hotShot

One key to beating a better team is using the "wishfull thinking defensive method". A strong team as you describe it, is used to bid slams and games that have a success rate of 45-50%. So don't look for the best defence, imagine a holding consitent with your cards and opps bidding that will make opps go down. Then play as if this was the actual holding until you know better. That way will often give away a trick but it will create a big swing in favor of your side if it works. If you think you need more than that: We all know that declarer play is a little easier than defence. If your side is good in declarer play, try to play more often. One way to do that, is using a weak NT (12-14) and 5-card weak two's (1st seat, 7-11 HCP, second suit possible) in alls suits. This is constructive bidding and the risk is not to high. You force opps to start their bidding at the 2 level or even above it. Bidding will often be: 2 (something) - all pass In any sport it ethical to select a stategie against opps weakest spot. So if you know that a team has a weaker player, you can try to use that. But this is usually dangerous, because opss will expect that and you are temped to try that even if it's not neccessary or even unhelpfull. E.g. you need to exit and you have the choice, exit to the weaker player, he might make an error more often.

If i multiply your 1.5/1/0.5 System with 4 i get: 6/4/2( /1) which is a base of many existing hand evaluation systems.

Well this was a great performance, by the polish organasation, the operators, the commentators. Let's not forget to congratulate and thank Roland for his work. He seems omnipresent at the vugraph tables and i guess there must have been walddk .... walddk9 arround or even walddk10 because of the other vugraph tables. The result service was amazing, sometimes you could even see the new results while the board was still played on BBO.

I have just learned that following the new definition it's not sure that we live on a "planet". This is because planets need to have a clean solar orbit.( It's clean because planets have absorbed all objects in their path. Just a few weeks ago the earth passed a big amount of objects leading to spectacular fallings stars. But there are millions of objects left in this small asteroid belt, so earth does not have cleaned it's solar orbit (yet). So by the new definition of planet, earth is no planet. So prepare yourself, one morning you might wake up and the planet you live on, will be gone.

After seriously considering to pass, if decided to go for 3♦ mainly because we are non vul.

Just the same old story, some people tried to make a deal with astronomic profit. Gready as they were they tried to get 3 planets more, and they ended loosing one. When will they learn that going for astronomic profit, is never sound business and that you will always end with a loss.

The address is a private page of someone at a univerity. I guess the author finished his study.

I was to late to see the 100 come up, but i can remember the crawling towards 1000. Guess we might see the 10000 someday now.

A Boing 767 fully loaded has a weigth of 180 tons, it is about 150 ft long and wide and about 50 ft high. If can be faster than 500 mph. To calculate impact energy you need to take the square of the speed and multiply it with the mass. The result is huge. I don't think the floors were designed to put 150 ton objects on it. So they were stressed to the limit. The mechanical damage to the structure must have been enourmous. The plane must have destroyed 3-4 floors, and when the stucture weakened the mass of the upper part of the building started moving downwards. Now asume that 20% of the buildings mass were above the impact, it means that a 100000 tons hammer droped about 50 ft hit the structure of the underlying floor. When you look at the collaps you will see, that whenever this hammers hits, the floors that are hit collapse. This goes sort of top down. Feb. 1993 they blew 700kg of TNT in garage, and that didn't damage the building seriously. To damage a building like that you need much more, or you have to drill holes and put it inside. And this won't go unnoticed. And notice the other WTC buildings that did not collapse, were damaged so much, that they had to take them down. Seems to me that people have a problem of understanding what enourmous powers elementary natural forces like fire, strom, eathquakes etc. can have.

Engineers said that the Titanic would not sink, but they did not expect anyone using an iceberg as a can opener. I don't think engineers thought about airplanes crushing into the building, and they didn't design the fire distinguisher to hande 50 tons of burning fuel. I also bet nobody designed the static of the sorounding buildings to withstand the effect the towers impact to the ground might cause. I doubt that even experts really know what happend, because they don't have the neccessary scientific data. Any studies made of planes hitting houses, had in mind that the pilot would try to avoid it. Nobody seriuosly studied what 50 tons of burning fuel would do to a skyscraper, because nobody expected that someone would put it inside. And nobody was thinking about the shockwaves caused by a collapsing 500.000 ton building. So even experts are sort of guessing here. And allthough a fire is not smart, it is acting multidisciplinary. So expertise in kinetics, static, chemistry and engenieering is needed gain a little understanding of what happend.

Fire have caused buildings (burning long enough) to collapse for ages and will cause their collapse in future. And don't forget that a plane crashed into the building with about 500mph and will have ripped more than half of the static structure away. Look how deep the pentagon was penetrated by the third plane. Standing next to the street you can feel a truck 40t just rolling past you. The WTC is supposted to have a weigth some 500000 t (each tower), hammering to the ground. If you insist on a conspiracy, have fun with it.

Have you ever seen a blacksmith working with iron? It's not liquid, it's solid but can be formed. Steel and even concret change when they get really hot. Both loose their strength. Even normal furniture will cause temperatures of 1000°C when burning. The only reason houses don't collapse regularly is that the fires are usually not burning long enough to get the heat into the structure. Burning jet fuel will reach similar temperatures, and burning long enough will weaken a buildings structure. Steel looses its strength at about 800°C. Now think about the enourmous weight such a building has, when the steel starts to weaken the building will collapse. A collapse of that size will cause a lokal earthquake, surely strong enough to damage buildings. Even bright people can talk nonsence, especially if asked the wrong questions.

Terrorists try to have a low profile prior to their act. This means no false parking, no speeding and nothing else that could catch attention. So from the moment they think being single might get attention, they will hide themselfs behind a marrige certificate. And those who are crasy enough to blow themselfs up, will find children to blow up with them, if they think that will make them successfull. So like lots of other actions that were taken up to now, it won't help, but it is giving away something important from our culture. Discriminating young, single arabic looking people, has at least a rassistic touch.

Responder has to take the blame for not reaching game. Opener overbid his hand (so it's his fault when the contract goes down) and responder has shown a minimum of 6HCP up to now. If one should bid game with responders hand is a different question .......

East raised 1♥ to 2♥ so he should hold 3♥'s (we would not want him to block the suit!) and a few HCP. That leaves 4 cards to opps. South bid 3NT, so south should have a ♥ stopper and that's not the J. East sits in front of the strong hand and is weak, how often can you expect him to play the ♥ finesse. So we want partner to get rid of JT so the suit is not blocked, and we want declarer to use his stopper to make ♥ a source of tricks while we have an entry left. At last we want to minimise the chance of opps taking 2 tricks with KJ. Playing A followed by x, only loses to KJx in declarers hand.

Meaning it wasn't online bridge. I don't see anyone who called the comment "out of line". Maybe i'm missing something, but most posts implied that although the comment did no damage opps, it would be better not to comment your own actions, during bidding and play.

At the table you should never comment your own auction. It could be taken as lead directing or giving other kinds of information to your partner. It could also be taken as intentionally misleading your opponent. Bridge is a game of mind and there is nothing wrong with thinking, but it could create UI for your partner. Being the third to pass you oviously won't influence your partners bidding if you pass and if you bid something it is allowed information for him. Weak hands may -of cause- ask about the bidding. But you should keep in mind, that there might be a timing issue. Asking about a bid immediately after an alert should be no problem, but detailed inquiries create to much UI, so they should not be done without a chance to make a bid. Without the intention to make a bid, you should wait until your partner made his covered lead. This way the UI won't influece the game. Note that if you ask opps about their bidding, don't imply meaning. Ask: How strong can he be? (Don't ask: Could it be invitational?) Because what you ask about can create UI for your partner. You stated that your hand might be worth a bid, since your partner could still be strong. So without you comment, there would have been no problem at all.

This one is a little tricky, first the simple things. 1) What was the agreement? We don't know so, so we can't find out if it was a missbid or a missinformation. If EW can prove that 3♥ was agreed to be weak, than we issue a psyche warning and the result stands (perhaps procedural penalty for not knowing the system). Otherwise we have to assume MI. 2) Would a correct information have changed north bidding? We have to ask north, what he would have done. (System notes anyone?) If north has a point in bidding differently (e.g. pass or bid 4♠ ) the TD needs to act (adjusted score depending on north new action). If north bids 3♠ anyway, we have to move on. 3) Would south bid 4♠ without the MI? Again we have to check. If south would not bid 4♠, we might have to adjust the score. Possible scores are 4♥ (UI?) and 3♠. 4) West has the UI that east thinks he's weak with lots of hearts. East would pass even with invitatonal/openning strength over a weak 3♥, so he might have a little more for his pass. The fact that N,S are bidding and east's passing is AI to west. So if his hand is as strong as suggested by the bidding, there was probably no use of UI. But rebidding must be suggested strongly by west's hand to assume no UI used. 5) I don't think south would dbl without the MI, but i need to look at the hands to decide that. If dbl of a rebidding weak hand is suggested by south cards i would adjust score to 5♥ undoubled. If south hand does not strongly suggest to dbl, i might rule double shot score stands.

No doubt that is you put a lot of conventions in the system that can be swtiched on and off, you can try to optimize it to a "best set of conventions". No doubt if you set a bidding system you can optimize, hand evaluation or point ranges. But the creation of a new convention seems very hard, though not impossible. You'd need to allow modification of existing rules and definition of new rules that are used by the bidding engine. The genes in the rules would have to be suitlength, strength etc.. You have to solve the problem of overlapping or even contradicting rules. To have a chance to get rules that contain answers to newly created bids, you would need a lot of randomness, a long survival rate and a big population. This way simple conventions like transfers (perhaps even simple relays) could evolve. Limiting it to e.g. 1NT opennings, seems a good way to start. This could really be interesting, but you would need a LOT of computing power.

What you describe is a competition between implemented bidding systems. My impression was that the question was about developing a new bidding system using genetic algorithms. This would require a fitness function that allows to evaluate each bid. Your target is to hit the best playable contract, the fitness function has parameter like HCP, distribution and the submitted information about partners hand. How will you evaluate a sequence like: 1♣ - 1♥ What is the best contract and on what level should it be played? Without knowing strength and full distribution of partners hand, it seems hard to evaluate. So this evaluation function, will induce a set of rules, that are optimised by the process. Conventions like Jacoby 2NT, Bergen Raises, Blackwood or Stayman could only evolve in this process by mutation, and they must be kept alive long enought to reach the right contract. But how do you change the fitness function so that these sequences are better than plain natural bidding? To the original question: If you define a bidding system, you should be able to optimise HCP-ranges for bids and evaluation of distributional strength. You might end up with a system that gives (just guessing): A = 5.8 K = 3.9 Q = 1.6 J = 0.3 T = 0.1 void = 2.8 ... Would you find that usefull? A new bidding system will not come up this way. Double-dummy solvers are perfect (but slow), there is nothing to optimise. Single-dummy agents, are guessing hands and use double-dummy solvers to find the right move for these. The card that is best in most of the guessed distribution is played. I don't think using genetic algorithms can do better here.

The number of deal needed to make a good descision depends on the amount of information available to the GIBs. e.g. bidding is 1NT - all pass. So the amount of possible distributions at the first trick is very big. The chance that the sample deals GIB generates differ much form the actual distribution is much greater than those after a more detailed bidding sequence. So the opening lead and the first few tricks of a GIB declarer/defender can be very bad. With each trick played the possible amount of distribution shriks rapidly, while the number of samples that can be processed (in the given time) increases.

Well the US educational system may not be so good, but in the end this means that banks and companies judge the people by examaning their abilities. You can do almost any job for a living, if you're not good enough you won't make it long. In western europe there is a lot of education, guilds go back to the middle ages. So people are fixed to the job they once learned and are judged by certificates they can present and not by the abilities they have. Since banks base their judgement on certificates, you won't get money unless you can prove you are a successfull businessman. In this tradition giving venture capital is a sin. Now say you have the money and you have a good idea for a business, bureaucracy comes in. You will have to bring lots certificates, first of all one that allows you to be in your selected business. As if national laws and regulation are not enough there are EU regulations to follow. Do the netherlands e.g. have adapted the european cableway regulations yet? I know there is no mountain, but the cableway regulation must also be used for "wired surfing" at lakes...... This way new business ideas are very hard to establish.

You showed 3+♦ and 4♥, partner showed a forcing hand, wanting to know more. He did not show any fit, but he must have a plan. 5♣ can be 2 things: 1) partner more information about your hand please (you showed little up to now) 2) a cue bid (could be setting ♥ as trump) We have 3 choices: 6♣ => should show partner shortness in ♣, 4♥, not 4♠ therefore a lot of ♦ 5♦ => long ♦, 4♥, minimum strength 4♠ => ♦,♥ and ♠, distribution between 4432 and 3460, if ♥ is not set as trump some pairs will require a♥ control for that. I'll bid 6♣, partner must have a pefect fit for my hand, and he should pik the slam.

11-15 pts 6cs or 5cs and 4cd major is a little ambigous, but can hardly be meant as 11-15 pts 5-6cs and 4cd major Online player don't have a chance to know if an explanation was fully understood. Possibly both no native speaker, there should be a little tolerance to this kind of missunderstandings. 1. Not really 2. The score seems to be damage 3. No 4. Tell opener to use "() or ()" in the explanation next time.

South pass after 2♣ clearly shows that south believed that his explanation was right. This pass is AI to north, so we don't need to discuss UI abuse here. If you want the TD to consider your system notes, you have to give them to him prior to playing the first board. (Otherwise you might have different sets of system descriptions to use.) As TD i would only accept the CC that was put on the table, if you have to get a CC out of your pocket, i won't accept it as evidence. Since the CC is not detailed enough, i may have to consider MI (missinformation) here. If north has 4-7 HCP and south passes, the missing 6-10 HCP must be with east. This makes the 2♦ bid a lot more attractive. So the 2♦ bid is clearly a consequence of the MI, so there is damage. The score should be corrected to 2♣+4 both sides.