hotShot

If annouced in time bids can be changed. Sometimes with severe penalties, like partner is not allowed to bid any more or if the other side is playing there might be lead penalties. But the f2f rules want to produce a result almost at all costs. In this case a UI was given and the partner of the player who announced it is the only one who is not allowed to use it. So bidding should go on, and you have to check, if his partner is bidding as he would bid, without the UI. You can hardly enfoce this at online bridge. The players might just log off. If you cannot produce a played result, you have to assign an artificial score. Is always A+ for the nonoffending side. The offending side should get A-.

Has anyone ever seen "snooker" or "darts" broadcasts? Even golf does not have to much action. We had a very succesful chess "show" for a while. I think there is a market for bridge in TV even if it's small. It would not hurt if we could see a picture of the players at a vugraph. It's nice to take a look at the champions. But for a TV show, we would need a different type of comments. The players moderating should know the hands in advance do that they can prepare bidding and play the stars might make. Commentators could prepare diagramms to point out different playing stategies, e.g. finesse versus sqeeze, and add information about percentages if available. You could even interrupt the play explaning what problem defence of offence have to solve. At vugraph you see all hands, that makes it a lot easier to bid and play, if you just show one players hand, you can discuss the information legaly available to the player, and speculate what a good move would be from his side. Believe me, if you get some TV people on it, they will take a few interesting boards, interview a few player, show a little of the tournament area, and it will be interesting for somthing like 30-60 minutes. It won't make prime time, but I'm sure one could find a spot. The question is: What group is your target ?

First off all it is a question of agreement. There are lots of valid agreements around, but the only one that counts is that what i have with my partner. And if my partner is not ML and i agreed to play Michaels, than I'm happy to bid 2♣ here. As Free correctly points out, the question is: "Where are the HCP's?" My partner and RHO did not find a bid. So my RHO is really weak, but what about partner? If he's weak too, LHO might have a strong hand with long minors. If he jumps to 3♦ to show 6+♣ and 4+♦ with a strong hand, i will have a hard time to show my second suit, and we might overbid by than. Yes 2 suites in the 4th seat are rare, and it might be useful to make a different agreement, but if you have no other, Michaels is definitly a good choice here. If I get a sign of life from partner, i can bid on to game if i like. But if he's weak i might be happy to play at the 2 level.

I don't think ACBL and WDF regulation are different in this case. In fact your example and mine are handled by the same law. You are allowed to chance a missbid unpunished, if you did not intend to make it. There is no need for a punishment nor is there an UI because the bid made, was never intended so it contained no information at all. Important is that you can prove it is not a chance of mind. Timing plays an important role here.

Well it is hard to define, because in the end is is just a question of minimising wrong decisions. You start to be intermediate when you master your own bidding system, meaning that you reach the right contract in uncontested auctions. During the phase of being intermediate you learn to "play" what you bid. The most importent lecture to learn is not to take your top tricks at once, but develope as much tricks as possible while you have everything under control. And you learn to master counting. Advanced player avoid to make gifts (e.g. at the first lead), master contested auctions, take those tricks that opps produce by dropping the wrong cards (counting!) and most of all, they know when "to win it at another board". Experts are advanced players that can create extra chances for their opps to make mistakes. They do it by pushing you to the limit. They won't go further then their own limit, but that might be enough to make you go one step to far.

Without knowing all your agreements your partner surely has at least 10 hcp. They can't be in ♠ and if they where in ♥ partner could have passed your dbl. So he must have something in ♦ and ♣. I can hardly imagine better news. So all we need to know is the number of keycards missing. 4NT seems the best choice.

The only thing i can think of, that would justify a 3♠ bid from partner here, is that he holds good and long ♠. Opener "stole" his bid. Maybe he is trying to uncover a psyche. Maybe he wants us to bid 3NT with ♣ hold. But he knows that we can play something at the 4 level. So i bid 4♦ a suit with high quality. I'll see what partner will tell me after that.

Isn't is sad, that all those good news today, will be forgotten tomorrow? Nice try Mauro

In f2f bridge you cannot misclick, that is why there is no regulation for it. If a card that could legaly be played gets visible to others you have to play it. The only reason to take it back is to prevent a revoke. Since revokes rarely happen at BBO, this is no topic here. In f2f bridge while you pull out the card, it is clearly visible to you and you see, if it the wrong card, before it gets visible to others. If you click on a card it is gone. This is why you have more unintentional played cards online. Following the bridge laws there should be no undo. So if you allow undos, you overide the bridge laws. This is no problem since this is no offical championship or something. ACBL events should not allow undos, because they have to follow ACBL regulations. In a tourney everybody should be treated the same, so if one player can have an undo, all player should be allowed to do it. If you decide that you want to deal with the bridge abilities of players and not with their ability to use a mouse properly, undos are a nice way to do that. Bit if you allow undos it is up to the players to decide, if they accept it or not. So as a host/director it is no longer your business. Note: There is no way that you can win in bridge (and this is true in many other areas too) "on your own". You win because others made more mistakes than you did. So you win because your opps misthink, misjudge or misclick. There is no way to tell if a player misclicked a card or noticed that he misthought or misjudged the situation after playing the card. there are several laws stating that a change of mind is no reason to take an action back. A misbid for example maybe corrected if you never intended to bid it. (e.g. You ask for keycards find that 2 are missing, and you want to end the auction, but instead of switsching to your agreed contract, you pass. Obviously it was not your intention to pass and if you notice that at once it can be corrected).

I understood the new interface should work with your local time.

Here is what i do: If nothing is agreed, i asume we are playing BBO Basic which is about SAYC (this is specified in the site rules). In doubt i take the more natural bid, meaning i would always bid weak two and not multi if we did not agree to play multi before. If something is in my profile and my partners profile, and i desparately need it i take it as agreed. If my partner bids 4NT asking for aces, and his profile says 41-30 and mine says 30-41, I take mine. Because this is a tick more simplistic than looking in my partners profile. And most important! If something went wrong because there was no agreement, anything more than: "Could we play xxx, in future." Is compleatly inappropriate.

It seems that south could not gain anything by throwing the king. it just makes no sence. So it was a severe slip of mind or a true misclick. You lost the contract when you decided not to finesse in ♣, while you still had control in ♦. So this is a matter of "sportsmanship". Do you prefer to win 12 IMP's on a missclick or because you played well? I don't like to win on intended or unintended gifts like that, i prefer to win on my own. In this case i can't see anything that could help south, if playing the King and than ask for an undo other than a missclick here.

There are two things that might have happend: 1) Your opp just clicked the wrong card und wants an undo 2) Your opp is "testing" your hand (e.g. testing if you can ruff, or have a card left) So you should wait 2 seconds befor you play your card all the time to give your opponent time to ask for an undo. If he does it, befor you played your card, fine. If an opp asks for an undo after I played my card, it creates a bad feeling. I usually grant the undo anyway, but if i think he gained an advantage by this action, I write a note in the players profile, that he askes for late undo's . If i see this happen again, i mark the player as enemy.

That is a nice analysis, Peter, thank you 4 pointing that out. It say that national champions are less likely to make a mistake than flight A players, who are less likely to make mistakes than those from flight B. And so on. As i pointed out imps per board tell you how much weaker your opponents are, not how strong you are. If you win a 100m sprint race against a 100 year old by x seconds, will you be fast enough to get world champion? This x says nothing about how good you are.

Defending against weak NT's there are a few things to consider. 1) Weak NT's are preempts If there is no better fit, and the points are distributed equally to each side, usually the side that is allowed to play 1NT, scores well. If you bid 1NT at once there is a good chance that opps will find some loosing lead due to the lack of information. 2) Don't hope to penalty dbl 1NT weak NT players have escape sequences to run, if they don't belief in making the contract. So if you can beat them big in NT, they won't play NT, they'll play something less expensive. 3) Don't fear that you miss game with balanced hands If is highly unlikely that you have game with balanced hands, if one of your opps has 12-14 HCP with a balanced hand too. So it is the unbalanced hands that might miss game. Balanced hands will bring you a partscore only. 4) Take the pressure of the 4th seat If opener can hold 12-14, your partners bid is pass with 0-14 hcp (if balanced) and 3rd seat will pass with 0-10 hcp, the 4th seat has a big problem. Opps can hold 12-24 HCP, partner 0-14. With these wide ranges partner can make more wrong decisions than right ones. So you should narrow them down by bidding in the second seat or live with the fact that a reopening in the 4th seat will have to be extra solid. 5) There is much to gain if you can play fit's at the 2 level. Even if it is a 8 or 7 card fit only. This is why "DONT" and "Lionel" allow you to play on the 2 level. But THERE IS ALSO MUCH TO LOOSE there. If your defence system takes all of this into account, it is well defined.

IMP's per board is some meaningless statistical number. There are 3 kind of boards: 1) unselective Boards, (almost)no chance to miss game, (almost)no missefence possible. Take a board where exactly 3 aces are missing, nobody will miss game with 28 HCP, and opps can hardly avoid to make there 3 aces. Even if you play 3NT instead of 4M it's just 430/420 => 0 imps. 2) boards where you can win an overtrick or gain by playing NT instead of a minor or something like that. Here you make an IMP per board against weaker opps, if opps are about your strength, they will make the overtricks too. 3) boards that really make a difference. Is it a game or not? Try for slam or not? Is this a good/bad sacrifice? Is there a wining/loosing lead? These boards don't come up often, but they come sooner or later. Good player wait for those boards to win the match. If you play 8 boards a type 3 board might not come up, so in the end you might be lucky to win by 2 imps. Even top player won't score more. But take a look at some vugraph final, each team match has at least 70-100+ boards. During that period some type 3 boards will come up. But does these boards favor the better player? No they don't! They favor bidding system and bidding style. So for one of these boards one of the pairs might have the perfect treatment in there system, another pair might have a weakness in their system for exactly this hand. So if you win with a big imp per board number, it says you took a high risk and got away with it. Usually this implies that your opps where weaker, but it says nothing about how good you are. If two world class teams fight 100 boards and one wins with 4 imps they made 0,04 IMPs per board. Does this mean they are not good players? So forget the IMPs per board number, it does not mean anything.

My impression is, that weak NT bidder pass strong in 3rd seat and bid suits if weak. Anyone playing weak NT here who can commend on this?

You put a lot of pressure on the reopener, second seat can hold anything from 0-14 if balanced. It is a risk to enter the auction as it is done using Lionel, but you take the pressure for your partner, you offer him 2 suits for fit and almost the strength that the weak NT bidder promised. So in 4th seat partner can make right decisions. Your partner will hold an average of 7-8 points usually and playing with fit at 2 level with 18hcp will not be too expencive. Your way partner might feel he should not reopen with less than 11 hcp, otherwise the risk is to high, you have to play with a combined 16 hcp.

I hate those 2 letter words .... so 2♦ is ok. The system seems to make sence, with 5-4 you have a bid, with 4-4 your partner will reopen. So 1NT - pass - pass - ? will lead to a reopening exactly when? Pass in the 3rd seat can be as strong as ... 10hcp opposit a 12-14 NT.

I think it's a question of percentage. If your opp opens e.g. 12-14 it get's less likely that your side will have a game. So you are figthing for a partscore here, this means limitted bidding space, and you should be able to play your fit at the 2 level, since your best fit might be 7 cards! The fact that the 1NT is weak, does not mean that your side has the majoraty of points. 1NT - X - pass - ? Stayman and transfer seem to be ok here, but you miss 4-4 fits in the minors and how strong can your partner be? LHO showed 12-14 you hold 15-17 together 27-31 HCP. So the other two share 13-9 hcp. So on the long run you can expect an average of 5.5 HCP from your partner. What is your target? What do you do with 13-14 and some 4432 distribution? I don't think you will hold 18-20 with a onesuited hand very often, so 2♦ might be arround one a year. The 2♣ thing makes sence but you might have to play the minor on 3 level then.

Do you know "Lionel" ? -> send it as PM :D

What about this: I guess each user has an ID ( think 4Byte integer should do) than sending a message to all user takes active user * 4 Bytes as an initial Message. Adding 2 extra Bytes for the table number (could make problems if BBO reaches 32000 active tables) (table 0 is lobby) and one Byte bitcoded N/S/E/W /Kib /Yellow/tourney/logoff / changed profile etc. will lead to 7 Bytes per active user at login as an absolute minimum. When installing BBO (not at update) the usernames and id are mirrored in a local database. Name and id cannot be changed so these data never expire. It could also contain the friend/enemy status. The profile of friends should be mirrored locally too. If i want to see someone's profile the request is send to a different server e.g. profiles.bridgebase.com this server is just handling the profile. This could be done with a direct connection to a database server. Parsing the SQL request output is done by the client. Keeping the answers fast could be done e.g. with a MYSQL cluster (but i guess BBO must grow a lot before that is necessary). People could choose how much space they would be willing to reserve for cached profiles, if there is space left those profiles can be mirrored locally too, if a login message indicates a profile change it is marked invalid in the local database, and called again from the server. I guess profiles of 100000 user take about 50MB,Not transmitting all the profiles all the time would help to save bandwidth and allow faster logons. (Guess you do a lot of this already.) Login and logout, seating information change of status will lead to 7 byte messages. Since these messages are send to all users this can be done by some sort of client based distribution. If you send this to 2 player at the table asking each to redistribute the message to the 2 others, the others might get the message twice, but the will sure get it. A similar idea can be done with table chat. I know you don't like to rely on the clients, but sending update information only to half of users using them to proxy the data to 2 others will reduce the bandwidth you need. If each message has a message id, a client can see that he missed something and can contact a server lostmessage.bridgebase.com asking for the message with the missing id. Or take a look at all those bittorrent distribution systems. They work! Since you can really save bandwidth this way you should think about it.

I don't think it would make much of a difference to me if you changed that to: 1) A friend logs in 2) A friend logs out 3) A friend/ someone playing/(kibbing) at my table changes his profile 4) A friend/ someone playing/(kibbing) at my table changes brb mode 5) See that a table is created only if i activate a table view 6) see 5 7) only if it's my table or i view the table list 8) see 5 9) Do you mean chat to Lobby (all), i don't need that i have lobby chat turned off But it might make sence to create a team match chat room (smaller group) 10) Only need that information when i activate a tourney list view 11) see 10 or if i am registered or put myself on the partnership desk 12) Lets deal with them when they come up. Worst thing that could happen is that it takes a few (milli)seconds, if i enter the table/tourney list, but I'm doing nothing else then. Does your ISP support broadcasts on IP level? You create a "broadcast IP-number" at your ISP's router, that represents e.g. all IP-numbers of kibs at a vugraph match. If you send the data to this "broadcast IP-number" at your ISP's he will distribute the message to all clients in the IP-list defined before. Save bandwidth between you and your isp, but your isp will charge the full outgoing traffic of cause.

Do we need a complete list of players loged on? I don't think so, if this list would contain only friends and yellows, this would do for a start. So if someone logs on, just seen the information to those who marked him as friend, and give him a list of his friends that are online. I would be willing to wait as long as it takes to get the compleat list when needed. (But i don't think i would need it, maybe i even know about the nick i'm looking for.) But I would want to be able to klick on a tourney hosts/directors name to kontact them and i would like to be able to click on my partners name, to send him a message. You have a point there with the table list, but you could separate those lists. 1) incompleat tables 2) tables with host names a-k 3) tables with host names l-z 4) tables with host names not starting with a letter If you keep only 1) updated this should do. The others would require immediate updates only if i'm viewing this part (maybe a tabbed view) of the table list. Updates of the tourney lists would be good enough when i look at it (at the table or by entering the tourney area). Perhaps you know how many users have their Lobby chat switched off. I remember when BBO had only a few hundred players online, it helped to ask for a player to join the table. My impression is, Lobby chat does not work for that purpose any more. (Probably everyone turned it off.) Perhaps it is no longer needed for players, just for yellows to broadcast. Your objection against using table hosts to distribute data is very valid. But each table is a very indipendent unit to handle, tables could be load balanced to different servers easyly. Using EJB one would think of a table as a "Session Bean". A different approach would be possible if you use the apache webserver. You could use "mod_proxy" to transfer the workload to different PC's. Any request send to e.g. bboserver/vugraph, would not be handled by the server but forwarded to another PC and it's answer to that request would be send back to the client. Your only limit would be the bandwidth to your ISP.

First hand i would bid 3N, stopping 3 of 4 suits including solid hold in the pre-empted suit. The second hand is indeed a problem, but i'd bid the ♣ the suit quality is better and passing 3N shows a very unbalanced hand and deneys stopper in ♦. If partner bids ♥, i still have that ♠ rebid.