JLOL

LOL This has been tried before.

Here are my thoughts: I agree with posts: These are absolutely useful. I will not reiterate the same argument that has already been posted, but if my view has been posted I will agree so that people know that another person feels the same way. To take a simple situation, if there were 2 possible views on a hand and one person posted one and the next person posted the other then people have no idea which is better without knowing who agrees with which views. I agrees are perfect for solving this problem. Polls are NOT, not every vote is created equal, and maybe OP didnt know there were only 2 possible answers to begin with. I think it is obnoxious to post the same thing thats already been posted rather than just post an I agree. One line posts: Sometimes these are not the optimal posts, but they're better than nothing. If I'm not in the mood to post a long post, or if I am short on time, or whatever, I still might just post 1H rather than 1H+reasoning. 1H+reasoning might be better, but 1H is surely better than posting nothing. I think that people would rather know I bid 1H than know nothing at all, even though they might prefer my reasoning. Also many times I just feel like the rationale for each bid might be obvious, it's just a choice of which one. I don't want to state the obvious reasons, I'll just post my answer based on what my judgement and experience suggests. WTP: This is a concise way to say that you think the bid is obvious. There is no shorter way, and it is easily recognizable. Again it might be nice to post the reasoning, but if it comes down to just posting your bid and not how clear it is or giving a WTP, a WTP is preferable obviously since it gives more info for people to evaluate with. I agree that it is the most tactful way to say something, but if you really get you're feelings hurt from it you should grow a thicker skin. I would rather post 1H WTP than this a completely clear 1H bid, there is no other option that is close to me in order to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside. LOL: Obviously I created this one, and my initial intent was to only post LOL. I think it is great for insulting trolls or people who are posting a stupid post in advanced/expert forum when they are clearly not without wasting too much effort on it. It is great for saying that you think whatever you quoted before the LOL is complete nonsense without wasting too much time on it. Those who have been around know I have always had the habit of giving these trolls/people/posts way too much time and effort when it's not necessary. I think it certainly adds value when I effectively say that some post or point was really LOL bad. The reader can evaluate if my opinion is more valuable than the person I am LOLing. I am happy to quickly and concisely discredit things that are LOL bad without wasting time on it, and I think it helps less experienced readers figure out what is right and what is wrong. Am I arrogant? Well let's say I will always think I am ALWAYS right when I LOL some post. I don't want to waste a million words proving the world is round. I do want people to know that if someone says its flat though that they are without a doubt wrong. If you ever feel like I single people out because I LOL some often and I never LOL franceshinden, it's because frances doesn't post nonsense and I will almost never be 100 % sure to LOL her. However some people consistently post nonsense, so they get LOLed more often. FWIW Jdonn used to be my favorite person to LOL. Also, to Lobowolf who wishes that only classy world class players would post since they would not LOL, they would also be very unlikely to ever post in high volume and they would probably never even respond to nonsense. I would rather Bob Hamman make 11,000 posts than 2,000 posts even if the other 9,000 posts were less classy and perhaps downright rude at times. It's not like you can keep up the same rate of replies if you are always posting long explanations that are tactful and try to never hurt anyones feelings and you have to explain why the most ludicrous things are wrong. Personally I think the fact that LOL spread so much is a function of how excellent it is for it's purpose.

LOL

Since it's imps I guess I'd try the genius CJ. My red suits seem to call for an active lead since everything is onside for declarer. The jack seems better than small sense it unblocks.

yep, pass.

It's probably still the normal style, but there has been a big shift in the past 10 years to people who (almost) always bid their second suit. That style seems much better to me.

Are people really suggesting that it's never right to splinter and bid again? You get to the 5 level, but you describe the key features of your hand well (like ~15/16, short hearts, no club controls). I could easily see this being better than a more vague cuebidding sequence where you don't describe your hand as well but get to the 4 level. In particular showing the stiff heart seems quite important to me for slam purposes. As Adam mentioned, hands like KQTx Kxx xx AKxx are really good slams and that is an obvious sign off over a splinter (15 with the HK). It will also clearly move when we bid again (prime hand, good trumps, and a ruffing value in context of already having shown a min). Furthermore, if you don't splinter and just bid 3H if you end up later cuebidding hearts partner is going to play you for the ace or king since that is almost always what you have, and if he cuebids hearts later you won't know if he has the ace or king(king queen) which is quite important. On this particular hand I'm not sure what is right, but if you added the ST and CT to my hand for instance I would definitely like splintering and then cuebidding, and I think it is definitely a possible sequence. Overall this hand is not strong enough for me to splinter and bid though, I think opposite partners range of signoffs we go minus by bidding a little more often than we get to good slams. Again, I'm fixated on the ST since going down on bad breaks seems much more likely without it. I like splintering and passing the signoff.

Fred and Uday: Thanks for hearing my idea and the opinions on it, whatever happens. Winston/some others: My goal is not to demean non experts, as matmat said I was basically demeaning the trolls who post like they are adv/exp etc when they aren't. I will agree if your view is that I should never be demeaning towards any group of people no matter what they do though. I have no problem with people who are not adv/exp in bridge. In fact I think people like jillybean who are not afraid to ask questions and try to improve are great, I'm sure she asks questions that a lot of intermediates might wonder about and learn a lot from it and it's easy to see she's grown a lot as a player in the last few years. However, jillybean does not pretend to be an expert on bridge. Likewise I rarely post in the watercooler on threads related to science, and I do not pretend like I know anything about it. There are a LOT of really smart people on the forums though and I really enjoy reading those threads and learning stuff. Occasionally if I am confused I will ask a question about something there. If there was a seperate subforum for people who were experts in the various fields of science to discuss some more high level things there, I would never try to post something with authority about something that is likely way over my head. I would NOT be shocked if I started making terrible posts in their high level science threads that basically derailed their discussion if they were not happy, especially if there were 8 other sub forums that I could post on. So anyways, if you interpreted my OP in this thread as trying to say people who are not expert bridge players suck at posting or something, that is really not what I meant. I just think you suck at posting if you pretend like you are an expert when you are not, and post on the adv/exp forum accordingly. As you have alluded to, I often work with and play with non expert players, many of them are very successful in business/life and are very interesting and good people that I am good friends with. I have a lot of respect for people who have been successful in other areas of life. I have no respect for the trolls on this forum though. But again, if your view is that I should be more respectful than I have been in this post and others to the trolls, maybe you are right, but at least I got my disdain for them across. All: I agree with the concept that this might be a better idea in theory than in practice because of the real world problems of implementing it. That said, I think that this can be made to work. I just want to reiterate that I think that this would raise the quality of posts of the advanced/expert posters, and probably bring back some others (hi hanp!). I mean, I was reading through my posts from like 2005, and comparing them to my posts now, and it's clear that I used to put a lot more time and thought into each post that I made. Then I did the same with many of the other posters, and most of those who haven't just left the forums are the same. Sure, a lot of the responsibility for this is on ourselves, we don't have to make short answers and sarcastic answers, but I think that if there were some place to discuss hands without a huge amount of trolls it would be a lot easier and more motivating, and less disheartening. Also, I noticed I don't post many new hands anymore. Most (but not all) of the best active posters seem to not post hands. I suspect this is because most of the discussion in the adv/exp threads will be meaningless for them. Even if they point to the relevant point, it will get into some convention or something. I know that I personally have a lot of pretty high level/interesting hands every day though that I discuss on AIM with people, and there are a lot of people on these forums who I would like to discuss them with as well, so I would love to post hands on this proposed new forum. The last thing is that I think that on every forum right now it is possible for people to ask questions and get responses from experts. I think that if this new forum does happen it won't stop people from being able to ask questions and get answers, it just won't happen on that forum. I think it was TimG who suggested asking a question about something on another forum if they see something interesting on the new forum, and it's not like all the other sub forums will disappear all of the sudden. The current adv/exp forum and the beg/int forum and the sayc forum and the interesting bridge hands are all used like that currently, so I think this one could be different without losing any of the current value. Also it's not like the best players that post on this forum would start ONLY posting on the new forum, let's be honest...we're all too addicted for that ;)

I am planning on bidding 4S after 4H and then partner will bid keycard rather than cuebidding some more. We have shown a diamond control so certainly if he has one of the hands for grand (lots of quick tricks) he can just bid 4N. When I show my void if his hand was KQ of spades he can put on the breaks. FWIW I do not think KQ of spades is supposed to get super excited, if our hand is solid trumps and diamonds controlled and the SA what are we doing bidding 4S instead of 4N? I could see this only if you think non solid trumps are possible for 4C. If partner keeps cuebidding with AKQ A or AK AK on this auction instead of bidding 4N then gl to him.

4H. The reason you should have bid last time is that RHO might bid 4S after LHO bids 3S. That is also why logically xcurt's agreement is not a good one.

You should bid, partner is not supposed to bid 5D with a yarb.

LOL

I would bid 4C setting trumps. Surprised jdonn thinks even if partner is 55 clubs "might" be right. It will usually be right even opposite 5530 (but not always since we have no CT). I just want to get into a cuebidding auction in order to try to get to 7.

If you think RHO will play the H7 whenever they have the 2 in their hand (as they should), your heart play MIGHT be good (wins when partner has K5, KJ5, loses to 52), but even then I think it's bad since declarer would just fire back a club at trick 2 if they had fast heart losers, and then plan to ruff his losing diamond(s) since he has the DA. This would be a VERY convoluted and weird line if declarer had say KTxxxx 72 AQx Ax. If a declarer is good enough to always make the right falsecard (most aren't), they arent playing a trump at trick 2 if they have that. All that said, partner's C7 was very bad, they should play the ten on the first round so you know the count and then follow it up with the 3 on the second round so you know the suit preference. Also partner should have given suit preference in trumps.

It seems obvious to me that see last trick is available since sometimes the cards just turn over. In real bridge you can keep your card face up and see the trick as long as you want, online you dont have that option so you have to have "see last trick." I would consider the OPs feature to be cheating, but it could be a good teaching tool.

Since the advanced/expert forum is a complete joke where everyone posts anyways, I propose a forum that is somehow restricted where there can be some real bridge discussion between people who are advanced/expert without having to read through all the worthless drivel from the selfish unaware people who are not advanced/expert who just want to hear themselves talk. This forum would not only be beneficial to the advanced/expert posters, it would be fun and perhaps even instructive for the beginners and intermediates to read a thread where good players discuss a hand (similar to how great master solvers club is, but better since there would be interaction between the people). This concept has been used on poker forums with Barry Greenstein hosting a "red pro" forum where he restricts posting access to people who he knows to be good or who have a record of doing well. This concept has even been done for an off topic forum, with the most prolific 2p2 poster "El Diablo" hosting a sub forum for people who basically don't say idiotic things. In that case you had to email to get access, and if you had no posting history of saying dumb things you got access, but if you made many bad posts you were then barred from posting. The first concept is similar to the star system. I'm sure Fred/Uday would prefer to avoid a subjective system like that, and the star system would probably be bad for this purpose anyways (since it excludes many good players and includes bad players from remote places) but you could go the second route and delegate that responsibility to a well respected expert poster (franceshinden, jdonn, mikeh, inquiry all come to mind). I KNOW that you might think this would be a PR disaster, and cause a lot of bad blood, and probably don't want to foster some elitist environment. That said the only people who feel bad blood will be those who ruin the advanced/expert forum from reaching it's true potential, ruining it not only for the adv/exp but for the others who could gain from reading that forum. These people should not be catered to, and historically this type of forum have been wildly popular. This kind of forum might even bring new really good posters to the forum, and word of mouth about it might cause new people to register for BBO to read that forum. At the very least it will accomplish the original goal of having a forum for advanced/expert posters. It also might make people like han and cherdano who had some of the most posts on the forum and very high quality return. Oh and just one stat to make my point: There have been ~62k posts on the adv/exp forum, way more than the ~29k for beginner/int and more than any other sub forum. I think this idea would be beneficial to BBO, and beneficial to ALL readers of the forums except those who can't follow guidelines, and just great in general. I ask this idea in all seriousness even though my tone my have been really harsh. I hope if you agree with this idea you will voice your support :D

oh and fwiw a double now is penalty in my book. There's no such thing as a takeout double at this point when you've already failed to bid twice.

If you happened to sort your hand wrong and pass over 1C then why on earth wouldn't you X 2C?

Really interesting, I think I would bid 1S rather than 2H. Not only is it safer but I think we are more likely to have a game in spades rather than hearts. I may regret a later spade lead from partner but that's life.

4C is completely obvious. I plan to bid 4S next if i get a shot.

LOL

Disagree, south had a wtp 3N.

South should bid game but I confess I'd have probably bid 4S. Not without play but clearly inferior to 3N. Maybe south should bid 3D and north 3N, dunno. It's not too shocking that 3N is the right spot with the south hand so I guess that means 4S would be a bad bid.

4S don't really see any alternative. Partner was too weak to bid 4S the first time so slam is really remote.

Ken we should play together on BBO some time lol.