MattieShoe

And the important corollary to the above... If you won't be ruffing in the hand with less trump, you should probably lead out trump... Not always of course, but probably. I think the other thing (particularly in MP) is to not be satisfied with just making your contract. Always try to (safely) squeeze out every last trick. If nothing else, it's good practice for when you NEED every last trick.

It is absolutely possible. There are problems though. * If you create a system, people will immediately look for ways to game the system. Lets say the default rating of new players is too high (common in many systems). People may seek out new players to play against to artificially boost their ratingand avoid new players as partners, for example. * If people feel they are being measured, they're more likely to be hostile to poor performing partners. Having no rating system whatsoever avoids unpleasantness. * If one starts measuring performance, some players who care overmuch about ratings will demand additional features like the ability to play unrated games. * The mere existence of a rating system would increase the likelihood of folks creating multiple accounts for the purposes of rating manipulation, or calling their partner on the phone during games, etc. * There are many aspects to bridge, and many players excel at one (lets say declarer play) while being deficient in others (lets say defense). How do you fairly rate these players? Okay, now what happens if said player joins only robot tourneys, where declarer play is much more common than defense (strongest hand is always rotated to south)? Or a player plays well with one partner but terribly with another? I believe it would be possible to create a rating system very easily, but you could spend a ridiculous amount of time on these sorts of edge cases. Honestly, I don't care if BBO ever implements a rating system. But I do wish I magically had access to hand data for everybody so I could roll my own. I'm just the sort of geek that likes writing rating systems.

Sorry, should have been more clear. I'm talking about the robot tournaments, in which N, E, and W are already GiB. Sometimes I may make a bid and GiB will respond oddly. I'd like to see whether GiB in my position would have bid the same (in which case there's nothing I can do), or whether it'd have bid differently (in which case I might have pursued a less than optimal bidding sequence)

Not for points or even factored into results, but when GiB responds in a weird fashion to one of my bids, it'd be interesting to see what it would have done instead.

Another rule of thumb is to lead through strength to weakness... Basically, the person playing fourth is in the best position. If you lead a suit that you know the declarer (playing fourth) is strong in, you will often end up finessing your partner. So if the (future) dummy bid hearts and his partner didn't support them, then the partner is likely weak in hearts. The dummy COULD have KJ and your partner might be sitting behind him with AQ. Or dummy may have AQ and partner is sitting behind him with the KJ, and so on. Leading an ace in a suit your partner bid is not bad -- it lets him know where the ace is and isn't going to finesse him, and likely isn't going to help your opponents in setting up a long suit.

Two come to mind... First was just a family game. We had determined we had 33 points and bid 6 spades. It turns out the 7 points we were missing were the Ace and King of spades. Both fell on the same trick and we made our six. Second was more recent... http://i.imgur.com/a7BP0.png I typically score ~45-50% in these tournaments, but the stars must have aligned that night...

Some reasons, off the top of my head 1) Perception. It's perceived as an old person's game. 2) Barrier to entry. You can sit down and play poker (albeit badly) right away. With Bridge, it's a slow process from sitting down to playing with any sort of confidence. Point counting, arcane bidding systems, bizrre conventions... Once you get over that hump, it is immensely enjoyable. But getting over that hump is tough. 3) Because a huge amount of it is scheduled around retirees -- during work/school hours. Here, there are occasionally beginner lessons on the weekends and one NLM club game each Saturday. Anything beyond that happens when I'm at work. 4) It's a bit intimidating for a rank novice to sit down with people who know what they're doing. 5) Cumulative ranking system like master points doesn't reflect skill very well. People like more immediate feedback. This is probably why I'm currently addicted to the robot tournaments... :-) Chess servers would be an obvious place to look for new players. They'll enjoy the challenge. The other one that comes to mind is board game geeks. They already enjoy the social aspect...

http://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?traveller=5079-1349154001-13062165&username=mattieshoe

[hv=pc=n&s=sak92hakt982d97c5&w=st864h74dqj52ca32&n=s73hj6dat43ckjt87&e=sqj5hq53dk86cq964&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=ppp1h(Major%20suit%20opening%20--%205+%20H%3B%2011-21%20HCP)p1n(Forcing%20one%20notrump%20--%206-11%20HCP%3B%2012-%20total%20points)p2h(6+%20H%3B%2011+%20HCP%3B%2012-16%20total%20points)p3h(2%20H%3B%2011-%20HCP%3B%2010-12%20total%20points)p3s(Help-suit%20slam%20try%20--%206+%20H%3B%203+%20S)ppp]399|300[/hv] My bidding was probably bad, but passing 3♠ seems... well, crazy.

Interesting. It makes sense, provided both partners are on the same page of course. I'm still trying to get my family to give up strong 2's, so... baby steps. :-)

Sorry, I'm not sure what "quantitative" implies here.... Could you elaborate? I've always used 4NT as ace asking or if NT is the bid (ie. 1NT 4NT), then small slam invitation. . . Is this what you mean by quantitative?

I plugged in the birthdates of my sister and me and the graphs looked eerily alike. The two graphs superimposed: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4046/4180351594_825d86dc95.jpg Apparently we cause sunspots. :-)

Amen! I always watch though. Glutton for punishment I guess...

Alas, not enough people to keep it alive http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2797/4165772066_053c40a25b.jpg

gd is nifty. I haven't done much graphics in C/C++, but XNA uses C# and has some very simple and very powerful stuff, and the IDE/compiler is free from Microsoft. I did some silly simple code for effecient circle packing with it for fun. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3485/3796580568_4780d21a01.jpg Took very little time to code. You can use image files like pngs, place them, scale them, rotate them, adjust their transparency, use antialiased fonts, etc. Pretty slick. I made a little boids program with it too, just to familiarize myself with it