slothy

i will give it to you, Claus...you certainly got a way about you that make people wanna love ya

lol Richard it seems some people in this thread other than Mr Hamman himself are being provocative :unsure:) i bowing out of this now, too volatile.... But as Mr Hamman himself could have said ;) "dont argue or fight with a pig... u will both fall in the mud, but the pig will love it" i just bought some new cream trousers so thats me outta the sty Mr PorkChopsRDaBest

geez Jimmy read the OPENING POST. It is, in itself, anecdotal

O Claus... It is not a moral lecture... and if i were to give you one, believe me, the crucifices will be waving frantically.... You stated something as a fact, and in my humble opinion, a highly erroneous and fatuous one. What are YOU suggesting??? That only people who play some contorted system have any meaningful opinion (which is right) and, even more so, that they actually believe that the system they play is the foundation of their success? As i said, do yourself a favour and ask any expert on BBO, or beyond, whether they agree with your comment - that only experts in simple bridge believe what Winston alleged and then if they believe what you have written. Without stating the obvious, the reason is Claus that this is the opinion held by the majority of the people writing to the thread.... i dont see many people agreeing with yours? Your Humble Heckler Alessio

I think I have heard that before. Mostly from experts in simple bridge. Geezzzzzz Claus you certainly know how to wind me up :unsure: and you do so very successfully i hasten to add ;) :) that is a very glib and (over)simplistic statement to make, if i may say so and even if i may not... you ask any expert - no self-proclaimed expert but one who has earned his or her stripes - his/her opinion and i will give you a bushel of cokes (lot in the store-room that fellow commentators have won from Roland) for ANY one of them who puts a system compilation ABOVE a comprehensive understanding of card play technique as what makes a good expert bridge player. They all have run the gauntlet of learning to play cards using a basic system and THEN when they want to extend their horizons, normally because the card play doesnt offer them sufficient challenges any more, decide to change their bidding system to one that may bring them better results. But, i am quite sure, at the back of their minds, they appreciate that the bridge system is the chisel whereas their card play is the statue. A person can (purport to) play as many fancy systems as she or he wants and decide, for whatever ridiculous reason she or he thinks is worthwhile, to concentrate his or her efforts on learning many more....but if s/he hasnt gone through the mill of learning the many ropes of card-play technique can spend many hours in the bar after a competition saying how they got to the grand slam, that no one else bid, after a 24 bid sequence where each bid had 23 meanings... (but then fails to mention that s/he went 1 off coz he didnt know how to play the hand (properly) ) One of the most intelligent, most intuitive and best bridge players i have ever played against (and with on a couple of occasions), and who sadly died a few years back, played the simplest system you could think for FORTY years (begrudgingly adding transfers 3 months before she died - alas her death-wish). Rarely got into the wrong contract. But give her a 4♠ contract that is makeable (and a cigarette to puff whilst she played it) and she would make it 95% of the time. lol. She was once told "What do you think of table presence?" She replied "Table presence? The best presents are those of opps who come to the table playing a system they cant pronounce and their card play is 4 times out of 5 just as unpronounceable" I rest my case.

:) B) :D You are shamelessly smacking both of my cheeks with your white glove with that remark. I dont like 'pistols at dawn' as i am not that with it in the mornings... There is a slight difference here and you know it. :) :) :)

Luis, luis, luis.... I have always agreed with your post on BBF... Seems like you were the most reasonable person here... that is until this totally insane post. Hate crab???? Unbelievable.. some up to maryland and I will fix you some crab cakes that are out of this world. Ben I have to say Ben Luis, my monogamous life style (well only saying that in case a certain person reads this thread hee hee) makes me want to avoid crabs in Maryand or any other state. PS As for Maryland chocolate chip cookies.....turn on the oven and bake them baby (sorry, in my Austin Powers persona now) Alessio

hee hee think you should rather thank your opp for not making a standard cover :)

Desperately stopping myself from replying to Rolands rather perennial allusion to Shakespeare and the fact that he seems to jingoistically believe that Hamlet is the only play the Bard ever produced..... :D .... One thing that seems to be omitted form these 'arguments' is the exclusion of the 'human factor'. I remember a similar discussion in a previous thread to which nobody really gave me a satisfactory reply to. the human factor being: how does a system cope with a preemption? or a slightly freakish bid, or a bid knowing it exposed a chink in the system's armour? (the defenses to Precision being a notorious one ). In a game where by definition one has 7 levels, if the opponents take away 3 of them the amount of available space left in proportion to what was available is severly reduced. IMO no system can really cope with this phenomenon. If there were 14 levels and an opp steals you 2 of them, there is still time to recoup, reposition your little tin men and change your battle strategy. No computer can be encoded to simulate unpredictable human behavior and thus no quantitiative analysis can really be made as to which system outperforms any other. As 'the other Dane' said B) most unnatural systems are systems off after a high(er) level interference. The best bridge players in this world, of which Bob Hamman is undoubtedly one of, have a bridge judgement that most of us would give the ace we have tucked up our sleeve for. They are able to retaliate to situations at the table that their system is not necessarily constructed to respond to , and make assumptions and inferences about hands that no number of variables in a C#** function can reproduce. Alessio PS ** sorry i meant a Java Class :)

i used to play 2NT as a 5-5 weak minor 2-suiter as part of a Lucas style bidding structure. I found that this was of more advantage to opps in terms of defending the hand compared to any preemptive qualities it had, hand for hand. On the rare occasion it paid off but more often than not allowed declarer to find the right line vs a thiny bid game. Naturally that was soon scribbled out of the convention card. The same applies, IMO, to a 2NT opener where you are defining hands within such a narrow distribution of possible suit permutations. IT no doubt gives the defenders the opportunity to defend , using better judgement, a contract you would most likely have reached using more conventional means. The hand is yours especially if p has a good hand and most likely you can get your hand across anyway, describing your shape along the way. if you ARE strong and the opps preempt in the suit you are short in, i feel it would be more important to concentrate on how to react to that rather than devising an adjunct to a system that on more hands than not facilitate the defence rather than your partnership.

and since when, may i ask, is North America (hail O Empire ) responsible for the evolution of the card faces that have been around before the pilgrims decided to persecute turkeys.... Still trying to find something that the Poles do that is common to everyone else...geez they even bid differently... And if you ever saw my ex-mother-in-law, and her friends, drive you would agree that they do lots of things differently ... to answer your question sewiously... Polish inherited Russian face cards which were arranged so....the Western European and Russian/Baltic card arrangements (whatever the word is, i know it ends in an -ology) evolved quasi-independently Alessio

Funny Jimmy..... Since your announcement all Bridge Clubs within a 367 mile radius of Seattle have decided to close during the dates you specified here..... It is nice to know your reputation precedes you....

Is it just coincidence or a repartée of my male intuition that it took a female, 'La Bavarde' a ses amis , to notice that there were no women on the panel. Quite right Béné!!! You cant blame us though Bene....its like asking children to play outside the sand-box... Alex ... a man hanging his head in shame PS You are right up there with Emily Pankhurst spearheading the Sufragette Movement B

A.C.B.L = Autocratic Confederation of Bridge Lunatics Sorry Floofy thought everyone knew that! :blink: Alejandro And whilst i am on the subject of more appropriate acronyms E.B.U. = Erroneously Biased Umpires After a nameless English Bridge Union Qualified Tournament Director, Mr 'Uriah Heep' Bagman to the rest of us, black-balled our appeal after a well-known (ex international) bridge player convinced him it was ok to hesitate for 8 secs with a singleton :P

Wow Sorry havent been to forums for a while (trying to wean myself off it) so havent read about this meeting...seems like a good idea and if i am around at the time (holiday time for me :) ) Of course i would like to recommend Bashforth-on-the-Riddle as a venue. For several reasons: 1) It is in the middle of nowhere so you are bound to get lost. 2) There is only one pub in the village and that happens to have a lovely pentagram on the wall with candles around it. 3) Everyone is related to everyone else so you will have no problems with remembering anyone's surname. 4) They even have a resident gay stray dog called Ruff which is a bit of a novelty (so make sure you get a dog-sitter). 5) You are woken up in the morning with a cockerel-call at 5.22 am. 6) There is a ghost on horse-back that rides through the town every Thursday evening shouting 'The Vikings are coming, The Vikings are coming' (no reference to Roland of course). Just an idea anyway

there is a woman called Elma at our club who consistently scores <37% during night-games Other nite she scored 66% - definitely underrated...she wanted 4 print-outs to ensure there wasnt a mechanical fault with the printer I think there are many 'underrated' players around...ones who are naturally talented bridge players (or even card players yet havent perfected their bidding) yet because of other commitments, whether it be family, business or other obsessions, havent been cameoed in the bridge flood-lights. They play occasionally in big events and more often than not score well but when they are off-color get judged by these results.

Doesnt suprise me Jimmy.....can only imagine you had to change your nik coz of your embarrassment of going off in a 2H+2 par contract or because you had one of your unfortunate bouts of internet-induced Tourette Syndrome episodes... Your faithful follow-up-poster

Join the club, man. I been making things up as i go along too: luckily the staff havent cottoned on that i do this and see it as a powerful indescribable intuition. I basically just embrace the principles of Chaos Theory to the workplace. On the good side all my staff look up to me. Whether that is because i exclusively employ midgets i dunno... And who is this William Gates dude? As for coming onto BBO, I came on very early on after putting in the Search Criteria of Google 'Embroidery Stitching Techniques Used By Neanderthals' and BBO came up third!!! I was frustrated that the nik alex had been taken so i think you lost points on the personal touch. i also wanted 6toedsloth, my nik on the Zone [i hope i not breaking 'The Code' mentioning La Zona here], but some Young Pretender had taken that too!! (sabotage, man, sabotage) Also i was so used to Zone i found the interface counter-intuitive (then). SO i left and came back in about late 2003...it was like the rush for Oregon!! I soon got used to it and have been sucked into this micro-universe ever since. Fred is it possible to have alex as a nik?? nobody uses it !! [ pleeaaassseee!! some people really have come to believe i am an arboreal vegetarian who prefers to view the world invertedly] (a star wouldnt go amiss either). I check evey once in a while to offer the person $5 BBO for it but he never comes on :)( [or she even]. A friend of mine called Alex came on before me and may have picked it but he had a sex change and calls himself Viagrina now and has abandoned his previous identity Alex

oh oh the pointer-thingey oscillated a bit on my pocket seisometer... ....sharpening my pencil....making sure the lead will take the pressure..... have to go for a while....but will return to answer....hopefully the exorcism i need to perform wont take that long Alex in morbid anticipation PS how did you know about my Aunts chilblains Roland? She has been suffering with them for years

Dont think it is new at all.... slight variations of this been played for a while...Marty just popularised it.

I shoot back ♦ i am playing declarer for 8 tricks 5 H , 1C (by force with K) 1S and a D. If the Q D holds then he just plays a ♣ for his ninth. (if he missing A J ♣, and K J ♦ too much going on..he might have decided to take simple finesse in ♦ for 9 tricks. if P has K ♠ and you short...consistent with lead, declarer still has chances if you got A ♣ anyway PS the 5♠ is ambigous to declarer: he doesnt know that your p found killing lead) so play a ♦ playing p for JT, J9(ie any holding that smothers declarer) unblocking 8. If declarer ducks, with a ♦ in the bag, play ♠ setting my ♠ up. we take 2♦ a ♣and ♠s before he can run 9 tricks (2♠s,5♥s,1♦) If he takes it win A♣ and play ♦ to get p in to lead a spade.

Quote 1: From the Guru himself: i feel that the Holy Grail has been put gift-wrapped and hand-delivered in a stage-coach hee he Quote 2: oh yes, and his grandfather was Egyptian (Anthony and Cleopatra), his sister-in-law a Greek (Coriolanus), his next-door-neighbour-but-one spoke Latin (Julius Caesar), his wife was Jewish (Merchant Of Venice), his daughter married an Italian (Romeo and Juliet) and ...his brother was a fairy (Midsummers Night Dream).

Funny, for me bridge is a game of rules. Rules aren't carved in stone but only those who know them have the right to break them :) I do agree with you and all the others that the ultimate goal is to think in patterns, not numbers. ... And I find it to be a nice formula. i wasnt sure whether to agree or disagree with you, Ochinko: Therefore i have replied in order to remove the tortuous mental embarrassment of having a Platonic dialogue with myself in front of the computer. From my experience in and understanding of bridge, albeit one much shorter than some of the longer-living members of this vibrant community :o i believe that the bridge theoreticians are trying to develop systems which are about telegraphing to your partner your hand pattern, or the smallest subset possible of distributions you can have. The Holy Grail of bidding, especially it seems with the spate of modern bidding systems that are pupating, is to develop a system where you can tell your partner your shape, whether it be a 5-5-2-1, a 4-4-4-1, a 6-2-2-3, with the minimum number of bids. Once your partner has pin-pointed your shape, it is so much easier for him to assess the quality of his hand - with, it seems, your HCP playing the 'poor cousin': they know he lives in the same town, but the family decides to ignore him. So with this in mind, many try to inseminate their systems with an appreciation and an evaluation of ones high card strength! At some point or other one of these 2 has to be sacrificed, as i believe no system can be developed that will allow you to finitely include bids to show both. Statistically impossible: it is like buying Roseanne a size 8 dress and telling her to wear it to the ball. :P We all seem to learn through HCP evaluation, and perhaps tend towards the pattern-showing systems as we evolve. I have a lot to learn in bidding, and want to; it just seems to me that more and more one comes to realise that there arrives a point where ultimately one has to rely on ones judgement, ones instinct , ones trust of partner and distrust of opps, and as Roland said ( the man who last night tried to convince me that Shakespeare was Danish hee hee), ones common sense. Alas, there is no replacement for experience/intuition: you cant buy it and you cant teach it. Those that have a 'feel' for the hands and sense that cards are working or not are the ones who seem to get to the right contracts. All this within a finely-tuned system where a balance has been reached and the system is constructed with elastic steadfast rules and, ultimately, as many bids as possible have a meaning to their partners to distinguish one hand shape and one point range from another.... Alex PS If anybody finds the Holy Grail, would ya please inform me. Last i heard it was rumoured to be near a goat stud-farm in the hills of Anatolia.

think this has been suggested before Sue. But i very much agree with you...a lot of scrolling and unnecessary searching when you want to kibitz a particular person... Example: You know someone playing in a tourney by hovering over her name, she is playing in tourney XYZ... you got to Tourney Lobby : you forget what it was so (as some sound the same) so you got to go back to lobby again. You remember the tourney and go to it and then you have to scroll to find the table...(she is NEVER at Table 1 or 2 :D( ) Would also be nice if this feature was implemented similarly to the new Vugraph feature for the bidding at other table.... When you hover over a player you get a matrix of all the players at his/her table So it will come up as Player 1 Player 2 Player 3 Player 4 obviously Fred with a more symmetrical layout :D

Yes Jimmy my friend it appears to be so: ever since reading your posts on an irregular basis as they are peppered intermittently between those i really want to read :D i have found that i have become more wise and more mature... Have to go now....i want to finish colouring in my 'Learn Snap With Dr Seuss' book and fill my bath so that my rubber duckies can have a little swim before i take them walkies... Sloffy