to shake together; see hotch + pot, pot.] **************************************************************** Hoche·pot Webster 1913 n. Hotchpot. [Obs.] Chaucer. *****************************************************************

Some sources of French terms are listed in a previous post: http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=28151&hl= For French terms you could also download and play against Yves Costel's Wbridge5 (The 2005, 2007 and 2008 World Computer Bridge Champion). It's French and it's free! http://www.wbridge5.com/

I would have thought most teaching has been done by having a pro partner. How would you charge for that, or even know that it was occurring? The form of teaching that I see in the future is: 1) student sits down at a GIB table; 2) hands are dealt according to a theme (eg 1NT opening), or randomly; 3) the teacher kibitzes the player, seeing only the student's hand. The extra that I want here is that the teacher and student are chatting with MS Messenger, say. The student voices his/her thoughts aloud. A discussion ensues. Another possible extra is to record the whole thing with something like Windows Media Encoder. A key difficulty of this last point is that this is memory intensive, something like 1 Mb per minute. I tried this with Cascade one time, with him kibitzing me at a GIB table and me voicing my thoughts, plus me attempting to video capture the screen and our conversation. My Windows XP with 1 Gb of RAM ground to a halt. So it's something for the future, when I have some free time again and an upgraded PC.

Larry Cohen writes about his 20 year bridge partnership with David Berkowitz: http://www.larryco.com/files/marriage.pdf It contrasts with a previous discussion in these forums about "What makes bridge partnerships break up?" http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=28705

The other Will Smith (English comedian) learns bridge: http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/the-mission-bridge

I haven't tried playing this way, but I am interested in reading your experience about how things develop. A couple of options occur to me: 1) Both play as South, say, at the same computer and discuss the bidding and play. 2) Play as a pair on BBO against GIB.

For suit contracts, the points scale of 26 = 10 tricks and 29 = 11 tricks suggests that 23 = 9 tricks and 20 = 8 tricks. The point ranges in bidding schemes are set up to get you to these levels with these number of points. Say you open 1H with 13 points. When partner bids 2H in support, he shows 6-10 points. With 13 points you should pass and you are at the 2-level with between 19 and 23 points, waiting for your partner to put down dummy. Say you open 1H with 17 points and partner again bids 2H showing 6-10 points. This time you bid 3H, inviting him to bid 4H ("game") with 9-10 points ("top of the range"). With only 6-7 points, partner should pass. Now you are in 3H with 23-24 points.

What I do is click MOVIE when I am dummy, or kibitzing, and SAVE the particular hand in which I am interested. I then open it with a free double dummy solver: http://www.bridge-captain.com/downloadDD.html

Wow, some people are never happy: now my sister wants a 4th! She is in Kone, a small town in New Caledonia. Thanks for the links. My sister said they were just what she needed. I also found these on Claire Martel's site: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/bcev/dicos/fed.htm http://www.bretagnebridgecomite.com/reglem/lexique.htm Source: http://www.clairebridge.com/toutsurlebridge.htm

Hi all, My sister has recently moved to New Caledonia and needs an English to French translation of bridge terms. Can anyone help? She is looking for an internet site. Thanks.

I like the clean look of this new bridge site: Mastering Bridge. There's a teachers and a players section. Barbara Seagram seems to have had a fair bit to do with it.

I recognize who you are talking about. If I recall correctly, similar bids and leads were made by the random selection of partners and opponents I played with and against last weekend on BBO. Heck, I might have even made some of those bids and leads myself! I recall an opponent who bid the lower of 2 five cards suits first. They got a good result. I recall choosing to lead the 4 card suit headed by the A, rather than the suit headed by the K, at 3NT. (OK so I only had 4 to the KQ, not 5 to the K as your "suspect pair" had. But I was in a similar situation where RHO had denied the majors and it was likely he would finesse into my KQ.) Someone complained to me that they won't play on BBO because most players cheat. I think that is absolutely wrong. I see exactly the same selection of random/crazy/stupid/excellent/brilliant plays on BBO that I see in face-to-face bridge. People who want to cheat won't persist. I saw it happen once in real life. It was two students at uni who were playing on adjacent computers. But they soon gave up: there was no fun in it. We play bridge for the intellectual challenge.

On BBO, the above probably applies: just change the word "beat" to "berate".