hotShot

East has shown ♦ and a major. If this major is not specified, bidding 2♠ should show support for both majors and from the context it's obvious that west is weak. So it's some sort of "pass or correct" used in an preemptive way. Since partner promised a 5 card major showing 3 card support is not a psyche, unless there is an agreement that 2♠ is strong. But after north opening and south dbl showing strength, NS can hardly claim any damage.

The real problem here is west who is hiding a 7 card major and his 4 card side suit. But you want to discuss your bidding: Given your partners light t/o doubles I agree with 1NT, but I don't like 3NT over 2♠, because 2♠ is asking for more information about your hand. 3NT should show solid stopper in all suits, leading to 7♥ tricks and a ♠ trick. Together with a stopper in each minor 3NT should be a playable spot.

Lets assume for a moment we could open our hand with the the best spot for our side to play, what advantage would we have? - LHOs first lead will more often be a gift for us, because he does not have enough information about the other hands. - opps will have problems to find their best spot, because they might not have enough bidding space left or they might not have the strength or distribution needed, to bid over our bid. If opps open, they will reach their best spot to play, if they are allowed an undisturbed bidding. Disturbing opps bidding to limit communication and exchange information with your own partner, makes their life harder and will pay off on the long run. So weak 2's and strong 1's have an advantage.

I thought it the Ninja-Symbol.

By using a modified approach I can get the result of a "simulation" in somewhere between 5-60 seconds. So its easy for me, to optimize the conditions to get the hands I want.

I'm interested to see how far out (in context) even a simulation of 1 million hands is: The real answer is 21.5512% and 1.6996% Well a sample of 1 000 000 hands of 635 013 559 600 means that 1 out of 635 013 deals is picked. This is like making a poll in Great Britain asking about 95 of it's about 60 610 000 inhabitants. One would ask about 1000 people to make a quick poll. Actually the results are quite good. Both values have an error of less than +/-0.02 and I doubt this makes a difference at the table. For big numbers (more than 10%) 100 000 deals are good enough, but for numbers less than 10% you need more, if you want to use numbers less than 1% a sample size of of 10^7 or more should be used. Simulation gets more interesting when the calculation gets much harder than this. e.g. How often do I have a Cappeletti 2♣ overcall in direct seat over a strong NT.

Based on a simulation of 1 million hands: 21,57% have 4432 shape and 1,68% have 4432 shape and exactly12 HCP probability HCP 0.0922 0 0.1820 1 0.3170 2 0.5518 3 0.8770 4 1.1157 5 1.4093 6 1.7255 7 1.8996 8 1.9728 9 1.9969 10 1.9010 11 1.6842 12 1.4693 13 1.2216 14 0.9593 15 0.7153 16 0.5224 17 0.3581 18 0.2390 19 0.1538 20 0.0902 21 0.0537 22 0.0310 23 0.0183 24 0.0083 25 0.0030 26 0.0013 27 0.0006 28 0.0005 29 0.0002 30

No! I bid 3♠. Many player pass 1- or 2- suited hand close to opening strength in first seat. We have 9 ♠ and it's quite obvious that opps have at least 8♥ (because partner won't have a 4card ♥ suit). So opps have a clear 3♥ contract and a good chance to make 4♥, if partner is at the minimum end of the possible strength. If partner has values outside of ♠, than 4♥ is probably down. Since 4♠ won't make it does not seem to be a good defense. So over 4♥ I pass.

Helene the problems I have with your proposal is not what computers do with the data they have, but what people do with the data they get or can access. Having nothing to hide is not the same as a live broadcast from your bedroom. You would be much more transparent, that the state. And just imagine that someone who knows your CPR, can almost do anything with it, that you can.

GIB makes a little less than one playing mistake in 3 boards, this is about that what human Experts/ World Class player can do. But there is a difference in the kind of errors they make. Human player use some sort of reasoning, while GIB uses statistics. So while expert errors still look reasonable, GIB errors seem "mindless". In this case there is a big chance that the 2♥ bidder is void in ♦ and since we know he is weak and did not have ♥KQJ there is a big chance he does not have ♦J. Obviously GIB estimated the chance that the ♦ 4-0 distributed higher than the chance that the 2♥ bidder has the ♦J.

4♠ showing a minimum hand with long ♠. Any bid on 3 level should be stronger.

No average citizen needs a gun/handguns. The only people you should be allowed to have firearms are: 1) Police 2) Park ranger 3) Members of private security companies 4) Official Military forces inside their training areas. 5) If someone can proof that he needs a gun, he should be allowed ask for an exception, which can be granted by something like a court. (e.g. living isolated in a polar bear region) Weapons used for sport or hunting have to be designed to minimal firepower to make sure they usually won't kill a being of human size. A weapons owner may not have a criminal record, he and his weapon must be registered together with a DNS-Sample, fingerprints and a sample shot. This way both weapon and owner can be identified in case of a crime.

Just look how many Presidents got shot..... The longer it takes you to get a gun, the bigger the chance that you get your mind right again.

The number of homicides in Germany dropped from 662(1146 including tries) in 1994 to 413 (794 including tries) in 2005. Taking into account hat germany has only 1/3.75 of the people the USA have, this would be 1500 homicides for a country as big as the US. In less than 25% of these guns were involved (this means that there was a gun, even if it was not used for the killing). If i take the data from 2005, 120 homicides / 80.000.000 people with guns involved and adapt that number to the US population, I get an estimated 450 gun related homicides / 300.000.000 people. Compared to the 11.000 in the US this is less than 4.01%. But you have less mass murders than continents where paramilitary groups depredate the area. I think these numbers support weapons control much more, than the right to have guns.

The best TD is someone who is capable to follow and enforce the laws of bridge. This means that you can count out everybody who bans psyching or applies other restrictions that are not covered by the laws of bridge. You only learn how capable he/she is, if you ever needed him/her to make a difficult decision at your table. A lot (if not most) of the free tourneys are hosted by friendly people who try to have fun or allow others to have fun playing some kind of tourney. They do not know much about the laws of bridge, but they are trying hard to make everybody as comfortable as possible. We should thank them for what they do and accept the fact, that they are hosts and not TD's. If you don't like what they offer, remember that you are not forced to participate and pick another tourney.

The weak jump to 2M after a 1m opening makes sense, if you think that you need to preempt opponents. To feel that need you should not be stronger than 0-5 HCP, because otherwise opps won't have a real chance to make any game. Of cause being non vul makes it a better idea, but even in red vs. red playing 2Mx -2 for 500 can be better than opps game (600 or 620) and they need to find a reason to dbl first. Your partner holds an 8 count with 2 defense tricks to your opening, so you should be able to make 4-5 tricks with this. Opps won't have game or even the majority of points so a preempt does not make sense.

The problem has been discussed several times here already (often under the topic "Suggestions for Software"). There are very strong arguments against a rating system, mainly because of the social impacts. To answer the need for social and more serious games, there are 3 Bridge Clubs now. As you can see, most people seem to prefer the old structure with only a "Main Bridge Club", so the other clubs are hardly populated.

Any Partnership should have good agreement how to handle the bidding after a 1NT opening. If you are playing weak NT the main advantage is that it comes up more often. It think it's about 2 times as frequent. The main advantages are: -it is more frequent and you are well prepared -opps loose the entire 1 level for bids -partner should pass with almost any reasonable holding, to give opps a thought reopening decision Defense methods against strong NT are usually destructive, because the opening side will usually have 24 HCP and need very little extras to make games in NT or a major. Against weak NT you should use constructive methods. If opps don't have these methods, they will often overbid or miss their game or partscore. The disadvantages are: -you loose the entire 1 level (harder to find and play fits on 1 and 2 level) -you loose the 1NT rebid (so many NT partscores and games will be played from the other side than the field) Against well prepared good opps, you don't have much of an advantage or disadvantage using weak NT, but against unprepared opps you can gain a lot. To defend against weak 1NT openings you should consider the Lionel konvention.

Tactics are an important part of Bridge. Taking the scoring method into account is something that you have to do, once you leave the novice/beginner level. At matchpoint scoring you will often get better results playing NT instead of a minor. So tactical considerations say that if you can't play a major suit contract, prefer NT to a minor contract. As a consequence you will have to start to treat minors and majors differently. This makes things more difficult, so some teachers simplify here for the first lectures. I used to teach Bridge to science students who were used to learn really complicated stuff, so I never did that myself. Another thing that teachers often do, is teaching very solid point ranges, to adapt for the lack of card play experience of the new players. In result oriented games, you will always consider opening NT, if you think that: - you might get a rebid problem - you will get about the same number of tricks than playing in a minor and the scoring method is MP - you might make 9 tricks in NT but not 11 tricks in the minor - you want to make it harder for opps to find their major fit (1NT has a preemptive effect)

You have loser: 2♣ 2♥ 2♦ and the chance to lose 1 more. To make 4H you need partner to cover at least 3 of them. He has 2-5 HCP and 4 ♥. So you need P to have some KQ or QQ(K well placed) in the minors 4 low ♥ and ♥ 2-2. I would estimate the chances are less than 20%. This is not good enough for MP's and not even good enough at IMP's.

pass In 2nd hand, a bid promises more than i have.

I don't think that the TD has any influence on that. It a tourney gets over a specific size, it is divided into sections. This makes sense for several reasons. Some of these are bridge related (e.g. you play a larger percentage of pairs in your section, so the in section result is more realistic) others are computer performance reasons. Lets assume that 100 tables are in the same section and the last table finishes, a lot of data that has to be send to 400 clients at the same time. This is impossible so the first table will have more time to play than the table who is seated last.

There is nothing wrong bidding 3♦ over 2♣ with a strong hand and a good suit. The bid is forcing to slam, so I don't see how you could stop without reaching it. OK partners hand does not fit his bid and I guess this is why he passed below slam.

Whenever you ask about an unalerted bid, you create an UI. Everybody else will think about the cards that made you ask. Lets assume: 1NT - pass - 2♥ - You ask ... pass 2♠ - 3♥ DIRECTOR! or 1NT - pass - 2♥ - You hold long spades, but you guess it's transfer and PASS pass - pass You just lost a good 2♠ contract and opps did everything right. No way you get your score back. The only way to solve that problem, is to enforce the proper alerts. This you should have protected yourself by asking is just stupid. Unless you ask every single bid you create an UI. So whenever opps forget to alert the non offending side is in a lose-lose situation. There is definitely something wrong with the laws there.

You need to open the movie window first by clicking on movie (in the lobby) and there is a load button to load a movie. I guess that movie is send. If you were at a table i guess the movie that was active was send.