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Cast the first stone


dburn

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Justin,

 

I love the way you think about Bridge and your insightful threads about this.

 

But can you please stop to insult people just because they have a different style to write and think?

Codo, in this thread it wasn't Justin who started the insults.

He ain't talking only about this post sadly. But I feel that things are improving on this matter anyway.

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2/1 is not like sayc, it requires a totally different frame of mind. If you have a 2/1 structure you just bid 2s on this hand, then partner can bid 2n (some kind of relay/enquiry) and then you can show a minimum hand with 5-4.

 

Making any bid past 2s in a 2/1 auction should show extras, including raising partners suit, otherwise you would have the aforementioned problem. Since you are in a GF auction you can bid 2s confidednt that partner will not pass, this is different from sayc where 2s is NF and you might just want to play in your best partscore 3d.

If by "SAYC" you mean the style of most players who put "SAYC" on their profile, then OK.

 

But as SAYC is described on a.o. the ACBL site,

1-2

2

and

1-2

3

are both forcing.

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Seriously bridge is a game of percentages. Nobody is claiming if they take an action it will work out whenever partner has any hand in his possible set of hands. So refuting someones bid based on one cherry picked hand is pretty silly.

 

The silliest thing in this thread is by far dbrn saying that you KNOW one common system is inferior to another common system. The second silliest thing is dburn going off on hanp for giving his input in a thread where dburn asked for advice.

 

But the joke is on all of us for thinking dburn actually cares what anyone has to say, he knows it all and would like to make not-so-clever jokes and not-so-clever references to obscure things to show us how smart he is.

 

Oh and did I mention he likes to troll Americans?

Justin,

 

I love the way you think about Bridge and your insightful threads about this.

 

But can you please stop to insult people just because they have a different style to write and think?

LOL

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Codo, in this thread it wasn't Justin who started the insults.

That depends on whether "LOL" is an insult.

Give me a break. Dburn makes a post asking several questions. All hanp does is answer them.

 

For this hanp deserves these 2 comments:

 

(Memo to self: asking hanp a question is a mistake. I knew this, but I had forgotten.)

 

then I would rather - well, I would almost rather play an entire session with hanp than play these cards in 3NT and not 5♦.

 

???

 

We also get some obligatory snotty remarks about "American bidding."

 

Naturally I'm the jerk in this thread because I said LOL when dburn said he "knew" that playing 2/1 was wrong. Ok. The world we live in is very funny.

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Give me a break. Dburn makes a post asking several questions. All hanp does is answer them.

 

For this hanp deserves these 2 comments:

 

...

Are you saying that your "LOL" was justified because you knew that Burn was gong to insult Han four hours later?

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Give me a break. Dburn makes a post asking several questions. All hanp does is answer them.

 

For this hanp deserves these 2 comments:

 

...

Are you saying that your "LOL" was justified because you knew that Burn was gong to insult Han four hours later?

Come on, if I wrote s.th. like "well but we already knew Brits can't bid", then I wouldn't mind getting a sarcastic reply, or a "LOL", or whatever. In fact, any comment just ridiculing my statement, rather than ridiculing me or Americans or Germans or Dutch would seem rather mild in reply to me.

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Do you mean that "to play [2/1 game-forcing] is a mistake" was an insult? Or are you saying that it wasn't an insult per se, but it merited one by way of a reply?

 

Edit: I'm rather regretting getting involved in this. As far as I'm concerned, Justin and David can throw around all of the insults they want to, as long as neither of them, nor Han, is thereby discouraged from sharing their views about bridge.

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Do you mean that "to play [2/1 game-forcing] is a mistake" was an insult? Or are you saying that it wasn't an insult per se, but it merited one by way of a reply?

I am saying that "LOL" in reply to "because I already know the answer - to play that way is a mistake" is not an insult.

 

Btw, "LOL" means "laughing out loud".

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As far as I'm concerned, Justin and David can throw around all of the insults they want to, as long as neither of them, nor Han, is thereby discouraged from sharing their views about bridge.

Perhaps starting a thread, getting replies from han that shared his views about bridge, and replying that it was a mistake to ask hanp a question, is a good way to discourage him from sharing his views about bridge.

 

You repeatedly question Justin's justification for LOL. What exactly is dburns justification for his comments other than to fuel his own massive ego?

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Do you mean that "to play [2/1 game-forcing] is a mistake" was an insult?  Or are you saying that it wasn't an insult per se, but it merited one by way of a reply?

 

Edit: I'm rather regretting getting involved in this.  As far as I'm concerned, Justin and David can throw around all of the insults they want to, as long as neither of them, nor Han, is thereby discouraged from sharing their views about bridge.

Yeah whatever I guess let's not get into it it doesn't matter. Even if you think "I started it" attacking hanp rather than me seems like a stretch. FWIW if dburn had insulted me after I said "LOL" I would not really have cared, but insulting hanp twice for doing nothing but giving his opinion on the questions asked seemed pretty amazing.

 

Also there are degrees of insults, I don't think quoting a statement like "I am sure that playing 2/1 GF" is a mistake and LOLing it is insulting to the person (I am talking about that statement only). I do think saying the stuff that dburn said to han is very insulting on a personal level, or at the very least to the level of their bridge (which is different than insulting a comment they make).

 

I also know that comments similar to dburn's do discourage hanp from posting. That's why he doesn't post much anymore. If hanp was a bad poster then whatever, but I think hanp is a good poster as I think most others thing, and he's also my friend, so it is sad to see.

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Perhaps starting a thread, getting replies from han that shared his views about bridge, and replying that it was a mistake to ask hanp a question, is a good way to discourage him from sharing his views about bridge.

Yes. That was what I meant, or part of what I meant anyway.

 

What exactly is dburns justification for his comments other than to fuel his own massive ego?

How would I know?

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In case I've given the wrong impression, my fairly pointless discussion with Cherdano and others about the nature of an insult was no more than a fairly pointless discussion about the nature of an insult. It doesn't mean that I agree with what anyone said to anyone else, or that I think anyone started anything, or that I think anyone was more or less in the right than anyone else.
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In case I've given the wrong impression, my fairly pointless discussion with Cherdano and others about the nature of an insult was no more than a fairly pointless discussion about the nature of an insult. It doesn't mean that I agree with what anyone said to anyone else, or that I think anyone started anything, or that I think anyone was more or less in the right than anyone else.

Further questions will be answered by your lawyer? :P :)

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West bid 6. Was that a mistake?

Was it a mistake? Maybe it depends on the circumstances.

 

If the slam had been bid by Zia, in a last ditch attempt to win the Lederer single-handed, then we would all applaud his audacity

 

If the slam was bid by a nameless novice in Bbo Relaxed at 3am after a bottle and a half of vodka, then why was it posted here in Adv/Expert Forum?

 

We will never know.... perhaps the hand is sheer invention to make a dubious political point?

 

Tony :lol:

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West bid 6. Was that a mistake?

Was it a mistake? Maybe it depends on the circumstances.

 

If the slam had been bid by Zia, in a last ditch attempt to win the Lederer single-handed, then we would all applaud his audacity

 

If the slam was bid by a nameless novice in Bbo Relaxed at 3am after a bottle and a half of vodka, then why was it posted here in Adv/Expert Forum?

 

We will never know.... perhaps the hand is sheer invention to make a dubious political point?

 

Tony B)

All political points are by their very nature dubious, but this hand actually occurred a few days ago.

 

I seem to have offended JLOL (in his various guises) not a little, for which I apologise. I plead in mitigation that in response to hanp's observation that it was a mistake for East to be playing with West, I was under some provocation when I (West) asserted that it was a mistake to ask hanp a question - that was by way of a retaliatory, not an ab initio, insult. Still, "yes", "no" and "yes!" did not strike me as views from which one could gain very much.

 

I also confess to having misunderstood one of cherdanno's comments, which was foolish of me and for which I also apologise. Mind you, whatever kind of idiot it must have seemed to him that I thought he was, I was mildly perturbed to discover that he believed I (although certainly an Englishman) might regard 1-2-3-3NT-4-4 as not forcing.

 

I am still a little perturbed at this suggested sequence (I think it was mich-b who proposed it):

 

1-2-3-3NT-4-4-4-4NT

 

because if the West hand were:

 

J10xxx AKx AQxx K

 

it would presumably bid the same way and the partnership would obtain a result no less undignified than the actual one (because West would bid 5 and East would bid a slam). It is axiomatic that one does not bid Blackwood with an uncontrolled suit, and although one tends to forget this axiom when the suit is the one in which partner has opened the bidding, one probably should not.

 

I fully understand the idea that bridge is a game of percentages, and "cherry-picking" hands to demonstrate that such-and-such an auction may not work well is in general an unproductive exercise. If I have been guilty of that to an unreasonable extent, I proffer a third apology. But it seems to me that whereas one may bid games, or take decisions under pressure in competitive auctions, on the basis of percentages or intuition or both, this approach should not be applied to slam bidding.

 

As to Ken Rexford's pertinent question about the meaning of 4, it did not mean anything very much other than that I did not want to pass 3NT (which, pace hanp, I still consider absurd), and I wanted to hear partner's next bid in the hope that if it was not 4 (which would simplify the auction for me greatly), it would be 5 only if he had a suitable hand for slam. Partner, on the other hand, thought he was obliged to cue-bid his club control despite not having a particularly suitable hand for slam at all, hinc illae lacrimae. Many auctions, but particularly 2/1 game-forcing auctions in the hands of unsophisticated people such as myself, suffer from this kind of flaw. But the truth may be, as Fred remarks, that the pair of you can end up in a daft contract without either of you having made a daft bid.

 

Thanks to him and to everyone else for their comments. Sorry, partner and everyone else.

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