hotShot

The ancient Greek had a god Helios, who drove a chariot across the sky each day. This is a typical example of religion filling in for the lack of scientific knowledge.

Please note that I said: Religion is used to explain .... Which is different from : Religion has all answers ......

Please state your definition of science. There is proof of brain surgery back in the stone age. We know that they knew a lot about astronomy, plants and animals. They discovered agriculture and farming. So I don't think that religion is older than science. Science and Religion are siblings, everything that science can't explain, is explained using religion. Since science can never explain everything and answer all questions, there will always be a need for religion. During the middle ages church dominated science and slowed down scientific progress for about 500 years. So Galileo and others helped science to a "come-back", but it was there long before them.

The big advantage of a system that has a 'catch-all-strong-hands' bid (like precision or Polish Club) is that it limits all other bids. This is a big advantage in the fight for the partscore.

clockwise ....

Assume a board where a contract can be made by taking the only possible finesse. Now assume that a squeeze will have a 90% chance while the finesse has only 50%. So in 10% of the cases players who don't know a squeeze will rate this expert to be a fake. What if a player picks a tricky 55% line and fails? It is much easier to rate an ebay seller/buyer, than to rate a bridge player.

Suppose I take a set of boards played by top-WC players. I give them to a bunch of beginners. After that I analyze the boards where the suit played is the same. Suppose I have 20 boards to compare. The WC-Player made not a single mistake. Pair A made a trick loosing error in 19 of 20 boards, pair B made a trick loosing error in every board. When they play pair B gives away an extra trick each board, but pair A gives it back 19 of 20 times. So pair A has 19 times the same result as the WC players and one score is better. Pair B has 19 times the same result as the WC players and one that is worse. Looking at the results only obviously pair A is of galactic strength worthy to represent earth in intergalactic championships, while pair B is a little weaker than WC probably expert level. (Self)ranking is hard ......

it's just slow

This is not quite true, elephants are the "worst" plant eating animals inside of woods and in areas with hills and mountains. Elephants need an enormous amount of food and have to spend most of the day eating. These are huge disadvantages and there are more. So there are more "best" plant eating animals around. The extra hair protects the lions neck in fights with other lions. This is your interpretation of their look not your observation. Scientists need to know the difference.

These are indeed interesting questions, but I look at it from a practical point of view. I have a list of about 250 player from which I watched or played more than 40 boards, I find that world champions and our national champions are at the upper end of this list, while BIL member find their place at the lower end of he list. If I'm interested in a players true rating, I can get me a bunch of boards from myhands and calculate the average error rate. Thats good enough for me.

I think most newbies probably make about 5-6 noticeable mistakes per HAND. Most experts, probably 4 or 5 in 20 boards, on a close detailed analysis by a group of other experts. Using a program that analyzes lin-files I found that (looking at cardplay only) GIB (using the money bridge settings) makes one error in 3 boards => 7 in 20 boards. Using lin-files of vugraph events I watched, I can tell that WC and expert player can reach a level of 1 error in 5 Boards => 4 in 20 Boards. Intermediate BIL members I played with, are in the area of 14-18 errors in 20 boards.

Could you post some evidence? I don't trust this. Like Hannie I have some doubts that the will be a uniform distribution. At least not at the top or bottom. Let us take an example with ties: If you think of a 7 table 13 round Howell movement, you are a close to a perfect movement as you can get. Now take 14 pairs: camp1 and camp2 average1 ... average12 Now enter the results. campX vs. averageY => campX gets the top (use +-100 as result) camp1 vs. camp2 or averageX vs. averageY=> average (use +-50 as result) Now calculate the MP's and you will find that the averageX plaver don't get the same percentage. You will find that the results differ about +-3 percentage points. This is caused by the fact that if both camps play a board on the same side the best score for the average player (5 equal results) is different from that they get if the camps are on different sides (6 equal results). My experience at club level is that the seating is not random. For example some players insist to sit e.g. at the smokers corner .... The size of the distortion caused by the movement varies from movement to movement and it depends on the number of strong/weak pairs.

ditto

If you open this 1♣ you have a ( game? ) forcing reverse 2♦. There is no need to jump to 3NT. Isn't it std to open this 1♦ because you have 4 of them? I've seen a lot of 2♣ bids with this shape and strength. I don't think this is a possible hand.

Obviously the opening hand has to be downgraded for several reasons, but there other things to think about. Suppose you agreed to open 12HCP, then the average strength of a first seat pass is 8 HCP. If this is followed by a pass in 2nd seat, the average 2nd seat strength is 9.33 HCP. This is what partner should assume for his decision in 3rd seat. So if you hold this hand in 3rd seat, you should pass because your side will have 20 HCP on average and there is no need to take a risk. If you get this hand in 4th seat, you can see that the average strength of your side is 21.33 HCP. At MP's you will only get a decent score, if you score better than 0. So you should open in 4th seat. What about 1st seat? Although the hand is worth less than 12 HCP, the HCP available to the other players is 28. This means on average your partner has 9.33 this means that your side has the majority of points. Your partner in 3rd seat will make his decision assuming that opps have 4 HCP more than they actually have. If you don't open there is a good chance that partner will not be able to act. There is a 2:1 chance that your partner does not hold the ♠Q so all of his HCP will be working well most of the time. I think it won't matter much whether you open or not. In 2nd seat you can assume that the 2 player left share 20 HCP. So on average your side will hold 22 HCP, so you should open, because you need to act. So a clear opening in 2nd and 4th seat, a clear pass in 3rd seat and a "does not matter much" in 1st seat.

Every time you psyche, your partners experience with you will grow and it will prepare him for future psyches. When your partner starts to consider you might have psyched, you have a concealed partnership agreement. This concealed partnership agreement puts your partner into a position where he might field your psyche.

Have you ever tried to sail a ship with captains only? It works better is you have a few sailors too.

I hold 9 HCP and if partners 2♠ bid is limited to 6-9(10) opps have more HCP than we have. We have a 9+ card fit in ♠ and it is very likely (66+%) that we have an additional fit in ♥. This makes it almost sure that opps have a double fit in the minors, they don't know about. If I bid ♥ I help them to count trumps and to discover their doublefit So I have 2 questions to answer: 1) Can they make 5m 2) Can we make 4♠ I think they can make 4m, we can make 3 or 4♠. So I think bidding 4♠ is the best choice. If it makes if was the right bid. Down 1 won't loose too much if 4m makes. If 5m makes, opps will find it harder to bid it. If opps bid 5m, they will find that the missing trumps break unfavorable. So my choice would be 4♠

drop

This is not the groups you play, it's the set you are picked from, your future opps are drawn from the other groups. If you are in the same set with France and Italy, you won't play them in the first round.

You are right, it has been growing before the incident as well. Never saw 59 guest with 31 members online before.

I think it is a clear case of 1) from these 2 possible scenarios: 1) A beginner does not know what to do and accidentally creates an UI. Oppy are allowed to uses that UI on their own risk. => score stands. The player should be informed politely to keep a constant tempo, because uncalled hesitations of experienced players could be understood as intentional misleading opps. 2) A player intentionally hesitates to keep his LHO from balancing. => This is cheating, and the player should be punished. (This is very hard to prove!)

Creationists took an Article from Homer Jacobson published 1955 in "American Scientist", as a scientific prove for their theory. He did not know that, but when he found out what they made of his publication. He reread it and asked the editor to correct it although 52 year have passed. Acting like a true scientist. Homer Jacobson's new statement

No, passing a new suit bid from an unlimited hand can hardly be a good thing. E.g. playing SAYC opener could hold up to 21 HCP in an unbalanced hand.