FM75

Why not just buy some cheap used windows laptop if you are going to run the windows client? You can always hook it into a nice monitor if you want a decent size screen. It is a very safe bet that there will not be a new windows, mac, or linux client. The world has changed. Most significant new systems are now running software on hosts, not on the local computer. It is very expensive to attempt to support multiple shrink-wrapped versions (yes, I know BBOWin does not come in a cardboard box with plastic around it). Examples - Google Docs, GMail, Facebook, Evernote, Apps of all types on phones, DropBox, Box.net, SalesForce... The web has evolved so the the presentation layer, and some of the interactive layer are handled by the browser. When (if) BBO abandons Flash, you will have an application that runs on all sorts of portable devices that have not yet been invented, as well as pcs running windows, mac os, linux, and things like chrome books and tablets. That said, I am not certain that there is much future in "personal general purpose computers". They are being broadly outsold by smart-phones and iPads.

The question of forcing, forcing for one round, forcing to a level (game or any other) is clearly ambiguous. Many bridge writers tend to be sloppy with their language, which maybe is ok in a conversation where one could ask for clarification. Who is forced? Partner, or the partnership? One way to begin to clarify the meaning is to distinguish between a bid that forces partner to respond once, or forces partner not to stop bidding before the partnership has reached some level. The term "forcing" used to "promise" a rebid seems awkward. That is two different concepts mixed into one word. If you can accept that conclusion, then forcing for one round is forcing upon partner to make a bid. (The force, under most conditions, expires if the opponents bid, and perhaps even if they double or redouble). Used in that vein, "forcing for one round", distinguished the bid from even more restrictive bids, such as forces that commit the partner to bid up to a certain level, or forces that commit the partnership to reach a certain level. Forces that commit the partnership perhaps should be renamed in the future as "committing bids", to distinguish events in auctions that are forcing on only one person from those that are committing to a partnership.

I appreciated Doron's explanation of the bidding as well. I only wish he/she explained why the bidding stopped.

Today when you click on a member it brings up the "profile" for that member. It used to be that right-clicking on the area with the person's "login name" would pop up a dialog with options including selecting a category, defining as neutral, friend, enemy, etc. Now you need to right click twice to raise that pop-up! That seems very unusual, since right clicking twice has no normal meaning (you don't even have to "double-click", just have to click twice in a row on the right mouse button). I would recommend returning the original behavior.

I would heartily recommend that you join Beginner-Intermediate Lounge on BBO if you have not already done so. Once you do that, there are two outstanding resources available for learning defensive carding and defense in general. Hondo717 has an 8 session series on it. The first four cover the principles of carding and the next four review them in practice. Chick runs an interactive session most of the year on Monday afternoons (US Eastern time) covering signaling. She teaches the technique and has you decide what to play. Normally about half of the kibs will be "playing" one hand, the other half are at the other. She also runs a more advanced session on counting. This is more oriented toward declarer play, but practicing the techniques she teaches are also useful for defenders.

I tried it. I would not recommend Photon to solve the flash problem unless you are desperate. (It only costs $4.95, non-refundable, to form your own opinion.) It does work (marginally), but it seemed pretty impractical for BBO (and for that matter even viewing Amazon instant videos - kept prompting whether you were still using flash!). I also suspect that the BBO audio does not work on it. But I did not test that completely enough to say it definitively. That said, the non-audio vugraphs are fine WITHOUT using Photon. You don't even have to login! :) You also can't chat watching the vugraph on iPad. My results were on iPad (3).

Some of the teachers in BIL are starting to use the audio feature in bidding and teaching tables. This is causing problems for some bbowin users who can't seem to get the browser version working. BTW, from my experience, the audio on BBO is better than the "internet radio" broadcast solution because it has: Better Sound No time lag Is more reliable, not prone to intermittent dropping of connections Plus, it is not just one-way. Conversation is supported. I am sure that somewhere, you must have the minimum Flash version posted, but I have not been able to find it. Since Flash is usually "bundled" into a browser, perhaps it would be useful here to list minimum software specs. Also it is my understanding that the flash version uses a different port. It might be useful to give instructions on diagnosing whether a port being closed is causing a problem, and how to fix it. So what are minimum acceptable versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome? Is there a minimum version of the Windows OS? Perhaps XP or later? Also, is there a minimum speed for dial-up users that is workable? This might also vary by OS. My friend has absolutely no problems using the latest version of Google Chrome on Windows 7 (64bit) except on BBO, where the only solution we have found is to use Internet Explorer.

Just tried Photon Flash 1.8 on iPad (3).. I would not recommend this $4.95 app. It is awkward to use with keyboard. It forces you to select to use flash. It repeatedly will re-prompt you to see if you are still using it (even watching an amazon instant video - not sure why they use flash). Click and drag, for example to change the size of the user/result area does not work. Finally, and this is not really the fault of the app, BBO needs to be tailored to a screen as small as an iPad to work well. Maybe someday, BBO will have "tabbed" windows that are easier to manage to switch between views and environment management. Then it might work pretty well, but I would not expect that to happen in flash which is truly an awful (outdated) way to handle interaction on the web. I did not try testing the audio in a teaching or bidding table. Perhaps bidding table might be one place where this would work ok.

Your most likely problem is that you simply have not established a connection to your router, assuming that you are using wireless connection. Confirm your connection first, before trying BBO. It might be helpful to know whether you are using a browser to connect or the old BBO windows program. You may have malware, which should be removed. You may also be starting too much junk every time you boot, and as a result using too much memory. Take AIM, Skype, and all sorts of other stuff out of your startup so that nothing is running after you reboot. It can take a long time if you have too little memory, fragmented disks, and are also trying to start programs that can't get a connection to the internet to finish their startup.

At a teaching table, selecting the option that the table owner (teacher) sees only his hand, prevents viewing of the other hands after a claim has been made. This is awkward. When fixing this, please check that any seats that would be responsible for accepting a claim can actually see the hands.

I would suggest 2♣ on two grounds. The hand has offensive strength and because of your shape and strength there is a reasonably high probability 1♠ gets passed out. On average, each of the other 3 hands has 7.3 points. The most probable shape of each hand is 4432. 1♠ is fairly pre-emptive, given the likely card distributions and point distribution. If partner were to pass 1♠ (fairly likely), opponents may balance in with 7-9 card fit. If he doesn't pass, his most likely bid is 1NT, which does not tell you much. 2♣ is significantly more preemptive than 1 ♠ and you probably do not want to defend against 2 red. Yes, I would hope that I were playing with a precision partner were I to pick up this hand. It would be nice to have immediate low level control ask available.

Yes. A con. Note that your partner was related to the opponents. Hope you did not lose too much money.

This was a friendly team match. The "TD" was my teammate sitting south :) Blaming a teammate would be easy, but this sort of thing (minus the 3 clubs forcing part) might have just as easily arisen in pairs. I was looking for some possible argument/bidding that finds the fit, that makes sense. One person suggested a double on my part instead of a 2 diamond overcall. I considered that, but with a doubleton in the other black suit and a hand not suitable for double followed by a bid of my own suit, both for strength and self-sufficient suit purposes, I chose to overcall. Maybe that was wrong, but I think the argument that a double shows a major (which happened to be the one my partner had) seems to be resulting a bit. Should the West hand bid? I think so, because I tend to bid whenever there is reasonable justification for it. Not sure how teammate downgraded her hand to unworthy of opening - maybe a lack of quick tricks. But not bidding the South hand pretty much left the partnership defenseless. - Yes, I am resulting here. :) Perhaps this is just another "that is just bridge" story. I was just wondering if either my partner or I missed some reasonable (perhaps complex) inference that would have supported a different action on our part.

Partner passed. Opener apparently did not consider 3♣ to be forcing. So it was passed around to me: [hv=pc=n&w=sk3haq52dat942c76&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=1s2d3cpp]133|200[/hv] I could not find a way not to pass. Unfortunately I did find a way to take one too few tricks. At the other table EW bid unopposed to 4♥ making - though on the layout it was cold for 6. My teammate South passed a 13 count 5=3=3=2 hand!

ROFL at squirrel. :) Maybe I should not have mentioned that we were -12 imps on this. Perhaps it was more pertinent that the team match occurred in BIL. My partner and I are a new partnership trying to learn precision, not that precision matters on this auction.

[hv=pc=n&e=sajt95ht9873dckt4&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1s2d3c]133|200[/hv] Both Vulnerable I am actually sitting West here. Vulnerable, I should have the values for my bid. What should my partner do? We ended up -12 imps in a team game on this hand, though the bidding was considerably different at the other table.

Ordinarily, I would pass. I note that it says board 12. Needing a number in a 12 board match, I might give 5♦ a shot, but that would depend on my assessment of opponents bidding style and playing strength..

I went down to 16 based on possible non-NT shape.

barmar, BBO wants users to use the browser version. The statement "browsers are supposed to check the modification time of a page, and not use the cached copy if the page is newer than the cache time" is wrong. To run a web-based operation smoothly, it is important to understand why it is wrong. Caching can occur on the clients device, as well as at various "hops" along the internet. If a browser were supposed to check the header of each resource for its date and make a comparison against a cached date, it would have to force the header check to go to the originating server. However, that said, even if it were correct, it is wrong to expect that BBO users should manage their browsers in a specific way to make BBO work correctly. Yes, they of course have to allow Flash. But other than that, when they click on the link to start the web client, control of what they get should be managed at the web server end, not in the management of the browser by each of your tens of thousands of users. Please research this problem and correct it. There are several threads on BBO relating to web versions failing to work at all, much less not running with what you hope is the current software. Thanks

Let's try a little arithmetic. With 1 club opening, op's partner could have responded 1x, or 2 clubs with 6 points. You have zero. So your partner and opener have at least 35. Opener likely has 16-19, leaving your partner with 16-24. But he is under opener, with no suit of his own. If opener had good 4 card major he might have tried it instead of 1NT. Bid 2♦. Partner will bid his best major at that point. He has some clubs. Probably 3, which gives him 2 entries to your hand. Why? Because his partner did not return him to 2 clubs after the 1N rebid. My guess - partner is 4423 with 21-22 points. (If partner is a beginner with long strong clubs, I hope p is not your spouse.)

I would not expect to find a teaching file unless it were supplied by Audrey Grant, for copyright reasons. That said, I don't believe one can copyright bridge hands, so you might find them as just a .lin file. Or, you could just punch them in with your own notes. MyBBO, Hands and results, Hand editor... Hint, you only have to enter 39 of the 52 cards. :) Store them in folders with chapter names if you like. Then set up a teaching table, MyBBO, Hands and results, Deal Source, ... play away!

♠KJxx ♥xxx ♦10xx ♣xxx might be all it takes to bring home spade game. Might even get there with less. Double and only show diamonds if you have to. You might also be playing with a 3 suit deck. If partner shows more than a required bid, maybe slam is in the cards.

I would also recommend clearing browser cache. BBO is likely delivered in a number of .swf files. They put out an enhancement to the options part recently that required clearing browser cache to get. I have used it without problem in Chrome on Mac (except for that recent change). It has been horribly problematic on a Windows 7 laptop using Chrome since last November. The solution on that machine seems to be to use IE - ugh. I do wonder if BBO is failing to give the components new names when they release enhancements. Just clearing browser cache may not solve the problem if all that happens is you get an old cached copy from some local node.

If your partner's head explodes, the TD has a problem.

Adding to this thread since it is pinned and because I wasted hours trying to figure out what was not working in a script that I was building in support of some bidding exercises, because I was not aware of the standalone dealer link posted below. I eventually found it in some other older thread. If you use the dealer within BBO Web, you may quickly get frustrated by the fact that you get the same error message whether your script had bad syntax, or the hand(s) that the script will generate are too improbable to be generated within the time allotted. There are several features that are documented here: http://henku.home.xs4all.nl/html/dealer/input_file.html , and here: http://svn.df7cb.de/debian/dealer/branches/new-dealer/Manual/dealer.txt that at least as of the time of this post several features are not supported - for example, dealer, vulnerable, ... (vulnerable would be a really good thing to support IMO). You can also ignore the actions for use in the BBO hand editor, though they are supported in the standalone dealer program. There is also an "extended" shape syntax that is documented that relies on a perl preprocesser, shapes with curly braces and + signs. These can't be used in the generator. If you want to try "programming" the dealer, it may be far more convenient to do so, first, in a standalone version of the dealer: http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/dealer/dealer.php That version will identify the first line containing a syntax error, if there is one, and tell you what is wrong with the line.