USViking

Incorrect in characterizing seeding as equivilant to a bye. If you must play do not have a bye. If I were to comb google I believe I could come up with a case where a 1st seed lost to a last seed, although perhaps not in the NBA to date. It is only a matter of time before it happens in the NBA. I missed the fact that there were byes for a few NBA seasons, most lately over 30 years ago. The fact remains that the no-bye format has been much more prevelant. I have not taken issue with the one-bye system. Get back with me on the four-bye system if you can think of anything which does not involve altering word definitions.

You are correct that my analogy is imperfect. It would be more precise if the US Olympic team had been the NBA champion prior to the introduction of so many non-Americans to the NBA. Now the team would have to be a hybrid if it were to consist of a core of the NBA champ. As it is the US Olympic basketball team has always been chosen by commitee. The fact remains that in North American professional sport byes are not universally employed, and never, I think, for more than one round. Certainly not for four rounds! I am still waiting for a convincing argument as to why Bridge should be an exception.

Here's another claimant racket gig for you: http://www.weirdspot.com/index.php/weblog/2004/12/ (from link): Peachy system we got, just peachy, huh?

I would like to know more detail about the new system. I agree to giving such teams preferential status. The question I have raised is how much. More than one bye might be due a team of Nickell's stature. In fact, on an individual level, Hamman, Meckstroth and Rodwell might be close to due universal bye in the form of an automatic spot on the US team of their choosing from now until they pass away, if they ever pass away, which seems doubtful in view of the bones they keep making with no break in tempo going on six decades (Hamman), and five (Meckstroth and Rodwell). So- perhaps I am being too testy about it, since HMR are the core of the Nickell team. On the other hand, in a different sport, such giants as Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar never got one bye in their entire professional lives. They would not have gotten a bye even if they had been on the same team. Addressed, I think. In most top level tournament sport and game the competitors are selected on the basis of "regular season" preformance, and then play off against each other with one bye max (eg NCAA basketball) or no byes (eg MLB). I think the US Olymic trials are usually a series of no-bye heats. I am not saying I cannot be convinced Nickell deserved four byes this year. I am saying I am not yet convinced.

This Rava guy stinks. So does the judge who approved the settlement. And their story isn't even the tip of the tip of the tip of the claimant racket iceberg, which might subtract more than $100 worth of value per person per year in this country.

Thank you for the information. Do you know of a website which spells out the criteria for byes in detail? For example, I would like to know if Nickell would have gotten four byes if their 3/4 had been another 5/8. I still think four byes is too much, and will until there is an explanation for why bridge should be different from other types of tournament competition having fewer byes or none. Knowledge of a rule does not make it a good rule.

Has it always been standard practice for a favorite team to get a bye all the way to the semis as the Nickell team in this year's US Bermuda Cup Trials? I am aware of the decades-long accomplishments of that team's members, and I do not question giving them at least one bye, but four rounds worth strikes me as too much. Imagine the uproar if someone suggested giving a team four byes in the NCAA basketball tournament! On the other hand, procedure for these trials has been honed throughout the 50+ years they have been conducted, so maybe there is general agreement that the present format is the best possible. I also wonder if the inactivity contributed to the Nickell defeat in first round they played.

Oh. So now the Wall Street Jimmie Moneychurners of the world are "victims". Well why didn't I realize that before? For the last several months I have been considering myself to be a victim of people like Mr. Wall Street Jimmie Moneychurner. And now it turns out we are all victims of a cabal of evil Wall Street mathematicians! Golly, I am glad that I now know my anger should be redirected. Thanks, pal, for tipping me off.

Wow, take a look at what Jimmie had to say about the Feds when they cast him and his financial Frankenstein Monster adrift on an iceberg: http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/03/04/bear...surys-geithner/ (from link, emphasis added): Well, I shouldn't exaggerate so much. Jimmie wasn't really on an iceberg himself, having gotten $61 million out of the deal. I have a confession to make. For the past several months I have been employing language similar to that used above by Jimmie. In the interest of tact I will not say who I targeted with this language. Here's a hint, though: they all have, or used to have, fancy offices on Wall Street, and their collective behavior of the last 15 years or so has ME teetering at the end of a plank over an iceberg. And I don't got no $61 million parachute to soften the landing.

The ideology I refer to is ever-increasing US Federal government efforts to reduce povery. Is there any doubt that ideology as been ascendant since the 1930s? Is there any doubt that CRA is a manifestation of that ideology? The effort has after three generations never come anywhere near solving the problem, so there is ground for contending that even if the ideology is sound, attempts to put it into practice have been mismanaged, and need overhaul. To be completely fair about it CRA is also a manifestation of a less contentious ideology, that of Federal government efforts to reduce discrimination. The two ideological motives are often coupled in one act. Here is Ben Bernacke speaking of CRA on 3/30/07: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...ke20070330a.htm If Bernacke is not talking about ideology, then what is he talking about? Here is Bernacke again, from the same link: (emphasis added) "Quid pro quo"?- that expression hovering over the issue from the mouth of an authority such as Bernacke sounds like pressure to me, what does it sound like to you? That is very nice of CRA, but the fact is that CRA's reason for being was to promote increased lending where the banks themselves showed no sign of willingness to take initiative, correct? Why the banks' reluctance other than their perception that the risk was not worth it? You may be correct and I in error here. I have not been able to locate texts of all legislative changes to the original act, and I was relying on links which described CRA penalties without sourcing the information. However, CRA does not need to have penalty provisions of its own: in a "quid pro quo" environment noncompliance is certain to trigger penalizing governent reaction, whether in the form of new legislation or new bureaucratic regulation. So far I think I have been on solid factual ground with the narrow exception of the CRA penalty question. (1) is true, (2) is true: no runaway foreclosures and no toxic Wall Street securities tanking for a trillion dollars absent subprime lending (3) would be true if CRA was the prime initiating motive force behind (1) and (2). However, to be completely fair I agree I probably overstate my case by singling out CRA. There has been much other mismanagement by federal government act and omission and many citizens who have taken unscrupulous advantage. No, I quote it in support of my observation that lending standards did not exist. I explicitly drew attention to "other actors", but you are right to emphasize a critical part of the problem that I mentioned only in passing. Ideology exists as fact of politics and statistical data is not needed to prove so. Acts of Congress such as CRA provide evidence for the legislative and executive branches' ideologies. CRA is part of the problem whether Ritholtz and others reaize it or not: Well intentioned US Federal Government acts are returning grossly less value than they consume, and CRA an example. If the individual states were left to their own devices I believe we would be in better shape than now. Unfortunately, the spirit of true Federalism is dead, and all states now plead for all dollars Federal in a never-ending circle jerk of loads my money, and yours, to Washington DC and then back to the state capital nearest you, but not back to you and me, unless you are a Federal Dollar beneficiary of some kind (I am not). Acts like CRA then suggest strongly how we use the dollar largesse, and we take the path of least resistence, and obey. We know what happened: (1) subprime lending, (2) zero regulation, and (3) promiscuous mortgage securitization cast us into the the whirlpool we now reap. I haven't heard a peep from our government about what it intends to do except pour money into the problem. Typical, huh? In my opinion (1) subprime lending should be returned to the 0.5 - 1.0% or so level where it apparently was throughout the entire history of our banking system prior to the 1990s, (2) rigorous mortgage qualification standards should imposed by the goverment (government must play some role) on all lending institutions, and (3) other standards should be imposed the Wall Street securities hogs. Simmer down. I have made a few concessions. Perhaps you might consider tightening a few nuts of your own. Namely: You yourself should accept that even if CRA is not the whole problem, then it is part of the problem, and that the problem is ideological. I do not know about you, but 40 years of my taxes have supported the ideology of Federal Government intervention on behalf of the poor. These efforts did result in pressure to expand mortgage credit to them, and did play a part in today's crisis. BTW I am aware of the fact that a significant amount of subprime debt is carried by consumers who are definitley not poor, but who wanted to buy more house than they could reasonably afford, so they can be added to the cast of irresponsible actors in this fiasco. It has reached the point where the numerous irresponsble actors might make ME poor, not that I have ever been remotely close to wealthy. When there are so many people upon whom to vent my fury why should I pick only on poor little CRA?

Fact: CRA was an act ideologically motivated to pressure banks to extend loans to people who previously would have been considered unacceptible risks. Noncomplying banks were to be threatened with loss of FDIC backing. Fact: Consequently banks loosened their standards, and not infrequently threw all standards out the window. You wanna mortgage? You got one! See link: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/200...gist-for-f.html Cute, huh? Fact: the government- executive, legislature and bureaucracy (including the FDIC)- looked the other way while standards were being jettisoned: mortgage lending became de facto an unregulated industry. Fact: Previously uncceptible risks (i.e. the infamous "subprime" portion of the market) subsequently came to make up about 25% of all mortgages, and they were foreclosed at a rate of up to almost 20 times that of prime risk mortgageholders. See links for graphics: (subprime share of market) http://www.agorafinancialpublications.com/...122206Rude1.JPG (foreclosure rates 1998-2007) http://economistsview.typepad.com/economis...8/subprime1.gif There were other players, culprits and plots to the story such as Alan Greenspan, that poison dwarf and high priest of deregulation run amok, and such as the "bundles" of "AAA" Wall Street bank securities, which is where most of the subprime mortgages seem to have physically wound up. But is was CRA which opened the floodgates, and we are now reaping the whirlpool, with no end in sight.

This is by far the best site I have found for tracking the races for national office: http://www.electoral-vote.com/index.html It gives Obama an all but insurmountable lead: 343-184 (11 tied). He could lose every state where he is now ahead by 5% or less and still win with 12 electoral votes to spare. Here is the method used to compute the standings: (from link)

I appreciate the nearly flawless excellence of the Main Room of the BBO site. It is so good I would be willing to pay a (not too steep) fee for using it (absolutely non-refundable). The many abilities of the site owner command the highest respect. This part of his reply to my earlier post is close to the mark: However, the rest of the reply was in my opinion so ineffective that I was provoked into writing a nearly sentence by sentence rebuttal. Then after thinking it over I decided it would be ungrateful to engage in extensive public dispute with someone to whom I am in debt for so much. Therefore I will post only the first sentence of my rebuttal, and bid this thread farewell. No, I am suggesting that entry fees be refunded based on YOUR perception that a mistake has been made.

I think the comments above are shocking. Any customer who purchases non-conforming product is fully entitled to post complain in any forum, whether the bug is in GIB, or in a Big Mac. In the case of a bug in a Big Mac the customer would get his money back. I would hope the same is true in the case of GIB. I am aware of the fact that GIB management includes people who are world class experts in two fields: bridge and computers. I would be suprised if GIB management failed to appreciate customer complaint for what customer complaint truly is: a guide to quality improvement and quality assurance. That is to say, a guide to customers who happily spend increasing amounts of money.

I said exactly that on a political board last week before Biden's selection was made public. Biden is a run of the mill liberal Democrat from a safely Democratic state. There is no chance that he will win over enough undecided voters to deliver any tossup state for the Democrats. He may also be an outright liability due to his mouth. In a strained supporting editorial David Brooks of the NYT used the words ""idiotic" and "infamous" to describe Biden's rhetorical history. Just what you need in a VP candidate, huh? Talk about faint praise. Virginia has been in a dead heat for months according to the polls. Kaine is a popular governor (57% approval rating including 49% among Republicans). If the Republicans win Virginia by under a 2% margin then I think it would be reasonable to assume the results would have been different had Kaine been on the ticket. A moderate such as Kaine might also be a threat elsewhere the break the near stranglehold of the Republicans in the South. Not this year!

Thank you for the information. This type of SOP did not occur to me. I commit what might be termed "desertion" much more often than I remove players. Hopefully I will not stray past the the cutoff limit.

Before I go further I would like to thank the BBO owner for the free gift of his site. It is a treasure to me. My life would be much poorer without it. I would like to know the exact letter of the law. If administration wishes to impose secret and/or inexactly defined rules that is its prerogative. Yes, I do think so. I prefer certainty to uncertainty. I automatically sympathize with anyone who might have been punished for booting slow players, even if the punishment is only a wrist-slap. All those I have removed for slowness have been inactive for over about two minutes once, or one minute twice, and yes, I do often time them with a stopwatch. I doubt I have ever removed five players in one day, but if I had to remove 100 for the type of slow play just described I do not think I should be punished.

Exactly what is the rule, and exactly how many removals within what amount of time will generate a ban?

Where do you suggest drawing the line of toleration? 30 seconds? 60 seconds? 120 seconds? All day? I have never once had conn probs, but if I do, then the host should boot me. It is better that only I be frustrated than for three other people to be frustrated.

At the risk of intruding I venture to say that the 21st century Italian World Champions have not displayed the cohesion of the fabled Squadra Azzurra. I hope they do in the future. I would like to see the dramatic, massive ability of Douboin-Bocchi-Versace-Lauria-Fantoni-Nunes keep on taking on the rest of the world as a team, and winning again as a team. They don't have to win all the time like the earlier Squadra Azzurra won. Let Norway, the US and others take the cup occasionally.

I had never watched viewgraph until yesterday since when I have taken in a few dozen hands. It is a very nice feature, and I appreciate its being made available by BBO. I have always admired Italy's consistently top to near-top performance in international events, and I look forward to following them in particular. The Noweigan defending world champs should also be interesting. Something that I found suprising, make that astonishing, was that undo is permitted not only on bidding but on play. I had always thought that if a card hit the table then it could not be taken back. I think it should be so: if you make a mistake you should pay for it. Maybe I am missing something, but I see no difference between undoing bid and play in bridge and undoing a home run pitch in baseball.

[hv=d=n&n=s752hak9532dt8ca7&w=sht86dq2ckqt98543&e=s986hq74dj9763cj2&s=sakqjt43hjdak54c6]399|300|Scoring: IMP BBO hand: Bidding (I was South): N: pass E: pass S: 2♣ W: 3♣ N:3♥ (opponents then all pass) S: 4NT N: 5♠? S: 6♠ N: 7♥? S: 7♠ N: 7NT? K♣ led. Two questions: Question (1) Can it be made? I've stared at this hand for a while and I still can't tell there is a reasonable possibility of it making. I don't think there is but I am not a good player. Question (2) Was I rude to my partner in the following exchange? Immediately after the opening lead my partner posted "Claim". I ignored him. He then posted "Claim" again. I then replied: "Be quiet". Partner then said "Bye" and left. My next post, which was on the subject of my departed partner, was definitely rude, but no need to go into that. [/hv]