hotShot

This is the 3rd turn to take action. First message was no opening strength (not even a 3rd hand opening), 2nd message was no t/o dbl on ♥ or trap pass and now the 3rd message is dbl this is penalty or an reopening dbl (the famous all purpose "do something smart partner"). Partner will usually have about 10 hcp, not really long ♥, probably no 4+ card ♠ suit and sort of a balanced hand. If you don't have a clear agreement, the better guess is that it's intended as t/o, although the questions remains, why the hand was not good enough for a 1-level t/o.

(Bit)torrent is a very intelligent way to distribute data in a short time to a lot of people. The trick used is that those who have already got parts of the data, transmit what they have to others. You all know a similar method from real life. Someone brings some copies, he gives all of them to the first, who keeps one for himself and gives the rest to the second..... If you create more than one chain and allow the chains to interact you have a god understanding how it works. If you enter such a network,while you download e.g. data, you are also distributing the data you already got. You can adjust the download and upload rate, so that it does not interfere to much with your regular network use. If you increase the upload bandwidth you offer, your system get more interesting as a distribution node and more nodes will connect to your node exchanging the data fragments they have with those you have. This will lead to an increase in your download rate. Once you have your data, you can/should leave the file available to others. Otherwise the the whole process would come to an end. Everybody would have to load the data from the original server and all advantages are lost. If you are paying a fixed rate for your internet connection that does not depend on the data volume and adjust your upload rate to a reasonable limit you don't even notice that you are seeding the data to the net. All this is perfectly legal, quite save and not much of a hassle, if you are downloading and relaying legal stuff. If you are downloading and distributing copyright protected stuff, you risk to get hassle with some layers sooner or later. So if you want to download e.g. a new Ubuntu boot image everything is fine.

Forum D is the same system as S.E.F. (Système d`Enseignement Francais) from france. A short overview in german is here: http://bridge-verband.de/picture/doc/13

I'll pass, partner has guessed about my strength (both opps made limited bids) and included it into his bid.

What do you intend to bid holding ♠KQx ♥AJxxx ♦Qxx ♣xx? Because that is what you have shown yet, your 1♥ bid has not nearly shown your strength and shape. So how can your pass be forcing?

what kind of results carry enough meaning to be used. Casual play in the MBC with randomly changing partners and opps, 4-12 board (individual) tourneys or # board team matches

Worst case scenario: Let 1..n represent the n-th best team in the field, the team with the lover number wins. The worst thing that can happen is to match up teams: First round: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, ... (n-1) - n 2nd round: 1-3, 2-4, 5-7, 6-8, .....(n-2) - n At the end of round 2 the 4-th and the 8-th best teams are among the double losers. If you continue the swiss tourney they can hardly recover and if they can, the teams overtaken in the last round will feel that hey have been treated unfair, because they had stronger opponents in the last rounds. What I would suggest is to play 2 seating round with randomly assigned opponents, prior to the swiss tourney. Forget about VP's it's just win or lose. The result of these 2 rounds is only used for seating, all points are reset to 0. Seat the 2 time winner against randomly assigned 2 time loser, without repeating a seating match. Randomly assign the big group who won and lost one match. Don't assign matches between teams that played each other in the seating process before half of the swiss rounds are over.

1) I think it's possible to create an ELO equivalent rating for partnerships. But how will you combine 2 pair ELO's to a team ELO or split a pair ELO into 2 player ELO's? (This problem is inherent in the Lehman rating as well, that's why playing with a weak partner will ruin your rating.) 2) A rating system should not reward "bunny bashing". (The Lehman rating does that.) 3) Prior to investing time into that subject, ask yourself: who would want to have a true rating? If my ELO said I suck in chess, I might find other ways to waste my time, having more fun. So maybe a working rating would drive people away from bridge. If I were a "BBO Expert" or a star from "a country where its easy to be nominated to international tournaments because nobody else is interested/willing/able do go" I would not want to know my rating or that anybody else know my rating. 4) We have discussed the social implications of a rating system on BBO in ### threads over the years, and they are not welcome. 5) I have experimented with a rating system based on the card play abilities of players, this could be a way to rate individual player.

1. I think that X is the most flexible bid now. Partner can bid 2♠ with 2 cards, if he bids ♣ - fine, if he bids ♦ hope he's got 5+ of them. 2. I would like to bid 1NT, but without a sign of life from partner the risk is to high. I don't want to hear a major from partner over my reopening dbl. That leaves 2♣ and pass as reasonable choices. In red it's probably better to pass, since opps have more hcp than you. (This is not the penalty pass case because you have the ♦.) White 2♣ is worth a try.

Blocking user is only half a good idea. There are users where part of their posts are a great source of information while at other occasions they are just LOLing. If you block this user you lose all his posts.

Thomas Andrews deal 3.17 at http://bridge.thomasoandrews.com/deal/ has an integrated DD-Solver, you can generate specific hands and if you like a lot of statistics.

If you do it randomly, than sometimes your bidding is canapé style, that is alertable. Notice that some SO's order to alert the 2nd bid of a canapé and not the first bid. Check your SO for details about alerting canapé style bidding.

Are you aiming at the single IMP for 1 down red against 130 (3♦+1)? Or do you expect to make 3♥, what would your partner need to enter the bidding over 3♦? Or do you hope to drive opps to 4♦ done something?

No, i'll just pass. The best that opps can score on their own now is 110 or 130. And it's far from sure that they make 3♦ at all. Partner had his chance to act and he did not, so I won't improve opps score by going down in a contract of our own.

People should start a poll, if they what to see numbers. If an interesting thread has a new post, it's frustrating to find another "Agree with..." post.

Although you are not wrong, you fail to see the true complexity here. If a big company fails, the market is gone (at least for a while) too. At first there is the direct loss of jobs in the company that failed. Secondly there is a loss of jobs in the businesses that provided raw materials and services to the company. The third domino that falls are the businesses (shops and craftsmen and other services) who's regular costumers lost their jobs. And this is not even the worst part yet. The people who still have jobs, but have to see that colleges or friends lose their jobs and that businesses go bankrupt, start to prepare for the worst and cut their budgets too. Now that's a big problem! If 50% of the consumers cut their budgets by 4%, all businesses will average a sales loss of 2%. Of cause they will (have to) reduce the costs of human resources and now the big job loss numbers emerge when 2% of all jobs are lost. If this is getting into a self-supporting trend, there is no stop to it. It seems logical to stop this as close to the beginning as possible. Saving the company seems a good start and if done well, future profits from the company could be used to repay the costs. Companies used to get along by borrowing money from banks, but the banks are "broke" and don't lend money any longer.

I learned the swiss movement from chess. I would agree about the fairness there, because you can only win or lose 1 point. In a bridge match you can get results for 100% to 0%. That makes a lot of a difference in the ranks esp. in the early rounds. Since the percentages you win also depends on the position of other strong pairs, the quality of your table opponents and even the system they play, you have at lot of noise that is larger than the differences between pairs in the middle 4/6 parts.

Not even a little bit funny.

The swiss movement was invented to find the best player while meeting more other good players than bad players, without playing a complete round robin. In a swiss movement to best players should be in the top few, while the worst player are in the bottom few. You sacrifice a reasonable ranking of the big majority of teams for saving many rounds. If you play a table based movement like you do offline, each pair is only playing a very small number off opponents. Assume Pair A is much better than Pair B. Pair A unfortunately hits the pairs Worldclass1 to Worldclass4 while Pair B plays the pairs Novice1 to Novice4. Guess who has a chance to score well? The results of such a tourney are completely random. The winners are most likely lucky people who meet weak opponents, that messed up badly. Given the shortness of online tourneys Swiss is the better format, because most of the good and the bad pairs will score well and most of the bad pairs score bad.

I think that logic is flawed. The 4♦ bidder accepted to play 5♠, why should the player who suggested to play ♠ in the first place now remove himself? Only his partner can judge if he prefers to play ♦ or ♠. After the double there is reason to assume that the estimated missing ♠ don't split 3-3 or 2-3 this makes a ♠ contract a lot less attractive. Since everybody except me thinks that 5♠ includes ♦ support, playing 6♦ is a lot more attractive.

Try the preview post button! That straight line is translated later and will not be expanded in the edit area.

How strong is partners 1♥ overcall? Many would do that with 8+HCP and a good 5-card suit. For your hand a good ♥ suit contains wasted values. Try 2♦ and let partner and opps tell you more about their hands. If you don't win the contract with 2♦ you will be able to balance later.

This is a clear double. If partner holds ♠Ax ♥Qxxxx ♦x ♣Qxxxx we won't make 5♥ but probably get one trick in ♥ or ♣ and two tricks from ♦ and ♠ so 5♦ is down. If partner holds ♠xx ♥AQxxx ♦x ♣AQxxx we are still down in 5♥ (losing 2♠ and a ♦). But there's a big chance that 5♦ will go down too. Edit: Even a ♦ void does not help much if partner has 3 ♠s. Holding ♠xxx ♥AQxxx ♦ ♣AQxxx we are usually down in 5♥.

Imagine a one board tourney, you would obviously need 100% to be the only winner. If you have a shared top you can't be the only winner. In a 2 board tourney a top and 1 average board produce 75% In a 4 board tourney a top and 3 average boards produce 62.5%, while 3 tops and a zero will get you to 75%. In a 25 board club tourney a top and 24 average boards produce 52%. As you can see having a tops is very helpful in short tourneys. In a bigger field the usual scores are often shared scores. So their %score gets lower. People adapt their strategy to win those events by taking more risks to get a top. If they get tops in the first rounds, they might play a little more careful. If they get zeros in the first round, some just quit the tourney and try to win the next tourney.

2♥ my partners would answer with less than 6 hcp to a 1m opening and he did not promise more than 4♥ yet. If he has invitational strength, he will make a move over 2♥.