Jlall

Haha, happens more often in real life/the post mortem :P

lobowolf how are you godly at everything

cleeeeee?

I don't understand all the 2C wizards. Lefty is bidding 2H very often...we have a stiff! If lefty is going to bid 2H I would much rather have bid 2D. In the unlikely event that LHO is not bidding anything, partner often has a good hand and might bid 2H or 2N. In either case I would rather have bid 2D since a 5-3 diamond fit might be our right spot. The idea that you will find a 5-4 diamond fit by bidding 2C because partner is going to bid 2D seems to ignore the fact that if we have 9 diamonds, LHO will bid 2H, and now finding diamonds will be extremely hard.

I dunno, people thought all sorts of things were impossible. We fly now. We fly to the freaking moon. I would be surprised if chess never gets solved. I'm sure in 100 years some amazing things will have happened with technology that we cannot even imagine yet.

If we just bid 2C here, we could have a 3136 11 count. As such we have to bid 3C with something like 16 and sometimes 15 (basically whatever you would rebid 3C with probably). So I don't really get 3C with a hand this good.

not forcing, and I'd bid 2H.

I was 1500 and finally breaking out of the beginner room into the intermediate room lol. But I got standard jlall serious about it and did tactics problems on a site non stop, studied from waitzkins software, watched videos on chesstv, bought a database, learned how to convert yahoo games to pgn and saved all my games and analyzed it with rybka/annotated them/etc. Basically got obsessed. Fournier used to watch my games and it was standard for me to be down a pawn out of the opening, then up a piece after the midgame, then lose the endgame. Basically I was only good at tactics/midgame, but I was learning some endgame stuff so that was helping. Fournier= god at endgames btw. Chess is a great game, much respect to people who are good at it.

I think I'm hopeless at chess again (not that I was ever beyond a novice). I gave it a go for like a month but I lost my skillz in the mental hospital :blink: I might do some kind of year long game challenge where I have to reach a certain rating on yahoo in backgammon, hearts, spades, and chess, as well as maintain a certain long term robo dupe average, and also maintain a certain winrate in both limit hold em and no limit hold em or something. Been thinking of the details, I would probably need action on it, but if I did it chess would definitely be the hardest (and I would make it the lowest necessary rating, like I'm thinking 3000 for hearts and spades, and 2000 for chess [2000 yahoo rating not FIDE lol!]).

Umm. Lets examine the first sentence of my post: The bold indicates that I do not play the mainstream expert way, The 2nd part indicates that since it's the mainstream expert way, that's what I'll assume my partner thinks it means. When I have no agreements, I fall back on the default "what do most experts play." Unfortunately my random expert partner's do not know my random idiosyncracies where I do not play expert standard, so rather than put my head in the sand and just assume whatever I personally like I go with expert standard undiscussed. Not sure why this is surprising! Whatever, it's not like you will downgrade your hand after hearing 3C. I think partner also has a perfect hand for a fit jump immediately but I guess they did not know if 2N or 3C would be the bid. Failing that, partner could bid 3H as a mixed raise or bid drury. Both seem pretty reasonable to me, it is kind of heavy for a MR and kind of weak for a LR. After that I do agree with partner's decision not to sign off in 2H after our pass, xx diamonds is good. If you change our hand a little and give us no CQ and one more point in the majors game is good. If you change partners hand a little and give him the HJ, game is good. So basically partner took the aggressive action twice, and we took an aggressive action, and we got to a game that is not unreasonable vul at imps (but not desirable either).

Yes but we also never showed this much, and partner bid keycard which shows a good hand opposite our potential worst hand which shows extras. It's not like he can just have some 13 count.

Your example hand and the auction 1C-1H-1S-2S-2N are completely unrelated. So was mine. Hope that helps.

Hey I would bid 3C don't get me wrong. I was just saying that Junyi is right that bidding 3C can cause problems, if not on the hands where you fake jumpshift then on hands where you actually have clubs. There are just too many hand types and too little room. I was also saying that using 3C or 2N instead of 2S is pretty lol but that's what's "standard" these days. I don't really care about getting into the debate about whether bidding 3C on 3 is artificial, but there are also hands where people bid 3C on 2, surely that is artificial. I think even though bidding 3C causes strain on your system and auctions, it's much better than bidding 4H though.

If we played kickback we would have room to show our SK! Haha jk. I would bid 7 now. I don't even think we've shown 5134 yet, with no heart stopper and 5224 over 3H we can bid 4D. We also have good spades and the CJ to fall back on. Partner bid keycard without even bidding 4H so I think he has a good hand.

Obviously, I don't really get your point? The fact that chess and go are not solved is because of lack of processing power. They are games of perfect information. With infinite processing power, we would know everything about perfect information games.

Josh, I would say humans are still better strategically and positionally at least early on. For instance computers often don't like lines involving sacrificing a pawn to gain some initiative/possible attack. Computers like sacrifices that gain material in the (nearish) future, or lead to a mate. Humans can force computers to evaluate things like the pawn sacrifice more deeply etc (or at all).

I was going to play against Hamman online once and noticed I had "world class." This was super embarassing to me. So I avoided world class for a long time but now my ego is big enough to handle it.

Junyi's examples are quite bad as jdonn has indicated. That being said Junyi's point that jumpshifting into fake club suits can be problematic, mainly on hands where you actually DO have clubs. These problems are not as bad as he indicates imo, but they're obviously real. This is easy to see theoretically. I don't think anyone who thought about it for 2 seconds would argue for using 2S as natural and 3C/3D as possible fake jumpshifts on the basis of it being superior.

Hey, there is no war :lol: I awoke pissed off that my hockey team (well, not mine, but I root for them) blew a 2-0 lead in the 2nd game of the current series; one of my dogs has to have an operation tomorrow; I hadn't had any coffee (hence my IQ is 10 points lower, and I am grouchy), and I always read and almost always enjoy han's posts and this time it struck me differently. I vented and it's over, and I suspect it never began for han. So, everyone....you'll have to find your vicarious enjoyment elsewhere.... speaking of which....has ken posted lately? B) It may just be that han points out when he disagrees with you because he respects you/usually agrees with you so it is interesting when he disagrees with you and brings about good discussion. I know that jdonn gets annoyed with me because every time I disagree with him I point it out and he used to think I was just picking on him but really if I disagree with someone every single time and don't think they know anything then I don't usually feel a need to point it out.

Weren't there some FU shut ups in between? FU STFU

They use computers AND humans for preperations, and a lot of both! Everyone knows that computers are better players than humans now, but not everyone seems to realize that a computer with human assistance will always beat the top computer. But as far as preparation obviously you need human guidance there.

I don't know but the way you presented it as being able to double when trumps are 3-3 or 4-2 is not a one for your side... obviously if you could choose one or the other you'd rather double them with 4-2 trumps since their trumps are not breaking/they will go down more often and more tricks on average. I'm sure my way is old fashioned though. Honestly I am not that concerned about doubling them at the 2 level that often and I like to just X when I have a balanced hand with values and then go from there. If I do double them at the 2 level I like to have 4 decent trumps so that they might go down a lot.

Yeah but you're missing a trump. The truth is partner is going to bid 4S a lot and 3N only sometimes. And of course when they decline the invite, they're going to bid 3S. It seems like our expected HCP is about 22-25 (sometimes 21, sometimes 26), and our expected number of trumps is 7 so moving past 2S is too much imo. Still not the worst thing anyones done obv and as you said it could work. Also if you're trying for game opposite a spade raise it seems like you should just reverse, you're already choosing to overbid (on a misfit hand, when partner is limited to non invitational values).

edit: OOPS THOUGHT WE WERE 2-3-4-4. Ok change my comment about partner possibly Xing 2S into partner possibly Xing 2H. My point is just that partner can be 3-4 in the majors and be able to X hearts and they might not run to spades. He could even be 4-4 in the majors. There's no reason to think either they have a fit or that we have a fit, at least initially. But that is unlikely, I just think Xing is the best start to describing our hand, especially if we get to raise clubs next. It's just a bonus that some small % of the time we get to double them in 2H.

If you're trying to raise clubs in some way, how is X then raising clubs not much better than doing it immediately? You always have only 4 clubs not 5, and you usually just have a balanced hand with some values. Another plus, they might bid 2S and partner might be able to crack it in which case you're happy to sit since they're in a big misfit (partner is probably 4423). 3C looks more like x xxx Jxxx KQTxx to me, not something like this. I do not feel the need to immediately show club support for fear of preemption in a major if I X since my hand is so balanced/scattered/defensive, and I only have 4 clubs.