Full BridgeBrowser Online, Free Saturday

[inquiry]

Every wonder what BridgeBrowser can do? Want to try it out on a database of containing more than 250 million hands?

• find all the hands you have played on BBO
  
• Play any hand you find double dummy
  
• see how you do with each of your partners
  
• find out how well you do against all of the opponents you have ever played
  
• check your lehman over time
  
• find all hands with at least 5-5 distribution and 6+ controls
  
• output hands in any of the following formats: lin, pbn, html, plain text, and more. For what it is worth, we do our Travellers for homebase events using bridgebrowser... for example see example traveller (note makeable contracts added via deep finessee analysis and text added as comments by comments)
  
• Find all the hands you got Great results on
  
• find all hands you got horrible results on
  
• Check how well your precision 1C openings have done, etc
  

Microtopia (authors of the software) want to stress the online system and see if it can take it. Part of the reason is that the full bridgebrowser online is being "given" away to people who play frequently in homebase events (and since gold stars play for free in the individuals, any gold star who wants full access can easily play frequently enough to have free access always). (Additionally, homebase bridgebrowser is available for those who only play occassionally in homebase events).

 

The way this test is going to work is for this Saturday we are going to create a username and password pair that will be made available to users of this BBO forum (everyone using the same username and password). In theory, hundreds of people can log on at one time using the same password (certainly 4 people can log in at the same time). In theory, the database can handle lots of simultaneous people carrying out independent searches. The fact is, however, to date there is seldom more than one or two people logged on.

 

Hopefully, this test will show that the system can hold up to lots of logins. What you will need to test the system. First, you need the new version of the bridgebrowser online program. If you happen to have a old version (older than today!) use "un-install" to remove it. Then download and install the program from http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/downloads/brbronline.zip. That takes you directly to the download.. if you prefer to read about it first, it is at http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/BRBRonline.html . That page has not been updated in a while, but the download link is current. Okbridge data is no longer added to the databases, the bbo data is current to the first of Feb other than homebase database which is always current (it is updated immediately after each tournament).

 

Second, you will need the username and password to get online. I will post the username and password here late tonight my time. The username and password will be good only for Saturday, March 8th. We will probably test it again a few more times in the weeks and months ahead. The username and password will be activated then as well, and of course, we will make the days public as it doesn't do much good to test it if no one comes!

 

You may find the movies on the following website useful in figuring out how to use the browser....

 

three bridgebrowser how to movies

 

Thanks in advance for helping test the system. If the server can not handle the traffic we will have to find another server. If you have any problems or troubles, feel free to post them here or send me a message.

[inquiry]

Ok, for the first trial, stephen wants me not to post the password publically... so send me a private message and i will give you the username and password to try.... I thought I was just going to post it, but he only wants legitimate bbo members using it....

 

So private message me.... and I will give it to you. Sorry for my misunderstanding when i said i would post it here publically.

 

Ben

[han]

The hands don't seem to go further back than December 2007, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[Guest Jlall]

The hands don't seem to go further back than December 2007, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.

ditto

[inquiry]

The hands don't seem to go further back than December 2007, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.

ditto

Each database is in small chucks... of 10 million hands or so....

 

To change databases, click on FILE then "choose dataset"....

 

Let the list fill out (takes about a minute of so)... then you can sort by size, or data, or name.... the bbo ones all start bboxxxx and are either "competitive duplicate" or "tournaments".. .basically competitive are main room, and tournaments are team games and tournaments.. there is a way to just look at team games, or just tournaments.. see if you can figure it out...

 

The really large databases are okbridge but they covered years and years... and go back to the 1990's i think

 

Ben

[1eyedjack]

Is there a way to merge the results of more than one dataset? (I assume you can only interrogate one dataset at a time)

[inquiry]

Is there a way to merge the results of more than one dataset? (I assume you can only interrogate one dataset at a time)

There are ways, but not with the test version today. I guess the best way to demonstrate that there are ways is if you look at the video with the jec hands, I have merged all the jec hands from all the databases into one file, that contains 17,124 hands he has played on bbo so far (end of january i think).

[han]

Thanks Ben, it's working great now and I can access all the data. Merging the files would be really nice. That would work if I could just keep the hands I selected. For example, I selected all the hands that I declared since December, if I could just keep those separate and work with another dataset then that would be great.

[han]

Hmm, it crashed and won't restart.

[inquiry]

Hmm, it crashed and won't restart.

let me see what is going on... back in a few minutes.... stressing the system was the major reason for todays test... maybe we found a breaking point... or maybe someone did a combination of searches that has never been tried before and unconvered a bug.....

[han]

or maybe someone did a combination of searches that has never been tried before and unconvered a bug.....

Sorry!

[inquiry]

Ok.. here is what happened... one of us logged on six times without closing the earlier connections. It is not clear that this should have been a problem and it is not clear if this is an easy or hard fix to prevent in the future... this is one of the reasons for the free test... to see what a lot of random users banging away on it will do to it.

 

It will be rebooted in a few minutes.... Keep banging away on it... but... try not to log on multiple times from the same computer.

[inquiry]

Up and going again. The multilogin from same computer seems to be the problem.

[inquiry]

Pop Quiz for testers (this is not being graded)

• Did you find how to find only hands you played in team games?
  
• Did you find how to play hands you played only in tournaments?
  
• Did the movies on the homebase site help? What other movies would be useful?
  
• Did you find how to plot your average results over time?
  
• Did you find how to see the quality of your spade suit when you make an opening bid of 3S?
  
• If you wanted too, do you see how to see the quality of the 3S opening bid when vul, when not vul, when both sides vul?
  
• Anyone play with the trick stat tab? Some cool features there are hard to find, a video might help with that.
  
• Did you find a way to easily find all the hands you played against jlall and/or jdonn (or any two people you choose who you have played against) and pull them out in one search? (somewhat tricky)
  
• Did you find the way to find all your slam contracts? And quickly call up only those that made? or only those that didn't?
  
• Bonus (extra credit) Did you find how plot your results for opening leads versus 3NT contracts for each suit legnth (singleton, doubleton, tripleton, etc)? Do you know how you can see all the hands were you lead a doubleton against 3NT?
  

[inquiry]

Thanks for everyone who tried it out today. Today's semi-private test (about 20 people asked for the info to get logged on) was a success from my standpoint. We did manage to crash it once (first crash in many many months), and the problem that caused that was identified and hopefully will be fixed. This is the type of thing we were trying to test.

 

Other than that glitch, the system ran just fine, despite a lot of people logged on at one time and doing all sorts of odd things. Great. I guess we will try another, larger test of the system where we tell a lot more people a viable username and password sometime in the near future.

 

And as you propably know, anyone who plays in a homebase events gets free access to the homebase browser (only can search homebase tournament hands)...but we also have a plan where the full bridgebrowser is made available to "regulars" of homebase events. The full details are being determined, but it will probably be something like play in 20 events and get a full month access to the full database. There maybe limits on when the 20 events can be played (over say 3 months or less) and maybe subbing into the tourneys will not count. Gold stars play free in homebase individual events (but win only 50% of cash awards), but those free plays count towards the total.

 

Anyway, i will try to remember everyone who signed up here and alert you next time as well. However, we will send email announcements with passwords to all homebase members who are registered on the homebase club site a few days before the next free trial. So that might be the best way not to miss it if you want to have another trial of the browser.

 

Thanks again.

[1eyedjack]

Ugh! not a happy first experience ;)

 

For a while I have been wondering about the net gains and losses enjoyed in the long term by opening 1N on 5422 shapes, so I thought I would take advantage of "free Saturday" to try out BrBr which hitherto looked beyond my capabilities, but hey, it was a free trial and if I could master this simple search I was on the cusp of going for it.

 

So I started by asking the dataset to find all hands where 1NT had been opened and where opener had 5422 shape, and left it running. And running. And running. I must have started it off at about 21:00 local time (give or take), but hoped that Saturday didn't expire State-side for another 8 hours or so.

 

After about 3 hours the hand counters were still incrementing, which to my mind suggested that it was not finished. Having spent a day erecting a glass-house I was a bit knackered so I thought I would catch a kip and check back in again at about 04:00. As it happened I woke up again at 02:00, looked at the screen and what do I see? A pop-up message at about 01:00 saying that I seem to be undertaking a large search and to send an email immediately or I will be disconnected (no email address was supplied, even if I had been awake at 01:00 to respond), and another pop-up (presumably sent a few minutes later) confirming that I had been disconnected. I don't even have the benefit of a statistical analysis of the 2000 odd hands out of about 40K that it had already identified.

 

Not a happy bunny.

[inquiry]

Ugh! not a happy first experience ;)

 

For a while I have been wondering about the net gains and losses enjoyed in the long term by opening 1N on 5422 shapes, so I thought I would take advantage of "free Saturday" to try out BrBr which hitherto looked beyond my capabilities, but hey, it was a free trial and if I could master this simple search I was on the cusp of going for it.

 

So I started by asking the dataset to find all hands where 1NT had been opened and where opener had 5422 shape, and left it running.  And running.  And running.  I must have started it off at about 21:00 local time (give or take), but hoped that Saturday didn't expire State-side for another 8 hours or so.

 

After about 3 hours the hand counters were still incrementing, which to my mind suggested that it was not finished.  Having spent a day erecting a glass-house I was a bit knackered so I thought I would catch a kip and check back in again at about 04:00.  As it happened I woke up again at 02:00, looked at the screen and what do I see?  A pop-up message at about 01:00 saying that I seem to be undertaking a large search and to send an email immediately or I will be disconnected (no email address was supplied, even if I had been awake at 01:00 to respond), and another pop-up (presumably sent a few minutes later) confirming that I had been disconnected.  I don't even have the benefit of a statistical analysis of the 2000 odd hands out of about 40K that it had already identified.

 

Not a happy bunny.

This is a poor design for a search... if you have stayed at the computer, you would have seen the message from stephen pickett offering you help so that you don't need to just sit there and let the hand records churn away.

 

Since you were away from the computer, what happened was his popup menu when unanswered, and after a while of no-activity, you were "timed-out". All would not be lost if you had simply clicked any of the "connect" buttons found on several of the search tabs, you would have been re-connected and your search, as painfully as you designed, would have continued.

 

So what was happening, was you were offered help to make your life easier, and the disconnect message was, well sounded rather rude, ok, but you could have reconnected and if you had answered it (or at least clicked the "ok" button to show you were there, it would have continued no problem.

 

Brute force searches can be quite slow, as you noted, you spent hours on this search, and were probably not close to finished. On the plus side for us, you were hammering away for hours without bringing down the site, or disrupting other users who were also testing the system. On the down side for you, you went to sleep while letting it run, and it is not clear it would be finished when you woke up. You are not the only one to get such a message... han was given one too, and he contacted me, and I offered to help show him how to improve his search strategy.

 

In reality, your search should not take more than 15-30 minutes or so. So you can see why help was trying to be offered. There is no way you would know how to choose the best search stategies from scratch. We have some guidence in our old newsletters (see http://www.homebaseclub.com/newsletters) and there are hints within the help files on bridgebrowser, but the best strategy is for us to make some how to videos showing the fast way to do searches like what you wanted.

 

OF course, I wonder if you watched the videos? But anyway, we need to post some videos on how to use indexed searches to speed things along. To "reconnect" all you need do is press the "connect" button without closing the program (so nothing is lost). OF course, your "painful" experience will spur me to create some tip videos showing how to do searches like what you tried to do.. maybe i will even use your specific example, why not? A reasonable one to show.

 

First things first, the databases have "indexed" and "non-indexed" terms. If you search on indexed terms (like player name or contract) the search is fast. 54 hands are not indexed. 54 hands with specific hcp are not indexed. So this becomes painfully slow to search on those items. However, there is a way to quickly build an index using the "brd Shaper/hcp" tab. When you use this tab, you tell it the number of hcp, the shape, etc you want. Then you can choose the whatever additional criteria you want as "aux terms". This probably doesn't make sense to everyone right now. But i could have walked you through it in 5 or 6 mintues, and a movie will make it very clear.

 

So,

1. the message was an attempt to help, despite the way it sounded.
   
2. if you failed to respond to the message, you would have been disconnected in about 30 minutes anyway...software autodisconnects for no activity
   
3. Connect button puts you right back where you were, no lost data if you are ever disconnected, nothing lost,
   
4. perhaps having two people on line most of the day to offer help wasn't enough, one on the server and me floating, but one test was to see what people would do. Most people managed ok, at least from what i am hearing back. And if we could have chatted with you, i could have helped with your search so that you would not have to worry about getting it done in time.
   

Anyway, what they say in your case maybe true. You get what you paid for. In your case you paid nothing, and seems you got about the same. I would say I learned from your experience, but i already learned from my own that there are right ways and wrong ways to do searches. I too have collected data for hours and hours the way you did... one problem you will run into is that after collecting about 500000 hands or so, your computer will fail (memory dependent). This is another reason stephen tried to step in and direct you to him or me. But i will have to work on insturctions for this type of search (I think one of the newsletters discusses this issue, if so, it will be one of the late ones).

[TimG]

Pop Quiz for testers (this is not being graded)

• Did you find how to find only hands you played in team games?
  
• Did you find how to play hands you played only in tournaments?
  
• Did the movies on the homebase site help? What other movies would be useful?
  
• Did you find how to plot your average results over time?
  
• Did you find how to see the quality of your spade suit when you make an opening bid of 3S?
  
• If you wanted too, do you see how to see the quality of the 3S opening bid when vul, when not vul, when both sides vul?
  
• Anyone play with the trick stat tab? Some cool features there are hard to find, a video might help with that.
  
• Did you find a way to easily find all the hands you played against jlall and/or jdonn (or any two people you choose who you have played against) and pull them out in one search? (somewhat tricky)
  
• Did you find the way to find all your slam contracts? And quickly call up only those that made? or only those that didn't?
  
• Bonus (extra credit) Did you find how plot your results for opening leads versus 3NT contracts for each suit legnth (singleton, doubleton, tripleton, etc)? Do you know how you can see all the hands were you lead a doubleton against 3NT?
  

I don't think I was able to figure out any of this, but I didn't read any help files or instructions.

[1eyedjack]

Thanks

 

I think you have to appreciate from the outset that you are not talking to someone who was weaned on computers, databases and the like. I am probably typical of much of Stephen's tarket market: the great unwashed. You (or Stephen) may have to accept that if you want this product to break out beyond the market of IT professionals you are going to have to cope with a lot of idiots and their correspondingly idiotic searches.

 

Yes, I watched the three videos, but I did not find them very helpful. If I am alone in that then please feel free to ignore me. It will not break Stephen's pocket or his heart if a single potential customer walks away. I found the videos to be very effective in demonstrating the power of the product, but not very effective as a tutorial.

 

Until your latest post I had no guidelines to suggest how long a search should take. Those guidelines may be tucked away in a help file or manual (they were not in the videos). I had very little notice of the opportunity for a free trial, so had no choice but to suck it and see.

 

From my perspective I did not regard it as reasonable to spend several hours watching my computer screen in case something happened. Nothing in the run-up to the search suggested that it would time out before completion. I had no indication that the progress of the search would be personally monitored and no reason to expect that someone would try to contact me in the middle of it. If anything, the fact that the management wanted to stress the system would have, if anything, led me to believe that it would be allowed to progress unimpeded. Nor was there any indication that I might have been able to recover by reconnecting having timed out. My original plan come 04:00 was to curtail the search if by then it had not completed, and hopefully be able to examine the statistics gathered by then. I still do not know whether aborting the search in mid-run would allow that.

 

So yes, I fully understand what happened. Someone saw me trying to do something wrong way and tried to help. The attempt is appreciated even though it was destined inevitably to fail. It comes as no surprise to me that my search criteria were inefficient. For a first attempt, with no opportunity to read a manual and precious little experience of similar programs, that is perhaps to be expected.

 

At present I feel much the same way that I did when first trying out the Full Disclosure CC system.

[sfbp]

Hi Jack,

 

Been a crazy day here, quite apart from keeping one eye (sic) on the server.

 

Some follow-up information:

 

1. I did your search the easy way; even then it was still a very very long one, and I'm not sure how valuable the information was. I got 51,000+ hand records with the criteria you specified.

 

2. I'm not sure what it proves, but seems to be that 1NT is a clear winner (to the tune of 0.4 of an IMP or 1.8% at MP). However, as Ben pointed out, there are so many contributing factors, that would help people decide whether to make this bid that I don't think such a broad search really is all that useful. What might be more interesting is to grab the hands which have 5 in a minor and 4 in another suit. The comparison between 5M and 1NT has been made many times. (I don't have to hand but by me, Ben, and others. We actually wrote an article rubbishing Zeke Jabbour in the nicest possible way, which the ACBL decided not to publish, despite support from Larry C).

 

For many people 5-4 in the minors especially 4D+5C is a systemic problem which 1NT solves in the right pt range.... and on and on.

 

3. The BRidgeBRowser help screens are fairly detailed (although I admit I wrote them a long time ago) and the program takes pains to point out each time you start it, that you can get context-sensitive help by pressing <F1>, the standard "help" key. This might have enabled you to learn what different types of search are, without cracking so much as a book open.

 

4. All versions of BRBR come up into so-called wizard mode, which projects you into your first search, as an answer to the folks who stared at the screen and said "wow! but so what?". This can be repeated as often as you wish after the first time by simply selecting Wizard from the Help menu just above "about", right where every Windows program tends to have a help screen.

 

5. Some of the tutorials on the HB website are oriented towards that first duel with so much data. For example http://www.homebaseclub.com/forums/index.php?showforum=28

 

and also here:

 

http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/day1.html

 

So it seems maybe the best idea might be to practise with the free hbrbr and get familiar with some of the ideas, in time for the next free day for the "real" product.

 

I'm sorry it didn't work out; I should be glad to have you as a customer. But I would still probably be trying to nudge you in the "right" direction; that's just my nature.

 

Cheers

 

Stephen Pickett

Author of BRidgeBRowser

[1eyedjack]

Many thanks, Stephen. I suspect from what you say that even I might have managed slightly better if I was not in such a hurry.

 

One point that confuses me, being a non-techie person, is that I would expect the program to have to examine every hand in the database once in order to reject it as falling outside of the search criteria. It may be obvious to others but I don't understand how narrowing the search criteria will get around that problem. Does the time saving come within the process of comparing a selected hand with the search criteria? That would surprise me.

 

As to your objection regarding the usefulness of the outcome, I agree with your and Ben's criticisms entirely. I was hoping that I could do a "search within results" secondary search after the initial one, to test the effect on the overall stats of tweaking the criteria. Of particular interest to me would have been the specific (in order) 4-2-2-5 shape (where there are no rebid problems in a natural system by opening 1C). At least the raw result might be of value to some (and they do exist) who religiously will NEVER open 1NT with two doubletons.

[Rossoneri]

I probably got the same problem as jack did.

 

Was trying to look at transferring or not with 5332 hands, and ended up trying to run 2 searches on 2 different computers - desktop searching 1NT AP hands and laptop searching 1NT-2D/2H hands. After 1 hour, I gave up and went to bed.

 

Was out since morning so I didn't get to try again....

 

I only finished the 1st video, so maybe I will look at the others and try to figure out...I quite like the idea of getting so much statistical data to look at.

 

Preliminarily, it seems to be that not transferring is the better option. But of course, my search could very well easily have been biased...

[PassedOut]

My situation is different in that I'm very familiar with computers and databases. Because of a late start, I did not get to try out all the features that I'd have liked, but I certainly know now that I will be a customer.

 

The videos were helpful to me, and without watching them I would have had a tougher time getting going.

 

The densely packed main screen is the sort of thing one really appreciates once a powerful program becomes familiar, but it does look daunting at first. That's always a problem with UI design, as Alan Cooper has pointed out often. And I'm sure that's why Stephen created the wizard mode.

 

I'm looking forward to checking out more and more of the capabilities of BridgeBrowser. Thanks for making the trial version available yesterday!

[sfbp]

Many thanks, Stephen.  I suspect from what you say that even I might have managed slightly better if I was not in such a hurry.

 

One point that confuses me, being a non-techie person, is that I would expect the program to have to examine every hand in the database once in order to reject it as falling outside of the search criteria.  It may be obvious to others but I don't understand how narrowing the search criteria will get around that problem.  Does the time saving come within the process of comparing a selected hand with the search criteria?  That would surprise me.

 

As to your objection regarding the usefulness of the outcome, I agree with your and Ben's criticisms entirely.  I was hoping that I could do a "search within results" secondary search after the initial one, to test the effect on the overall stats of tweaking the criteria.  Of particular interest to me would have been the specific (in order) 4-2-2-5 shape (where there are no rebid problems in a natural system by opening 1C).  At least the raw result might be of value to some (and they do exist) who religiously will NEVER open 1NT with two doubletons.

Well, the good news is, I ran the search without doing it via the net. Ie I took a real dataset on a real machine and let it go full tilt!

 

What a difference! Now it takes 5-10 minutes. Sorry I didn't watch but I had other fires to fight, notably the clock change.

 

The downside (of course) is that it takes about 1/2 of the CPU.

 

Here it is:

 

http://www.homebaseclub.com/images/5422.jpg

 

I'm sure someone will want to give detailed commentary on this (hint hint) but I will content myself by saying this: the SD (actually SEM) is available but not shown in this graphic. The SEM for low frequency actions is large. The SEM for high frequencies is pretty small.... ergo, don't rely on the number you see for 2C but DO rely on 1NT.

 

I wish I could anticipate all the things that people might do, and create easier ways to access the data. The (perpetual) problem is that to be really interesting, people feel they have to look at the data in some way noone did before. After all if the answer is known, why bother?

 

So if you are serious about the 5422 thing, the only real solution is to put you and about a gig of data in the same room. It's bad enough being over the net, and in England at that (whereas I am only about 50ms from the server and awm is even closer, about 20ms!!!). This is the way we did searches at the beginning, I may add, until I came up with all these weird ways to index data. Originally I thought "maybe this will never be useful remotely". But you can get a lot of information (drilling down, they call it nowadays) on very specific things, like specific players who bid X holding Y or Z. Saving an intermediate file is definitely possible but it would take way too much CPU and disk on a shared server. As you've seen many ideas take a scan of almost the entire data set, and no one else gets a look in.

 

Ben will have the answers to these and many other questions over the coming months.

 

Stephen

[inquiry]

Well, not everyone will have watched the video on bid analysis on homebase's page, nor taken the six lessons in the bridgebrowser university on the same pages. So for them, the image Stephen posted will be a little difficult to follow. So let me see if I can explain what stephen showed...

 

First, he did a seach for all hands were dealer had precisely 5422 distribution (any suit could be 5 or 4 or 2) and 15 to 17 hcp. There were 51,498 of these. He forced opener to bid something (no passes in teh table) so he found auctions for 51,276 hands. Lets examine the top of image...

 

 

http://www.homebaseclub.com/images/0003.jpg

 

 

I have highlighted two areas in red. Inside the red circle is an arrow shaped thingee pointing to the column header "open". That means the "data" (imp average and mp average) will apply to the opening bid. Inside the long red box we see the following items...

 

1C 8299 0 0 0 0 0 81 0 -0.12 4792 48.30 3507

 

What this means is 1C was opened 8,299 times, and after an opening bid, no one bid one club as overcaller, responder, advancer, opner rebid, or made later in the auction (all such bids would be insufficient of course, which is why). One club was the final contract by the OPENING side 81 times, and 1C was never the final contract by the non-opening side. Of the 8299 hands that were opened 1C, the average result was a minus 0.12 imps (4792 opening 1C bids at imps), and the average mp score was 48.30% (3,507 opening 1C bids at MP).

 

If you were to move the sliding arrow (in the red circle) over the column headed by CntOS (for contract opening side), the average imps and matchpoints columns would reflect what the results were for the 81 contracts played in 1!C. And the number of matchpoint and imp hands would change from 4792 and 3507 to a pair of numbers that add up to 81 (for the 81 hands played in 1!C).

 

Now, lets look at another part of the image....here i placed a green box around the opening bids of 1!C, 1!D, 1!H, 1!S, 1NT, 2!C, 2!D, 2!h and 2!S. One might understand a 2!C precision opening with 4M5!C and 15 hcp. 2!D through 2!S might be a two suited opening bid. I know ritong (and I) will open 2!S or 2!H with five in that major and 4!C on up to 15 or maybe 16 hcp. In the database, you could click on the 13 hands that opened 2!S and see the hands and the alerts, if you were curious.

 

http://www.homebaseclub.com/images/0004.jpg

 

But if we look across the table, we find that an opening bid of 1!C, 1!D, and 1!H all averaged below 50% MP and negative imps. The 1!S opening bid averaged essentially zero imps (slight negative) and slightly more than average MPs. While 1NT averaged better very plus imps and MP's.

 

This search was set up with very broad limits.. it could include, for instance xx in both doubletons, one could fine tune it, making Qx or better in doubletons a requirement if one wanted to.

 

In addition, you can use the plotting routines to see if 15 versus 17 hcp made a difference in any of the bids, you could look to see if opening 1M worked better with weak major or strong major. All that from this screen without doing any more searching (the right click on the bids and plotting is a powerful tool).

 

At the very least, this study suggest that opening 1NT with 5422 distribution is not a losing proposition, and might very well be a winning one. To fine tune your decision process into rather to open 1NT with such distibution, you might want to examine the type of hands where 1NT turned out poorly. That is easy enough, right click on 1NT and choose plot. Look for contracts played, or tricks won, etc.. to examine how typical auctions might go.

 

Pop quiz ... from the table above, how many times did opener rebid 1NT after opening something other than 1NT?