slothy

And what exactly is this for?? Is this for those team matches when the Team Creator, self-appointed TD as it were, himself may be playing and thus no way of controolingmatch? Ta' Alex

Umm Hoggy soo what are the rules on insufficient bids on BBO ???? ;)

Ps Hooloid...Marc (spwdo) forgot to mention that he hopes your spelling is better than his own as well....

Well Elena the best strategy is to declare the hand and play it soo bad the chances are your p will sub you himself (i say HE because i can only imagine a man doing that...[a woman would ask oyu first and invite you even if you said no ;)] ) PS your English is very good; and even if it wasnt your accent is so cute...

i psyched my response to the question...i chose the third one when i only had the values to choose the first....

dont be afraid, my child....as for Marc, he would agree with everything you say, whether he believed it or not.. man thing .... it has taken me so long to respond as i have had to stitch together this effigy and go to the haberdashery to buy some needles :D but it is all in place now and dangling merrily (the effigy i mean)... i feel obliged to respond in bullet form (taken literally or otherwise hee hee), retaining the Feng Shui principle, of course, of using an odd number of bullets.. 1) it is virtually impossible to dismiss the fact that you are emotionally involved with the person, as a couple, you are playing with...and this naturally alters the dynamics of ANY interaction you have at the table!! - any change in temperament, because of 'mistake'/'misunderstanding' tends to spill over... It is quite ironic too...if a pair do EXTREMELY well together they start behaving like a pair of teenage lovers again (and the man goes to the toilet and secretly rings his lawyer to abort the divorce proceeding he filed 2 days before..) I think it is done because, as i mentioned in a parallel post, we fallaciously think we can get away with it and that it is feasible to do so :) Now some couples can play together but only because the man is too afraid to say anything and knows he will be sleeping on the couch for 3 weeks if he does 'play up'...(please take this tongue-in-cheek :D [its 4 weeks if especially severe] ). 2) I have too known couples who do play together...but i do find that either a) they communicate very well OFF the table and cannot say a bad word about the other because they worship the ground the other walks on [these are recognisable by the fact that the man can often be seen in the crouching position kissing the woman's feet] b ) they have established ground rules that they have to adhere to -and experience tells me they rarely do [these are recognisable by the fact that the man has a sign cellotaped to his forehead with the inscription "Hit me on the head with a shillelagh if i DARE say anything non-constructive to the witch sat opposite me"] c) the husband wears a hearing-aid and surreptitiously turns it off before entering the bridge-room -further enhanced if the wife is a mute [these are recognisable by the fact that the man continues looking at his cards and ignores you when you ask him to explain his bid and his wife just starts waving her hand frantically in the air with hand-gestures in a similar fashion to a person trying to swat a rather acrobatic mosquito] d) they are desperately in love and cant find anything more exciting to do together other than play bridge [these are recognisable by the fact they call each other 'kutchy-wutchy', 'slushy puppy' or 'MY tarzan', incredibly remember each others birthdays, hold hands as they walk between tables, and the woman gets homicidal when the man smiles at a female opponent] 3) difficult to discuss bridge hands or have a prognosis AFTER the bridge game is finished with a couple...women INSIST that the men write the hands down on paper as they seem to struggle to picture 13 objects in their head - and then they INSIST that the man writes it out AGAIN as they cant read his writing and then they get hysterically angry when he only writes down 12 cards as he is seething by now and the triple scotch he ordered (before the drive started in anticipation) is affecting his basic numeracy skills.... 4) i ALWAYS say wdp when my p plays a hand well....although there are times when the 'w' key mysteriously gets jammed and i cant write it...what i say when she plays it badly depends on the number of triples scotches i had... 5) Nothing wrong in saying sorry...as long as you have your fingers crossed if you say it and you dont really mean it Alex Hope this has enlightened you as to my views on couple bridge... Moral of the day: (contributed originally by aisha but in a very unconvincing tone of font) Couples CAN play bridge together.. (and with equal veracity Norway will win the eurovision song contest) This is exactly what Bert said when he started playing with Cheryl. He was on his SIXTH (bridge-related) marriage by now :))) PS As for responding to your own posts, sometimes it is the only way to get responses :D PPS Oooopps forgot to mention...Cherly is Bert's SEVENTH wife :)

ummmm non sono sicuro se la parola 'gentilezza' essiste....:D insomma... Alex

Wake up Marc!! :D

This may sound a bit extreme, but how about living in separate accomodation? :D Appparently was very successful in some Native American cultures (when husband lived in a wigwam and the wife in a teepee their relationship was too tense (two tents :) ah well i try).... As for your wife not playing tennis with you Nafiz you should try improving your back-hand, mate :D As seems to be the consensus of opinion, it doesnt seem to cause many people any problems whatsoever....if you playing in the same room and 'kissing your teeth' when your p, aka your hubby, doesnt return the suit you led that may be a breach of ethics but then again only you know that :D Would play against thee anytime.. PS If the man in your house you are playing with is someone elses husband, the ethical issues of course become much more broader :) :) Alex

But you dont go to Marc when you want to complain about Marc do you??? :) :D :D If only you knew, Marc......the hours and hours, till the break of dawn and the birds first twitter, i have had to sit there listening to Aisha droning on and on and on complaining about you, about how you adjusted this and didnt adjust that, the decision you made here and didnt make there- but being the very good listener i am, i sat there and listened and nearly succumbed to the urge to stand up for you. The only saving grace i suppose is that by complaining about you she wasnt complaining about anybody else ... :) Alex PS Only being vindictive coz you didnt mention me in the people you thanked!! If you remember i did sub for you in your 24th tourney......i got disconnected after 5 mins and couldnt come back but we wont mention that

ciao Vincenzo.... grazie per la tua gentilezza... Stiamo provando organizzare la vacanza adesso da Ingleterra :D...quando siamo piú sicuri colle date, rispondaremo subito.... Alex...

One more curious thing about 3.6.7..... I turned my speakers on for the first time the other day... I was playing in a 2♥ contract and went 1 off in a cold contract....This sound of a man scoffing uncontrollably and laughing at me continued to emanate from the speakers for about 5 mins, disrupting the rest of my game.. The most infuriating thing is that it continued after i switched my speakers off.... any ideas what could be wrong?

Funny that you wrote all that Kurt...it was on the tip of my tongue :huh: ....and i second it. <á la Dwayne ditto>

Re what names to give the buttons and their sexiness....... It seems exclamation marks have a strange sexual fascination for some of male proposers for some inexplicable reason :huh:

Yes you right Ben...malice aforethought...(sorry Uday/Fred/Sheri/anyone thinking there was a bug) no apologies to Hoggy for having the chutzpah to reply to it :huh:

Uday....Seems like people will have to have meaningful log-in names now (like slothy for example :huh: ) instead of preceding it with asterices etc to push thmseleves up the name-list ;)

I am not sure whether it is a bug or not, however since installing 3.6.7 i have found that 43% more of my finesses i take dont work.... (Re-edit after 12 mins) ....oh diddums just risen to 58% :P (should have gone for the end-play...) :D

This thread seems to be getting itself tied up in self-fulfilling (Gordian) Knots :P I am still convinced they are (translated as ELLES in French if you get my drift) 'friends' he has skulking in his friends list he dont want his girlfriend to find out about......

FYI, i am specifically enquiring about the Piccadilly Line train arriving at Kings Cross tube station at approx 17:32 PM ty :P

i have to agree with Ben (begrudgingly of course ;) hee hee...i promise it will never happen again :D ) and Hoggy With a regular partnership and you overcall minor suit pre-empts perhaps more aggressively, more currency in using 4♦ more protectively... HOwever, P is not denying ♣ stopper so if i responding to overcall i may bid honor-studded (just made that phrase up-it sounds kinda kewt) major and give p chance of bidding 3NT.... As p has overcalled a pre-emptor and i got a neat hand - so we got ze points? -more rational to use 4♦ as a fillip to start exploratory process for slam, stopping in game if necessary, rather than teasing p to bid game if he got the right hand over a hand where you are not sure anyway (otherwise you would bid it yourself...) So, in a nutcase, 4♦ forcing... PS OSH, at least you got a welcome form inquiry for making your postal baptism :P i got nada ...think he got a phobia for sloths hee hee)

Quoting Claus "To speed up a bit I think it also might be helpful to change the default setting to 'autoplay of singletons'. " Of course Claus the only problem with this is that when a recognisably slow player plays a card 'out of tempo' , ie fast, the chances are it is a singleton...for this reason i have noticed many people change it back if they had set it to autoplay:) Of course it might encourage people to play a bit quicker if they knew beforehand that when they reduce to a singleton it will be shot onto the table faster than they could say "i meant to play the Queen of ♠" (hee hee)... It does frustrate me a bit when you know a person has a singleton - from bidding especially - and you suspect s/he is delaying because you potentially have a guess to make in the suit (or s/he thinks you have)... in these situations it is best to use humor (or sarcasm as a friend of mine told me describes what i say better :P ....) i just say "Which half of your singleton do you wish to play first, my friend?" You find, ordinarily, that they dont know how to respond so just play their card :D ...or as i found out the other day discard from another suit (lol she opened a multi with a 7 card suit, hee hee)...or just swear at you in a foreign language...

Umm you certain you havent goto a couple of secret admirers Kenneth???

Is it possible for you Ben to ask Fred to code this 'Find Empty Seats' for when i get on the subway and find myself standing for 12 stops when there is a free seat in Carriage 13A????

I have to agree with everyone and no one... the surest form of diplomacy...( you dont make many friends but you dont make any enemies ;) Short tourneys are fine in the sense that one is not having to commit oneself for too long but as was mentioned by Free i think you get a couple of bad boards you are hoisted......and if it turns into a fiasco coz of more red on the screen than my bank statement the agony is limited... Long tourneys are better in the sense that you can get a more balanced idea of how well you have done, i am talking subjectively now in the sense that Im more concerned with how well my p and I have played irrespective of our overall ranking...bad silly boards get diluted as well as lucky ones where opps have delusionally discovered they are playing with a 60 point pack.... And of course the long marathon tourneys are mainly spring-boarded at US time zones.. So and as a suggestion to Uday ( I might even re-post in appropriate forum ;) ) i second what edelweiss said: have long tourneys interrupted and sectioned out over a time period with breaks in between...some increased coding but not too much i imagine as can just temporarily dump scores...even perhaps giving people the option of playing in 2 of 4 outings say to overcome zonal problems [will even out discrepancies i am sure] So prefer longer tourneys but one sitting (after all in real-life always got 30 min break in middle?) is too long to sit....even a hen don't brood all day :rolleyes:

As i seem to have 'earned my stripes' as Novice Poster, i thought it was time that i started a thread off my own steam... One of things about Internet Bridge that i find entertaining and engaging is the wide variety of people- different ages, different nationalities, different languages, different temperaments, different genders jaja, and, yes i said it, sxeuality (one guy felt his duty to tell me that he was gay and would i still play with him once i knew that. When i responded "That depends, do you like lasagna?" He said "Whats that got to do with it?????" I replied "About as much as your sxeuality :) ") - one meets. And, of course, Bridge is the catalyst that binds us together... This i find especially so on BBO compared to the Zone, for example, where i used to frequent (and still do from time to time) and tried my best to get banned from :) - better in the sense that it is not as Americo-centric and there is less pressure to have to speak english at all times although there does seem to be a claustrophobic attitude that English (Slothy sharpening his proverbial axe) MUST be the Lingua Franca (excuse the pun) even if the English-speakers are a minority at the table and some of the players are trying their best to communicate and being belittled for not speaking English (Scottish people in particular hee hee [in-joke sorry])!! Anyway because of this diverse cosmopolitan pool of people there are many occasions where i have had the pleasure of some quite funny exchanges with people, some even hysterical, as well as some rather enlightening, informative and educational ones. Funny in the sense of thigh-slappingly funny as well as ones where the humour (i am ingliz) arise from misunderstandings in language, culture and in some cases gender (yup, men might agree with that one! ) Some come and go and are easily forgotten and provoke a momentary titter but some seem to remain. Along the same lines as Aisha's post, i want to start a thread for people to recount funny or provoking stories they have had while on BBO - not necessarily funny but these tend to be the most memorable. To reflect Luiz's (the guy with the Tin-Tin hair-style :) ) attitude in a recent post which i agree whole♥edly with: internet bridge is about interacting with people in a socially-different environment as well as about playing a few hands of cards. If i want a weally, weally serious game of bridge i go to my club. Those who i perceive as being at their most comfortable onBBO are those that are able to somehow bridge that divide and compensate for the lack of face-to-faceness that one naturally experiences in the real (horror horror) world of club bridge. Those who DON'T are ones who are incapable of distinguishing the difference! As i am the one who called for the game, as it were, i will throw the first pitch. Please excuse any sxeual innuendo, but i have to say it is 'dyed-in-the-wool' to use the phrase in its original context ;) ----- The second time i came on BBO and was having a feel about the place i went to kibbitz a random table...I was unusually polite and said "Hi Mary, Job, [other two forgotten their names]. Mind if i kibbitz?" They said sure and i settled in to watch... After about 3 or 4 verbal exchanges Mary says to her opp "Do you always give your partner such a good hand job?" I felt it my duty to point out that a comma and name capitalization in the right place might be in order... ----- A weird guy - yes there are a few weirdos on here too ;) - was opping me and tells me why i referred to my p as XX...so i tell him coz she a woman and has 2 X chromosomes. Ahhh he says "i get it, i did genetics at scool. Thank God I am YY!!!!" The subsequent discussion made me aware he was being serious as to his presumed genetic make-up and i only managed to persuade him he was XY to account for him having 3 daughters [2 which were 'mistakes' apparently and only 'preconceived' (quote) because of parties- i didnt follow that one up of course]...So we talk about genetics and inheritance and i mention haemophilia and he says "Dont mention haemophilia, my friend, my mother had that since she was born!!!" Yup, i said this man a genius... ----- Last one :) Was opping an italian lady newbie who said she didnt speak English very well and a new p sits opposite who asks her if she wants to play SAYC. She sends me a privvy asking me "What is SAYC?" So naturally i reply "It stands for 'Silly And You're Crap'". Just as i was typing that this was my interpretation and it really was....a message explodes onto the table saying "No Silly and Youre Crap!!!I want play Italy please!!" I found myself re-directing my comment to her to this guy who left the table without much of an explanation ;) As for the lady and me, it was the end of a beautiful 25 min relationship.... -----