[jh51]

the hog, on 2011-August-05, 23:07, said:

"3. I wasn't aware that 1M-1NT-4M guaranteed, or even suggested, a 7-2-2-2 hand" It doesn't necessarily. I said this is the most likely holding. Opener won't have a singleton as most, strong partnerships play autosplinters on this auction.

This being the B/I forum, I thought "splinter" was banned here.
It would suprise me to find a B/I partnership being described as "strong" or using autosplinters.

[mgoetze]

jh51, on 2011-August-12, 12:46, said:

This being the B/I forum, I thought "splinter" was banned here.

Uh... why?

[awm]

What are the reasons for not wanting to open 4♠? It seems that there are:

(1) It might be better to play a partial, in case we cannot make a game.
(2) 3NT might be a better game than 4♠.
(3) We might miss a slam by opening 4♠ that we could find if we opened 1♠.
(4) We might induce a double from the opponents by passing and backing in later.

I don't think 3 and 4 are very serious concerns. In particular this hand (seven tricks) is not really stronger than the expected hand for a 4♠ opening. Certainly a slightly weaker suit and an eighth spade might be more common, but I don't think this hand is much better than ♠AQJxxxxx ♥xx ♦x ♣xx for example. For case 4, this may work against robots but any decent player in a real game is wise to this trick and will probably be less likely to double you than if you opened 4♠ in the first place.

You seem to claim that ♠AKQTxxx ♥xx ♦x ♣xxx is not a sufficiently similar hand to make judgments about this one.

However, it's clear that this less-shapely hand will play worse in 4♠ and equally well in 3NT. So if you don't open 4♠ on this hand, you shouldn't open 4♠ on any hand with seven spades to the AKQ. In fact the same could be said about ♠AKJTxxx and out, which is also likely to produce tricks in notrump.

Looking at your own sim results, I think it was clear to bid over 4♠ with hand 5. Slam is great opposite any four-level opener with ♠AK, and will have good play opposite ♠AQ and five-level safety opposite any second-seat 4♠ opening. On board 3 and 4, it seems like your robots just made mistakes in the bidding. Why would they double 4♠ when you open 1♠ but not when you open 4♠? Why do they overbid to slam when you start with a pass? I just think this is robot silliness that occurs when they cannot simulate a hand consistent with your bidding (because you did something weird) which is not really an issue that human opponents (even weak ones) tend to fall victim to.

[VM1973]

G_R__E_G, on 2011-August-12, 11:20, said:

VM1973 - At post #10 your top choice was to pass and your second choice was to open 2♠ (actually you said that would be your top choice if you were playing Ogust). By post #48 your first choice was to pass and your second choice was to open 1♠. Somewhere between there and your most recent posts you've decided that opening 1♠ is your top choice. So, despite much ridiculousness along the way, it is evident that your are learning something albeit at a much slower pace than you could be learning if you weren't burning most of your energy trying to prove that you are right.

This forum is hilarious. Half the people say that talking to me is like talking to a brick wall because I just won't budge and the other half claims that my opinion changes.

Yes, I initially thought that 3♠ was better than 4♠, as you can see by looking at my initial posts. It turns out I was wrong. I also initially thought that if you were going to bid with the hand that you should bid 1♠-2♠-3♠ with it. I no longer think that way. Isn't it amazing what will happen to a person's POV when they play the same hand 50+ times. I can tell you that playing with these bots you can never reach 3NT when it's right as when they bid 3NT they always have a void in my suit and that doesn't work out well at all. Does that mean that 3NT could never be right with this hand? Not at all!

As other people have noted: pass can work but it isn't the right decision. I completely agree! I've found, however, that pass never does badly when your partner is void in spades. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that this is the case.

My biggest complaint about this thread is people attitude along the lines of: "Well, we know what the right call is with this hand so we see no reason to look into the matter further" and then think I'm the stubborn one!

[VM1973]

gwnn, on 2011-August-11, 18:04, said:

My point was that there are no experts today who would pass hands that are good enough for opening, with long spades, in matchpoints or imps, white or red, day or night. 74, 75, 7321, 7330, or anything. They just will not pass. Pass will not occur to them.

Would you open AQxxxxx x x xxxx 1♠? If not, then you don't have a king above opening strength on this hand.

Anyway, the fact that AQxxxx Kx xx KQx is rated the same as AKQxxxx x x xxxx by K&R does not mean that either hand is a 3♠ bid, it just means that my rough guideline "a king above a minimum opening hand" is not to be taken as Gospel (hint: none of my posts on BBF ever should be). Anyway, you seemed to have forgotten the part with "a good 6 card suit" (extra points for criticising my reading abilities). AQxxxx does not qualify for a 3♠ rebid.

Unfortunately I can't look at the hands very carefully right now, but let me say that I cannot completely trust the competitive decisions of bots that think that

-
Q9xxx
Q10xxx
AQx

is a good hand for unusual 2NT and

xx
QJx
xxx
AQT9x

is a good hand to raise to 2♠ and

xxx
J
AKJTx
AQJx

is a good hand to jump to 5♦ over 3♥ from opponents

Sorry for distrusting these robots but believe me I am not a Luddite. I am a big fan of technology but we are not quite there yet when it comes to bridge bidding.

as an aside, 4♠x= scores 590.

AQxxxxx x x xxxx

Zar Points: Ace=6 Queen=2 Total:8
Plus 7 points for the longest suit: 15
Plus 4 points for the 2nd longest suit: 19
Plus 6 points for the difference between the longest and shortest: 25
Plus 1 point for concentration: 26
Plus 1 point for holding the spade suit: 27

Minimum open bid using Zar points: 26

So yes, I would not argue with a partner that chose to open the hand in question 1♠ if we had agreed to play Zar points. In fact, you could change the ♠Q to a ♠J and it would still be an opening bid.

Edit: Not that I think this opening would be considered legal in an ACBL junior room.

[gwnn]

I apologise if the below post says a lot of things you already know, but I guess there is some of it you don't already know, or something that I got wrong, in which case I would be happy to be enlightened. I think 1♠-1NT; 3♠ is a bad idea and if you were to open 1♠, then 2♠ is the way to go (or some hand similar to this might want to bid 4♠, see more on this about 2 pages below).

If you ask me whether AQxxxxx x x xxxx was more or less likely to make game than a 'modern' 1m opener that often has 12 crappy points and a 4333, I will probably say that they have about the same likelihood, and I believe that is what the ZAR count of 27 tells us. Does this mean that AQxxxxx x x xxxx is a good 1-level opening? Not at all. A minimum balanced opening has a much lower likelihood for making game than a minimum unbalanced hand. A minimum unbalanced hand with a good 6-card suit makes game even more likely than a minimum hand with, say, 5-4 minors. Why is this? How did this happen? There are two reasons for this that I can see, which are related to each other.

First of all, you can preempt with a hand with a long suit but not a lot of points. Basically when you have something like AQJTxx in a suit and not a lot outside, you know with a high confidence level that your partnership should play in that strain, especially if the said suit is a major. First of all, even though I have a long suit, partner still rates to have a doubleton or so, second of all, even if partner is strong and has a long suit, we should play my suit because the partnership should play in the weak hand's suit, other things being equal. So if I know we should play spades, we do not need to describe each other's hand so delicately any more. I can just say "let's play spades!" like Robin Sparkles and partner will acquiesce. Opponents, on the other hand, need bidding space more than ever, since if we have a long suit, and hence a fit, they rate to have a fit themselves but at the moment they don't know where that is. Sure enough, if my evil opps open 3♠ and I have 7 hearts I can bid 4♥ and we are (sort of) happy, but often this secret fit will be 4-4 or 5-4 or 6-3 with 6 cards in the weak hand, or often if one hand bids 4♥ and the other has a singleton heart they need to find their 5-4 minor suit fit but it's too late. There have been many threads on BBF on the best possible structure over (3♠)-3NT-p-?, and let me tell you a secret: they all suck! All those structures are horrible and involve a lot of guess work (of course, some structures are better than others, but compared to 1♠-1NT-p-?, they are really really inaccurate and random). And that is because the situation is horrible. Well anyway, what I wanted to say is that preempting with a long suit is a good strategy, even though the ZAR or K&R points rate this hand better than AJx KQxx Qxx Txx.

Secondly, let's talk about these balanced hands. So what of AJx KQxx Qxx Txx? Why should we open this hand if it barely even crosses our expected value from the dealing machine (10.75 at K&R, 23 zars)? Shouldn't we heighten our opening requirements when it comes to balanced hands? Isn't this groupthink at action again? Well I'm not a psychologist, and I am sure groupthink has a part in most bridge actions, but I think there's good bridge reasons for opening such a hand. It is encouragement for partner! If we are going to encounter the ruthless, stormy waters of competitive bidding, partner should be let in on the secret that we have points. Suppose I pass one of these crappy balanced hands and LHO preempts, then what should partner do with a long suit? Well he could overcall regardless of his strength, but there's a limit to everything and we will often miss a game like this: there's a hand with the points and the other hand with distribution/a suit. If the hand with the points doesn't help out, the hand with a suit just doesn't warrant action. By the way, it still pays to act sometimes with distribution when they preempted, for example I remember some hand like Axxxxx Qxxxx x x when it went 3♦-p-p- and the smartest guys in the room like jlogic and hanp all said 4♦ wtp? because our partner rates to have 3-4 diamonds but didn't have enough to bid 3NT so we should help him. However, this only goes so far and we should still open balanced hands that have nothing but a few points to tell partner "I have points!!!!". This motif of encouraging partner applies not only to game level, btw, we will often find some sort of nice partscore when we open these balanced hands and partner can show his suit, or sometimes he has 4-5 cards in our silly minor and we find a partscore there. There's another reason, namely that even though we have only points, sometimes points are enough. If I hold 12 balanced and partner has 12 balanced and we pass it out, it might be that we just missed a good 3NT where our 24 points with no distribution sufficed for 9 tricks. Well this is not so likely, but still 12+9 is usually very good for a 1NT contract, and so on, even if we are 3-4-3-3 opposite 3-3-4-3, or something, so this is another case where we need to open in order to find a partscore.

So, I think a fair question at this point would be, if indeed anyone got to this point of my post without dying of boredom, 'what does this have to do with anything??'. Well I will tell you: the point is that the minimum hand for a 1♠-1NT; 2♠ rebid is a much stronger hand than for 1♣-1♥; 1NT. And if you look at the definition for 1♠-1NT; 3♠, it will say something like "good 6-carder, 14-16 points". So if we amend the above auction, I can tell you for sure that a minimum hand that bids 1♠-1NT; 2♠ and has a good 6-carder (say, AQT9xx or better), I promise, it will be a much stronger hand than AJx KQxx Qxx Txx. So when the beginner's book says "14-16 points" for the 3♠ rebid, it means that literally, you should indeed have 14 high card points for the jump rebid. And in the context of having a good 6-card suit, it will rate very very highly on K&R. AKJTxx KQx Qxx x rates at 17.75, for example. Obviously with a 7-card suit you won't have 14 points all the time. AKJT9xx AJx xx x is 18.2.

Some things I didn't really touch above but I will mention very briefly here:

• the 'good suit' restriction is often defined as 'playable opposite a singleton', i.e. partner may indeed raise to 4S with a stiff spade, if his hand doesn't look very notrumpy
  
• another good rebid on a 6-card spade suit is 2NT sometimes, if 2S looks too much of an underbid and 3S doesn't seem possible because of teh above suit quality requirements
  
• there are some people who like rebidding a 3-card minor as a temporising bid, but others seem to think they can do without this
  
• playing gazzilli you can have two different 3S rebids: one for strong suits+points, one for strong suits only. perhaps in those systems having a hand like this (but not exactly this because this is still a 4S opening for me!)
  
• indeed, the whole post above this point is slightly suspect because I want to advocate a 2S rebid when I am a 4S opener all along
  
• on this note, I'd like to finally say that there's an interesting point that you should discuss with your partner: what does 1S-1N; 4S show? some players think it's just a 4S opening with a side king or so, others that it is a powerhouse (20+ with 6 very strong spades) and partner is entitled to act over it

[gwnn]

I would also like to mention that checking a lot of hands to compare certain actions/plans has been done before on BBF, but with humans, not bots.

You can find them here:
http://www.bridgebas...r__all__st__200

The same hand was played 30 times. The final conclusion was that pass and double are comparable but 2♥ was probably inferior. Something that disappointed me because I wanted to bid 2H. There was a clear consensus, however, that we will never do this again - it seemed to be a waste of time, to a certain degree.

Summary thread: http://www.bridgebas.../36778-summary/

[mikeh]

VM1973, on 2011-August-13, 08:58, said:

This forum is hilarious. Half the people say that talking to me is like talking to a brick wall because I just won't budge and the other half claims that my opinion changes.

Yes, I initially thought that 3♠ was better than 4♠, as you can see by looking at my initial posts. It turns out I was wrong. I also initially thought that if you were going to bid with the hand that you should bid 1♠-2♠-3♠ with it. I no longer think that way. Isn't it amazing what will happen to a person's POV when they play the same hand 50+ times. I can tell you that playing with these bots you can never reach 3NT when it's right as when they bid 3NT they always have a void in my suit and that doesn't work out well at all. Does that mean that 3NT could never be right with this hand? Not at all!

As other people have noted: pass can work but it isn't the right decision. I completely agree! I've found, however, that pass never does badly when your partner is void in spades. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that this is the case.

My biggest complaint about this thread is people attitude along the lines of: "Well, we know what the right call is with this hand so we see no reason to look into the matter further" and then think I'm the stubborn one!

I think you misunderstand the arguments being made by most who criticize you. By the way, you didn't help your cause, at least with me, by asserting, in essence, that you are smarter, or better educated, than those who criticize you. In fairness, you seem to have changed your attitude to some degree, and maybe your earlier arrogance was based on a false impression of the levels of competence, education, intelligence etc actually possessed by many of the posters here.

As it is, it seems to me that your (commendable) re-evaluation of the respective merits of various actions is still based on a less-than-optimal approach to simulations.

At the risk of being overly-condescending myself, any attempt to weight the merits of various approaches using any bridge playing programme is not going to help you very much....at least, not if you ever want to play the game well. These programmes do NOT bid well. I don't know enough about them to explain where theit faults lie, but I do know enough to be able to state with confidence that we seem to be years away from having any software able to bid at the standard of a run-of-the-mill real life expert. Card play is a different story, in that the brute force repeated iteration approach of good software seems to hold a great deal of promise, especially if the programme is written to be able to draw inferences.

What you have done, in essence, is to submit 50 or so deals, using the OP hand as a given, to 4 bad bidders, and then drawn inferences as to which appraoch works best with these 4 bad bidders. Note that if you submitted this hand to a different software package, you would likely get different results.

By contrast, submitting the hand to this forum has exposed you to the collective and individual experience of a wide range of players. I don't know much about most of the posters here, beyond the impressions gleaned from their writings, but I am confident that every one of the posters who has critcized your approach and reasoning is a far better bidder than any of the bots you have employed.

I think it is fair to say, and actually is one reason bridge is such a great game, that for most people (certainly for me) progression through the game is like approaching a distant but very high mountain range, by crossing a series of ever higher foothills. Every time you reach what you think of as a summit, you realize that there is ever more hitherto unseen territory to explore, and a higher summit to ascend.

I think it was Reese who wrote to the effect that an average player, if able to read the thoughts of an expert during a hand, wouldn't believe the complexity of the expert's thinking (I am paraphrasing, not quoting).

I mean no disrespect when I say that the impression I get from your posts is that you don't yet realize the full extent of the difference between an expert player and the type of player exemplified, in terms of bidding, by your bots.

There is no rule, of course, that says that you should meekly accept the opinions of those who post here. We represent a small cross section of good players, and only one of those who have so far posted on this thread haa a solid claim to be world-class in the true meaning of the term, but, equally, I do think that you are wasting, at least to some degree, the opportunity afforded by reading these forums.

[Quantumcat]

I say 4♠ - for a side-suit to be worthwhile with a really long suit, it has to be a good one.
Why?
You can be fairly sure partner is short in your really long suit, and even if he is void in your side suit, you won't get to ruff very many. And the more likely thing is you'll need to lose one or two tricks in the side suit before you can start ruffing them, and defenders would have to be pretty dull to not lead a trump or two at this point.
In this case the side suit is just a bunch of losers, same as your singletons, and there won't be much difference between you having a 7222 and this 7411.
However, if you have a couple of high cards, hopefully partner will also have a high card or two in the suit, and it will be a set-up-able suit rather than a suit full of losers you wish you could ruff.
Treating a 7411 like a nice shapely hand and adding some points to it means you are banking on partner having a couple of trumps and a void/singleton in the side suit, or else being very strong in it to take care of making it a set-up-able suit all by himself. Not too likely.
Lesson is, unless partner supports you, a 7411/7420 with a bad sidesuit is basically the same thing as a 7222.
So with this hand, it isn't as good as it looks and 4♠ will do nicely.

[VM1973]

gwnn, on 2011-August-13, 10:57, said:

I apologise if the below post says a lot of things you already know, but I guess there is some of it you don't already know, or something that I got wrong, in which case I would be happy to be enlightened. I think 1♠-1NT; 3♠ is a bad idea and if you were to open 1♠, then 2♠ is the way to go (or some hand similar to this might want to bid 4♠, see more on this about 2 pages below).

If you ask me whether AQxxxxx x x xxxx was more or less likely to make game than a 'modern' 1m opener that often has 12 crappy points and a 4333, I will probably say that they have about the same likelihood, and I believe that is what the ZAR count of 27 tells us. Does this mean that AQxxxxx x x xxxx is a good 1-level opening? Not at all. A minimum balanced opening has a much lower likelihood for making game than a minimum unbalanced hand. A minimum unbalanced hand with a good 6-card suit makes game even more likely than a minimum hand with, say, 5-4 minors. Why is this? How did this happen? There are two reasons for this that I can see, which are related to each other.

First of all, you can preempt with a hand with a long suit but not a lot of points. Basically when you have something like AQJTxx in a suit and not a lot outside, you know with a high confidence level that your partnership should play in that strain, especially if the said suit is a major. First of all, even though I have a long suit, partner still rates to have a doubleton or so, second of all, even if partner is strong and has a long suit, we should play my suit because the partnership should play in the weak hand's suit, other things being equal. So if I know we should play spades, we do not need to describe each other's hand so delicately any more. I can just say "let's play spades!" like Robin Sparkles and partner will acquiesce. Opponents, on the other hand, need bidding space more than ever, since if we have a long suit, and hence a fit, they rate to have a fit themselves but at the moment they don't know where that is. Sure enough, if my evil opps open 3♠ and I have 7 hearts I can bid 4♥ and we are (sort of) happy, but often this secret fit will be 4-4 or 5-4 or 6-3 with 6 cards in the weak hand, or often if one hand bids 4♥ and the other has a singleton heart they need to find their 5-4 minor suit fit but it's too late. There have been many threads on BBF on the best possible structure over (3♠)-3NT-p-?, and let me tell you a secret: they all suck! All those structures are horrible and involve a lot of guess work (of course, some structures are better than others, but compared to 1♠-1NT-p-?, they are really really inaccurate and random). And that is because the situation is horrible. Well anyway, what I wanted to say is that preempting with a long suit is a good strategy, even though the ZAR or K&R points rate this hand better than AJx KQxx Qxx Txx.

Secondly, let's talk about these balanced hands. So what of AJx KQxx Qxx Txx? Why should we open this hand if it barely even crosses our expected value from the dealing machine (10.75 at K&R, 23 zars)? Shouldn't we heighten our opening requirements when it comes to balanced hands? Isn't this groupthink at action again? Well I'm not a psychologist, and I am sure groupthink has a part in most bridge actions, but I think there's good bridge reasons for opening such a hand. It is encouragement for partner! If we are going to encounter the ruthless, stormy waters of competitive bidding, partner should be let in on the secret that we have points. Suppose I pass one of these crappy balanced hands and LHO preempts, then what should partner do with a long suit? Well he could overcall regardless of his strength, but there's a limit to everything and we will often miss a game like this: there's a hand with the points and the other hand with distribution/a suit. If the hand with the points doesn't help out, the hand with a suit just doesn't warrant action. By the way, it still pays to act sometimes with distribution when they preempted, for example I remember some hand like Axxxxx Qxxxx x x when it went 3♦-p-p- and the smartest guys in the room like jlogic and hanp all said 4♦ wtp? because our partner rates to have 3-4 diamonds but didn't have enough to bid 3NT so we should help him. However, this only goes so far and we should still open balanced hands that have nothing but a few points to tell partner "I have points!!!!". This motif of encouraging partner applies not only to game level, btw, we will often find some sort of nice partscore when we open these balanced hands and partner can show his suit, or sometimes he has 4-5 cards in our silly minor and we find a partscore there. There's another reason, namely that even though we have only points, sometimes points are enough. If I hold 12 balanced and partner has 12 balanced and we pass it out, it might be that we just missed a good 3NT where our 24 points with no distribution sufficed for 9 tricks. Well this is not so likely, but still 12+9 is usually very good for a 1NT contract, and so on, even if we are 3-4-3-3 opposite 3-3-4-3, or something, so this is another case where we need to open in order to find a partscore.

So, I think a fair question at this point would be, if indeed anyone got to this point of my post without dying of boredom, 'what does this have to do with anything??'. Well I will tell you: the point is that the minimum hand for a 1♠-1NT; 2♠ rebid is a much stronger hand than for 1♣-1♥; 1NT. And if you look at the definition for 1♠-1NT; 3♠, it will say something like "good 6-carder, 14-16 points". So if we amend the above auction, I can tell you for sure that a minimum hand that bids 1♠-1NT; 2♠ and has a good 6-carder (say, AQT9xx or better), I promise, it will be a much stronger hand than AJx KQxx Qxx Txx. So when the beginner's book says "14-16 points" for the 3♠ rebid, it means that literally, you should indeed have 14 high card points for the jump rebid. And in the context of having a good 6-card suit, it will rate very very highly on K&R. AKJTxx KQx Qxx x rates at 17.75, for example. Obviously with a 7-card suit you won't have 14 points all the time. AKJT9xx AJx xx x is 18.2.

Some things I didn't really touch above but I will mention very briefly here:

• the 'good suit' restriction is often defined as 'playable opposite a singleton', i.e. partner may indeed raise to 4S with a stiff spade, if his hand doesn't look very notrumpy
  
• another good rebid on a 6-card spade suit is 2NT sometimes, if 2S looks too much of an underbid and 3S doesn't seem possible because of teh above suit quality requirements
  
• there are some people who like rebidding a 3-card minor as a temporising bid, but others seem to think they can do without this
  
• playing gazzilli you can have two different 3S rebids: one for strong suits+points, one for strong suits only. perhaps in those systems having a hand like this (but not exactly this because this is still a 4S opening for me!)
  
• indeed, the whole post above this point is slightly suspect because I want to advocate a 2S rebid when I am a 4S opener all along
  
• on this note, I'd like to finally say that there's an interesting point that you should discuss with your partner: what does 1S-1N; 4S show? some players think it's just a 4S opening with a side king or so, others that it is a powerhouse (20+ with 6 very strong spades) and partner is entitled to act over it

Well your post was long and kind of rambling, but let me respond with a few impressions.

First of all, you indicated that you think a 4-3-3-3 +12 Milton Work points (hereinafter called "HCPs") is just as likely to make game opposite another equal hand as two 27 Zar Point (hereinafter "ZP") hands. Now I personaly have not done any simulations, but from what I've read ZPs work out just fine, including some people on here who've said they've found it profitable to open 6 and 7 HCP hands because their ZPs were good. Even the detractors admit that ZPs are better, statistically speaking, than HCPs. Accordingly I reject your idea that I should open ♠KJx ♥AQxx ♦Jxx ♣Jxx for basically no other reason than that the 4-3-2-1 HCP system was popularized back almost a century ago because it was simple and easy to remember. A simple look at the ZPs of that hand shows that it is well below a minimum opening bid and the LTC concurs.

Secondly, regardless what you might bid with the hand in question I certainly hope you wouldn't bid 4♠ holding ♠AKQ10xxx ♥xxxx ♦x ♣x but you certainly might consider opening it 1♠ and if you do, I think you must certainly admit that it doesn't do the hand justice to rebid 2♠ with it. You could easily make game opposite:
♠x ♥AQ10 ♦xxxxx ♣xxxx which is a bare 6 HCPs and no better than an 8-card fit. The hand values at 21 ZPs and since the proposed opener clocks in at 30 ZPs you are actually 1 ZP short of the 52 required for game.

[VM1973]

mikeh, on 2011-August-13, 13:19, said:

I think you misunderstand the arguments being made by most who criticize you. By the way, you didn't help your cause, at least with me, by asserting, in essence, that you are smarter, or better educated, than those who criticize you. In fairness, you seem to have changed your attitude to some degree, and maybe your earlier arrogance was based on a false impression of the levels of competence, education, intelligence etc actually possessed by many of the posters here.

As it is, it seems to me that your (commendable) re-evaluation of the respective merits of various actions is still based on a less-than-optimal approach to simulations.

At the risk of being overly-condescending myself, any attempt to weight the merits of various approaches using any bridge playing programme is not going to help you very much....at least, not if you ever want to play the game well. These programmes do NOT bid well. I don't know enough about them to explain where theit faults lie, but I do know enough to be able to state with confidence that we seem to be years away from having any software able to bid at the standard of a run-of-the-mill real life expert. Card play is a different story, in that the brute force repeated iteration approach of good software seems to hold a great deal of promise, especially if the programme is written to be able to draw inferences.

What you have done, in essence, is to submit 50 or so deals, using the OP hand as a given, to 4 bad bidders, and then drawn inferences as to which appraoch works best with these 4 bad bidders. Note that if you submitted this hand to a different software package, you would likely get different results.

By contrast, submitting the hand to this forum has exposed you to the collective and individual experience of a wide range of players. I don't know much about most of the posters here, beyond the impressions gleaned from their writings, but I am confident that every one of the posters who has critcized your approach and reasoning is a far better bidder than any of the bots you have employed.

I think it is fair to say, and actually is one reason bridge is such a great game, that for most people (certainly for me) progression through the game is like approaching a distant but very high mountain range, by crossing a series of ever higher foothills. Every time you reach what you think of as a summit, you realize that there is ever more hitherto unseen territory to explore, and a higher summit to ascend.

I think it was Reese who wrote to the effect that an average player, if able to read the thoughts of an expert during a hand, wouldn't believe the complexity of the expert's thinking (I am paraphrasing, not quoting).

I mean no disrespect when I say that the impression I get from your posts is that you don't yet realize the full extent of the difference between an expert player and the type of player exemplified, in terms of bidding, by your bots.

There is no rule, of course, that says that you should meekly accept the opinions of those who post here. We represent a small cross section of good players, and only one of those who have so far posted on this thread haa a solid claim to be world-class in the true meaning of the term, but, equally, I do think that you are wasting, at least to some degree, the opportunity afforded by reading these forums.

First of all, I never asserted that I was smarter or better educated than anyone on here. How could I? I don't know anything about any of you.

Secondly, you'll have to forgive my scepticism, but every day I run into BBO "Advanced", "Experts", and even "World Class Players" who make the most amazingly stupid bids and plays imaginable. It makes the Bridge Baron Bots look quite skilled in comparison. So you'll have to forgive me if I take anyone's claim of expertise on here with a grain of salt.

Finally, as to the claim that if the hand were submitted to a different software package that the results would be markedly different, I seem to recall that I suggested other people put it to their favorite software program and/or just deal some hands out to see what results were obtained. It wouldn't be impossible for all these expert club players to agree to "spike" one of the boards that had the correct vulnerability and position to see how the hand would actually get bid and played in a club setting. No one, however, seems to have any thing else to say except, "We're not experts, but we have the uncanny ability to read experts' minds and know that experts would unanimously bid 4♠ with this hand."

[Cyberyeti]

VM1973, on 2011-August-16, 12:42, said:

First of all, I never asserted that I was smarter or better educated than anyone on here. How could I? I don't know anything about any of you.

Secondly, you'll have to forgive my scepticism, but every day I run into BBO "Advanced", "Experts", and even "World Class Players" who make the most amazingly stupid bids and plays imaginable. It makes the Bridge Baron Bots look quite skilled in comparison. So you'll have to forgive me if I take anyone's claim of expertise on here with a grain of salt.

Finally, as to the claim that if the hand were submitted to a different software package that the results would be markedly different, I seem to recall that I suggested other people put it to their favorite software program and/or just deal some hands out to see what results were obtained. It wouldn't be impossible for all these expert club players to agree to "spike" one of the boards that had the correct vulnerability and position to see how the hand would actually get bid and played in a club setting. No one, however, seems to have any thing else to say except, "We're not experts, but we have the uncanny ability to read experts' minds and know that experts would unanimously bid 4♠ with this hand."

There are at least 2 people who are going to the Bermuda bowl in the list of people who are telling you that you're wrong, and other good F2F players too.

I agree you can't go by peoples' estimation of their own worth, but read some of the other threads, you can often tell which posters have the respect of the experts (I'm certainly not one of them) and that should be a clue they're worth listening to.

[gwnn]

VM1973, I will try to make this post less rambling, and will make sure it is shorter than the previous one.

I would often open 4♠ with AKQxxxx xxxx x x (there is no ten, and especially not T987, but OK, it's a long thread and we all make mistakes), and when I open 1♠, I definitely rebid 2♠, not 3♠. You will have to read my long and rambling post as to why not, but the basic idea is that it is not good enough! a 3♠ jump rebid promises a very good 6+ card suit and about a K more than opening values, and in the context of a very good 6+ card suit in a hand that is too good to preempt, neither AKQxxxx x x xxxx nor AKQxxxx xxxx x x is good enough for that category.

As to why open balanced 12 counts, I tried to argue but I guess I didn't convince.

[mikeh]

1. In terms of what I perceived as your attitude, take another look at the tone and content of your post 40.

2. In terms of your reference to others testing your method using their favourite bridge program, I think you reveal your lack of appreciation of the level of expertise of most of the posters hereon. I speak only for myself, but would be surprised to learn that many of the better players here have a different view: I don't have a 'favourite' program. My understanding of such programs is that none of them play well enough to represent a challenge as opponents, and I have limited time to play, and either play with friends, for the social element, or with a serious partner, for the competitive element. In the former, there is no benefit to playing against a computer rather than other friends or in a live tournament, and in the latter, we play to hone our competitive skills, and playing a (bad) computer opponent won't assist us.

3. In terms of your suggestion that I and others are really saying: 'We're not experts, but here's what a real expert would do', all I can suggest is that you google Justin Lall, and, to a far lesser extent, me. JLOGIC recently won the US team trials, which is one of the toughest events in the world, and this is only the most recent of his notable successes. My credentials are far more modest, but they are enough that I think I can validly claim to be a bit better than your 'club expert'.

[Phil]

VM, the nice thing about the forums is that you have more transparency that you do in the MBC and I agree that you have a lot of yahoos that put expert and world class on their profiles and do not understand the game.

There are a few players like 655321 that are relatively anonymous, but for the most part you can google a lot of the players here and see some of their tournament results and make the determination for yourself with regards to their qualifications.

[neilkaz]

I'll chime in very late to this thread with another vote to open 4♠ with what looks like a preempt to me. I think in a good game this is more effective than "walking the dog" by starting with 1♠ and PD is allowed to expect me to have 7 tricks of playing strength to open 4♠ in 2nd seat, even at favorable.

.. neilkaz ..