[Wackojack]

This is a bit of personal feedback on my experience with BBO.

1. I played bridge at a fairly competitive level as a young man, then quitted entirely for about 25 years. About 5 years ago I was pesuaded by some ladies who were learning bridge to take it up again, so I started playing rubber bridge then duplicate at the local club. More recently I decided that I wanted to improve and move up a level. I found the BBO forum and decided to use it to further my bridge knowledge. 18 months on, I can say that I have learned so much all due to the really informed contributions to the forum. I am not exaggerating when I say that the dedication and knowledge shown by most of the posts fill me with admiration. You are doing a fantastic job.

2. Until very recently I have not been tempted to play on-line. I confined myself to occasionally watching view graphs of international matches. Recently one of your regular posters said hi to me when I was checking the viewgraph. After a brief chat he showed me the mechanics of playing on-line, and since he was the perfect tutor in that respect it playing was a fun experience. Next, I started to go to the main bridge club on-line to get a pick-up partner at intermediate or advanced level. What was most noticeable was that the players in their profiles in so many cases say they play so many obscure conventions - and inevitably Gerber and Capeletti - when if they paid more attention to good bidding principles they would be much better players. On the other hand, I did once kib a game played by regular posters playing their fiendishly clever systems who obviously knew what they were doing, and most importantly were having a lot of fun.

Last Friday, however, just before my bed time (UK) I dipped into kib a homebase tournament and was taken aback at the standard of bidding by some of the players. Twice in succession hands that even Mrs Guggenheim at the local would have got right went badly wrong. The 1st when 3 clubs was bid opposite a 2nt opener, raised to 4 clubs presumably because it was thought to be natural. The 2nd when the 2nt opener rebid 3 hearts with 4 spades and 3 hearts in response to 3 clubs. (raised to 4 hearts in 4-3 fit) Why is this happening? Do playes treat on-line bridge tournaments more carelessly that f2f local duplicate bridge. Or would they do this kind of thing anyway?

3. All that said, I am not put off on-line bridge and can see that it could become very addictive. I find it amazing to be playing with people from all parte of the world; to see the Bermuda Bowl on viewgraph; and to get expert views on Bridge issues - and all for free.

Thanks

[csdenmark]

I find it amazing to be playing with people from all parte of the world
Me too!

[inquiry]

Wackojack, on Mar 13 2006, 08:21 AM, said:

Last Friday, however, just before my bed time (UK) I dipped into kib a homebase tournament and was taken aback at the standard of bidding by some of the players.  Twice in succession hands that even Mrs Guggenheim at the local would have got right went badly wrong.  The 1st when 3 clubs was bid opposite a 2nt opener, raised to 4 clubs presumably because it was thought to be natural.  The 2nd when the 2nt opener rebid 3 hearts with 4 spades and 3 hearts in response to 3 clubs. (raised to 4 hearts in 4-3 fit)  Why is this happening?  Do playes treat on-line bridge tournaments more  carelessly that f2f local duplicate bridge.  Or would they do this kind of thing anyway?

Wacko,

I am glad you are taking the plunge and playing on line. As for the quality of the bridge online, it can be very good to very very bad. Still the example auction you gave for 2NT auctions don't ring too true: for homebase or elsewhere, although I guess both will happen occassionally. In fact, for HomeBase events it is very easy to investigate such auctions in real time. Our hands are uploaded immediately into the bridgebrowser database. Using bridgebrowser you can search by data or by auction or by date and auction, or by player, or by player and data and auction. or by contract, or by suit quality. or player and data and suit, or by hand shape, well you get the idea.

In homebase events (either free ones or fee-based ones) there has been no

2NT - 3C
4C <<----- auction to date in any homebase event. This is easy enough for any homebase member with bridgebrowser to confirm

That doesn't mean that there has been some bad auctions. Just not the first one you poste (or the hands didn't be posted to the database, but as I look at the records of hands -- see http://www.homebaseclub.com/hands ) I see all four events from Friday were added: We have to add them to get these links posted.. for the record. we use bridgebrowser to create the webpage for the individual results and to post the link in this page for the individual results, all automatically.

So far in homebase club, 2NT has been opened 142 times, of these 9 times with a minor two suiter (9 hcp - 5 times, 10 hcp - once, 11hcp -3 times), once with 17 hcp, seven times with 18, eleven times with 19 hcp, seventy six times with 20 hcp, twenty eight times with 21 hcp, nine times with 22, and once with 23 hcp.

Of the 142 hands, opener only rebid 4♣ once and that was an auction that went like this:

2N - 3H*
4C*

Where 3H was jacoby and 4C was cue-bid with max and support for spades. That auction had an interesting point perhaps for students.. the auction continued...

2N - 3H*
4C*- 4H**
6S <--- this was doubled

Where 4H was alerted as "retransfer to spades" but opener took it for cue-bid. Slam was down one and responder had ZERO slam ambition. Hands like this are useful tools to hammer out partnership bidding understandings. This was NOT a pickup partnership.

The second auction you suggested (2N-3C-3H with 4S and 3H's) did occur. I doubt this was so much a bad auction as a misclick. You have to remember, if you misclick there is no recourse if undo's are not allowed. The player in question has played MANY MANY hands on the bbo and uses stayman more or less normally. So I would not read too much into that one.

Finally since you were watching this in a Free tourney (not one of the fee-based ones), there is a lot less serious bridge being played in those. But for the most part everyone tries their best in both types of games.

[Wackojack]

Ben,

The hand in question was board 5 in tournament 84. I have downloaded Bridgebrowser but I have been having trouble using it. I remember 2NT was the opening bid and 3C was the response. I see the final contract was 5c in a 4-1 fit. (So opener must have initially made some bid other than 4c) Incidentally you were one of the opps. The potential bidding interest to me if I had responder's hand would be "do we have an agreement on what to bid with a 5431 7-count?" 3S? Also what does 3C mean. 4 or 5-card (puppet) stayman. Either way it should be easy to get to either 4S or 3NT.

You caught me out on that one, next time I hope to have Bridgebrowser going and check my facts. I am glad that the 3H bid must have been a misclick. btw I haven't yet learned how to request an undo although, so far it, hasn't been needed- touch wood.

[inquiry]

Ah.. yes I remember the hand well. The auction was not a thing of beauty, but as usual when something like this happens, was due to a series of misunderstandings

2NT - 3C
4NT - 5C
Pass

Where

3C was stayman
4N was meant to show a super max 2NT without a four card major
5C was "blackwood" response showing no ACES (btw, with this hand I would have passed 4NT)
4NT bidder thought now that 5♣ was natural and contract choice and with four clubs (in 3334 hand) passed.

4NT has a play, 5♣ is hopeless. LHO clearly made a mistake with 4NT, RHO facing a limited partner and knowing game is the limit made a mistake by not passing the 4NT call.

To use Bridgebrowser, Wacko, you need a new username and password. We provide these to club members who play in one of our events (either one of the nearly two dozen free ones we ran in the last two weeks, or in any of the pay ones) every few months and who join the homebase forum. You have done the second part of this, you joined the forum. Now you just need to play once. I will be happy to give you one-on-one instructions for using the program. For instance, to quickly find the hand you jsut described...

1) choose search by contract, pick 5C
2) combine contract search with player search, since you know I was playing

This search (hands played in 5C where inquiry was at the table) will be very fast and will return very few possible hands. You could combine this with a 2NT opening bid and no doublt it would return only one hand.

Other ways to find this hand are to look for 5C contracts were declerer has a singleton club. A faster way of the same is combine the 2NT opening with 5C contract on a singleton (hands are indexed by player and opening bid so such searches are faster). Another way is to look for opener with 21+ and balanced pattern (regardless of oepneing bid) and 5 club contracts, etc. The opening lead here was a confused trump by me if I remember, so you could search for 5C contracts with a club opening lead. There are more options of course, and any number of these can be combined.

Ben