hotShot

I would say, that if it's common knowledge in your club, that these 2 psyche occasionally, you're off the hook since you don't know more than opps.

Basically at Butler (using a mean) you are averaging the score, while at cross-imps you are averaging the IMPs. The results differ, because the IMP-scale is not linear. It would be nice to have a par score, but many boards don't have one. (I remember a board where I could make 6♠ while our opponents could make 6♣.) At Butler scoring it's easier to handle outliers, you just don't use them when calculating the mean. But this does not help much, if there is no par score. Using cross-imps you want to have as much scores as possible, so that outliers from both ends even out.

It would have been a good idea to make this a bidding poll in an other part of the forum asking what to bid over 3NT. That would give us an unbiased view how many people would pass. My guess is, that it would be the "bigger half".

"NS play Viking Precision with a 14-16 NT." South holds a 4333 shape with 14 HCP, why did South deviate from the agreed System? I usually have little sympathy for player who mix up their 2-suited overcalls, but I don't expect players to have agreements to defend any possible bidding system. OK West should not speculate, if they don't have an agreement, but anyone who plays an unusual bidding system should be prepared that opps have no agreement. EW are not responsible that North now has to choose between non-forcing and game forcing. A problem caused by South decision to deviate from the agreed NT bid. If they appeal, I suggest to keep the money.

Have I posted in this thread?

They live in the snow, what do you expect?

Since 2/1 is a mystery to me, my contribution will be a questions. Should not a jump over a GF be at least invitational to slam? Now if that is true, than North has failed to show his ♣K and his ♥A. And perhaps 3♠ is a slide overbid from South. North has 2 keycards, an extra K and shortage in an unbid suit. What more would I need to bid 5♦ as exclusion KC (if available) over partners slam invitation? I assume that 2♦ and 2♥ would have been a GF too. So North has shown a hand with less than 3♠, less than 5♥ and ♣length>=♦length. South could/should understand North bidding as 2434 that includes A or K in ♦. I don't think that South has a chance to guess a 7 card ♣ length and ♦ shortage. So I think South has no move left after partners sign off 4♠.

The TD should not ignore the UI case once it gets to his notice, even if NS did not mention it. I think North claim has some merits. He could have bid 3♥. This is different from bidding 4♦ (assuming that would show a good ♠ rise too), because it's not clear that East will bid 4♥. There is a chance that West would pass or double allowing South to bid 3♠ or 4♣ describing his hand. It's also clear that South will now recognize that, if opps bid to the 5 level, there is a chance they will go down. I disagree with the TD that 5♥ could be dbled by North. Without the alert West has shown a 2 suited hand with very long ♦ and long ♥. There is no guarantee that ♠K or ♣A are worth a trick.

When they show me a new trend, that I can remember from the past....

5♥ makes, so bidding 5♠ was a good choice. No damage. But was West allowed to bid 5♥? The missing alert on 3♦ is UI. West could bid 5♦ as choice of games and opposite a weak NT I won't rule out pass as a LA. If the transfer only promised 5(+) cards 5♥ might be an LA again. With 9 HCP opposite a weak NT even dbl might be a LA. This calls for a poll. 4♠ makes and 5♦ is down 2. While I would not allow immediate 5♥ call, I think West could run to 5♥, if 5♦ is dbled. So I would suggest a weighted score between 4♠=, 5♦-2 and 5♠-1, weights depending on the result of the poll.

The swiss format is a theoretical equivalent of a sorting algorithm, that will bring everything into the correct order within log2( Number of objects ) steps. To work properly it is necessary that the comparison function can give a true answer about which object is "larger" than the other. Unfortunately the remaining randomness of bridge distorts that comparison function. On a small number of boards, the better team/pair will not necessarily win. The algorithm is designed to use only wins and losses. The amount of a win should not mean anything. So using IMPs, VP or MPs for more than to determine the winner, leads to an additional distortion of the result. To make a good swiss you should only count the wins and losses to determine the ranks. If everybody is playing duplicated boards, one could use the MPs/IMPs as a tiebreaker for those who have the same number of wins, but it will reintroduce a little more randomness to the final result.

Obviously it's your agreement to pass such strong hands in 2nd seat. So your partner would balance weak? If so we have to pay the price now and pass. Or do we have an agreement how to show strength now? Such an agreement would be useful now. Without an agreement I think I now have to bid 5♠ if that is optimistic.

I don't like West's dbl, he should bid ♣. What East should bid now depends on the agreements. If his hand is stronger than the agreed minimum for overcalls, he should bid 3♣. If East has is close to the agreed minimum for overcalls he has to bid 2♥.

I'd say that the process is similar to the preparation of sourdough that is used for rye.

Putting a small pan with a thin layer of water on the bottom of the oven, helps to emulate the steam in a normal oven.

The first thing I was told to have a shape memory was called Wonderbread. If you crush it like a shock absorber, it just jumps back into shape. This kind of industrial white bread, has lots of additives that make the bread softer and prevent crumbling. Because of the crumbling the bread does not have a real crust. And the best thing of e.g. French Baguette is it's crust.

Views have nothing to do with posts. In the German forum are 68 posts, that have been viewed 1926 times.

Playing matchpoints declarer and defender should get 50% if the normal contract is made. At club level there are usually more that miss game/slam than those who overbid, so a "normal" declarer will get 50+X % for making, the defense will get 50-X % as a result. So your expected value for the average declarer play should be 50+X, while your expected average as defense is 50-X. If you club has less than 7 tables and lots of weak players, than X might be quite big. At regionals and nationals that X should be smaller. You get a positive score, whenever you make (even if you miss game/slam) or if they go down. You get a negative score whenever they make or if you go down. Defending, there is nothing you can do about the X when opps make. You get a negative score and the best you can get is 50-X%. You can get below 50-X by allowing unnecessary overtricks. A good sacrifice will get you a better score than 50-X, a bad sacrifice will get you below 50-X. What you need is an estimate of the X in your club. If that X in your club is 15, than the average score for a making game is 65% and the defense has to settle with 35%. Your result of 36.5% would indicate that you make a little more good sac's than bad ones. But an X of 15 would indicate a very low level of play (or a very small club). If X is smaller, than you are making a little more bad sac's than good ones.

66.7% for positive scores seem very good, but obviously you are bidding a little to aggressive at some points so that you have only 36.5% when the score is negative. I read that that you are declaring and going down, when they are going down as well. You should focus on that, you can gain a lot at this problem.

Hurray for Photoshop!

There are [switching to political correctness mode] impolite players who punish partners errors with useless redbles and overbids. As a result these pairs get a very bad score, pushing the results of the declarers up. Since the lucky defenders of the deals get an undeserved top, that no one else can reach, it pushes the IMP score of defenders down, that reach a normal result.

I guess that is a feature, to make sure, that if a kib takes a seat, he does not know the hands.

We sometimes make BBO-parties, that means 4 of us with our laptops meet somewhere to play on BBO using the "crowd" as "other table". You use the table result as score. Whenever the "normal" result is close to zero this works perfectly well. Now I took 3 random results from myhands. 2 Board 1 and Board 3) of then also not without flaws, work fine for that method, as the normal results for EW and NS are close to 0. Board 2 has an irrational result that will rip the EW and NS scores about 10 IMPS apart for the normal play. Board 1 Normal score, 2/16 missed to bid game. Board 2 One lunatic 6♥xxN-6 for -3400 distorting the score for everybody else. Board 3 Everybody makes 10 or 11 tricks but, one fails in 4NT 1/16 distorted results. Taking the number up to 160 might not change Board 1 and 3 much, perhaps the number of weak players is about 1/16 bis 2/16. But my "random" boards have only 1 lunatic score in 3 tries, off cause that is meaningless because of the small sample size and the lack of true randomness, but if we assume this is a trend, the distortion would reduce from about 10 IMPs to 3.3 IMPS. Considering the efforts of abuse and BBO's automatic abuse detection, I would hope that the number of lunatic is smaller. I think a higher number of comparisons would be nice, but it is not vital. Since the focus is now on the flash version, I think it's only a matter of time until the Windows client will be constraining further development of BBO in enough ways to be given up. I assume the at that time only very few people will still be using it.

How weak could East be to take out partners double? Obviously East is better than that minimum both in strength and in ♥ length, so East should bid 3♥.

It may surprise you, but for some people playing on BBO is serious bridge. Usually they play among their peers, but they like to have scores to compare their results to.