semeai

Fair enough. This seems very well suited to a simulation. I imagine it was included in the article because it looks flashy and is something Namyats just can't do. Without doing a simulation, I was about to go impress you with just how overwhelmingly likely it is partner has hearts, but by my rough calculations, it's 80% or so, which is sizable but not quite overwhelming.

Can we really not tell the difference between lying and a rhetorical device? On topic: There's some trade-off between preemption and accuracy here certainly. For the 3NT vs 4M decision, though, Kantar 3NT is better off than Namyats, which can't go back to 3NT. Is your objection that pass seems worse than getting to 4M on xxxx-x-Axxx-Axxx opposite a Kantar 3NT opener, in which case we should do a simulation? Or are your examples supposed to be an indictment of Kantar 3NT itself as a convention, in which case it must also be an indictment of Namyats?

This is off slightly; you're overcounting. One player could hold an eight card suit and one player could hold a nine card suit, for example.

Awesome data, Cascade! Cascade's exact answer of 1.985...% is pleasantly close to hrothgar's simulation answer of 1.978...%.

Getting exact numbers is fairly annoying. A bit of work gets us upper and lower bounds. Upper bound: 4*(probability south has an 8 or more card suit) = 4*.00505 = .02020 (using Ben's work) Lower bound: 4*(probability south has an exactly 8 card suit) - 6*(probability south and east each have an exactly 8 card suit) = .01867 - .00031 = .01836 So it's between 1.83% and 2.03%. Good enough? If what we really wanted to do was reproduce hrothgar's program's number, sorry. How to get the probability south and east each have an exactly 8 card suit: Multiply the following three lines and divide by (52 choose 13)*(39 choose 13) 4*3 // ways to choose south's and east's long suits (13 choose 8)^2 // the two 8 card suits sum from n=0 to 5 of (5 choose n)*(26 choose [5-n])*([26+n] choose 5) /* in the sum the first term is the ways to choose south's cards in east's long suit the second term is the ways to choose south's remaining cards the third term is the ways to choose east's remaining cards */

@gwnn Ultimately everything in chess is material too, with the only material being the king. Maybe the problem is that chess as a whole is harder than the card play of one bridge hand? Even so, most think in reductive terms even in bridge. Certainly we have the phrase non-material in bridge, as in say non-material squeezes, and have things like entries and stoppers and so forth. The difference between double dummy and single dummy suggests there are other types of non-material things about in a bridge hand as well.

The Merrimac Coup certainly seems like a gambit. You're giving up a trick (in the suit you lead the high card in) for a non-material gain. In the wikipedia example hand, if you add a third club to dummy, then it's even an example of a gambit that should be refused!

Is part of those 10 HCP a King? (Irrelevant of course, but I couldn't resist!)

I didn't mean "some guy" to be disparaging. However, as you imply, "an expert on" would have been better wording than "some guy who knows about." By way of lame excuse, maybe I can erroneously suggest that I have a high bar for using the word "know(s)."

No experimental error confirmed yet I guess. My take from the sources mentioned in this thread: The paper giving the "correction" didn't make a mistake in its physics, but the original paper presumably used GPS time calibration that already included the physics "correction," according to some guy who knows about GPS time calibration.

I like Commonsense Bidding by Root for this purpose. It's a slightly older style of Standard American than SAYC, but well explained and thought out, with many more sequences defined. It's not so relevant to your question, but: SAYC is a better gateway to current expert standard, but if you were to play SAYC with no bells and whistles (but more sequences defined than just those in the SAYC booklet, say) or the older SA style described in Commonsense Bidding, you'd probably do better to play the latter. Basically it skimps on invites when necessary (without using gadgets) instead of skimping on forcing bids, which better allows you to [learn how you would actually ever] bid a slam intelligently. Probably there are some good recent books.

Thanks for the link. It makes complete sense that the people who think about time synchronization using GPS would already take into account relevant effects like this. After all, as we all know from xkcd, even general relativity is necessary for GPS to be accurate. That said, I'm not sure why there's the comment about there being an error. Maybe the reporter misunderstood, or put the researcher on the spot and it was a throwaway comment? Equation (2) in Elburg's paper is correct; he's not adding velocities. An analogous equation shows up as equation (8) in the paper cited in that news article as already taking into account the effect.

Do you have a link? Maybe a simpler way of putting it: Two clocks that are at rest with respect to each other have a notion of being synchronized.

Regarding what Kaplan-Sheinwold's psychic controls actually were, here's what I find at the Bridge World's K-S Updated page: Really this seems to be a system in which 1♥-1♠ shows spades or heart support. As to which bids were the "controls," if you like the definitions Blackshoe quoted, then the 3♥ and 4♥ bids are the controls. This is like the Watson 3NT bid, but rather more direct: there's an agreement on the exact auction in which the psychic bid has been made instead of a general agreement which could be useful for a psychic bidder to use but which will also be used in other auctions (or perhaps even the same auctions) by non psychic hands. If you don't like that definition, maybe exercising the restraint never to bid 4♠ is the control? This is similar to requiring a 2♦ response to 2♣ to cater to partner having a weak hand with diamonds.

No mention is made of the call being conventional, merely an agreement. (You don't need an agreement on passing Stayman in the auction 1N-P-2C-P;P though, which is why I suggested 1N-P-2C-X;P as the auction in my post above, since you would have an agreement there. It doesn't completely expose the psychic bid, but neither does a double of 3NT on any old auction.) But all right, how about 2H X P P; XX? An SOS redouble is an agreement and it's conventional. Is it allowed if we've psyched? You wouldn't do this on the OP hand, but maybe some two-suited or suicidal three-suited psychic bid would like to redouble here.

You aren't fond of noun adjuncts? Speaking of which, a quick google search turns up

I don't understand the regulation. If we have any old auction in which I make a psychic bid, and then I double 3NT asking partner not to lead my suit, this need not expose the psychic bid. I may not have psyched but have a hand that does not want that lead. Thus it does not "control" the psychic bid in that it does not guarantee the bid was psychic. I'm simply making the most logical call with my hand. Am I generally not allowed to act in my best interest after making a psychic bid? For example, if I bid 1NT with long clubs and a weak hand, and then the auction goes 1NT-P-2C-X am I now not allowed to pass if my agreement for pass here is "suggests playing 2C doubled" or "shows length in clubs"? I'll note OB6A3 only mentions that I may not use an "agreement" to control a psyche, with no mention of natural/artificial/conventional. This isn't simply meant as an indictment of the law. I would like to understand what is required of one who has made a psychic bid.

A nice suggestion, but 5 seconds is likely too much. It alone would account for 4 1/3 minutes if we assume 10 tricks played and 3 rounds of bidding. Maybe 2 or 3 seconds could work and provide enough benefit.

I don't. I'll support it as logical, though. A fast action means what you're doing is clearly right on your hand and a slow action means it's less clear. Also, ask then slow pass and ask then slow double should be right next to each other in strength for those cases when you really want to decide between them. You don't even need to discuss it with your partner, and you probably already do it (to some extent)!

Maybe at this point GIB simulates instead of relying on point count? That would explain the similarity of the descriptions (GIB wouldn't know what hands would bid on over 3♦ without running a meta-simulation). Aside: Certainly 3♦ is/should be invitational.

This all makes sense if partner has AQ, but I don't follow when partner just has the Q. Then partner would need to signal attitude in case declarer wins the Ace.* In fact, this makes the situation when partner has AQ strange, since partner will know that we won't know whether partner's holding is AQ or Q. I suppose partner signals count, so that the two messages we can receive are, say, "Q or (AQ and even)" and "AQ and odd"? * Need is too strong a word. Attitude won't always be helpful (compare Qxxx to Qxx) and count can be useful too (but won't distinguish xxx from Qxx), but we decided to play attitude, so that's what we're stuck with when it can still logically matter. (I posted all this here since the quoted post is a month old. Also, this thread is precisely about this topic.)

Okay, I suppose there will be hands with Hx in spades and no heart stopper that will guess to bid 4S instead of 3NT. But I think most hands with xx in spades and no stopper will just bid 3NT anyway. Or did 3S deny a stopper for you? Standard Lebensohl as I know it uses 2N..3S as invitational and 3S direct as forcing. If 3S did deny a heart stopper, then definitely you'd play 4m as natural. Assuming 3S says nothing about a ♥ stopper, I don't think I'd bid anything other than 3NT or 4S as opener very often. The comment by ggwhiz about responder bidding 6D over 4S is pretty good: you could even find partner with just Hx in spades but a better diamond fit sometimes. Surely it isn't optimal just to bid 3NT or 4S all the time. I still don't want to bypass 3NT with ♠xx ♥xxx, but there's room to distinguish a normal 3-4 card raise, a great 3-4 card raise, and hands with Hx. You could play something artificial allowing you to show all three of these, or maybe just agree that 4m is natural suggesting ♠Hx (since you wouldn't bypass 3NT with ♠xx usually). I don't like cuebidding here since we're the limited hand, but one artificial bid suggesting slam positive values with a spade fit could be worthwhile if you're going to go the artificial route and reserve one bid for these. (Really I wouldn't want to agree to anything artificial here since it wouldn't come up often enough.)

If partner bids 4♣ as a spade cue, why would you need to show your second suit? PS Q1 yes, Q2 abstain, Q3 slam Wouldn't this ask for a heart control?

I'm not BBO staff, but I think it only counts non-robot tournaments from the past month or so, and you need maybe 10 non-robot tournaments in the past month for it to be computed. It should show up when viewing your own profile. The logic behind robot tournaments being excluded is that you're not helping or hurting anyone by staying in or dropping from them. You're only helping or hurting someone if you're playing with people, so that's all that counts. It does seem that they could maybe have completed robot tournaments count positively for your TCR and just ignore uncompleted robot tournaments, but this isn't how they've chosen to do it.

Our prior experience tells us that certain categories of actions tend to have high variance in terms of how well they turn out and certain other categories of actions tend to have low variance in terms of how well they turn out. I don't think most of us accepted his premise that he'd really never had it be wrong. Maybe his memory is selective, or he didn't notice when there was a better 5-4 fit sometimes. This would be interesting. Or maybe we could just simulate the whole thing.