hotShot

Pass The only valid reason to bid 6 at once is to keep opps silent. So this is a sacrifice.

Without other agreements i would guess that 2♠ shows extra values, while 1♠ shows a minimum opening here. So i would bid 1♠.

I disagree, the strong 1♣ opening is what makes this system work. If limits the range of all the other bids. The main problem in Franks Pattern based system is, that after a weak jump interference his partner has to guess opposite a 10-21 range. Holding 7 HCP he might miss game opposite partners 17+ hand, or he might enforce a hopeless 8 card fit, 3 level contract with just 17 combined HCP. If this range would be limited to e.g. 10-15 or 10-17, the 3rd seat decision is much easier. If the range is not limited, you need to be sure to have a 9 card fit if you are weak. Balanced => 48% 2-Suited => 29 % single suited => 19% 3 suited => 4% Upsides of Franks system: He can play 1NT with both strong and weak opening hands. Opening 1S or 1NT a lot (48%) keeps opps from 1 level interference. Downsides Openings with unbalanced hand (52%) may suffer from opps interference. 1♥ opening is to rare 9.75% (18+) + ~0.1% for 3 suited 17 Suggested improvement: Include 4441 to balanced and define 5440 as 2 suited. Now balanced is about 51% and 2 suited is 30% 1♣ 2-suited with 5 card minor (15%) 1♦ 2-suited with 5 card major (15%) 1♥ single suited 10+ (19%) 1♠ balanced 12-14 1NT balanced 15-17 1♥,1♠,1NT make about 70% so opps have little chance to act at 1 level. This would make the 3rd seat decision easier as partner can often guess the major or minor you hold after interference. By bidding the lower/upper minor/major as pass or correct, he can show min/max and support, and dbl can show strength without fit to the 5 card suit.

You open 1C for a two suited hand (10-21), your LHO bids 3♦ showing 5-10 HCP and 6+♦. What are the options you partner has, to show his hand. Since he can't support your unknown suits, how strong must he be to answer. Since he does not know your strength, how can he avoid a min-min situation and how can he avoid missing game if you are max?

About ..... none. :)

"I couldn't care less about them. " I could not agree more to that. If you look at suspicious boards, you find: - misunderstanding in pickup partnerships - stupid play ( Remember this ) Cheating cannot generate tricks that are not already there. If someone gets an overtrick because his opps are too stupid to take what is rightfully theirs, is that cheating? If someone is stupid enough to double a sound contract, the lucky declarer is cheating? If someone actually knows what to lead and how to read his partners signals, so that his side gets the tricks the defense should get, should one think of cheating? A declarer is able to make a difficult contract, should one think of cheating? Playing against cheaters is not different from playing against world class opps, you get the best possible opps, and you got to pay for each mistake you make. So if you don't like tough competition join BIL and start bunny bashing.

Suggestion: Create a kibbing table, where all player(that finished) or kibs can kib. Make it a copy of a real table, but don't show the player names. Start showing the last board of the previous round, and show the the first board of the last round when playing has been finished. The table copied can change every board. Or you can pick a star players table. This way everybody can kib and discuss with other kibs and there is no way to submit the information kibed to a player, while the board is played. But before investing much work to it, please realise, that the "kib" could just turn into a player and join the tourney. There is a good chance that he will sit on a different position than the player he is helping. So it's possible to message, partners hand or one of opps hands without a problem. If the "kib" is not interested in his own result he could just play very fast so that he can message the whole board, before his partner starts playing it. So i don't think banning kibs is going to help much against cheating,and even less to reduce the unfounded cheating accusations.

What would 3♥ show? 16+ HCP and a good ♥ suit and no other 4 card suit. This is not what the North hand holds, so 2♥ just happens to be the maximum for this bid. Without a fit you should not add distributional points for the single ♣. imagine South has ♣KJ instead of the ace, the HCP would be lost. This would be consistent with the bidding. The single ♥J of south is very important, but the chances to find this card with south is only 1/7. ♣ break 3-3 that is good, but a little more often they break 4-2. So 2♥ is in general better than 3♥ with north holding. In the actual hand you gave there are a few lucky extras. ♥J => 14%, ♣ 3-3 (24%) not 4-2 (35)% => 40%, ♣A instead of wasted values So in about 99% of the times you won't find these extras.

Let us assume that player started to play 1-1-2003 up to know, that is about 4 years. To reach 35000 he/she must have played 24 boards every single day since that date. It takes about 2.5 hours to do that.

I think 4♥ is the best bid for now, i may want to bid more over 4♠ if partner does not. The downside of an immediate 4NT is, that may partner will understand it as suit setting in ♣!

Heh..it's all relative. In a lot of forums your post count wouldn't even be that high, but forums like that are typically much more active. I am kind of sad to report that this forum isn't even the one I post on the most...or even the second most. lol. But can your read all the post in the more active forums?

How about "solo entertainer" :P

35000 wow Could you add how much time it took to reach that?

Hobgoblin by John Torrey Jun:p10 1993 google: "Hobgoblin site:bridgeworld.com"

There are people who think that a 4card (major) side suit should keep you from preempting. Listening to the 2♣ opening of LHO, creates a "wish i had bid my preempt" feeling followed by some irrational bidding. Did this move make them win? I doubt that very much. This is a "last board top or flop" action to compensate bad scores made before. I doubt that cheating is involved, i think it's inability to do better.

You won't find a law that says this. Well guess it was in the "minutes" than. The minutes of what? The Minutes of meetings of the WBF Laws Committee. I think this is what i said.

You won't find a law that says this. Well guess it was in the "minutes" than.

You can't get more tricks than GIB tells you, not even by cheating. Most of the odd scores would have been impossible without massive stupidity of some players. Most of the unusual scores are caused by bidding and playing mistakes. Pick-Up partnerships that take things for granted, lunatic doubles and truly horrible play. People are allowed to make slams even with 2 Aces missing, because opps are unable to find the killing lead. Player manage to go down in contracts where everybody else makes an overtrick. The possible effect of cheating on your score is barely noise compared to that.

People cheat at bridge 1) because they don't want to be last. 2) because they don't even know they cheat (look at social bridge, there are players that use any UI available, although they don't know how UI is defined) 3) because they feel like experts, but the results are not as good as they should be. They *know* everybody else is cheating, because otherwise they would not beat them. They try to restore equal chances by cheating too. 4) because they want to keep the playing level of their peer group. 5) because they can get away with it. 6) because the second is a looser. ....

1) Was there a MI? The cards differ from the information given, and if this was a regular partnership i would assume a partnership agreement here. I would think so because 4432 balanced hands with 4 card majors and strength above the 1NT opening cause problems. Playing an unusual NT range is enough for me to assume a "regular" partnership. 2) Was there damage? Well I guess North was smashed.... 3) Is the damage caused by the misinformation? East has 18 HCP while he should have only 15. The laws tolereate 1HCP deviation, so East has 2 HCP too much. But how strong is Wests "weak" would 9,8 or 7 be weak as well? Opposite a 15-17 NT weak would be below the strength needed for a Stayman bid. Usually 8HCP are expected. So If you lover the NT strength by 2 HCP the Stayman response would have to be 2HCP stronger, so bid under 10 HCP could be considered weak. The combined strength of EW is within the range North should expect and even if South would have a K more, he would still go down a lot. He now gets: 0♣, 1♦,1♥ and 2-3♠ that should be about down 4-5, having 3HCP more might change that to down 3-4. So the bad score is a consequence of North poor 3♠ bid, holding 6HCP (don't count the ♣) and 5332 shape. So you should not correct the score of NS. With EW there is a problem, if they are a regular partnership, extra power with 1NT openings in 4th seat seem to be (implicit) partnership understanding, so the 1NT bid should not be considered a psyche (yes, you can also psyche that you are weaker). f2f you could assign a split score or a procedural penalty.

I think from the motivation side, there are 2 kinds of political terrorists. One kind has a good social background and have the feeling they know how to change the world to be a better place. They start as political groups, but the don't get a majority behind them. They begin to think they are right and the majority is just ignorant. They develop the idea to take actions to shake people up. These actions get more violent each time, as this way of convincing people usually does not work. The other kind grows on dire poverty, a life of privation or oppression. If people don't have the means to live a self sustained life, no access to education they get angry and look for someone who is responsible for that. Desperate people take desperate actions. Now add to this mix, that there are people who got their power, because of birth rights or because they are religious leaders. They don't want democracy, separation of state and religion or even laws that would limit their arbitrariness. They don't want things to change much and they are glad that someone else can be blamed.

If lots of experts are in fact advanced or intermediates, you should realize that lots of the advanced are weak intermediates. I guess that south expected you to play Bergen raises or something like that to show an invitational ♥ support and that he/she expected 3♥ to be at least opening strength. Nothing one would expect without agreement. South has a strong hand, but 4NT is just plain stupid. If you don't use serious NT, I guess 4♣ would have been a cue bid now, giving you the chance to show wasted ♦ values.

Double can be shape oriented promising 4-4 in the majors or you can agree that it just shows opening strength. I usually suggest to play it just point showing, because of hands like that. This way my overcalls show 5card suits and an NT overcall stays well defined. Of cause if i have to agree to shape oriented doubles, than bidding 4card majors is a good idea, because pass is the worst description you can give, if you actually hold opening strength, because it puts the pressure on your partner to reopen. You need tools to show an off shape hand with opening strength.

I have taken people that never played bridge before (or at least very little) to BBO. 1) To use a teaching table, for teaching. 2) To play among them selfs (not to be troubled with wrong leads insufficient bids, bids out of turn ...) 3) To kibitz player and explain (at least try to explain) what they are doing. 4) To have Gib-Analysis available If the people have laptops available, you can come together f2f but play online. So there is no communication problem.

Mini-Bridge simplifies the bidding to almost nothing so that new player can concentrate on the playing technique. Now Wayne is suggesting to simplify the scoring for beginners so that everybody is non vul. at all boards. I think when people start bidding and play this would be ok. Before new player start to think about sacrifices, they should learn to make what they bid. But any simplified version of bridge you might use for teaching, you should get to the real think as fast as possible. I usually start teaching basic playing techniques and use of Mini-Bridge to allow my trainees a little practice in the beginning. As soon as they a capable of playing a deal and basic evaluation of their hand, we start bidding. When bidding starts to work, I introduce the scoring and it's consequences. Up to this point Waynes suggestion makes sense, since scoring is of no importance.