shyams

I have noticed over the past week or two that every article on Covid vaccine effectiveness seems to top the "most read article" list on the BBC website. I would have thought the a single-number for effectiveness (e.g. today's headline --- "Janssen single dose Covid vaccine 66% effective") provides no informational value to the average (i.e. non expert) citizen. The Covid vaccination centres are unlikely to offer people a choice, right? And even if they did, would the recipient be in able to make an informed choice? In other words, is the fixation on the percentages a needless distraction? Would love to hear opinions.

If playing with GIB (my current regular partner :)) me (W) - GIB (E) 1NT - 2♠ ...Minor suit Stayman 3♣ - 3♠ ...Splinter (agrees ♣) 4NT - 5♥ 5♠** - 6♣ ...see below pass ** 5♠ is a cue bid (shows ♠A and asks GIB to cue with extras). Unfortunately, my experience has been that East GIB will never voluntarily bid grand. It is also reluctant to bypass 6♣ to show any other extras. If the minors were the other way around, I think GIB would cue back 6♣ over 5♠ which would allow West to reevaluate. If playing with a regular partner (from some years ago) me (W) - pard (E) 1NT - 2♠ ...Minor suit Stayman 3♣ - 3♦ ...Misstating hand as 6♦-4♣* 4NT - 5♥ ...RKC in diamonds; 2 KC no ♦Q 5NT - 7♣/7♦ ...It's possible pard would bid 7♣ as a choice of slams; otherwise he'd bid 7♦ pass *partner was creative enough to deliberately introduce such a bid because the ♦Q is an important card. We had a way to revert to club slam with no diamond fit. If I held the East hand in this partnership, we might reach a grand slam (if at all) by chance than via a proper/scientific sequence.

No, it wasn't natural. It's an artificial bid that does indeed set hearts as trumps and shows slam interest. However, it does not specifically show a top spade (i.e. not a cue in the traditional sense) Added: This is a valid point and I don't know why North did not. The super-accept is part of the GIB system and this hand ticks all the boxes for a super-accept.

According to various reports, the establishment is now ganging up to protect the rights of the hedge-fund class. When these random day-traders to arrive on the scene with little experience and then set about hurting the actual ruling class, the first thing they did was to go crying to the regulators. If I may generalise & extrapolate, this is yet another sign that people (especially Americans) have very strong feelings about the striking wealth disparity in the USA. This became especially more clear during the pandemic; millions of normal Americans got poorer, hundreds of thousands were bankrupted, hundreds of thousands lost their lives even as the billionaires saw their wealth grow by over US$ 1 trillion!

North held: [hv=pc=n&n=skqj6hqt98dkq2ca5]133|100[/hv] There are 13 trick available in ♥, ♠ or NT. Hearts broke 3-1, spades broke 3-2. At the table, I took a "state-of-the-match" gamble and bid 7♥ which scored 96% and was a massive boost to my score. I was thinking along the lines described by Helene and had decided to bid 6NT. Then I thought that most opponents will be in 6NT as well and I felt I needed a good board. So at the very last second, I just took the plunge and bid the grand slam. In reality, most people were in 6♥ which scores them 32% MPs. Consequently bidding 6NT would have scored enough (74%) without the downside risk of scoring a zero.

I think they are present on the Casual server under the menu option "All Public and Private Clubs"

Caveat: I'm not a TD or an expert on these matters. I would rule in favour of N/S. There is no obvious reason for West to break tempo. The comment "finding my mouse" is even more justification for ruling against West. Although the EBU Director's statement "In my opinion people hesitate online for all kinds of reasons and I don’t think an 8-second pause is sufficient to adjust" might align with the rules / laws, there are other factors to consider here. (1) The BIT was exactly on that particular trick when the tempo was most sensitive / relevant. (2) The act of losing the mouse is highly improbable (and "finding my mouse" sounds inculpatory). Why would West have misplaced the mouse? Did it drop to the floor OR did it somehow disconnect / become unresponsive? Why did it occur specifically on that trick? If West was truly unlucky and some highly improbable events led to this situation, perhaps West can accept more bad luck in the form of a score adjustment. As an aside, I personally feel that any 8-second rule (or 10- or 15-) etc. is meant to ensure the declarer cannot game the rules by playing one of the honours and then calling the TD when it goes wrong (isn't this called "double-shot"?) by claiming significantly smaller tempo variance (of say 3 seconds or 5 seconds). Here the description strongly indicates that declarer did have a genuine problem, West had no reason to hesitate, and the BIT was a factor in declarer playing the King.

If I recall, a transfer to hearts followed by 2♠ shows a 5-5 hand in the GIB system.

This is a hand from yesterday's Zenith Daylong. Matchpoints. North is a robot. [hv=pc=n&s=sa874hak754dajcj6&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=p1np2cp2hp3s(GF%20!H%20raise%3B%20shows%2015%2B%20total%20pts%20)p4c(cue%20bid%20%5Busually%20!CA%5D)p4n(RKCB%20%5B!H%5D)p5d(1%20or%204%20key%20cards)p5s(Query%20for%20!HQ)p6d(Yes%20!HQ%20%26%20!DK%20%5Bdenies%20!CK%3F%5D)p?]200|300[/hv] What do you bid now? I haven't offered a choice of 6♠ because I'm guessing North will immediately bid 6NT in response.

I'd actually respond with 1NT. If partner has a vanilla hand and is unable to move over my 1NT, I am fine with it. I realise that occasionally our side will miss out on game (when cards fit perfectly) but I am fine with taking that risk.

This might help https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/84886-alert-menu-popup/page__p__1016099#entry1016099

Today the exploits of the reddit /r/wallstreetbets made it into the mainstream media. It's crazy what a bunch of testosterone-crazed "small-time traders" can do to the market. Unlike those times when hedge funds gang up to bleed a stock through concerted (not collusive) actions, this time around it's the turn of these hedge funds to bleed. This is going to end badly, most likely for the small-time traders who (in search of the ultimate hit) could land up bankrupting themselves.

I don't claim to understand the functioning of the US Senate or the House so excuse me if this looks a bit premature. It's been a week since President Biden assumed office. Yet the Democrats are nowhere close to the promised relief money to the lower-income American people. While there might be delays expected due to the precarious 50:50 tie in the Senate, I fail to understand why there appears to be no real urgency to expedite the cheques for individuals. Separately, the promises made to American people (or more specifically those in Georgia during the Senate run-off) was a $2,000 cheque. I found numerous mainstream media reports dated 4th and 5th Jan that explicitly say "Democrats close the Georgia campaign with populist pitch vowing $2,000 stimulus checks".Yet, after President Biden assumed office, the amount suddenly got downgraded to $1,400! I wouldn't call this a good start for the Biden administration.

Can we co-opt this thread to talk about the successes and failures of the Biden administration? I am quite surprised (and occasionally saddened) by the softly-softly approach of the new President. He seems to have not found his mojo yet even though the American people are probably yearning for him to find & flaunt it.

I was thinking along the same lines as AL78. I must also confess that I would probably get this wrong at the table because I would be unsure of the best line of play. I agree that the safest line in trumps is what AL78 wrote. Low to King, then low towards declarer intending to insert the 9 if East follows (or win and play towards dummy if East shows out). However, the problem is when West started with ♠Qxxx and East started with ♣Qxxx. Then I will not be able to ruff a diamond in dummy without creating two trump losers and I will then need clubs to come in with one loser. Based on the opening lead, it looks like West was short in hearts (otherwise the Jack surely looks a weird card to lead) So I think I will play the dangerous line by cashing the ♠A and finessing West for the ♠Q. I lose when East began with ♠Qx ♥Axxxxx ♦xxx(or xx) ♣Qx(or Qxx)

There is an interesting article on the NFL website on Covid transmission. (Link) Some points from this report that I found interesting (only selective text shown below - the entire article can be accessed using the link): Edit: The CDC "Early Release" article on the above subject can be found here

Ha! Sorry it was early morning here and I overlooked the fact that South bid ♥ first and will be declarer. I was under the impression that East made the opening lead. Must. Drink. Coffee. :) Edit: It seems I got the answer right but based on a wrong reasoning. I guess today's my lucky day.

Cards appear to be perfectly arranged for a Morton's fork coup. You just have to guess which opponent has the ♣A. I would tend to favour West to have the club Ace because the bot East will (often enough) cash the Ace as the opening lead if East was dealt an Ace.

I am logged in right now! Chromebook, Google Chrome browser. All I had to do was to reject the option to "update" my Adobe flash (the option conveniently popped up on 1st Jan). I suspect that the Jan 1st update was the one with the kill switch.

I must point out that the Flash version is still accessible via the old URL. I don't play Robot Reward that dave251164 posted about in the OP. However, if I were interested in that game, I would surely use the flash version to obtain a significant advantage over any other player using the HTML version. Given that Robot Reward has an actual BB$ reward associated with it and the outcome of such a tournament is affected by the speed of play (robot speed, the interface etc), perhaps those affected are right to complain about it.

https://tinyurl.com/y5rs8pcr Two issues I found with the bidding in a particular hand where the bot opened 2♣ 1. It seems North GIB has no way to actually ask Key Cards. The explanation for the 4NT bid reads like a quantitative 4NT. 2. The alacrity with which GIB passed my 6NT made me suspect that it did not run simulations before the final pass. Otherwise it would (should?) have considered raising to 7NT or switching to 7♦.

If declarer's bidding has to make sense, then it is more likely that declarer is short in hearts. If South held a suitable heart stopper, an attempt of some sort for 3NT would at least have been made. In such a case, I feel it is best for us to give declarer a nasty guess at trick 1. I keep my fingers crossed and underlead my spade Ace. The material risk in such a play is for East to finesse dummy and play an interior honour card. If partner does that, I will take the blame. My reasoning is that if I lead hearts OR a neutral trump, it will give declarer the time to investigate as to which high cards are held by partner thereby improving their odds of a correct guess in spades (if that's what is needed to land the contract).

Thank you for this information and the links. I was unaware that we really were doing so many vaccinations a day. The dashboards are quite useful to track progress... and I intend to do so periodically. Well, at least until it's my turn to get vaccinated :) At this rate, hopefully the entire Covid situation could turn around quickly within 2-3 month. I assume it is reasonable to assume that R0 for Covid will drop to insignificant levels once about 50%-60% of the country has been vaccinated. That is something I eagerly look forward to.

I love how officials in the UK responsible for managing the pandemic allow themselves to describe mundane acts as though they just moved mountains. Case in point: A headline on BBC (link here) reads Covid-19: England delivering 140 jabs a minute, says NHS chief executive The NHS Chief Exec didn't define how they are deriving the statistic. Presumably this is based on minutes in a working day (8 hours?) which translates to 67k jabs per day. If one allows for the lunch hour (i.e. proper workday of 7 hours), the number is even lower at 59k per day. The article goes on to talk about setting up vaccination centres that will operate 24x7 within the next 10 days. This suggests that the vaccination programme currently operates only during the day time and that the "140 a minute" calc is probably is based on working hours only. The vaccination rate is much lower than one would have thought possible or necessary. Yet, somehow the Govt. can spin it to make it look like success!

He's not going to leave the country. He still has money to make for the Secret Service protection to which he is entitled. He will most certainly insist on invoicing the US Govt. even higher tariffs on the lodging & boarding for the Secret Service staff assigned to protect him and his family.