BBO Discussion Forums: Free bid options - BBO Discussion Forums

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 12:19, said:

lol

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We'll just take your word for it.

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lol

Wow, you are really a clown.

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 12:19, said:

True learning cannot begin until you realize the inconsistency of this statement.

wyman, on 2012-February-29, 12:37, said:

I never resorted to calling anybody names because it's childish, but I'm happy to hear people variously calling me "jackass" and "clown" for having a well-reasoned argument and sticking to it. Well defended, wyman! Clearly I can't have anything valid to say, why, I am both a donkey and a man who paints his face and terrorizes children! Case closed!

HighLow

You annoyed a lot of posters when you first showed up, but people took the time to explain to you, as a newbie in the site, where you were rubbing people the wrong way.

You seemed to acknowledge that the criticisms of your posts were largely valid, and you moderated your tone in a way that did you credit: you continued to make your points, but you dropped the 'I'm right' tone.

Unfortunately, you have now, it seems, reverted to the attitude that generated the initial criticisms.

In particular, your assertion that you know when you're right. That smacks of a very closed-minded, arrogant approach to a very complex game in which few bidding issues can ever really be answered so categorically.

Bidding is a balancing of a host of factors, including, in the context of the OP:

1. Risk/reward re an initial overcall

2. Partnership agreement, either explicit or as a result of playing together, with respect to what an immediate overcall may promise

3. Partnership style as to reopening doubles as opposed, for example, to reopening with 1N

4. Partnership style as to what our minimum would be for 2♠ over 2♣: the more aggressive we are in fighting for the partscore, the less likely it is that partner will raise 2♠when we belong in game

5. Partnership style as to what 3♠ shows, over 2♣. This is intimately related to (4).

And so on.

Points 1 and 2 are essential to a determination of whether this hand warrants immediate action. Not every dangerous action gets caught speeding....even when we 'should' be going for a number, the opps often can't read the situation, or we have somewhere else to go. Here, the opps, for example, might 'have us' at 1♠ but be unable to get us, due to systemic constraints and/or fear that 200 or 500 won't compensate for a missed vulnerable game.

If we play 'sound' overcalls, then overcalling seems wrong because, in addition to the inherent risks of 1♠ going for a number, our partner may get us too high.....but this is a question of style.


I have for most of my bridge career been a relatively conservative bidder. My own experience, which is not at the level of a Justin but is greater than yours, is that I am nost successful when I overcome my conservative instincts, and least successful when the opps combine good agreements with good technique and, most importantly for this post, aggression in the auction.

Your experience may differ....you may be sure that you are right....but if you want to make friends and influence people, you need to recognize that others, including stronger players than you are, disagree....and you need to tone down your attitude.

Phil, on 2012-February-29, 12:43, said:

Phil, There are many, many things I have a strong opinion on but am open to feedback from others. But I have limits. Some things, you're just not going to convince me I'm wrong about, unless something earth-shattering happens, and I haven't seen anything close to that here today.

And there's one thing I can say with absolute certainty here: my opinions expressed here are extremely valid and easy to back up. I have done a very good job of doing so here, and for that, I'm being called a "clown" for using scare quotes when referring to a person's 'credentials.'

Ad hominem attacks don't make one look like a winner, they make one look like an immature fool. And I stand behind my scare quotes, because--> and I state this with the utmost conviction-->I have yet to see a post by JLOGIC that is anything near as insightful as anything you, mikeh, BunnyGo, inquiry, and about 20 other people I can list off the top of my head post here on a regular basis.

Those players are much, much, much more qualified than me to post an explanation on almost anything having to do with bridge than I am. Why? They are much more experienced than me, and they consistently write well and thoughtfully.

I'm done for now.

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 12:49, said:

Actually, I called you a jackass for calling JLall's action ludicrous with no argument at all (your claim that I ignored the other part of your post is silly, since that had to do with your call after (1H) P (P) X
(P) ?
not about the overcall)
and for subsequently getting indignant about it.

And I called you a clown for putting quotes around Justin's "credentials" and for claiming that you know you're right when several experts here disagree.

I stand by both claims.

mikeh, on 2012-February-29, 12:54, said:

MikeH, I list you as one of the people above whose opinions I very much respect. Do you not know what caused me to be so angry?

It is because MULTIPLE PEOPLE have reverted to immature, ad hominem attacks against me, irrespective of (1) their actual knowledge of me, (2) the quality of my argument, (3) what other people are actually saying.

Please reread all this. *I* am the one being attacked for having an opinion and voicing it strongly. Are other entitled to an opinion? Absolutely. But attack my argument on its merits, not me; and stop, for the love of God, talking about how wonderful these pithy, vapid one-liners from 'the anointed one' are. They are not insightful to me in the least, and in some cases they fly in the face of opinions expressed by multiple-time World Champions in print.

-Tate

wyman, on 2012-February-29, 12:55, said:

JLall said he wouldn't overcall. Reread his argument, for the love of God.

Besides, an overcall in this position is, in my opinion, ludicrous, and if you need me to explain why, even though I've done so several times, I'd be happy to do so again.

And in terms of "credentials" --> I stand by my scare quotes. Feel free to ask me why. I've explained why I've used them several times.

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 13:04, said:

No, he said not overcalling was OK but that he would overcall:

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I think its time for a walk around the block for you. Go get a sandwich or something.

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 13:04, said:

JLOGIC, on 2012-February-29, 05:22, said:

Ah, I see what you mean...

Phil, on 2012-February-29, 13:08, said:

This is exactly my point: it could be read as "I would overcall, BUT..." meaning, he wouldn't overcall. Or he would. Either way, to anyone who isn't playing in the Bermuda Bowl, overcalling on this hand seems nutso to me. And it's another example of an ambiguous, unhelpful post.

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 13:17, said:

A word of advice:

there is a huge difference between

<action> is ludicrous!
and
<action> seems nutso to me.

The former is a judgment of an action. It is absolute. It implies something about the person that makes the action.
The latter strongly states your opinion about the hand but is neither authoritative nor judgmental, and it suggests a willingness to hear another side.

"seems nutso to me" is actually a much friendlier way to disagree than saying "is ludicrous" (though, especially when I'm outwardly disagreeing with seriously WC players, I'd tone it down even more).

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 13:01, said:

I took you up on your suggestion.

Justin made an intelligent post (leaving aside his typo re his major suit holding). It was succint....he rarely writes at the same length as, for example, I do. However he set out his reasoning in an understandable fashion.....very few posters elaborate and most assume that their readers can fill in the blanks, especially if they (the posters) have made a very large number of posts and can thus expect most of the readers to know something about how they, the posters, think.

You called his choice of overcall 'ludicrous', without any supportive argument.

later, when called on this, you gave some arguments, but the starting point was you, not others.

later, you said that we ought to be aware that partner had strained to reopen. When called on this, you admitted that you ought to have said that partner 'may have' strained to reopen...this is a non-trivial distinction. Once again, the criticisms voiced of you were in response to a weak (indeed, mistaken) point raised by you early in your posts.

You clearly resent the respect given to Justin. Maybe there are a few posters who upvote his a little exuberantly, but I don't assess his posts by his accumulated upvote total...I don't know what it is, other than I'm sure it's much higher than mine! And I suspect that the vast majority of posters and lurkers feel the same way.....even when we disagree with him, we find that thinking about what he has said gives us a better understanding of the issue.

so chill out.

There's another issue here, and I've had to calm down before attempting to write this.

HL keeps saying that he's happy to hear people debate him on an issue. Something like: "well, I've explained my reasoning, go ahead and debate me," which is fine. But this usually ends up with "you haven't proved me wrong, so I must be right."

There are a lot of decisions in this game where one can write a few convincing paragraphs outlining exactly why one course of action is more likely to succeed than another. Play problems lend themselves nicely to this, for example. But bidding decisions are considerably harder to be provably right about. So many things make these decisions subjective -- style, opponents (including history), system, colors.

Bidding problems rarely have a right or wrong answer. HL seems to have the strongest feelings in the thread about the (non-)overcall in the OP, but most people are on the fence. "It's not my style" or "I would overcall but barely" or "I wouldn't, but I wouldn't object if partner did" or "In my partnership this isn't an overcall, but playing with person X, it would be" I think sums up the feelings of most.

This is an answer to OP's question. He came here not to look in an answer key for the right or wrong answer necessarily, but to hear what others would do with the hand. OP can decide, based on his experience and on reading the forums for some time, how much weigh to give to each of the responses, and he (and his partner) will develop their own style (which needn't match any of ours) accordingly.

One point I want to make explicit: When Justin comes into a thread and says "I'd bid 1S," that's information. I don't need him to spell out the colors or the fact that I have 3 dead in RHO's suit. I can see that. I want to know how much weight to give that. My internal learner sees that Justin would overcall, and that bit helps me make decisions on future hands (after all, I'll likely never see this exact hand again). Since I give more weight to Justin's decisions than you do (which is a personal decision), I want to see what he says, even if he doesn't write 2 pages on the subject. Attacking his action will only serve to make him (and other players of his caliber) post less, and that's bad for the forums. Again, not every post needs to be as long as this one. Not every vote needs to have a "why" along with it to be meaningful.

mikeh, on 2012-February-29, 13:24, said:

I'm chill. As Walter Sobchak says in The Big Lebowski, "I'm calmer than you are, dude."

I just explained this in a private message to Phil, but I'll rexplain it here.

Point 1: Calling an action ludicrous is not a judgment of the actor. It is a judgment of the action, and I stand by the judgment that an overcall is "nutso to me" or "terrible bridge" or "ludicrous" in this situation. That is an opinion of the action, not the actor.

Point 2: For the record, I originally read JLOGIC's post as saying "I would overcall under different circumstances, but here are 3 reasons I wouldn't." I still stand by that interpretation. But I can concede that he might be saying "I would overcall. Here are 3 reasons why others might not." This is vague phrasing and it's characteristic.

Point 3: This is exactly what I meant earlier by saying that I find his posts unhelpful. I find them sloppy, disorganized, uninsightful, and not fully (if at all) explained. I guess I just got to the point where I'm tired of it.

Point 4: I still think that even in the most favorable interpretation of his posts, they are dangerous. Sure, he is an expert with a whole host of partner agreements, but his statements can be interpreted very dangerously by the other 99% of the bridge-playing population who aren't playing at Expert/World Class levels with a whole host of system gadgets and a profound understand of what makes this hand different from, say, ♠J107xx ♥AKx ♦T98x ♣x. So my point beyond point 3 (unhelpful) is, point 4, they can be dangerously misinterpreted by people who don't fully understand all the considerations, and I can even pinpoint an example of this happening in another forum post about a different hand. I called his advice on a particular situation, or at least the interpretation of his advice as stated by the poster of the hand, terrible advice.

Point 5: Calling me a clown or a jackass is a judgment of me that has nothing to do with the soundness of my argument. These are VERY different things. VERY VERY different. And this is EXACTLY what got me angry. I have no beef with JLOGIC, I just don't have any esteem for what he writes. But I take deep, personal exception to namecalling.

It was the ad hominem attacks and attacks without the facts that angered me. Not that I hate the overcall and others may love it because JLall seems to love it; not because they disagree with any of my arguments or how I presented them.

I'm sorry, guys. I'm not going to play nice with people who call me names, and if you critique my arguments without a solid understanding of the facts, I'm going to nail your argument to the wall and carve my initials into it.

Just as I would expect you to do of me.

Right, let's get on then.

-Tate

wyman, on 2012-February-29, 13:37, said:

I read everything you wrote, Wyman, and it's much better than what you've written earlier today.

However, I'm not missing the point. You're missing the point.

See my post above.

HighLow21, on 2012-February-29, 13:53, said:

Your approval means everything to me.

Wow, this thread got ugly in a hurry. I doubt Justin needs so many well-intentioned citizens leaping to his defense every time someone disagrees with him.
I think the initial overcall is close but I would bid. I'd like to avoid having to make an uncomfortable decision later in the auction and at a higher level.

wyman, on 2012-February-29, 13:37, said:

This is ironic. As I read the thread, HL gave his opinion on the overcall (he thinks it's ludicrous) and you attacked and insulted him for it.

quiddity, on 2012-February-29, 14:03, said:

THANK YOU. Finally, someone understands what pissed me off so much in the first place!!!