hotShot

Short tourneys and the need to produce big swing to reach a top spot in IMP tourneys, trains people to play more dbled and redbled contracts. Unless much more boards are used to calculate the crossIMPs in the MBC, you can get a -IMP score for playing the right contract.

There are unforced errors and mistakes made caused by beeing under pressure. If you like to win by opponents unforced errors only, good luck to you. You will get positive results if you are good enough, but i don't think it is a winning strategie against strong opps, because they don't make much of those. Overcalling 2♦ is a winning bid, because: 1) it helps partner with his reopening decisionin 4th seat. He can decide, if we are in a 20-20 hcp situation or if opener hold a 18-21 point hand and passing at low level makes the top. 2) It disturbs opponents bidding. Assume that N/S play an 2/1 style system, with a focing 1NT. 1♠ - 2♠ => good limit raise 1♠ - 1[NT] XX - 2♠ => weak limit raise By bidding west ripped N/S of an easy GF and south will no longer be able to know if 2♠ is a minimum or a maximum bid. Less information means higher chance to make a mistake. 3) 2♦ is not lead directing, because if NS play ♠ it's west who is on lead. If North bids NT, partner will smart enough not to finess ♦ for declarer. So lead directing is a pseude argument here. So there is nothing wrong with the 2♦ bid. EW forced South to make a decision, and with 3♠ he made the wrong one.

Um, no. Yes he does :lol: Tell me, what can he bid, if he holds a 6 card ♦? North won't have a suit to run to. Knowing that north is not going to pass means, knowing that ♦ is not the true suit of north. Well if you have an agreement about that dbl e.g. beeing lead directing, that dbl should have been alerted. So i think it is some kind of takeout/info dbl. You hold 18 HCP and partners dbl should show some hcps so it is impossible that north can hold 22-24 hcp. So this is *obviously* not possible. It would have been a good idea of west to ask for specification to that bid. Of cause it's possible west does not know multi und is a weak player, but we don't know.

The convention called "multi" shows: a weak 2 hand in a major with 6+ cards or a semi focing opening in a minor or a balanced strong NT hand, the HCP range varys a lot. seems to me opener tried to explain that, but did not do it properly. It is obvious that west knew what multi is! Otherwise he would have passed easts dbl transforming it to be penalty. If E/W claim damage, it will be interesting how they argue. West knows that EW hold 30+ HCP, and bids his 18HCP very "solid". North should be alerted to better explain his bids, but i don't think abuse is needed in this case.

The problem with swiss movements is, that pairs/teams that have already played against their direct competitors, would get weaker opponents in the next rounds. Assume you are first on the list hand have already played against the 2nd-4th in previous rounds. You would now get the pair/team that holds the 5th place as opponent. While the 2nd and 3rd will fight for a close result, you might be able to score big. This problem gets smaller, if the field is of equal strength (or at least the top 10 pairs) and if the field is big (smaller chance to play a top competitor early). The number of rounds should be log2( participants) or 2^#rounds = #participants. Note: The number of rounds should not be bigger than that! #Participants #Rounds 4 2 8 3 16 4 32 5 64 6 128 7 256 8 So if you have 50 pairs you should play 6 rounds, without replays. In a danish movement, you always play against your direct competitors, because replays are allowed. This way these competitors won't get easyer opponents, but a weaker pair might pass them, afterscoring big against an even weaker pair. In the worst case, e.g. at MP's 2 paist can always score 50% against each other, and will continue to replay over and over. In f2f bridge TD's like to combine these methods and play, without replays until the last 1 or 2 rounds, and allow replays during the rounds left. This makes sure you get diferent opponents at the beginning and play your direct competitors at he end.

dbl after an agreed fit, should be penalty, East holds ace of trump which is the savest trick, now west will have to produce 4 tricks to prove his bid right. 1) East should not run, so 4♦ is very bad. 2) dbl is lunatic, because you'll need lots of luck to get 3 tricks in ♥ and Q♠ and you still need partner to bring an additional trick.

Just to be sure i got that right: 1) West called the TD about his partners call 2) TD rules east's bid was a violation of the tourney rules 3) TD adjusts west/east's result from -800 to +620 Even a TD not knowing the laws of bridge should be able to guess that you should not adjust a board just because one player did not like what his partner made. To the case: 1) weak 2 bids should be alerted 2) east is weak with ♠'s so it is no psyche 3) south dbl seems to be penalty, no need to alert it 4) the score should only be adjusted, if N/S claim damage and in fact got damaged by the missing alert, since N/S did not complain, there should be no adjustment I hope that the TD just made a mistake and did not intend to do what he did.

Yes, if all boards of that round are finished!

A CC is one thing, a compleat system description is something else. I can look at a CC to see if "may contain 5-card Major" is checked, but i can't read a full system description while playing. Creating something like that makes only sense if you plan a long term partnership. With a pick-up partner you might have only agreed on 5-card Majors and aome NT range. But i agree, an electronic playing environment should supply means to define a full system description or a good CC. Opponets should be provided to look at some sort of partnership history of opponents, to see if a sequence like the one that just happend, had been played before.

If 4♣ would not have been alerted or correctly explained as fit, W would have the chance bid his ♦ because he can be quite sure that east will have support. Since 4♦ is -3 and EW is vul while NS is not this is not a good idea. After 5♣ and 6♣ the fit is obvious, so EW can hardly claim a damage for their play. A lot of player think that a missing alert or a incompleat/incorrect explanation will give them an adjustment. Unfortunatelly a lot of BBO-hosts give these adjustments, because they don't know better, or just to stop beeing bombarded with chat from this player. This player would have earned a place on my exclusion list.

The bid is obviously a psyche, hoping to find a fit in the majors. Since it is a goulash tourney pointranges will be of no importance, suitlength and fit will be more important. Psyching is most effective with goulash hands. If you disallowed psyches you should say so in your post. Knowing that adjusting the board is ok. FrancesHidden gave the procedure for that. To those who think banning psyches is not bridge, and who have posted that 100 times before, please remember that most of us know that by now.

Would be helpful, just to ask for a list of unfinished boards then.....

dbl for a start, we will see what partner has to say. Bidding your own suit then, should be very strong.

Many bidding systems have precise point ranges for raises. If your hand does not fit one of these you need to find a "waiting bid". Bidding a 3 card minor is as natural as a 1♣/1♦ opening and there is no need to alert this. So if 2♥ would show a 5 card suit, 3♣ is a perfectly normal bid. No need to alert if it does not contain any other agreement. Think about the "delayed game rise" which is invitational to slam, or all those times you need to find a bid over a forcing NT in a 2over1 system.

It would be great, if a list of unfinished boards would be available (selected by round). I try to keep track of the unfinished tables, but if called to a table, this is often not possible. Now a TD can only adjust a board to AVE+=- or sub a player. In a lot of cases none of these are covered by the bridge laws. Procedural penalties are coverd by them. So it would be nice to have them. Of cause they might be abused, but let's deal "abuse" with it, when it happens.

Having players from everywhere in the world online, it is possible to hit someone you is unfamiliar with english. So "ask partner" might have just suggested, that partner can understand english. Without any other agreement the site rules apply. They say, if nothing else is said, BBO Basic is on.

You saw player X overbid in round one, so when he is your partner in round 3, you bid "rock solid". Now player Y who was you opp in that round, knows he will have to bid more aggressiv, because he "knows" you bid way to careful. Would you like that? But much more imported, if you tell your opps that your partner often overbids, they might dbl and call TD if you make it, claiming that you missinformed them. You are of cause allowed to base your bids on anything you like, but keep opps out of it. One or 2 boards are by far not enough to have a "partnership understanding".

I hope that one day one can set languages in the profile. Since yiou can set a tourney filter "by language" i expect this will come.

Using a percentage limit might not work well. Consider cases like: -2 nv = 100 X-2 nv = 300 XX-1 nv = 400 Or: 2♠= and 2♠X=

There is a simple reason not to split this into more than one topic. A score of 7NTXX-13 on one side, does indeed influence heavily all results of the board. Not only will all pairs playing at the same side gain a lot of -IMPs thos on the other side will gain about the same as +IMPs. The tourney score is worthless after that. So the offenders does not only ruin his own score, he is destroying the scores of half the participants in a tourney. If a TD whants to save his tourney he needs to adjust the boad. But to what score should he adjust? Not knowing the players system, their ability etc. any decision made will be somekind of unjust. Best he can do ist assign ave= to both sides so that the others get a fair score. But the offenders would go unpunished until "abuse" hits them. So handling extreme scores while calcutating the board result could help a lot here. Introducing some sort of "cut" is of cause possible. One could calculate the crossIMPS for all others ignoring the cut results. Those players involved in this result, get their crossIMPS calculated including their results, after TD decided not to assign an artifical score.

1) Directors are only aware of such results if they are reported by a player. 2) Such an action, if it comes to the attention of someone, should be reported to abuse (at) ...com They'll know what to do. 3) I do like the idea that the software could give an alert on "strange" results, but i think it is very hard to define "strange result" to a computer. Since a lot of strange results might be simple misunderstandings. It such an alert could be implemented, it should perhaps better be directed to a yellow or to abuse, because they can react to such a violation of site rules in an appropriate way. e.g. ban a player from the site.

I'll open 1♠! Don't make it opps to easy to find their double fit in the minors. If they have stoppers in the Majors they might have 3-6NT.

It would be great (and has been already suggested) to make the names of TD and Partner clickable on the tourney page. This way you could contact the host and your future partner easyly.

2♠ even with this 2 suiter is a preempt. For all we know, he is trying to keep us out of game or slam. This is very different for a redoubled 1 level opening. Since opener will usually hold 5♠s and we hold 3, it is not sure that opps have a fit at all. With 3-3 in the minors we have no idea what openers second suit is. But we can expect, that there is a high risk, that any suit we might have, breaks unfavorable. We signaled our strength, and some sort of flat distribution to partner, so that he can make the best choice. He might hold 4-5♠ and nobody has a fit anywhere. There is also the chance that opener in fact preempted his partner and our side has nothing, and maybe there are only partscores around. But the one with most information about our sides strength and distribution is our partner. So his pass of the redbl, must have a well defined meaning. Itf it does not pass a lot of information, he puts you in a bad position just guessing from your own hand. What would i do, if XX is alerted as values? I'd still pass. If partner is weak, it is not a good idea to let opps play 2MXX with overtricks (although this is mps, and it maybe does not matter that much how high we loose). So he should have bid his longest suit as a takeout. He did not. Values does not mean fit, so still your partner might hold ♠ as his best suit. Perhaps it is poor judgement of partner, but to me, his bid indicates, the best we can do is play 2♠XX. So why on earth should i change his judgement, when he knows more about our combined hands than me. If his judgement is that poor, maybe this partnership has no future, but a system where opps can get away with weak preempt bid, without being punished is flawed.

Opps may not know what XX means, but your X asked partner to make a choice. He has chosen to pass. So if this partnership has a meaning, you should pass too.