brian_m

Printing does nothing here, either. The 'download' option also seems broken - I tried downloading a large thread, wasn't given an opportunity to enter a filename and when the process (apparently) completed, there was no entry on the downloads page (Firefox and Linux). Setting my printer to create a PDF and then printing from the browser print option doesn't seem to get me anywhere either. Most puzzling, I really expected this last method to work.

I think it would also help for those of us who play an unusual system. Even if you tell pickup pairs that they're free to discuss their system at any time (which I do) it still seems a bit much to expect them to cope with an unfamiliar partner AND an unfamiliar system. Mind you, I expect that even if this is implemented, it won't be made available to those of us who still prefer the old client. :(

I'm sorry, but I still do not see the difference between UI caused by a tempo break in the bidding and UI caused by a tempo break in the play. Both are evidence that the player has a problem. Procedural penalties are the answer to partnerships who routinely use such information - I think that those who couldn't play them legally would very quickly stop using them after being handed a few quarter-top penalties.

Well, I guess I should thank you for the advice, Ed, but the fact is I don't play in ANY tournaments, ACBL or otherwise. They're too slow for my taste. I think I tried one or two a few years back, and that was enough for me. Too much sitting around waiting compared with standard club play. The statement about passing UI was because the various regulatory bodies appear to have decided that in the case of dual-meaning carding, it is the creation of UI, rather than its deliberate use, which is the problem.

And that ban is, of course, grossly unfair on those pairs who prefer this system and know how to play it LEGALLY. I like odd/even carding throughout. When I partnered my wife, I made it clear to her when I taught her the method that she absolutely HAD to keep tempo, even to the extent of possibly giving me a false signal if she couldn't work out which card to play without breaking tempo. TDs are used to dealing with the use of UI from hesitations in bidding, and there is no logical reason why hesitations in play should be treated differently. Throw the book at the players who do pass UI with a dual-meaning carding scheme, by all means, but those who take pains to play them without passing UI should be allowed to do so. Fortunately I no longer play offline bridge, so the ACBL can stick its regulations where the sun don't shine.

Hmmph. My wife and I live within 25 miles of a border crossing into Canada. Coming back into the USA, the list of prohibited items changes regularly (almost weekly, if you believe the guy in the booth). There seems to me to be two options :- 1) Uncle Sam is on the ball, and foods do really need to be banned one week but are OK to bring back the next. 2) Uncle Sam has no clue what he's doing. Last time we came back from St. Stephen (about three weeks ago) it was citrus fruit, peppers and tomatoes that were forbidden. The previous time, about two weeks prior, they were all OK, but blueberries were prohibited. I wouldn't mind so much, but the St. Croix river at Calais barely merits being called a river. What, exactly, do they think they're keeping out?

Not alertable in a Precision auction if it's not forcing? You've got to be joking! A strong 1C opener, a (positive, I assume) 1S response, and you think a 2H rebid isn't alertable if it's not forcing? Even if it's not an asking bid, you're at least 95% certain to be looking at a game contract after a positive response to 1C, and it's far from unknown for Precision pairs to play positive responses as unconditionally game forcing - the benefit gained from so doing (at least IMO) far outweighs the times you win from being able to stop short when both opener and responder are dead minimum. My partner and I have precisely ONE rebid by the 1C opener in our version of Precision which isn't game forcing. It comes up maybe one time in 100, and the only reason we keep it is that we can't think of a better use for the bid. I'd expect a non-forcing 2H to be alerted under any circumstances, unless you have both pairs playing the same (unusual!) system, or your local regulations dictate otherwise (which sounds unlikely).

I'm not sure whose version of Precision you're using as your standard - but when I learned Precision back in the early 1970s, from Reese's write-up of Blue Team methods, I'm fairly sure that 2♣ and 2♦ over a 1♦ opener were both only 4+ cards and 1♦-2NT was 15+, game forcing and asking opener to bid 4 card suits upwards.

Many moons ago, when I was taught Benjie Acol (i.e. Acol with weak twos in the majors only) the standard was that 2H and 2S were weak in the first three seats but were back to Acol Strong Twos in fourth seat (that's 8 playing tricks in the suit including some defensive strength, for those unfamiliar with Acol). Whether there was ever a similar concept in American "standard" bidding, I have no idea.

There's a very slight advantage, and (IMO) no downside, to playing WEAK pre-accepts, where you switch your suggested meaning for the intermediate bid and the bbid of the suit directly. Why is this an advantage? Just because it makes it that little bit harder for opponents to come in. Take the sequence where opener denies the support 1NT-2S-2NT-3C - now responder could have a stronger hand and not want to go on because of the lack of club support. Look at the other sequence 1NT-2S-3C - now responder will pass with a weak hand but only one opponent gets the chance to balance once responder is known to be weak. If there's a downside to playing them this way round, no doubt someone will point it out to me, but I can't see one.

I guess it's what you're used to. I took a look at your link, and I'd much sooner have the text version every time.

You probably don't need to buy it. There are free convention card editors out there, if you can put up with the limitations of the various formats enforced by the different bridge authorities. Personally, I just use a word processor. As regards your question about the explanations, see my reply to Art. One of the options is whether or not you see FD alerts of bids made by your partner - so the answer is both you and your partner need to set the checkboxes appropriately. Once again, I know nothing about the flash client.

I have no idea about the flash client, but in the old (downloadable) program, click the 'conv' button, then options, and you will see checkboxes to allow you to control what FD explanations you see. I have to add, though, should I play against you, either I'm not going to be happy about having to key everything in because you switched FD off, or you're not going to be happy with the results if you just tell me you'll ask if needed.

I didn't say anyone should decide what was an idiotic result, and certainly not that I should do it. I just noted their existence. If you look back through the thread, and perhaps read a little more carefully, you'll see that my suggestion is that the number of plays of each board be increased, and then the top and bottom result be disregarded. There would need to be a little more thought put into this - the pairs concerned still keeping their scores, but their scores being disregarded for cross-imping the rest of the board (although I can't honestly see a problem with a Butler-type calculation). And no, I'm not saying that one pair getting into a massively anti-percentage slam and then making on a lucky lead is an idiotic result. Lucky, yes, idiotic, no. What I'm calling an idiotic result is those in the 7NT**-7 sort of category. Perhaps boards where a pair goes down more than three tricks redoubled should be automatically flagged for review, to see whether the pairs concerned are just playing silly buggers. And so another straw man is (hopefully!) laid to rest... As regards your suggestion of playing team games - they're rather difficult to arrange with only four regulars, but if there are another four players reading this who play a set game starting around 7pm New Zealand time, I'm more than happy to try to set something up, please send me a private message.

Maybe I'm the only one in this thread who plays in a regular game (though I very much doubt it). The IMP score is a simple way to come up with some kind of measure as to who's got the better of a 20-30 board session amongst players of comparable strengths. Why does wanting to minimise the distortions caused by the idiotic results imply anything about trying to assess "how good we are at bridge"? Here's a novel idea for you. Stop trying to be a smartarse.

Nonsense. When you find someone whom you think has potential, tell them you'd like to arrange another game and ask them for their e-mail address. Then follow up on it. I've found a number of partners that way. Brian.

Having hand-scored more than my fair share of Butlers, all you do is round the calculated average before comparing. What's the problem? One line of code if you're doing it with a program.

As a user of the Windows client, albeit under Linux, I certainly hope that day is a long way away. I've tried the web client and I detest the interface. As a (retired) database programmer myself, I would be surprised to learn that something like that had been hard-coded in such a way that increasing it would require significant amounts of work. Yes, there are limits that you can't get round, e.g. the self-contained database code with which I was most familiar limited you to 1,000,000 records per table and a record size of 32,000 bytes, but I've never heard of a toolbox that would be responsible for a limit of 16 plays.

I realise OKB had the additional motivation for the larger number of comparisons, but it still seems to me that sixteen is a bit low. And sure, the ridiculous scores don't occur that often. I'd put it a little higher than you do, not the downright impossible scores but the ludicrous contracts (e.g. one member of a partnership is playing strong twos, the other weak, and in amongst all the slams and games you have a 2H+4). I can see the case for winding up the number of plays and discarding the top and bottom, but then I don't have to implement it.

Sixteen does seem an unreasonably low number of comparisons, though. In the days when I was an OKBridge member, with a MUCH lower total membership than BBO, they still managed to use fifty plays per board. Going back to the OP's point, I'm not so much bothered about exchanging a couple of IMPs for cold games as I am about the morons who give (and accept) impossible results, just because one side landed in a ridiculous contract. THAT is really frustrating, particularly when the board has had only a few plays when you get to it. Yes, I know the scores will even out as the board has further plays, but it still skews the running score. Over nearly 40 years of playing bridge I've screwed up hands in almost every way imaginable, but I've yet to find any way to avoid making at least four tricks when I have AKQJ of trumps in my hand.

Before you buy a new computer, I would have someone who knows what they're doing take a close look at your internet connection. If you're on a lousy connection, then buying a new computer is going to contribute precisely zero towards sorting the problem. I see a fair amount of hangs here too, but I know full well that it's down to the crappy satellite connection which is the only internet service available to me, and has nothing whatsoever to do with my PC. Do you see the hangs when doing something which doesn't involve using the internet? P.S. "Someone who knows what they're doing" does NOT mean calling your ISP's technical support people. Unless it's a small ISP, you'll end up talking to a level 1 "script monkey" whose primary concern will be to absolve his employers of all possible blame, and you don't have the computer knowledge to get past them to someone who knows what they're talking about. You need someone independent of your ISP to check out your connection.

No, but I can make a good try for the other end of the scale. I remember scoring up a Mitchell at St. Albans BC (in the UK) in the early 80s, it would probably have been around eight or nine tables, and the winning pair in one direction (I forget which) had a score of less than 53%. The lowest pair seated that direction had 47%. Scoring was by hand in those days, of course, and I spent a LOT of time double-checking those scores! P.S. And the scores in the other direction showed a normal spread. That made it even more surprising.

All but the most basic strong 1C systems should have a way of handling the strong three suiter types. That extra level of bidding (assuming 1C-1D) makes life so much easier. The early versions of the Multi 2D catered for strong 3-suiters too, but as you say, they come up so infrequently that better uses were found for those sequences. As regards Nick's hand, my vote is for 2NT, provided I can trust pard to look for a 4-4 major fit. If pard has he habit of banging 3NT on anything even semi-balanced "so as not to help the defence", that would probably talk me into putting a club in with the spades. Brian.

I see it on about half my attempted logins (I'm using the Windows client under Linux and WINE) but I'd just put it down to my crappy satellite internet connection. I agree with you that it always seems to work OK on the second attempt. I can't remember ever having to try it a third time. Brian.

I know this post doesn't get you any further as regards sorting the problem, but I just can't resist a "me too", and I know it goes for my regular pard and her husband too. *IF* Fred were to fix FD and the new client (some of us put a lot of work into FD) and also gave the web client an option to save hands played as .LIN files to the local hard drive, as the old client does, then I would be a lot more inclined to try to use it. (Note: If these problems have been addressed in a later release, then I'd not heard of it, I admit it's been some time since I tried the web client). Brian. (who, being a Linux user, doesn't have IE. Presumably WINE provides the required libraries.)