hotShot

North has a clear 4H bid! Even if South is void it is better to play ♥ because: 1) ♠ is a single, South would need to bring a double stop there 2) ♦K is worthless if South does not have an additional stop. It would be a little better if North played the NT 3) ♣AD is better on the declarers side 4) If South had a double stop in ♠ and a sure stop in ♦, he might have a stonger rebid than 2♦waiting espacially if void in ♥. 5) Since South did not show strength (towards 6♥) or distribution(several tricks in own suit), 3 NT is a high risk. 6) Playing any contract from the North hand is better, because a lead in a minor gives a trick. 7) South ♠ must be better than KBx to have a double hold in ♠, and the ♠ lead is most likely against NT. He should have at least ♦QXx and ♣QXx because he does not know what suit are stopped by North. But with 9-10 HCP South should bid a 5card suit or 2NT. And South should have at least one ♥ for communication to the North hand. So any hand suitable for 3NT is good enough to make 4♥.

If you play poker, it is hard to find out what a better player would have done with your cards. Playing team or pair events you can compare your results with that of other players. So finding the boards where you messed up is very easy. So i guess something between 30-100 boards played should be enough to get valid picture of you skills. Here at BBO you can even look at movies of the other players to analyse what they did. So i guess playing at BBO and analysing the boards will give you valid information about your strength and weaknesses. You can concentrate your statistical efforts on the boards you failed.

There are some differences between online directing an face2face directing. At face 2 face directing: 1) the TD gives the signal 4 the round change, but unfinished hands can be finished. 2) the TD can give slow pairs that do not speed up a procedural penalty. 3) the TD can decide that a table that is behind, plays a board after the last round. 4) i can seat a slow pair, with a group of known fast players hoping that this will ensure avarage pace. 5) you rarely loose player (no need to sub) None of 1-4 can be done online. Now we have the choice between the "wait each round" and "wait at the end" tourneys. Players want to know at what time the tourney is finished, and they want to play at their own speed. In an fast clocked tourney, the director has a hard time just doing subbing and adjusting. And directors have the right to know when the tourney is finished too. Scoring travellers with A+-=, have to be scored with correction factors etc. But this is still unfair, because it results in MP fractions. I don't know if this is done here, but it should be done. This is why the rules say that artificial scores should be avoided if possible. Of cause my idea can be modified to define a maximum number of boards. But it is intended to bring a lot of people clearly defined time of fun.

I think the amount of cheating at BBO is largely overestimated. This is because: 1) A lot of pairs playing at BBO didnot agree on anything before they started playing. So in fact they are not only bidding and playing, but guessing most of the time. 2) A lot of BBO players, cannot not recognize worldclass/expert play, if neither of the opps have a star. 3) The way to win short BBO-tourneys is to score tops. This requires unusual leads and unusual play. If it fails you will get a bad score, but you will never win a BBO tourney with "normal" leads and play. You need to take more risks here.

Well it may also be usefull to spy upon people, but is this what the world should be like? There are several thousand privat messages each day and may be a handful worth reporting to abuse. I think it is not acceptable to log all privat chat, just to procecute a few offenders. We are talking about rudeness here and not about serious crimes. There are people out there who cannot file a screenshot if neccessary. They need somethink more convenient,within the software.

This happend to me just after the latest update.

In an Mitchel tourney you have 2 winners, one on each axis. Here one would have winners in each section. If someone takes pride in winning in the 15boards/hours group it is fine with me.

I assumed (probably wrong) that there would have to be an even number in each section, so it might be 1 of 2. :)

But you would win only the section of those playing the same number of boards, as you did.

The advantages and disadvantages of clocked an unclocked turneys have been discused at other threads. What if there was a tourney typ that makes unclocked events more predictable? One would have the advantages of the unclocked tourney and TD's an player could still plan their day. Here is my suggestion how this could work. Instead of entering a number of rounds, the maximum play time for a tourney is given in minutes. Let's take a look at such a 2 boards per round playtime 60 minutes tourney. The fast players could do something like 6 Rounds/12 Boards, the slow players will finish 5 boards. When less than 5 minutes of the tourney time are available no more board is started. Players have a minimum waiting time between rounds, and at the end no more than 5 minutes till the result is shown. TD's would not have to adjust boards as all boards have to be finished except the last. So while subbing and other calles are on, no adjusments are needed. At the time that adjustments are relevant, the tourney is finished, nothing else but adjustments to do. To calculate the result, sections should be made depending on the number of finished boards. e.g. section A 12 finished boards, section B 11 finished boards, .... Since the tourney will take exactly 60 minutes players and director have full control over their time.

I think the best way would be to add an "report to abuse/director" Button that sends last few lines from privat/public chat to the server. It would be great if the transmitted chat sniplet could be shown in confirmation box first. If the confimation does not happen, the chat-buffer should be erased, so that this chat can not be send any more. (To prevent trying to snip the provocation out.) This way you don't have to log privat chat and still get "true" chat messages. Sending it to the director might help in zero tolerance cases.

It is obvious that if you psyche more than once or twice in one tourney, your p will be aware of that, and therefor gain an advantage by that knowledge. You can see it as some sort of implicit agreement. Espacially if you do the same psyche twice, the director will assume that your p is prepared for that type of psyche. Thats why if you play a major pairs/team event, any psyche has to be reported to the director so that he has a count and can note the type of psyche. Considering the length of online tournaments more that one psyche/tournament should be too much. At an online Indi you can get a p, who saw you psyche a few boards ago (as you p or as your opponent). They would be prepared for your psyche too. So one shoukld be carefull there too.

ok it would work like this 4♦ - 4♠ 4NT* - 5♣ 5♥** * void ** 1 of 5(actually only 4 since ♦ is void) Now i don't loose a trick in ♠, because i have none so i don't care if p has ♥K or ♠A. With 10 trumps on our side there is a good change to catch the king if that card is not in p hand. But i can drop my ♦ on spade then.

#1 Yes it is strong enough, but a splinter is probably not the best bid. what would 3♣ have been? #2 For a slam your p needs a lot of aces, if the had the ace of ♦ it is useles. If he has A of ♠, A of ♥ and AK ♣ you have may have 7, but if he has AKQJ in ♦, J of ♠ and K of ♣ you are lucky to make 4, So his 4♦ should cool you down. #3 Following the rule of 20, yes i would open it, with a well kown p at one level. #4 If P is single we lose a ♦ trick and i need to ruff 3 or 4 times to develope some ♦ tricks of my own, trump lead would make things difficult. I can lose a trick in ♥ if K is double with the opps, p values in spade are wasted. There might be a slam. I can ask my regular p with 4SP, if he is void or single and how many aces he has. I am quite sure 5♥ is save, so no risk there. Guess at IMP's i'll try 6 at least.

You made an agreement for a bidding sequence, that is not disturbed by the opponents. If you think that in this sequence the system is "on", then you have to alert, if you think the system is "off" you bid your ♥.

Take a short look at BBO - Standard , BBo - Advanced and the sayc booklet BBO-Sandard ans SAYC have no splinter bid , BBO-Advanced has. So if agreed to play SAYC, you did not make an agreement to the sequence 1 Major -> 4 minor. I know people who have a 40+ pages system description, the SAYC booklet has 8 and BBO - Basic has only one screen. Which of this descriptions do you think covers most cases? Do you discuss with each of you online partners, if after 1NT - dbl - 1♦ is transfer or not, of if 1NT - dbl -2♣ - is still stayman? Is 1 ♥ - 2 ♥ Any color A long suit trial bid, a short suit trial bid, a game try or a game forcing ? I don't think you do at BBO, you have a basic agreement and lots unclear sequences. Most of the extreme results you see at the travelers are due to missunderstandings. Even if you know the system perfectly, what makes you sure that the p you get from partnershipdesk or in an indy knows the system perfectly too. So often you don't have an agreement, and you can say "We have no agreement". Of cause you know your hand and should be able to describe this to your opps If you play bridge 4 fun or with novices, you don't need all that Bridge Law stuff. You need it, if you play bridge at competitions. You can expect more than a little basic bridge know how there. And if like in this case, someone knows enough bridge law to know that he can get an adjustment if opps hand does not fit the description, he should know at least know enough about bridge to know about judgement. The true problem is, that a lot of TD's at BBO have only basic knowledge of the bridge laws (some have even none), and adjust scores, if players insist hard enough.

TimG even a novice has learned that a double queen or any single honour is not worth its full hcp. They also learned that a long suit has a value beside hcp's. So it is common bridge knowledge that the sum of your hcp's and those you show in your bid might differ a bit. I would concider this basic bridge knowledge.

We need to read Law 40 here This means you are allowed to judge the value of your cards Here a King or more is specified as a limit to what your hand might be weaker than the usual range you agreed with your p. So having +-1 HCP more is no problem at all.

please read Law 75.C

Well i don't think the ruling is correct. At BBO one can only explain ones own bidding, so th 2♦ bidder must have alerted his bid as michaels. His Partner must see this as both majors. He picks ♥ and when his p bids ♣ showing a very strong hand probably with a diamond void. He corrects to ♥ showing a very weak hand. Without the hand shown i see no reason to believe he knew that p did not bid correctly. After 4♣ from his p (a strange bid) and 4♠ from your side he has the perfectly legal information that something might be wrong. If not his P can dbl the 4♠ contract so he is save to pass. Still no reason to belive that this Opponent made something wrong. So did the bidder of 2♦ give you a wrong explanation or did he make a mistake (wrong bid)? His explanation must cover the partnership agreement not his actual hand. (This is where a CC comes in handy to prove the bid was wrong) His partner acted as if Michaels was the agreement, but when in doubt the TD should asume wrong explanation. So there might be reason to adjust, but to what contract? The question is how did the 2♦ bidder get aware, that his bid was wrong? In f2f bridge this can happen if his p gives an alert., this cannot be the case on BBO. So it is likely that his wrong bid was either a deliberate psyche or some sort of mistake. If he did not get the UI from his partner that his bid was wrong, than he is allowed to bid. Here on BBO it is very likely that he had legal information that his bid was wrong. So if the 2♦ opener has reason to believe that dbl on 2♥ is penalty, he is allowed to bid. Now we come to the interesting part. If your side did not bid 4♠, your other opponent would have been in big trouble, because he has to act on the base that his p has a very strong hand with both major suits, i don't think it would be legal to pass 4♣. But your bid of 4♠ took him of the hook, now he has legal information that something is wrong with his p bid and he does not have to bid to keep the bidding alive. So let us say there was a infriction, but was there a damage? Even though you believed that one of your opps had 5 ♠ cards in his hand you reached you ♠ contract, and made it. Since you made only 5, you did not miss a slam. So it seems you where not damaged by the wrong explanation, so a score correction is unneccesary. In f2f bridge your opps would have earned some sort of procedural penalty, because they had no CC and did not know their own system.

That is excactly what the rules tall you to say, if you and your p have no agreement. It is common knowledge that a double jump into a new color is a splinter, if your p knows that - fine, if opps don't know that perhaps they are beginners :-).

No need to agree to this , it's the rules. Your opponents have no right to know your cards, otherwise you can play with open cards. It would be unfair if your p knows more about your bids than they do. Thats why you have to give a full explanation about your agreements. If you p has to guess what you mean, opps can guess to. This is why psyches are perfectly legal, as long as your p does not know you psyched!

Somewhere in the rules it says that +-1 HCP is Judgement and not a psyche. This kind of judgement is allowed, no need to war opps about it.

Transfer bids over 1NT are very common with strong NT ranges as 16-18 or 15-17. Some people play weak NT openings eg. 12-14 or 10-13 they usually don't play transfer bids. There are only a hand full of artifical bids that are so common, that you have to alert if it is not artifical. One case is Stayman. Any local club or country can define own rules about what should be alerted. I wonder if "polish ♣" system calls have to be alerted in poland. Since you meet people from all over the world on BBO you should assume that at their place a bid might have to be alerted. In f2f brigde unneccesary alerts may create UI, but on BBO they don't because your p does not see your alert. So you better alert when in doubt.

You can enter comments to a player within the same dialog you can declare friends and enemies. If i played with someone, i put informations there e.g. about conventions we agreed on, how well we got along, if he/she happens to know things better than me (or just believes to), if i agree with the skill level they had in their profile and most important if i do not want to play with than person again. Of cause i could mark as enemy but that would exclude the player from my tourneys, what i think would be wrong just because our bridge style does not match. I would like to see my comments when scrolling though the partnership desk and on invitations.