jjbrr

He's quite obviously fabulouthly unaffected by the beauty that surrounds him, not that there's anything wrong with that. On the other hand, the girl in the middle is phenomenal. I'm sure there's a joke here about drilling cavities, but I'll let someone else handle that one.

thank you for starting this thread.

that's nice.

i'd also like to say that if the villain were a professional being paid to play with a client (ie someone who should definitely know better), i still wouldn't call the director. if i did call the director in a moment of poor judgment, i would ask to talk to him away from the table and tell him the facts as i saw them and request perhaps that he pull the villain aside after the game with some sort of ruling. we all know accusing someone of cheating at the bridge table is like saying "bomb" at an airport. it's just not worth it to me. honestly, the villain would never admit any wrongdoing in this hypothetical; he has too much to lose and frequently an ego too big to allow himself to be caught, or in the case he's a bad player he just doesn't know any better, which obviously doesn't excuse him, but doesn't mean we should necessarily crucify him anyway. that's why i'd relay the information to the director without the villain being able to butt in. it would be really, really terrible if the pro actually had something to think about in that spot that we didn't recognize, and while i agree it's likely he would be fishing for this exact outcome in this hypothetical, ie cheating, it's not worth potentially ruining his career over something so minor in the big scheme of things. take my opinions with a grain of salt though. i think club games should be fun and easygoing, which maybe is a minority opinion. for example, i've never enforced a penalty card at a club game; i just tell them to pick the card up and forget it happened. maybe i, myself, am also breaking the rules, by being "unfair" to the other pairs in the room or whatever, but like i said, its just not worth worrying about to me.

assuming this is just a club game, i'd smile and move on. if i have a good relationship with the director, after the game i'd pull him aside and say "a pair did this against me. they're not good players. in the future is this something you would like to address when it happens?" if he shrugs, let it go. it's going to be more trouble than it's worth. unfortunately there's a million ways for bad pairs to get you like this. really they just don't know any better, and assuming they're capable of getting better at bridge, they'll begin to realize things like that aren't ok. if they're not capable, then you're just wasting your time and making a bad experience for them. sorry.

nice thats nice

I'd leave it where it is.

bump

tough hand. i think 3♠ is a bad bid.

What's your definition of fast?

agree with everyone calling this silly

I read this post and thought of Patrice O'Neal and thought I'd share. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNqVC4cRxeQ Edit: RIP

Think of a convention card as like a menu of the conventions you play. There are different sections for the different "courses" (opening bids, leads, signals, competitive bidding, etc) and you check off the items that you and your partner have agreed to play so that the opponents will know what you're doing, even before you make a bid.

You are correct. If we erroneously pull three rounds of trumps, and they play ♥ every time we play a ♦ to try to establish it as a long suit, we will run out of entries to the diamonds before we're able to enjoy them. If the defense errs and plays a club instead of a heart at any point, and ♦ are 3-3, then we have just enough entries to set them up and we'll still have a trump to get over to them. Obviously it's better for declarer to ruff his losers in dummy before pulling trumps. It's a good hand to demonstrate the importance of counting your winners and losers before you set out declaring the hand. You can count 2 club winners, and no winners anywhere outside of trumps, so we know we need to take 8 tricks with our spade cards. If we pull three rounds, that leaves us with only 2♣, 3 rounds of ♠, and then 2 more ♠ winners in each hand = 9 tricks. If we ruff 3 losers first, we can take 2♣+3 ruffs in dummy+5 ♠ tricks in hand.

Not too much noise at all. Keep the discussion flowing! On 3-0 trumps, the hand is a bit trickier but still a big favorite to make. You must ruff 2♥ and a ♣ in dummy before pulling three rounds of trumps, or alternatively play to set up the ♦ suit in dummy. If ♦ are 3-3, you could even make the hand after erroneously pulling three rounds of trumps. Correct, ♠Q is still worth a whole trick which is nice, but it's not worth the two points we had evaluated it for. It's equal in value to the ♠2 on this hand, so useless wasn't the right word but perhaps "valueless" was. Many of us are suggesting that, indeed, the bidding would be unchanged if you modify the hand slightly, and you are correct that the former is a great contract, the latter hopeless. However, reference my previous post. On the example in which our 4S contract goes down, the opponents have a laydown 4♥ game. Even if they double our 4♠ bid and we go down, we still score better than we would if we allowed them to play their game.

I'm sure now that the novelty of the vote system has worn off, the minimum requirement could be removed, particularly if our goal is to drive traffic to the novice forum. Perhaps the mods could remove the requirement and not tell anyone so those who might abuse it are none the wiser for a while? :)

Also the discussion doesn't end with "Does 4S make?" You must also consider the score the opponents achieve if you don't bid 4S (ie do they make 4H?), the psychological effect jumping to 4S has on the opponents (you only have 4 points!), the score you might achieve if they bid to the 5 level and it's wrong for them, the equity you get from them doubling 4S and you making it, the chance that they can make something at the 5-level and decide to defend 4S, etc. You're right that on some hands, 4S is the losing action; however I think it's the winning bid on balance.

One more thing I will say that I think is important for new players. Don't worry too much about conventions yet; they'll just get in the way. Focus more on card play and make sure you have a strong foundation in declarer play, defense, and signalling. Part of being a good bidder is understanding how the play of the hand might go, and if you can't play the hands well, then it doesn't matter what set of conventions you play. Many players use conventions as a crutch, and overall it hurts them as a bridge player. Obviously it's important to understand conventions so that you know what the opponents are doing and such, but for now the primary focus should be on getting better at the play of the hand.

In a duplicate bridge event, each pair may play their own selection of methods/conventions and it is possible that no two pairs are playing the same set of conventions. Many conventions, though, are very common and generally standard. As Adam mentioned, following a 1NT opener, many people play "transfers", that is that a 2♦ bid shows ♥, per his example. Another common convention you might know is stayman. So when you sit down with a new partner on BBO, there are many bids that you can expect him to interpret correctly. It would be possible that the opponents are playing a convention you've never encountered before, and yes, you might require them to explain every bid they make. This can be a bit of a nuisance, but as you get more experienced in bridge it will become much less overwhelming. Further complicating things is that people in different regions or countries play conventions differently. What may be completely normal in your part of the world might be completely foreign in another, so it's never safe to assume your bid will be interpreted correctly. With a regular partner, though, you can go over your bidding system thoroughly and make sure you're always on the same page for each bid you make. This is obviously more enjoyable than trying to guess what a new partner is intending. So to summarize a bit, there is no requirement of everyone to play the same conventions, but in general many of the pairs in a given competition will play a similar approach to one another. Successful partnerships are the ones who spend time making sure that each member of the pair understands what the other's bids mean.

I'm just teasing, of course. Several of my friends had mizzou winning it all, and obviously many others had them getting to the final four.

.

hard to sympathize with anyone who picks missouri to win it all tbh. have you seen any of the 1 seeds play this year (excluding syracuse)?

this is a totally random, probably off topic post so dont take it in any context with the rest of the thread, but i know jlall went on a chess streak for a while and lobowolf is obv baller, and maybe others might find it interesting. i once was ok at chess, but i never studied it or put any work into it or anything. my story is a friend taught me chess in 5th grade during lunch break, a few weeks later i could consistently beat him, and throughout middle school i would qualify for the state tournament and finish like ~7th or so. i was never great or even good by any serious player's standards, but i appreciated the theory and understood what was necessary to get to the "next level" though i never will get there. this was all before i understood bridge, obv. anyway, i just recently saw this study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laLKG2hyuh4 and it really seemed awesome to me. many of you have probably seen it, but jfc, if you cant appreciate how awesome chess is after seeing this, i feel like there are a lot of things in life that you're missing.

honest question since I never learned SAYC very much: should partner bid 2C instead of 1S? anyway, i wouldn't bid 2D. the hearts are great, the diamonds are bad, the stiff spade ace is bad, and i have minimum values. lots of things in favor of 2H

Yes your conclusions are correct. I don't play puppet over 2NT for a lot of reasons, but do play 3C/1NT as puppet. In addition to the 33 and 43 major hands, you should include 42 major hands as well. Also 1NT 3C 3NT shouldn't exist.