pdmunro

After you bid 1♥, the continuation you want to hear is 2♥ by partner, showing a four card heart suit and 13-15 points. Now you can invite partner to game by bidding 3♥. With only 13 points partner passes, whereas with 15 points partner accepts the invite and bids the 4♥ game.

I like this explanation of surface tension: http://wwwchem.csustan.edu/chem2000/Exp5/BKG.HTM

Are these of any use? http://www.worldbridge.org/departments/systems/cce.asp http://www.ecatsbridge.com/documents/wbfin...entioncards.asp

3041 RKCB is better in the Main Bridge Club on BBO, as it causes less misunderstandings when playing with pick-up partners. I use plain Blackwood because it causes even less misunderstandings.

The ACBL site has a number of new bridge lessons. They are writtrn to complement Audry Grant's "21st Century Bridge Series" and Fred's "Learn to Play Bridge" software. Some are written by Pat Harrington: http://www.acbl.org/teachers/materials.html A good site for teaching links is http://abtahome.com/resouces.htm It includes these links: BRIDGE FOR YOUTH Donna Compton has arranged material designed to introduce bridge to the target group of ages 4-7. http://web2.acbl.org/documentlibrary/teach...LessonsPreK.pdf Donna also has created a manual for teaching bridge to a target group of children aged 8-10. http://web2.acbl.org/documentlibrary/teach...essonsFinal.pdf The School Bridge Lesson Series Teacher Manual for ages 11-13 (and adaptable for other age groups) developed by world champion Kitty Cooper: http://web2.acbl.org/documentlibrary/teachers/ABSmanual.pdf

Would Dummy Dummy Solver (free) do the job you want? http://www.bridge-captain.com/downloadDD.html

I started by reading this "Barry Crane & me" story http://www.bridgeblogging.com/camfrench/20...rry-and-me.html and continued on reading other articles in http://www.bridgeblogging.com/ A nice concept: several bloggers, for the price of one; fresh stories; a touch of controversy; different points of view from top players.

Is this relevant? http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=19636&st=0

Quote from Reuters: "FACTBOX: Rise and fall of the SocGen rogue trader Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:35pm EST * His job was to buy and sell similar financial instruments simultaneously, making money only on the tiny and momentary spread in prices between them -- classic arbitrage trading. * He was not allowed to leave the bank with a net exposure. * The alleged fraud, as outlined by the bank, included a genuine long position in regulated stock market index futures, contracts bought in the hope that prices would rise. * Usually an arbitrageur hedges such a long position with an equal and opposite sale, or short position, reaping a profit from any gaps between the values of the two transactions. * The SocGen trader did hedge the first position with a second, but the trades in that portfolio were fake. So the bank was unwittingly holding long futures positions without cover, leaving it exposed to the risk that prices would fall. * To evade controls, for the second portfolio he chose unregulated over-the-counter derivatives which do not need a downpayment, including forward contracts. * Because there was no downpayment, or margin, these trades were not subject to the same immediate checks as the real futures positions held in the first portfolio. * Since the real and fake trades balanced each other out, SocGen says its computers perceived "low residual risk" overall. * As the market turned against him, he sought to cover up mounting losses to avoid further tiers of compliance checks. * The bank alleges that he misappropriated computer passwords and faked documents. To prevent supervisors from uncovering the fictitious positions, he would erase them before the checks and rebuild new ones immediately afterwards. * He ended up with a 50 billion euro portfolio, worth more than the bank itself. http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/i...0080127?sp=true **************************************************************** Wall Street Journal "Rocked by Rogue Trader Société Générale Blames $7.2 Billion in Losses On a Quiet 31-Year-Old By DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS, CARRICK MOLLENKAMP and ALISTAIR MACDONALD January 25, 2008; Page A1 Mr. Kerviel essentially made bets on which way large European stocks would move, in one of the most liquid markets linked to equities globally. His expertise was trading futures tied to baskets of stocks such as the Euro Stoxx 50. In normal markets, some $40 billion to $50 billion of the futures of that index trade daily. The index gives traders such as pension and hedge funds quick access to a large swath of the European economy, by investing on the belief the index will rise or fall to a certain point in the future. Mr. Kerviel also made trades in Germany's DAX Index and France's CAC-40. According to Mr. Bouton, the Société Générale chairman, Mr. Kerviel began conducting fraudulent trades sometime in 2007. People familiar with Mr. Kerviel's behavior believe he worked late into the night, essentially burrowing into Société Générale's computers, as he allegedly built a multilayered way to hide his trades by hacking into the computer systems. Société Générale's computer systems are considered some of the most complex in banking for handling equity derivatives, that is, investment contracts whose value moves with the value of other assets. Officials of the bank believe Mr. Kerviel spent many hours of hacking to eliminate controls that would have blocked his super-sized bets. Changes he is said to have made enabled him to eliminate credit and trade-size controls, so the bank's risk managers couldn't see his giant trades on the direction of indexes. Mr. Citerne said the bank didn't notice the unauthorized trading until last week because the trader had "intimate and malicious" knowledge of its procedures and knew at what dates checks were conducted. "Each time he took a position one way, he would enter a fictitious trade in the opposite direction to mask the real one," Mr. Citerne said. According to one person familiar with the situation, Mr. Kerviel used the computer log-in and passwords of colleagues both in the trading unit and the technology section. According to one person familiar with events, the bank's controls did red-flag an outside trading partner of the bank, whose account showed unusually high finance levels. The client, when asked by the bank about the account's finances, denied knowing of it. Pursuing this matter ultimately led to Mr. Kerviel." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1201158146...=hpp_us_pageone (temporary link) *************************************************** Patrick Hosking: Commentary "The Times" January 25, 2008 To a lot of people Jérôme Kerviel is a hero. Sure, he lost his employer £3.7 billion, but by definition the people he traded with therefore made £3.7 billion. With a few reckless bets, the junior banker has created the equivalent of 3,700 millionaires among the hedge fund managers and traders of the City and other financial centres. In derivatives trading winners exactly match the losers. Mr Kerviel has merely redistributed wealth from Société Générale shareholders and his former colleagues, whose bonuses will shrink this year, to the happy counter-parties he traded with. To that extent, ordinary bank customers may shrug and say: “So what?” But the fraud has much bigger implications, partly because of the impact that it had on financial markets and policymakers, but mainly because of the stark warning it gives of a much bigger calamity narrowly averted — one capable of hurting every worker, saver and taxpayer in the West. SocGen’s secret unwinding of the rogue bets almost certainly exacerbated the extraordinary turbulence suffered in European equity markets on Monday and Tuesday. The closing-out of such vast positions pushed share prices lower. Just as a punter will move the odds by placing a sackful of cash on a rank outsider on a quiet afternoon at Uttoxeter, so SocGen’s rushed attempts to extricate itself worsened an already nauseous day for shares. ... SocGen ... has trades outstanding with other global banks with a face value of trillions of dollars. It claims to be the biggest equity derivatives house in the world. The failure of such an institution would lead to paralysis in markets, with everyone terrified of doing business with everyone else for fear that they too had been contaminated. That would without doubt lead to a world recession, a world depression probably." http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3248283.ece **************************************************************** From "The Times" January 26, 2008 "Dark ideas on SocGen affair" Martin Waller: City diary "Meanwhile, an entirely convincing conspiracy theory suggests Jérôme Kerviel phoned a friend at A Well-Known US Investment Bank on Sunday for advice, and that the said bank positioned itself rather conveniently in the falling market on Monday morning as a consequence. I think I'd better not name the bank." http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3254292.ece *****************************************************************************************

Dollar values below are Australian dollars. AUS$80 billion = about US$70 billion. [i think the bank released the news on the Wednesday after closing off a number of positions.] http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...63-2703,00.html From another article, a couple of quotes that made me smile: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...5-12335,00.html

A very good video Ben. It seems a reasonable length. I guess it's about 5 mins which is about 5 Mb at 1 Mb per minute. I tried making some movies and, like you, I found that I had to go with the best quality screen capture mode in order to make the type readable.

The San Francisco NABC - Fall 2007 Daily Bulletin (#4) for November 26 is a tribute issue to Paul Soloway. http://www.acbl.org/play/recent-results.php

What are these derivative things? How much are they going to magnify the damage of the sub-prime crisis? Let's pretend I'm an investment banker in 2006-2007. In early 2006, house prices are rising so people are paying their mortgages and the value of my CDO's look secure. But in the knowledge that some of these CDO's are riskier than stated on the package, I take out a CDS, where someone else pays up if the mortgagees can no longer make their payment. Now it's the trading in those CDS's that I am interested in. Does the CDS have a lifetime of say 50 years and were they put into the derivatives market where they are traded over a much shorter time spans of, say, 90 days? Look I am really completely ignorant on all this. I have never traded an option in my life. What sort of option position is taken? How do I gain/lose money? Here are a number of quotes to read. Of course, the final quote from Warren Buffet is the most insightful. From an article I posted earlier from WSJ.com From a paraphrase I attempted in an earlier post. "And it doesn't stop there. CDO losses now threaten the AAA ratings of a number of insurance companies that bought CDO paper or insured against CDO losses. And because some of those insurers also have provided insurance to investors in tax-exempt bonds, states and municipalities have decided to pull back on new bond offerings because investors have become skittish." From Winstonm's article immediately preceding this post. I recalled reading, in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reports, less than complementary comments about the derivative positions they inheried when they purchased Gen Re. I have found a very interesting analysis in his 2005 report. It follows. 'Long ago, Mark Twain said: “A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way.” If Twain were around now, he might try winding up a derivatives business. After a few days, he would opt for cats. We lost $104 million pre-tax last year in our continuing attempt to exit Gen Re’s derivative operation. Our aggregate losses since we began this endeavor total $404 million. Originally we had 23,218 contracts outstanding. By the start of 2005 we were down to 2,890. You might expect that our losses would have been stemmed by this point, but the blood has kept flowing. Reducing our inventory to 741 contracts last year cost us the $104 million mentioned above. Remember that the rationale for establishing this unit in 1990 was Gen Re’s wish to meet the needs of insurance clients. Yet one of the contracts we liquidated in 2005 had a term of 100 years! It’s difficult to imagine what “need” such a contract could fulfill except, perhaps, the need of a compensation-conscious trader to have a long-dated contract on his books. Long contracts, or alternatively those with multiple variables, are the most difficult to mark to market (the standard procedure used in accounting for derivatives) and provide the most opportunity for “imagination” when traders are estimating their value. Small wonder that traders promote them. A business in which huge amounts of compensation flow from assumed numbers is obviously fraught with danger. When two traders execute a transaction that has several, sometimes esoteric, variables and a far-off settlement date, their respective firms must subsequently value these contracts whenever they calculate their earnings. A given contract may be valued at one price by Firm A and at another by Firm B. You can bet that the valuation differences – and I’m personally familiar with several that were huge – tend to be tilted in a direction favoring higher earnings at each firm. It’s a strange world in which two parties can carry out a paper transaction that each can promptly report as profitable. I dwell on our experience in derivatives each year for two reasons. One is personal and unpleasant. The hard fact is that I have cost you a lot of money by not moving immediately to close down Gen Re’s trading operation. Both Charlie and I knew at the time of the Gen Re purchase that it was a problem and told its management that we wanted to exit the business. It was my responsibility to make sure that happened. Rather than address the situation head on, however, I wasted several years while we attempted to sell the operation. That was a doomed endeavor because no realistic solution could have extricated us from the maze of liabilities that was going to exist for decades. Our obligations were particularly worrisome because their potential to explode could not be measured. Moreover, if severe trouble occurred, we knew it was likely to correlate with problems elsewhere in financial markets. So I failed in my attempt to exit painlessly, and in the meantime more trades were put on the books. Fault me for dithering. (Charlie calls it thumb-sucking.) When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now. The second reason I regularly describe our problems in this area lies in the hope that our experiences may prove instructive for managers, auditors and regulators. In a sense, we are a canary in this business coal mine and should sing a song of warning as we expire. The number and value of derivative contracts outstanding in the world continues to mushroom and is now a multiple of what existed in 1998, the last time that financial chaos erupted. Our experience should be particularly sobering because we were a better-than-average candidate to exit gracefully. Gen Re was a relatively minor operator in the derivatives field. It has had the good fortune to unwind its supposedly liquid positions in a benign market, all the while free of financial or other pressures that might have forced it to conduct the liquidation in a less-than-efficient manner. Our accounting in the past was conventional and actually thought to be conservative. Additionally, we know of no bad behavior by anyone involved. It could be a different story for others in the future. Imagine, if you will, one or more firms (troubles often spread) with positions that are many multiples of ours attempting to liquidate in chaotic markets and under extreme, and well-publicized, pressures. This is a scenario to which much attention should be given now rather than after the fact. The time to have considered – and improved – the reliability of New Orleans’ levees was before Katrina. When we finally wind up Gen Re Securities, my feelings about its departure will be akin to those expressed in a country song, “My wife ran away with my best friend, and I sure miss him a lot.”' page 10, Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report 2005 (released in early 2006) http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/reports.html

Perhaps this is an answer. This guy talks about using Amazon's servers to stream your video. I have given two links because they illustrate your problem. They are the same video in two different delivery forms: the first is using Brightcove, which is similar to YouTube; the second uses Amazon's servers to stream the video. http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=7...annel=770166766 http://www.askmrvideo.com/cam/s3/ I think people use Amazon's servers because of the cost saving. Or you could stream it from your own website: http://movavi.com/videoconverter/tutorials/stream.html I am not an expert on any of this.

I recall that when the Australians took the field on the last day, they formed a huddle on the field. When the on-field camera man tried to get in close, Ponting shooed him away. The camera guy moved far enough away so that that Ponting's words couldn't be heard, but you could see that everyone in the team huddle was listening intently to what he had to say. It was probabaly along the theme of: "Let's take one wicket at a time, make every chance count, remember we got the poms (English) out in one day, remember our plan for each batsman. Focus, focus, focus." He might have even included a typical gee-up used by every Australian captain of any sport, at all levels: "We can beat these bastards". It's not meant to be offensive, it's just what's said to focus the mind on winning the game. Whatever Ponting said, you could see that there was fire in his eyes and the scent of blood in his nostrils. He was totally focused on winning. We can only imagine the level of concentration that these top sportsmen are able to apply to the task of winning. I recall Keith Miller saying that Bradman wasn't like other players: "When he was at the nonstriker's end, he wasn't thinking about women like the rest of us, he was only thinking cricket."

for fun, i like the card game "oh hell", also known as "hitting the moon" http://www.pagat.com/exact/ohhell.html this site has card games and their rules: http://www.usplayingcard.com/

could look up some sources, but too lazy .... so instead i'll just try and recall some things i have read ... i might have some bits wrong: 1) the indians have all the money: 70% of the money in world cricket, many $millions in TV rights; these money men will have the final say; all controversy is good for TV ratings; they would, of course, prefer the series was not already decided; so a bit of controversy is the next best thing 2) the indians see harby singh as ponting's nemisis: so they are thinking conspiracy theory; this is apparently all the talk in india 3) clarke made some controversial catch that the umpires didn't properly sight, and took ponting's word that it carried; should this have happened? 4) symonds got involved in something that didn't initally involve him: harby patted lee on the backside with his bat, symonds says he had to stand up for his mate and so he said something to harby, harby responded; i ask you if lee isn't big enough to look after himself? + let the umpires sort out things out; + didn't some cricketer wave a bat at dennis lilley or vise versa? and while it created a reprimand it didn't lead to suspensions or a tour cancellation. 5) tendulkar said the monkey comment wasn't made; ponting said it was; who is to be believed? 6) i feel the players would be better off leaving the controversy to whatever is picked up by the cameras and the stump microphone; then there would be a record of events; and the officals could step in without the players dobbing each other in; this would require officials having access to all stump-mike recordings, which might be unworkable, or might create endless controversy over what is acceptable sledging; 7) hogg is alleged to have called someone a bastard, which brings up the whole question of cultural differences: isn't bastard equally offensive? is calling someone a lucky bastard offensive? how exactly is the term monkey regarded in a country which worships a monkey god? is calling someone a monkey more akin to teasing than villification? 8) i was watching the abc program about the madras tied test recently: there were a number of altercations there including (a) teammates having a go at each other (b) players, particularly greg matthews stirring up the crowd with some bizzare gestures ( c) opposing players having a go at each other, including an indian batsman telling tim zoehrer (?) where he was going to stick his bat and tim bending over and telling him to try it; and (d) both captains having a go at the umpires. and i think it was ravi shastri who stormed into the umpires' room after the game and gave them a piece of his mind. these things happen in the heat of the battle. a lot of this has been cleaned out of the game. people like allen border and kapil dev, the two captains in the tied test, are aware of all this and should be a calming influence in the present situation. 9) i think a couple of cricketers have had multi-match suspensions* and have had to cop it on the chin: if you don't respect the judicary then the system falls apart; but the pakis got darrell haire's decision of ball-tampering reversed; so, who knows, maybe things won't fall apart if the suspension is reversed on appeal. 10) there are a couple of twenty20 tours coming up in india which may become as big a draw as test matches: when i was in st louis a visiting team such as chicago would come to play night matches: there would be crowds of 26 000 for 4 nights a week, every second week for 9 months of the year; with all the money this generated the players were on multi-million dollar salaries; if you have a 3 hour product with lots of rivalry and lots of action you can make big bucks. if the indian money men decide this is where the future of crickert lies, then maybe they will give the word to abandon this test tour. * I think it was Gibbs (Sth Africa) and Lehman (Australia) for racial taunts.

Quotes re subprime crisis: "These sorts of things are what's known to the academics as "endogenous to the system"--that is to say, they're normal. They happen usually every three to five years. So we had a freezing up of the market for corporate credit in the summer of '02. We had an equity bubble just before that. In '98 we had Long-Term Capital. In '94 we had a mortgage collapse like we're having right now. In 1990 we had an S&L collapse. In '87 we had a stock market collapse. These things flow through the system, and they're part of the system." Bill Miller, Chairman and chief investment officer, Legg Mason Capital Management http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fortun....fortune/5.html "Gary Shilling’s 12 Investment Themes: 1. The housing bubble has burst. 2. The Fed will ease; meanwhile, the yield curve will remain flat inverted 3. U.S. stock prices will fall, perhaps below the 2002 lows, in the midst of a major recession 4. China will suffer a hard landing due to domestic cooling measures and U.S. recession 5. Weakness in the U.S. and China will spread globally, dragging down economies and stocks worldwide 6. Treasury bonds will rally 7. The dollar will rally, but not before the recession is global 8. Commodity prices will nosedive 9. Maybe global and chronic deflation will commence 10. Maybe U.S. consumers will start a long-run saving spree, replacing their 25-year borrowing and spending binge 11. Maybe deflationary expectations will become widespread and robust 12. Speculative areas beyond housing may suffer in 2008. " Gary Shilling, Forbes magazine columnist http://store.digitalriver.com/store/es_764...illing_FDC_Edit

I came across an article titled Investment Landfill: How professionals dump their toxic waste on you. It explains the subprime crisis in plain English. http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/files/Inv...nt_Landfill.pdf http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/user/paul_tustain (Click 30 Jun '07 — Investment landfill) Here is my attempt to summarize the article. The task: Combine a number of risky mortgages into one collateralized debt obligation (CDO). Now find a way to sell it. The solution: 1) Point out that house prices are rising and so mortgagees are making their monthly payments. Use the money obtained to lend more easy money, then bundle those mortgages into a CDO, and onsell. Keep repeating. With easy money available, house prices will keep rising, people won't default on their payments (they will want to keep an asset that is going up in value), and investors will keep buying CDO's. This is the strategy that investment banks and their hedge funds have marketed to the retail banks. 2) Tired of trying to sell the riskier investments? Then keep the CDO and its cash stream but take out an insurance policy. This insurance policy is called a credit default swap (CDS). The underwriter of the CDS gets a big return at the cost of having to pay up if the mortgagee defaults on his loan. Interestingly when a number of CDS's are combined, they are called "synthetic CDO's" which better reflects their origin. 3) Parallel to the growth of the subprime market has been the growth of a derivatives market where bets are laid as to when the whole process is going to fall over. Governments have shored up the subprime market. After the dot-com "boom and bust", legislation was introduced which forced funds to buy investment-grade bonds. And with house prices rising, the CDO's and CDS's were made to look like suitable investment-grade bonds. So retirement funds have invested in them.

Below are some quotes from an article from WSJ.com as it appeared in our national paper, The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...from=public_rss If anyone can put it into plain english, it would be appreciated. How Wall Street wizards conjured up sub-prime's hurricane Norma Carrick Mollenkamp and Serena Ng | December 29, 2007 IN recent years, as home prices and mortgage lending boomed, bankers found ever-more-clever ways to repackage trillions of dollars in loans, selling them off in slivers to investors around the world. Financiers and regulators figured all the activity would disperse risk, and maybe even make markets safer and stronger. Then along came Norma. Norma CDO I Ltd, as its full name goes, is one of a new breed of mortgage investments created in the waning days of the US housing boom. Instead of spreading the risk of a global home finance boom, the instruments have magnified and concentrated the effects of the sub-prime mortgage bust. They are now behind tens of billions of dollars of writedowns at some of the world's largest banks, including the $US9.4 billion ($10.7 billion) announced last week by Morgan Stanley. ... Only nine months after selling $US1.5 billion in securities to investors, Norma is worth a fraction of its original value. Credit rating firms, which once signed off approvingly on the deal, have slashed its ratings to junk. The concept behind Norma, known as a collateralised debt obligation, has been in use since the 1980s. A CDO, most broadly, is a device that repackages the income from a pool of bonds, derivatives or other investments. A mortgage CDO might own pieces of a hundred or more bonds, each of which contains thousands of individual mortgages. Ideally, this diversification makes investors in the CDO less vulnerable to the problems of a single borrower or security. .... In principle, credit default swaps help banks and other investors pass along risks they don't want to keep. But in the case of sub-prime mortgages, the derivatives have magnified the effect of losses, because they allowed bankers to create an unlimited number of CDOs linked to the same mortgage-backed bonds. UBS Investment Research, a unit of Swiss bank UBS AG, estimates that CDOs sold credit protection on roughly three times the actual face value of sub-prime bonds rated triple-B. The use of derivatives "multiplied the risk," says Greg Medcraft, an Australian who is chairman of the American Securitisation Forum, an industry association. "The sub-prime mortgage crisis is far greater in terms of potential losses than anyone expected because it's not just physical loans that are defaulting." .... Such cross-selling benefited banks, because it helped support the flow of new CDOs and underwriting fees. In fact, the bulk of the middle-rated pieces of CDOs underwritten by Merrill were purchased by other CDOs that the investment bank arranged, (What does this mean?) according to people familiar with the matter. Each CDO sold some of its riskier slices to the next CDO, which then sold its own slices to the next deal, and so on. Critics say the cross-selling reached such proportions that it artificially propped up the prices of CDOs. Rather than widely dispersing exposure to these mortgages, the practice circulated the same risk among a relatively small number of players.

What about trying GIB on BBO? It shows you what the bids mean. Also there is http://bridgeonline.co.nz/ It might be worth a go. Has anyone tried it?

The list below comes from the Glossary at the end of Friendly Bridge: Beginning Bridge Lessons By Ed Kinlaw and Linda MacCleave (Richmond Bridge Association). http://richmondbridge.net/PDF/handouts/fri...book_Sept07.pdf I have selected all the slang terms, and any jargon that I recall puzzling over when I first heard it. The only term that I have added is "peter" which is the UK equivalent of the US term "echo". Baby: (1) (slang) (adjective) low. [usage: "two baby hearts" = two hearts of insignificant rank.] (2) (adjective) occurring one level lower than usual (e.g., Baby Blackwood: three notrump as an ace-asking bid). -bagger (slang) indicative of the length held, as in "five-bagger" (a five-card suit). Bare: (slang) unprotected; not accompanied by small cards. [bare king = singleton king; queen-jack bare = doubleton queen-jack]. Blitz: (slang) (verb) defeat severely; (slang) (noun) a big win; (slang) (noun) a win that obtains the maximum possible score. Blockbuster: (slang) a very powerful hand; powerhouse. Board: (1) (slang) the dummy; dummy's cards, as spread on the table; (2) in duplicate bridge: a holder, usually of metal or plastic, used to preserve the cards as originally dealt; (3) (slang) a deal. Boost: (1) (slang) raise; (2) (slang) bid in the bope of pushing the opponents to a higher contract. Bring in: (slang) fulfill (a contract); play (a suit) without loss, or without adverse circumstance, or to win a particular number of tricks. Business double: penalty double. Bust: (slang) a very poor hand; a hand weak in honor cards; a hand weak for the holder's earlier bidding. By me: (slang) improper form of "pass". Cash: (slang) take a trick with (a winning card). Cash out: (slang) cash all available immediate winners. Cheapest bid: the lowest legal bid. [Over one club, one diamond is the cheapest bid.]. Check: (slang) improper form of "pass." Coffeehousing: (slang) making gratuitous statements, often (and highly improperly) with the intention of misleading or confusing the opponents. Cold: (slang) easily makable; laydown. Come-on (signal): a defensive card-play signal encouraging partner to lead or continue leading a particular suit. Crack: (slang) double (for penalty). Ditch: (slang) discard (usually a loser). Dog: (1) (slang) (noun) a very weak hand, or one that is very weak for the previous bidding; (2) (verb) [usually with "it"] bid conservatively. Down: set; defeated. Drive out: force an opponent to part with (a certain card or cards). Duck: (1) play a small card when holding a higher one; (2) surrender (a trick). Dump: (slang) discard; Echo: the play of a high card followed by a low card (in the same suit); [Commonly used to show attitude, encouragement or discouragement, or parity of count, even or odd, in the suit.]. (In the US one "echoes", in the UK one "peters".) Empty: without any significant cards other than those specified. [Example: Ace-empty-fifth means a five-card holding in which the only significant high card is the ace.] Endplay: (1) (verb) force an opponent to lead disadvantageously; (2) (noun) the position of the cards so resulting; Exit: get off lead. Feature: (1) a high honor (usually ace or king; sometimes ace, king or queen). (2) anything of interest in a particular suit, such as a high honor or shortness. -fifth: within or heading a five-card holding. [usage: jack-fifth = five cards headed by the jack = Jxxxx.] Fix: an unfortunate result caused by happenstance or undeservedly rewarded poor performance by the opponents. Fixed: (1) (slang) placed in a difficult position; (2) (slang) in line for a poor result because of winning action taken by the opponents. Flat hand: (slang) a hand with 4-3-3-3 suit distribution. Flat board: in pairs play, a board on which all (in casual usage, almost all) of the participants achieved equivalent results. Float: (1) (during the bidding) (slang) be followed by passes. [Example: Three notrump floated = three notrump was passed out. West's three spades floated around to South = North and East passed over three spades.] (2) (during the play) (slang) lead and duck; let ride (usually by declarer's not putting up a higher card from his hand or dummy's) [Example: South floated the jack of hearts around to East's queen.] (3) (during the play) (slang) not get covered. [Example: The ten of spades floated (i.e., was led and won the trick).] -fourth: within or heading a four-card holding. [usage: jack-fourth = four cards headed by the jack = Jxxx.] Free bid: a bid made when it is not necessary to bid to allow partner another chance to call. Gadget: (slang) a convention designed to cover a specific bidding situation rather than an entire class of auctions. Good: (1) established; (2) consisting of all winners. Go to bed with: (slang) fail to take a trick with [usually, of a card that could have won a trick in a straightforward manner]. Hand hog: a player who attempts to become declarer as often as possible. Hit: (1) (slang) double; (2) (slang) ruff; (3) (slang) (relating to a dummy) come down. Hook: (slang) finesse. Jam: (slang) preempt. Jettison: a discard, particularly the discard of a blocking card. Kibitzer: spectator. Kiss of death: a score of minus 200 at matchpoints when the maximum possible contract is at the part-score level. Knock out: force out so as to establish lower cards. Laydown: (slang) easily makable; cold. Lock: (1) (slang) (usually said of a contract or a set of circumstances) certainty; (2) (slang) place the lead irrevocably in a particular opponent's hand. Locked: (slang) restricted to or away from ["Locked in dummy" means unable to get the lead out of dummy; "locked out of dummy" means unable to get the lead to dummy.]. Minnie: (slang) minimum. Monster: (slang) a strong hand. Moose: (slang) a strong hand. Moysian fit: a partnership trump holding of four cards in one hand and three in the other. Nuisance bid: action aimed at disrupting the opponents' auction. Off: (1) (slang) down; set; (2) (slang) offside (3) (slang) missing. Off the top: (adjective) describing tricks that can be taken without gaining the lead or lost before gaining the lead [usage: Four spades was down off the top = the defenders could take at least four tricks before declarer gained the lead.] Offside: unfavorably located; Onside: favorably located. Our hand: (slang) a deal on which "our side" can make a higher contract than the opponents. Pard: (slang) partner. Passed out: (1) (of a contract) allowed to stand; (2) (of a deal) thrown in because no player bid. Passive: (of a defensive play) not risking tricks but not tending to promote any immediately. Phone number: (1) (slang) a penalty in four digits; (2) (slang) any large penalty. Peter: the play of a high card followed by a low card (in the same suit); [Commonly used to show attitude, encouragement or discouragement, or parity of count, even or odd, in the suit.]. (In the UK one "peters", in the US one "echoes".) Piece: (1) (slang) part-score; (2) (slang) a high honor [A piece in spades means a spade honor.]; (3) (slang) any card. [in general cardplaying lingo, "a piece in spades" sometimes means any spade.] (4) (slang) double for penalty [i wanted to take a piece of that contract.] Pitch: (1) (noun) (slang) discard. (2) (verb) (slang) to discard. Pointed (suit): spades or diamonds. Post-mortem: (slang) discussion of deals following play. Powerhouse: (slang) a very strong hand. Pull: (1) draw (trumps); (2) remove partner's double. Pump: (slang) force out a trump. Push: (1) (slang) (verb) bid more than justified by the values held; (2) (slang) (verb) force the opponents to a higher level; (3) (slang) (noun) in team-of-four contests, a no-score result on a deal; wash; washout. (4) (slang) (verb) in team-of-four contests, to create or to achieve a no-score result on a deal. (5)(slang) (verb) lead; (6) (slang) (adjective) having no net score. Quick trick: a high-card holding likely to take a trick on an early round of a suit. [Typical quick-trick values: ace-king = 2; ace-queen = 1.5; ace or king-queen = 1; king = 0.5.]. Refuse: duck. Renege: fail to follow suit (when able to do so); revoke. Rock crusher: (slang) powerful hand. Rounded (suit): hearts or clubs. Ruff: (verb) trump; (noun) the play a trump on the lead of another suit. Ruff and sluff: the ability to trump in one hand and discard (usually a loser) from the other. Ruff out: establish by ruffing. Ruffing value: shortness that may lead to ruffing tricks. Rule of Two and Three: a rule propounded by Ely Culbertson as a guide for preemptive bids: you should be within two tricks of your contract when vulnerable and within three tricks when not vulnerable. Sack: (slang) sacrifice. Sandbag: (slang) pass with strong values, hoping to trap the opponents or come into the bidding later on. Score: (1) a numerical result of a deal, match, session or event; (2) (slang) take a trick with; [usage: Score the queen of spades = take a trick with the queen of spades.] (3) (slang) win. [usage: Score three spades and two hearts = take three spade tricks and two heart tricks.] Seat: (1) place at a table; (2) (slang) position (meaning 2). Set up: (1) (noun) established; (2) (verb) establish. Shaded: (of a bid) made on slightly fewer values than usual. Shape: (1) (slang) distribution. (2) (of a suit) pointed or rounded. [spades and diamonds are pointed suits; hearts and clubs are rounded suits.] Sluff: discard. Soft values: lower honors, usually queens and jacks, as compared with aces and kings. Solid: (of a suit) with no gaps, or with no gaps after the specified card. [usage: five solid = AKQJ10 (sometimes AKQJx). jack-ten-solidfifth = J10987.] Spots: (slang) (noun) strong intermediate cards; Spot card: any card from deuce through nine. Square hand: hand of 4-3-3-3 distribution. Steal: (1) (of a trick) win with an unusually low card (2) (of a trick) win without losing the lead (3) (of a tempo) gain time needed to perform some other function or deprive the oppponents of such time. (4) (of a contract) make through deception when there was a way to defend successfully. (Also refers to a successful deceptive defense but not usually so applied.) (5) (of an auction) become declarer at a (perhaps surprisingly) low contract when the opponents could profitably have bid higher. Stiff: (1) (slang) (adjective) unsupported by low cards. [stiff king = singleton king; queen-jack stiff = queen-jack doubleton] (2) (slang) (noun) singleton. (3) (slang) (verb) discard protection from or all other cards in a suit except. [stiff the ace of clubs = discard all clubs other than the ace] Strain: one of the four suits or notrump; the non-numerical element of a bid; denomination. Swish: (slang) followed by all passes. [usage: four spades swish = four spades, pass, pass, pass.] Tank: (1) (slang) (verb) not act for a long time. (2) (slang) (noun) a state of intense concentration. [usage: South went into the tank.] Tap: (slang) force to ruff; pump; force. Their hand: (slang) a deal on which "their side" can make a higher contract than ours. -third: within or heading a three-card holding. [usage: jack-third = three cards headed by the jack = jack-tripleton = Jxx.] Tickets: (1) (slang) high cards; (2) pick-up slips Tight: (1) (slang) conservative; (2) (slang) (of an honor or honor holding) not protected by small cards. [usage: tight king = singleton king; queen-jack tight = doubleton queen-jack.] Touching: adjacent (usually in rank, as "touching cards," "touching honors" or "touching suits"). Trap pass: pass made with enough values to take other action. Treatment: a partnership's interpretaton of an action. Unauthorized information (UI): knowledge that a player is not entitled to use (as, for example, that obtained through partner's uneven tempo). Unguard: discard accompanying, protecting small cards. Up the line: (1) describing bidding the cheapest of equivalent features; [Responding one heart to a one-diamond opening with four cards in each major is bidding up the line.] (2) describing playing the lowest of available cards. Vulnerability conditions: (slang) amber (U.K.) = both sides vulnerable. (slang) equal = neither side vulnerable or both sides vulnerable. (slang) favorable = nonvulnerable against vulnerable opponents. (slang) green (U.K.) = nonvulnerable against vulnerable opponents. (slang) horse and horse = both sides vulnerable. (slang) red (U.K.) = vulnerable against nonvulnerable opponents. (slang) red (U.S.) = vulnerable. (slang) red against red (U.S.) = both sides vulnerable. (slang) red against white (U.S.) = vulnerable against nonvulnerable opponents. (slang) unfavorable = vulnerable against nonvulnerable opponents. (slang) white (U.S.) = nonvulnerable. (slang) white (U.K.) = neither side vulnerable. (slang) white against red (U.S.) = nonvulnerable against vulnerable opponents. (slang) white against white (U.S.) = neither side vulnerable. Yarborough: (1) a hand containing no honor card; (2) (slang) a weak or relatively weak hand.

That is one direction to go in. Another is to have a standardised bidding system that all the programs use. Then allow individual programmers to determine: 1) what bidding adjustments to make; and 2) the most efficient algorithms to simulate and analyse possible hands.

Looks like some new entrants this year: http://www.ny-bridge.com/allevy/computerbridge/index.htm http://www.ny-bridge.com/allevy/computerbr...ntries2007.html Includes link to convention cards used for the competition. I imagine one of the difficulties is programming in the convention cards of your different opponents.

Who says there's no fun games any more? They just haven't played in the Main Bridge Club. All in all, I have a new strategy. Let me explain a little. It all comes about because I have been reading a few humorous political anecdotes. The gist of these was it's not your opponents who are your enemies, it's those on your own side. If you have a better paid job than them, then they are after it. So they will set out to undermine you. Reading politcs has put me on the lookout for the "enemy-partner". I steel myself and practise focusing, ignoring the chatter. This is my strategy: anticipate the jibes and answer them with silence. Recently, my partner derided my bidding, then my self-rating, then finally left the table with the ultimate put-down: "Practise p". Not to be outdone, my partner from yesterday decided to open 1C with 7 points and a 5 card club suit. Of course, I was accused of being crazy when we ended in 6NT. Today's partner (P) looked around for an insult aimed at puncturing my silence: P: Hi p P: Hi all Opp1: last game for me, ty all, bye pdmunro: thx P: tx Leon P: wd o Opp2: HI ALL pdmunro: hi P: Hi o wlcm Opp3: hi P: nto gdp pdmunro: hi P: gd Peter nto P: oh my p P: sorry p P: (your bid) was the wrong bid P: no one rebid the heart! (My actual "sin" was supporting p's heart response with 3 cards.) O3: gtg last hand thx all for games enjoyed pdmunro: thx P: tx jia O2: ty p O2: must go ty all P: good bid p ! P: and good play pdmunro: hi O4: hi reset score,pls O4: tu P: ops keep changing p.. they should take the challenge of the score ! O4 (private message): don't know how long i will stay ... the last (same country partner) couldn't speak english and had nothing noted on card P: glp P: Huh!! wrong bid p! P: ? P: sorry.. great bid p P: P.. you talk way too much :) pdmunro: :-) P: You speak onlly Australian? :) P: ?? P: no shooting is allowed p ! (Did she think I was about to shoot her?) pdmunro: gl P: I dont understand your bidding (I had just bid 2 suits and p chose the one I didn't bid.) P: tx for the game all ! pdmunro: ty P (Lobby): You are a little boring p.. but tx for the game