hotShot

Pass = 0-5 balanced Well treat this like a normal pass, but remeber it is better defined. 1D = 2-6 unbalanced 1H = 7-9 unbalanced 1S = 10-12unbalanced These bids are preemptive and mean mostly pass. So you should bid 1M as if they where opening bids. You should adjust your 2 suiter convention to show opening strength. This way you can bid a lot of 2 suiters without any problem. Dbl should show opening strength and 5+ of the suit opps bid. I guess your 2 level overcalls are solid. 1NT strong balanced 1C = 0-1 unbalanced or 6-37 balanced or 16+ unbalanced Dbl should show opening strength and 5+C. 1D=>1S natural, almost opening strength (should be solid if it was a preempt.). Your 2 suiter convention showing opening strength. 1NT strong balanced 1NT = 13-15 unbalanced This is a little tricky, because opener is "strong" and unbalanced. But this opening is forcing and you could pass and wait as opps will try to play at least 2 in openers longest suit. But since you will usually be unbalanced too, you can play DONT or Cappelletti if you like. The risk that one of the opps share your long suit ist moderate.

The stars look great, if they are not on one of the yellows. Maybe it would help, if the yellows where a little paler. The locks are fine.

This "taskbar blink" is a function that is generated by the operating system. It appears e.g. if a dialog box opens and the application windows is in the background.

The new look on the table list is good, except the Host,IMP,# of Kibs field. Since this field often starts with BBOID's it's hard to understand the field at all. It would be better to color code the host in the table view. And now that there is a lobby view visible when you are at a tourney page, it would be great, if the tourney host and partner would could be shown there too.

A Min and Max setting for the # of cols together with a maximimize/minimize togle Button next to the options button would be perfect.

I like the new interface. But i think setting the number of columns for the lobby is not so usefull. I think i would prefer a button that would make the lobby wide or small. If i don't want to look 1-3 columns are enough, if i want to search in the lobby i would like it almost full screen 8 columns.

Well if you support a Bridge Playing Site, and your editorial work is almost always mentioning a different site, your customers might get the impression, that the other site might be better. It is legally highly problematic to copy features of an existing software. If you have to start your defence with: "Users asked us to copy the feature from BBO!", it is a bad start.

If we want to investigate Free's 3NT lead hypothesis, we have to define precisely what we are looking for. 1) Obviously opps play 3NT. 2) The player who has the opening lead holds a 54xy distribution. 3) both suits are almost equal (honor strength) or the short suit is better His only bidding example is (his side silent): 1♠ - 2♣ 2NT - 3NT Does this mean, it is a restriction, that his side is silent and if so, what is his partnerships agreement for overcalls with 5-4 distributions. His example implies that opps don't need to open NT. In this example opener is also declarer, is this a restriction too? The hand given to this example is: [hv=s=sqxhkxxxxdkxxxcxx]133|100|[/hv] Both of his suits are unbid suits, is this a restriction too? After reading the article my impression is, additional restrictions are: 4) Defending side had been silent. 5) Both of leaders suits are unbid. Restriction 4 is the main problem when defining the search, because it depends on the overcall structure. So it would be best to select deals from bridgebrowser that follows this restrictions. 1) Opener is declarer 2) The final contract is 3NT. 3) Defendig side has been silent.* 4) 2nd seat has 5-4 distribution with unbid suits. 5) Honor quality of the 4 card suit is better or about equal to the 5 card suit. *Since overcall structures can be very complex this can mean a lot of different restrictions. I think it is possible to simplify by looking at opening bids 1♠ and 1NT to eliminate noise of lunatic 1-level overcalls. But to be accurate one would have to investigate all 1(something)- ...... - 3NT sequences seperately. Since we need bidding information to select the deals, a simple double dummy solver won't help us much. But is bridgebrowser capable to apply these restrictions? If so, we can look at the result set and compare the success, depending on the lead suit, if there are enough samples for both 4 and 5 card leads, we might see a significant result.

Right! If you are talking about unforced errors. If you want to analyse your own individual skill level, you should look at the best defence possible. If opps play worse than that, good for your result, but opps gifts are not part of your skills. Mistakes and errors are the only things that matter in duplicate bridge. You win because of the imperfection of your opps bidding, play and defence. You loose because of your sides mistakes and idiotic actions. If no side makes mistakes both sides (should) get the average score. Expert+ players have a very low rate of unforced errors and can keep their "forced error level" low too. This is why they reach the top spots. The only way to improve is reducing the number of errors you make. As bridge is a complex team effort it's sometimes hard to pinpoint who has to take the blame. Partners bidding, signals or play may lead us the wrong way. Of cause if you blame your partner for every bad score and take credit for every good score, there is nothing left for you to improve.

If you want to rate your declarer play, you eliminate all contracts where you are not declarer. If you want to evaluate your leads, you focus on the deals you had to lead to. Now what if your lead was succesful or unsuccesfull, because you followed partners dead directing bid? Your partner bid/lead out of turn, so you are "forced" to lead or not to lead the suit shown. Should this board have impact of your lead quality statistics? Your partner preempted 5m and all pass. In what way does this deal reflect your bridge skills? If you want to rate your own performance, it is valid to erase all scores that are beyond your control. But you should be very carefull only to erase results that are really -beyond any doubt- unrelated to your performance. Otherwise your rating gets worthless.

There are 2 groups: Those who favor strength over shape and those who favor shape over strength. Strength over shape: You need to remember all the time that with a weak hand the second suit of your partner can be longer. You will often have to guess partners shape. (You need to alert both bids and inform opps: "There may be a longer minor!") Shape over strength: You need to remember that reverse bidding sometimes means minimum with a lot distributional strength, as in 6+ - 5+ distributions. (You need to alert the second bid announcing: "Reverses may be weaker with distributional hands!") Both ways are valid and have their up's and down's. As long a your partnership agreement is clear about what group you are in. If your 5 card suit is ♠ and your 6 card suit is a minor, opening the minor is usually better, because you have more bidding space left to show your distribution and strength. If your 5 card suit is ♥ and your 6 card suit is ♦, showing your shape might get you to high, opening ♥ will prevent that, but your partner will never know about your 6 ♦.

This is a very complex problem. 1) What deals to look at? Those that where opened 1NTor any deal that ended in 3[NT]. 2) How often do you hit partners double? Obviously 8 cards given to 3 players averages to 2.66... so partner should have 3 cards about 2 of 3 times. So going for the 4 card suit is an antipercentage play for the 5 card suit. It is logical that the quality of the 5 card suit is very important. A weak suit hitting partners double will cost a lot, while with a strong suit partners double does not matter. 3) Of cause the combined quality of the 4 card suit is important. Playing a "weaker" 4 card suit, is in fact betting on partners unknown hand. 4) When developing a suit, the main question is: Do i have enough entries to win my tricks once the suit is developed. Obviously if the answer is no, developing the suit is a waste of tempo. So if you don't have a good 5 card suit and have problems with entries, hitting partners double in your 5 card suit will be expensive. Leading your 4 card suit might be better. With a strong suit and enough side entries, i don't think playing the 4 card suit will pay off.

You observation is right. At MP's it any difference between result counts, so if all others have 120 for 2NT and you got 110 for 3minor you get 0%. If others make an over trick and you don't, you MP result will be bad. At IMPs a difference of 10 does not count, and an missing overtrick wil cost you 1 IMP. (Less than one if others miss the overtrick too.) On the other side it does not matter weather you get an overtrick all others don't get or make a grand. You get one MP more than the second best result. At IMP's you can gain a lot of IMP's if you get a lot more points than others. So if you miss overtricks but usually reach games and slams, you will be better at IMP's than at MP's.

If you try to get better, it is nice to have some means of measurement to evaluate your performance. If you meet someone and you want to compare your skills, a measure would be handy. If your sports is marathon, you can use the time as a measure. So there is a need to have some mesurement of bridge skill. But what could be a measure in bridge? Masterpoints won't do, because they include the size of you bridge club and the number of events you played in. Someone who made 1MP's in his first tourney may be much better than someone who collected 20MP's in 40 years. MP-percentages won't do, because the strength of the field is an important factor. Even in an all expert field some player have to have less than 50%. So it is hard to think of a ranking system that works. When people log in at BBO they do that for different reasons. Some just want to play a few boards in a relaxed atmosphere, others are looking for a tough fight. Depending on your own level, novices, beginners or intermediates are no competition especially if you play with a regular partner against some first time partnership. If you partner plays a contract where you think xx tricks are fool prove and he/she makes less than that, you might be a little upset. If you are no match for your opps, they might find it booring to play with you. This is where the trouble starts, if you host a tourney for expert+ players, every player who would like to play, needs to set his level to expert. ......

Each distribution has a different "best card" that should be played. By number crunching the computer can find the move that is best for most of the possible distributions. So while a chess programms may be able to loose no game, a bridge program will loose 50% of all hand that depend on a finesse. A chess program can enter a game at any point and take over from there. A bridge program needs to know the bidding and the sequence in which the previous cards where played. A bridge player/program needs to draw conclusions from the sequence the cards where played. While number crunching is easy to computers, drawing conclusions is not that easy. The advantages of bridge programs are: -almost no unforced errors -almost perfect in percentage play -reliable bidding style Problematic areas: -antipercentage play -drawing conclusions from bidding and play

If you play chess all there is to know about the game is visible on the board. If you play bridge, you know what cards are still out, but you don't know how they are distributed. This is why a bridge programm will always be left with some uncertainty. So the best playing level a bridge programm can reach is that of the best statistical chance. But i think the biggest improvements can be made in the biddding section.

Well who has the experience to know what is odd if a plane hits a building? Unexplained phenomena turn to explained phenomena, after some considerations. Eyewitness reports usually differ or even contradict each other, even with "simple" traffic accidents. I have seen nothing yet that would be unexplanable considering what happend. What I have seen in this thread is ignorace against simple physics and chemistry.

Polish experts and even beginner would open that hand, because "polish club" has an opening bid for hands like that. The same goes for a lot of other strong club systems. I guess every expert pair will have an agreement how to deal with such hands. So if your question is: "Is this hand worth opening?" The answer is, a lot of bidding systems consider this an opening and have opening bids for this type of hand. But your question should be, what is my partnership agreement on such hands? This is beween you and your partner and it is more a matter of style and agreement, than a matter of right or wrong. Having agreed on plain SAYC/BBO Basic or 2/1 / BBO Advanced the systemic bid is pass. Your hand is about a king worth short of the minimum HCP strength your partner expects from you. This means that your partner should (and will) bid to a level one trick to high. So what would you do, if he bids a game force? Quit and miss game or slam? You forced you partner to misjudge your combined hands and you can't judge your combinded strength, if you partners answer is unlimited. If you and your partner agreed to open weak 2 suiters on the 1 level, he should be prepared to find a hand like that and 1♠ seems an option, having no better agreement for this type of hands.

The size of you plane has no influence on navigation. Beside that remember all the electronic navigation tools there are inside a plane. It might be enough to enter the position of your target into the autopilot. Who said that they have no experience flying such a big plane? Where do you think John Travolta got the licence to fly his Boing? I guess there are flight schools that prepare you, including practical experience. You just need lots of money. How long do you think this was planned? This needed years of preparation. Long enough to train a few pilots.

Well the subject seems to be religion, but in fact it is not. Guess we all know from history classes that emperors and kings claimed to be a god or that their claim of reign was some gods will. Religious leadership lead to political and economic power. Our culture evolved to seperation of religious and political leadership and to enable everyone to participate in the political process. Making religious leaders give up their political power is a process that was not easy in our culture and it took a few hundred years. And we had Jesus saying something that could be interpreted as separation of religion and state. The concept of separating state and religion is not compatible with the islam, so it might be harder for them to evolve in that direction. Additionaly economic extrems between those who got rich selling oil and those who have nothing, lead to high social tensions. Leaders everywhere and at any time used some external enemy to make the people forget internal problems. The pope is guilty of being an easy target to direct the hatred to, that would have caused social riots otherwise.

I don't think it is a good idea. 1) Your cards say that opps have a ♠-fit and can allways overbid on the same level. 2) It is still possible that your side has 20 HCP but, you know that 3 suits break unfavorable for opps and it is possible that your partner hold 4♠ so they may well break unfavorable for opps too. 3) If you bid now opps will place more HCP to your hand. So they will play any finesse they can through your hand, do you really want that? 4) If your partner has a maximum pass, opps won't have game and might overbid their partscore. Why do you want to warn them? 5) If your partner is maximum he can reopen.

The pope was refering to a paper from Prof. Khoury, quoting a document written by emperor Manuel II. Palaeologos presumingly 1391 about a dialog the emperor had with an unknown Persian scholar. In this dialog the emperor is quoting a sura, that is following Prof. Khoury from a time were Mohammend had no power at all. Maybe a poor choice of quote, but usually quoting a paper from a well known scientist, you expect the facts to be right. Yesterday there was an interview with a young muslim, who said he would be willing to kill the pope if he came to his hometown, because the pope dishonored all muslims. Asked what the pope said that offended him so much, he said he does not know what the pope said, his friends told him that the pope dishonored all muslims. So he was asked what his friend told him what the pope said that was so dishonorable and he answered they don't know what the pope said either.

Opener showed 12+ HCP, i hold 15 HCP, LHO should have 10+ HCP leaving a maximum of 3 HCP for partner. What does partners 2♠ promise? Of cause he should have 3♠, so the Q might drop, if it's not with him. The only usefull cards he could hold are: ♣K, ♥A, ♦A and ♠Q (not too helpfull though) and for game we need him to hold 2 of them. This is very unlikely, but we have a 9 card fit which means that opps will have a 8+ card fit too. So we need to play 3♠, not going for game or even inviting to game.

Well he started saying that the following quote is from a paper that is biased against the Islam. Within this quote, a sura is partially quoted that says: "there should be no force in matters of religon". As an excurs he mentions that the quoted emporor knew about the regulations of "conversion by sword" and "holy wars" the koran has given. So carefull reading reveals that he agrees that the concept of converting peoples religious belief by force is wrong. One of the big problems with his speach is, that he is often quoting someone who is quoting someone else (and sometimes even quoting someone third). But than he was talking to a bunch of theologie professors at the university where he used to lecture. I guess he learned that now he's pope, he must be much more clear about what he says in public.

Well it would be nice to have a european flag on BBO and i think the if flags for e.g. "The lunar dogsitter club" were added, this would help BBO to make clear that the flags don't represent indipendent contries. On the other hand, this could lead to unlimited number of flags .... More usefull than the flags would be a list of languages the player is able to communicate in.