hotShot

I have a problem here. North has a single ♠, his partner made a t/o dbl of ♠ and his LHO opened. North has a clear picture of RHOs strength and knows that opps have a 9+ card ♠ fit. South t/o dbl (most likely) promised a 4 card ♥ suit. North does not need to ask to know that an alerted 2 ♥ bid must be some sort of ♠ support, he can even estimate the strength. If he asks about the bid, the answer will not influence his bid. 1) If he asks and opps recognize that the question was irrelevant for the bid, they will claim asking about the bid and then bidding ♣ implies ♥ length. 2) If North does not ask about the bid and South is not aware of the meaning, South is likely to get into a position to "ask and pass". Although South has the right of full disclosure, he is forced to guess, because opps can claim UI, if the answer makes South pass. I can't accept a regulation that deprives one side of the right to get full disclosure. The law should state that the player in 2nd seat always has to ask or better that asking about an alerted bid does not create UI.

I don't know about the web-Client, but with the Windows client my impression is that if you miss "Accept" by a pixel your click is transmitted as "reject".

Borderline reopening a little more likely to be mis-shaped than just weak.

It is not so unusual that someone "knows" that something is right but can't say why he knows. Look at the Poincaré conjecture, it took about 100 years to explain why it was right. Fortunately Bridge problems are simpler. I will try to give a few reasons why 4♥ is an obvious bid. Have you ever made a T/O double in 2nd seat with 4 cards in openers suit? What kind of hand would you have to make a 2nd seat T/O double with 3 cards in openers suit and does this happen very often? When South makes his T/O dbl of a suit where North holds a singleton, North knows that EW are more likely have a 10+ card ♠ fit than just a 9-card fit. That is why he decided to bid for the lead instead of showing ♥ support.The fact that 3♣ is NF is irrelevant since North can be almost sure that EW will bid again. The fact that opps settle for 3♠ is surprising to North, but now he has the chance to show the possible ♥ fit too. If EW don't try game with a (9) 10+ card fit, this suggests weakness on their side and extras in the South hand. It makes North ♠ shortness more valuable. As mentioned above if South should not happen to have 4♥ cards, there has to be a ♣fit.

Every deviation that is deliberate and gross, should be treated as psych. The interesting question about this hand is, whether or not the deviation is gross. The hand is about a king short in HCP, that is compensated by a void instead of a single and an extra card that could be either in a side suit or in trumps. Hand evaluation is part of the partnership agreements, especially their application to weak distributional hands must have been discussed by a regular partnership. So if a partnership has agreed that this shape and strength is withing or close to their agreed range, they need to say so. Given the disclosed meaning, 5-8 HCP and "won't be kamikaze" I would consider the deviation to be gross. If we would discuss a similar deviation around opening strength, I would not think the deviation is gross.

Without thinking this to the end I suggest something like that: The way I understand this, is that the "DNA" needs to be the full decision tree aka the whole bidding sequence. So you automatically generate a starting generation with decision trees that contains (random) combinations from limit raises, preemptive raises, strong raises, Bergen, Jacoby, Mini-Splinter, Splinter, ... ,passing if a termination rule is true. To each decision tree generate several individuals with different HCP / suit length intervals for each decision. As fitness function take the percentage of the testset boards that fit the function decision tree difference_in_total_points (decision tree result , par result) < (something like 199). To build the new generation take the average/combined ranges of identical decisions in the tree. (The problem can/will occur that the decision tree will not have ?disjunct? decisions!) Or perhaps transfer complete nodes.

If we could train a neural network to bid, we would still end up with the problem to extract the "rules" it uses to determine the bids, especially to get them in a human usable form.

I would like to point out, that the suggested approach will lead to a "computer optimized" system and not to a "computer generated" system. The parameterization is in fact the core of a system, what would be left to the computer would be to optimize some ranges. The same is to say about fitness functions. Of cause computers can't generate systems yet and I doubt that they will be able to do anything like that in the near future, so a computer optimized system is the only realistic target reach. I would suggest to start with a reduced decision tree / sample set e.g. 1M openings and follow up bidding with fit.

I suggest you redo your calculations. I assume that Mach5 is faster than 770mph and since an hour has 3600 seconds, this does not correlate to 212 miles in 3 seconds. Mach 5 is about 3800 mph. I would round that to 1 mile a second => 3 miles in 3 seconds.

Why is this random noise? Hamman plays a different system with Zia than he did with Soloway. Also his style might have changed. I know that you can do the required math yourself. I had a look at the quoted website and noticed that in partnerships that are registered with more than 2000 boards, players have a smaller deviation from 25% than in those with less than 600 boards. Often this is an indicator for random noise. The quoted player have results both above and below the expected 25%, another indicator for the presence of random noise. Since the expected value is 25% and almost all of the values are within the interval [23,27] and for larger numbers within [24,26]. So I estimate any effect to be of smaller or equal size to the noise. My estimation could be wrong, but from 400 boards played 25% would be 100, 23% would be 92. Since you are the math expert, you can tell me if that is significant enough.

I think a lot of these numbers describe random noise. Look at these numbers of players that are in the list with different partnerships. Duboin Semeta 26.35% declarer Bocchi 24.59% Hamman Soloway 26.52% Zia 23.27% Wolff 26.15% Zia Hamman 24.17% Rosenberg 25.61%

Where is the "Home" team?

Does the Heisenberg principle apply to semantics? Maybe it matters if two of the words are entangled. ;), sadly some will miss the beauty of this remark.

The partnership will know if partner tends to bid aggressive or very solid. Thinking about 3 NT could suggest wasted values in one or both minors. I accept that as negative. Holding ♠AJ9 and partner is thinking about 3♠ than his spades are longer or better. I think this is encouraging for slam because there are probably no ♠ loser and ♣ loser can be dropped on ♠ number 4 and 5. This also suggests that partner has little wasted values in the minors. That leaves a ♦ loser and a ♥ problem. We have all been in worse slams. So this favors a slam try. So I have 2 in favor of a slam try, one that is discouraging and one that the partnership knows better than my guess of 50:50. So for me this is more like 2,5: 1,5 in favor of a slam try.

If the play is that slow, I would probably have forgotten what card I player 2 tricks back, because it could have been 2 hours ago. Even if this means 15 minutes/board, I don't know if the extra time you have to concentrate does not cost more at the end of the round than you win during the round.

Years ago I made some stats counting the number of cards played, that lost a trick compared to double dummy play. The average GIB lost one trick in 4 boards, the leading GIB close to one trick in 3 boards. So I'd say that the lead is a very difficult part of the game.

I think it's more likely that partner was unsure if 4♥ is enough than that 4♥ is a stretch. But I'm not sure it's demonstrably.

You lose 2 tricks to ♠AQ(J) after the ♠ lead if the A is with West and a 3rd trick to the trump Qxx (of East). Maybe I am pessimistic, but this is no slam you have to be in.

I don't know if Greece is importing much from outside the Eurozone. About 70% Germanys exports stay inside the Eurozone, so the gain is not that big.

These signal triggered computer sales act as an amplifier if stock values go down. They can't act intelligent, they act like a crowd in panic. And since they are faster than human traders they can make lots of bad deals before any human can stop then. So any small reason can cause a big avalanche that is not justified by the facts.

If you look at the economical size of Greece compared to the whole €-Zone, you will notice that the markets are overreacting. The rating agency's did not do a proper job evaluating Greece, so they had to downgrade Greece twice within about a week. Germany's political system is focused is a local election, if this had happened next week, the German position would have been much clearer. Everything will calm down within a few weeks.

Why? I think housing prices correlate directly with rent. In fact, property value is a direct function of lease. You realize of cause that the very slow real estate bubble has just exploded. So the long term experience from the last 5 decades that house prices only go up, is no longer true. Did not the Goldman-Sachs Real Estate Fond get worthless last month? It might be to optimistic to think that you can "refinance" and sell the property in the near future. On the other side, they say buy when the prices are low. If you can answer all of the following questions with yes, than it is probably a good idea to invest. Do you have the money to 1) survive a big repair to the house that you did not expect. 2) deal with a tenant that does not pay his rent for month (legal costs etc...) 3) get over the time until you get a new job, in case you lose yours.

Do you really think that Novices and Fake-Experts are competent to judge other players skill level?

I don't see what your problem has to do with multi.

The correct option is not available. We modify the system, if we discover that our system forces us into the wrong contract, whenever a specific situation appears. We elaborate our agreements (and update the system notes), whenever we hit a bidding sequence that is not covered by an agreement or a meta agreement and that lead to a misunderstanding. Of cause the frequency of these occasions, goes down very fast. A bidding system is like a tablecloth that is a little to small, if you fit one side, you open a gap at the other side. Frequent system changes lead to more system changes ..