shyams

There is an old chestnut that goes something like "No good deed goes unpunished". Well, I feel it is time to make smerriman aware of his "good deed". ( :unsure: :rolleyes: B-) ) This is what I'm referring to: Before the above, I had no qualms skipping those poorly formatted posts full of drivel cos reading them was such strain. Since then, all posts have "paragraphs" (I'm being charitable here) which make my eyes want to go through the posts hoping to garner something useful or fun. Alas, they still are full of drivel. So I blame smerriman :). Stephen, I'm pulling your leg -- please don't ban me :)

Let me address this point in isolation (with no implication on the suitability or appropriateness w.r.t. Laws). The claim function on BBO has a feature whereby you can cancel/renounce your claim without needing an opponent to reject it.

There could be various reasons that people "follow" other regular people (by regular, I mean not a Star, a renowned player or such). Allow me use a personal example to provide one. I used to often play with pickup partners on BBO tournaments. If I discover that my partner's play is good and I sense that he/she enjoyed playing with me, I add them to my follow list. It then becomes simple to message such a person the next time I want to play a tournament. Typically I would send a message like "Hi, hope you remember me. We played together (3) days ago. There's a (12)-board (MP) tourney starting in (10) minutes. Are you free to play again with me?" Many of these people I follow would have been complete strangers but, through repeated playing together, they become BBO friends. IMO, there is nothing creepy about "follow"ing someone -- I'd be surprised if any significant number of "follow"s are done by stalkers/creeps.

I found it interesting that Christian Pulisic -- a US soccer star playing in the Premier League -- pronounces his own surname as Puli(sick) whereas all British commentators and fans correctly pronounce it as Puli(sitch). Random thought for the day!

I find the tendency of opposing useful ideas when they are clearly good ideas very strange. It is particularly strange when I know that these characterisations are being made by extremely helpful people that do not work for BBO.

Hello and welcome to the forum. There are two separate ideas co-mingled in your post. 1. "You should be made aware that someone is following you" I think there are previous threads on the same topic on this forum. If I recall, the consensus was that people's choice to follow you or ignore you is a personal and private one. Consequently BBO did not feel the need to build this feature. You may disagree with their stance and you may want to pursue this further, but to the best of my knowledge they have no plans to change it. If you want to know whether one of your infrequent partners is following you, there is one way to test it. Choose to follow them (temporarily). If the text changes from "follow" to "friend" (it barely takes seconds to do so), you know that the other player is following you. You can then undo your "follow" action. 2. "If you have players on ignore they can still see you and check when you’re on line" I agree with you completely on this point (including your reference to stalking). Indeed this should be a feature added to BBO i.e. you should become invisible to anyone who is on your ignore list, even if they choose to follow you. Also, such people should not see an alert when you login. I hope BBO can take up this request seriously. Barmar, Gerardo or other "yellow" posters might want to add their views.

Hahaha, this is becoming puerile asinine. smerriman, I hope you agree with me that continuing this is a waste of your patience + energy. I hope you can be sure that at least 1 person (which means "zero or one people" :)) is 100% in agreement with you.

Either you have not had the intellectual maturity to debate properly, or you are a troll who likes to interject ad hominem attacks just for kicks. That (probably informative) post of yours would not have suffered if the first line was skipped or replaced by a neutral observation.

I like the line in Jonathan Bernstein's Bloomberg article.

Yours and, when you are declaring, your dummy's. It does not impact other players' cardplay.

If he is eventually evicted from the White House (against his will), he might probably steal the Resolute desk as a final act of defiance :)

I would have bid the same as you did. Open 1♠, then jump to 4♠ over partner's 1NT response. The 2♦ opening of your opponent was conventional; not something familiar to me. I would simply open 1♠. After reading the post by nige1, I must say I never considered opening 2NT and I don't think I would ever open this hand with a 2NT.

I'm afraid I disagree with the assertion that the South hand is "hardly worth a 2♣ opener". I would certainly open it as 2♣ and, upon hearing a 2♦ response from North, would rebid 2♠. It so happens that North has a great spade fit albeit a flat 4-3-3-3 hand and while others might have conventions to show the ♣K enroute an eventual 4♠ contract, I don't usually play that. So I'd simply bid 4♠ with the North hand.

Hi cybourgh, welcome to the forums. I suppose the "best hand" feature for robot tournaments has become quite an established thing. Most of the standard robot tournaments have the feature. You are right that the proportion of hands where you get to defend reduces tremendously as a consequence. Also, on a few hands, the human declarer gets an unfair advantage. However, one has to admit that the format is very popular on BBO. I suppose people like to bid (instead of passing), like the increased frequency of slams, and definitely feel relieved to have far fewer instances of pass-out deals. If you prefer other type of ACBL tournaments, perhaps you would enjoy playing all-human tournaments where the hand strength is completely random.

The early play - or not - of ♥A is not relevant :) I guess I mentioned it because the link to the play had me cashing the ♥A

Thank you for hosting this, smerriman.

By the way, a thought occurred to me about Trump's future years. AFAIK, as ex-President, he (and Melania? and possibly Baron until he becomes independent?) will be entitled to Secret Service cover. I assume Trump will insist on travelling to his various properties around the world and then invoicing the US Govt. at exorbitant rates for the Secret Service personnel's stay at his property? That's another cute way to make some more cash off the US Govt, no? :rolleyes: :huh:

For the sake of completeness (and to anyone who found that the solution eluded them), the correct play was to overtake the ♠K with the ♠A at trick 1, then play ♥A followed by ruffing ♥4 in dummy with the ♠Q. N/S have 7 trump winners plus 2 Aces plus an "obvious" ruff in dummy. The problem arises if we instinctively let the ♠K in dummy win the first trick because there is no quick entry back to hand to ruff the ♥. If you allow ♠K to stand, you will next have to play a low club OR the ♦A and a low ♦. You hope that opponents will lead another card in the minor suit and you can ruff that in hand. However, East (or West) will win return their second low trump when in with their first trick. This causes your ruffing trick to evaporate and the contract is now headed for a disaster. Here is the link to the actual deal: https://tinyurl.com/y8dml8ss Deals like this appear in card play textbooks. The illusion is created by the superfluous trump winners in North. This problem would have been an non-problem if North held ♠43 and South held ♠AKQJ109x --- everyone would win the first trick in the South hand and immediately secure the ♥ ruff.

If I were to guess, it is the random discarding by East Robot that is to blame. East could have discarded ♦4 at trick 10 or trick 11 to save West from the confusion.

I feel this contract is not making unless I can trick opponents into helping. The opening lead has deprived me of an entry to dummy. So I think I will manufacture this late entry. I ruff the ♦A in dummy, cross to hand in ♣ and lead a low ♠. For our side, the sequence of trump plays is irrelevant --- one loser is unavoidable. However, if West holds something like ♠K3 ♥-- ♦AQJ109876 ♣Q32, a duck by West is unthinkable. From West's perspective, I appear to be making some sort of desperation/silly play to trap West into sacrificing the trump trick. If West goes up with the King, I have two entries to dummy --- one to set up the club suit and the other to use it.

[hv=pc=n&s=sajt9872ha74d73c9&n=skqhda98542cjt432&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=1d1h1s(forcing)2d(good%20!H%20raise)p3c(3%2B%20!C%3B%205%2B%20!H%3B%2011-13%20total%20pts%3B%20forcing%20to%203!H%20Q%2B%20in%20!C)4sppp]266|200[/hv] This came up when playing against Robots. The bidding looks a bit suspect but the final contract is sound. West leads a trump -- the ♠6 (and East will follow to this trick with ♠5). Plan the play, especially to the first 3-4 tricks. PS: FYI, I almost got this wrong.

A 2♣ response to a 1♦ opening is an auction that can often cause difficulty unless you have a well agreed follow-up. For example some play transfer rebids by opener (i.e. 2♦ shows 4-card ♥, 2♥ shows 4-card ♠, 2♠ shows a 12-14 bal NT type hand) Absent any predetermined agreement (e.g. with a pickup partner), I would simply rebid 2♥ and await further developments. I'd be slightly worried that partner might assume extra HCP or extra shape for my 2♥ bid.

From the outset, the assertion that nobody told him was irrelevant; he obviously knew. Most Americans would need no proof for them to disbelieve the assertion, and the Americans who believe Trump unconditionally are not likely to believe the additional piece of evidence.

I would lead ♠J. If I were asked to choose a different suit, I'd probably lead ♥7 because it is least likely to cost a trick. The dealer+vul combination says this is Board #7 and the table info suggests N/S are likely to be leading. In that case, I really think a minor suit lead is too risky to consider. If I assessed that we were (say) 15-20 IMPs behind with only 1 more board to go, I might consider whether I should risk leading ♣K. This is definitely not it.

The best action, in my view, is to respond 2♦ over the 1♦ overcall. It shows values + ♣ support for partner and keeps it flexible for partner to describe their hand. It is possible for partner to hold a diamond stopper which enables our side to play in 3NT. In the given example, partner can make a forward move and you could hope to land in 5♣.