hotShot

Has anybody seen a statistic how many player are from the various leagues? I mean every team seems to have players playing in the German, English or Spanish league (incomplete list). I wonder which league has the most players at the WC?

Paraguay was robbed, I think the goal was regular. Neither was the active player offside nor did the ball jump to his hand. I'm a bid disappointed about the performance of the Spanish team.

You can alway overbid opps suit on the same level with ♠. That seems advantage enough to pass with ♠, since you don't mind 1-level overcalls or even 2-level overcalls, if you are prepared to play a Moysian. Since (pass, ) 1♦, 1♥ and 1♠ are transfer bids that could be weak and "force" partner to bid the suit on the 2-level (if he's weak), what do you need preempts for?

Another gwnn victory and mich-b takes the lead.

I think now Uruguay has a psychological advantage in the penalty shooting.

Grrr Left a little before the break and were back a little late. Result I missed an unconscious soccer player and a goal....

Or we could get the Germany - Ghana rematch someone predicted :rolleyes:

This looks like we are on the way to a NED-GER final. We thought it was close .....

Good referee! Should have followed gwnn when he changed his bet.

Oh no ...... NED 2 BRA 1

Does Brazil have a keeper problem? 2 goals from Brazil, but one on the wrong side ...

Would you accept the Church as a state and implementing a centralized religion instead of democracy? Implementing Christian belief with the sword was quite successful in Europe around the year 1000.

Remember jdonn's post? Except for USA -Ghana the higher ranked teams won. South Korea and Japan seemed to be the weakest. (This will obviously change when the ranking is updated after the WC.) And who expected that France would not qualify from a group with: 9 France 16 Uruguay 17 Mexico 83 South Africa Of cause Uruguay deserves to be in the round of 8, but Portugal has meet Brasil and Spain on their way out of the tourney. Could you agree that Uruguay had more luck than Portugal?

What do you expect, it's the round of 8 of a world championship. This should be the 8 best teams in the world. 5 of them definitely are and I think Ghana, Uruguay and Paraguay had a little luck. It would be easier if the pairing where different, so Paraguay - Spain seems the only save bet. According to the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking (which is bad, but not totaly useless): 1 Brazil 2 Spain 4 Netherlands 6 Germany 7 Argentina 16 Uruguay 31 Paraguay 32 Ghana So the QUARTERFINALS are: 57) Netherlands (4) - Brazil (1) 58) Uruguay (16) - Ghana (32) 59) Argentina (7) - Germany (6) 60) Paraguay (31) - Spain (2) 57 and 59 are close matches everybody has to guess. 60 should be a clear win for Spain. 58 is interesting because Ghana is underrated and Uruguay had a lot of luck getting there.

Try Biddig system design contest and for further reading: Matt Ginsberg's post on system evaluation

Nice work Tysen! Anybody feel competent to say at what level of event such a system would be allowed? I guess that, if you add a restriction like: "You need at least 3 HCP to open." the information contained in "pass" drops a lot and "Silent Spades" would be less attractive.

57) 2 Netherlands - Brazil 58) 2 Uruguay - Ghana 59) 2 Argentina - Germany 60) 2 Paraguay - Spain

I think it's mich-b and cherdanno

I think the problem is that responder holding KT AK9xx Jx Kxxx did not expect partner to hold a single ♦. to him it is more likely that partner really holds an A or Kx(x) in ♦. He does not know about the 7th ♠ and 3rd ♥. Responder wants to hear about the 2nd ♦ keycard and the best way to get there is allowing for the 5♦ cue bid.

Spain (or Portugal) will have an easy quarterfinal ...... I don't want 30 more minutes of this.

I don't like a 4♦ bid that can be a mixed cuebid or shortness. But still it must set ♠ as trump suit. If that is the agreement, than it did not cause the problem. But what is 5♦?

You are probably right, but how could he know that the Mexican guy behind him was not lifting the offside? Why should a soccer player call attention to the fact that he was offside?

The matter of video proof is not that simple. I don't see much of a problems with video proof to decide if a ball was behind the goal line or not. But that would not help if a player is between the camera and the ball. There is not much of a problem to decide if a goal was scored by a player who was offside. If no goal is scored immediately, what should a linesman do if he is unsure if a player is offside? If he signals offside and the video proof shows he was wrong, what is the compensation? A free kick or a penalty? So the linesman would not signal offside if he is in doubt. The play continues while the video crew checks for offside. After some time, the video crew signals the offside. Do you reset the clock? The team that in lead could kill time that way.

As an expert in Bridge you know that usually an opponent has to flop, to get you a good result. There are unforced errors, but you don't see them often at this level of play and there are forced errors that are a consequence of better individual strength or better (tactical) team moves. As to the referees, there are great referees in the top leagues, but they are amateurs and the FIFA has to take referees from around the world. Of cause not that is bridge :) They are better than masterpoints ...... Well the best of the best should make it to the round of 16.After that, one has to admit that top teams are often of about the same strength. There is an element of luck involved. Actually it is not that simple, if you were fouled and manage to stay on your feet, but lose your chance to score, the referee will have trouble to recognize the foul. So the best legal advice is: In case of a foul don't try to stay on your feet. Most of the so called dives just follow this advice. Of cause this means that there is room for discussion. These discussions are part of what makes interesting. And yes there are some terrible referees.

I know the ball was behind the line, but there are those who deny that. http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/9487/1277650995551.jpg