[sceptic]

Scoring: IMP

---

West North East South

 -     -     -     Pass
 1NT   Pass  2♥    Pass
 2♠    Pass  4NT   Pass
 6♠    Pass  7♠    Pass
 Pass  Dbl   Pass  Pass
 Pass  


I am curious what 4NT bid is here?

according to this 4NT is not blackwwod or RKCB,
http://www.bridgeguy...byTransfer.html
I took it as quantative and accepted by bidding 6 spades


I was playing with an Advanced Turkish person, who up until then had seemed pleasant

His conversation went something like

pard 0314 you must bid

PARD YOU MAKE BIG MISTAKE THIS IS UR FAULT

???????????/

YOU mUST BID 0134

BAD BAD

etc etc etc

I do not have log chat on anymore and I could not be bothered to report to BBO, as this is becoming daily occourrence for me (maybe I am just crap and that is why I have so much trouble keeping pards)

The questions I have are

1/. is 4NT correctly described by my horrid pard as RKCB ask

2/. Why are people so bloody rude on the Net

3/. Why did my opps not boot my partner (this is a biggie for me, anyone that lets opps pard be rude is as guilty as the rude person)

4/. I play with a lot of pick up pards and I see them go down in reasonably easy contracts or defend badly, but when there is a bidding error some of these people become complete assholes, is there some sort of reason for it

5/. Why are play and defence errors acceptable and bidding errors a complete no no by the majority of people (in my humble opinion)

[helene_t]

1/. is 4NT correctly described by my horrid pard as RKCB ask
If he's really advanced he should know that it's quantitative, but I wouldn't count on it. Besides, what else is he supposed to bid with that hand? In the absence of specific partnership agreements I would just forget about spades and bid 6NT directly.

2/. Why are people so bloody rude on the Net
- People are not used to online communication and don't realize that there partner is flesh and blood
- It's part of human nature to be rude, actually they are even worse in real life

3/. Why did my opps not boot my partner (this is a biggie for me, anyone that lets opps pard be rude is as guilty as the rude person)
- If you didn't ask them to boot him they shouldn't, IMHO.

4/. I play with a lot of pick up pards and I see them go down in reasonably easy contracts or defend badly, but when there is a bidding error some of these people become complete assholes, is there some sort of reason for it
- Bidding mistakes tend to come from two sides so it's important to preempt partner's assholeness by being an asshole yourself first. Play mistakes tend to be obviously blamed on someone so there's no discussion to preempt.

5/. Why are play and defence errors acceptable and bidding errors a complete no no by the majority of people (in my humble opinion)
- see above

[whereagles]

> If he's really advanced he should know that it's quantitative

I'm not sure of that. I don't think there's a standard interpretation for this auction. Let's say it's the sort of bid you should avoid


> Bidding mistakes tend to come from two sides so it's important to preempt partner's assholeness by being an asshole yourself first.

A completely correct and exact analysis

[Codo]

helene_t, on Apr 10 2006, 05:23 PM, said:

1/. is 4NT correctly described by my horrid pard as RKCB ask
If he's really advanced he should know that it's quantitative, but I wouldn't count on it. Besides, what else is he supposed to bid with that hand? In the absence of specific partnership agreements I would just forget about spades and bid 6NT directly.

2/. Why are people so bloody rude on the Net
- People are not used to online communication and don't realize that there partner is flesh and blood
- It's part of human nature to be rude, actually they are even worse in real life

3/. Why did my opps not boot my partner (this is a biggie for me, anyone that lets opps pard be rude is as guilty as the rude person)
- If you didn't ask them to boot him they shouldn't, IMHO.

4/. I play with a lot of pick up pards and I see them go down in reasonably easy contracts or defend badly, but when there is a bidding error some of these people become complete assholes, is there some sort of reason for it
- Bidding mistakes tend to come from two sides so it's important to preempt partner's assholeness by being an asshole yourself first. Play mistakes tend to be obviously blamed on someone so there's no discussion to preempt.

5/. Why are play and defence errors acceptable and bidding errors a complete no no by the majority of people (in my humble opinion)
- see above

100 % agreed to Helene,

[Cascade]

4NT is quantitative

But that is only the second worst mistake of your partner on the given auction.

7♠ is insane over 6♠. It is the type of bid that one would make to try and punish partner for his presummed (but in this case non-existent) mistake.

[Wackojack]

[quote name='sceptic' date='Apr 10 2006, 03:09 AM']

I am curious what 4NT bid is here?

according to this 4NT is not blackwwod or RKCB,
http://www.bridgeguy...byTransfer.html
I took it as quantative and accepted by bidding 6 spades


Of course your partner's outburst was rude and offensive and moreover he was wrong. However, it seems that there is an unwritten rule in all pick up partnerships, which is that you must blast 4NT with any big hand and it means Blackwood or RKB according to profile. If you are playing Jacoby + Texas you can infer that 4NT should be quantitative, but I confess that I would have responded 5C in your position because it seems that it can't cost. I now pass any 6-level bid. A response of 5D, I would have to assume it is the SQ ask. 5S after 5C would give me some anxiety I admit.

I am giving the bidding attention here because I don't normally play Texas and this hand exposes deficiencies in my method. Responses to 1NT that I normally play are:
2♥-2♠-3♠ = GF 6 spades
3♠ = Invite 6 spades
2♥-2♠-3NT = pass or bid 4♠
2♥-2♠-4NT = RKB in spades

So I would not be able to make a bid that says "Partner bid 6 with 3 card support and max" The best I would be able to do would be to bid a 3-card minor as a trial bid after the transfer.

Maybe I should pay Texas, but nobody does in my part of the world. How many misunderstandings I wonder arise out of whether a 4♦ bid is Texas or SA Texas?

Back to your partner's behaviour: The player that misbids, all to often, is the one that gets offensive when the wrong contract is reached. Thats the way it is.

[rbforster]

Cascade, on Apr 10 2006, 05:12 AM, said:

7♠ is insane over 6♠.

I agree. 4NT is quantative with 5 spades in all my partnerships, but this may depend on your other choice of NT conventions (Texas, etc). 7♠ is ridiculous - he got mad at you because you get to make the 6♠ bid instead of him?! What did he think, that you found an extra ace hiding in your 15-17 NT opener?

[csdenmark]

[hotShot]

sceptic, on Apr 10 2006, 10:09 AM, said:

I am curious what 4NT bid is here?

A lot of people think that after agreeing on playing a suit, 4NT is always some sort of Blackwood. The question is: Did 2♠ agree to play a suit. Transfer seems very simple but in fact it is a very complex thing to agree about.

Quote

according to this 4NT is not blackwwod or RKCB,
http://www.bridgeguy...byTransfer.html
I took it as quantative and accepted by bidding 6 spades

Most people when agreeing transfer, think that this includes only the part of bidding the next higher suit. Other think that this implies superaccept and so on.

Quote

(maybe I am just crap and that is why I have so much trouble keeping pards)

Seems to me that you are trying hard to improve, an attitude that in incompatible with "crap". I don't think that you have more problems to keep a partner than others.
Bridge players have a tendency to think the way they bid with their regular face to face partner is "common sence". This makes almost everybody else to an irregular player.

Quote

1/. is 4NT correctly described by my horrid pard as RKCB ask

This is a matter of agreement, seems to me you did not have an agreement here.

Quote

2/. Why are people so bloody rude on the Net

You should consider a few things:
1. Face to face, 80% of the communication is non verbal. Online you can't see partners disapointment or any other emotion that would normally tell you that partner did not intend to hurt you.
2. Limited language skills cause people to simplyfy what the want to say. So they often read much harscher than they where intended.
3. People are alone with their computer, they don't get the emotional feedback from the one they are "talking" to. So they don't "see" that they have gone to far.
4. There are cultural differences about how much emotion you should express.
Some are more passionate others less, this leads to missunderstandings.

Quote

3/. Why did my opps not boot my partner (this is a biggie for me, anyone that lets opps pard be rude is as guilty as the rude person)

Well it's hard to know, lots of people seem to think that doing nothing is not taking side, but they are wrong.

Quote

4/. I play with a lot of pick up pards and I see them go down in reasonably easy contracts or defend badly, but when there is a bidding error some of these people become complete assholes, is there some sort of reason for it.

It is easier to see the splinter in someone else's eye and avoid the forest in one's own eye. If they don't know how to play better, how can they know they made a mistake?

Quote

5/. Why are play and defence errors acceptable and bidding errors a complete no no by the majority of people (in my humble opinion)

It is much easier to teach bidding, than to teach playing. The "systemic" bid is defined by HCP and length. The play is hidden in the cards played, analysing opponents strategies and understanding partners actions.
Experts extend their bidding system with judgement and understand the play.
The mathematic genius Gauss said:
Nothing shows lack of mathematical insight more, than accuracy dealing with numbers.
I'd like to adapt that, saying that nothing shows the lack of bridge abilities more, than pernickety with hcp ranges.

[kenrexford]

Although I agree 100% that 4NT is Quantitative and that the resulting comments and bids were ridiculous, I would suggest one thing.

That 4NT is quantitative does not and should not end the inquiry. My personal preference is for 4NT to be "quantitative/1430." Using this, Opener has several options after 4NT:

1. Accept by bidding 6NT
2. Accept, agreeing spades, by answering 1430 at the five-level
3. Accept, declining spades, by introducing your own suit as an alternative strain suggestion, at the six-level
4. Accept, but inquire about plausible 4-card minors with 5NT.

Under this approach, 6S is not an option. If 6S is "not an option," it should show something greater than "possible." Greater than possible could mean all four aces and a doubleton. If you assume that, then the likely doubleton, from partner's perspective, is in a round suit; you probably also need AJx of trumps. This makles 13 tricks rest on little.

That is a HUGE stretch, and certainly not worth comment. But, I like to find SOME way to defend, as Devil's Advocate.

This makes me think more. Perhaps a six-level bid, usually showing a void, should show a precise doubleton??? Perhaps the parameters should be four controls? Food for thought...

[paulg]

I would expect an expert or advanced player to recognise that this sequence is subject to differing interpretations at any level of the game, more so with an intermediate from another country. So it is foolish to get overly concerned about it.

But unfortunately, too many on-line people focus on the result rather than the game, which I feel means that they are missing the point. There is a time and place for results, and it is not pickup partnerships in the main club.

Relax, stay happy

Paul

[FrancesHinden]

To start with, personally I don't think everyone's suggestions about what other methods you should be playing are helpful ("should be Gerber" "should be a max with a doubleton") because you are playing with a pick-up partner, and "should" is irrelevant.

To address the questions

Quote

1/. is 4NT correctly described by my horrid pard as RKCB ask

I play it as quantitative. With my regular partners I would have bid as you did.

If I was playing online with a random partner, if partner bid 4NT and I wasn't going to pass, I would tell him how many aces I had. He's not going to misunderstand an RKCB response, even if he also thinks it is quantitative. There's a chance he will misunderstand a 6S response.

Quote

2/. Why are people so bloody rude on the Net

I don't know. I'm (almost) never rude on purpose, but I've managed to upset a couple of people totally without meaning to. But saying you've done something wrong is bad manners to start with, and to repeat it seems to me to be worse.

Quote

3/. Why did my opps not boot my partner (this is a biggie for me, anyone that lets opps pard be rude is as guilty as the rude person)

I don't really play online, but when I play F2F I never interfere in the opposing partnership unless they ask me to. I treat the opposition pair as a single unit, so (if it were me) it simply wouldn't occur to me to 'boot' one player.

Quote

4/. I play with a lot of pick up pards and I see them go down in reasonably easy contracts or defend badly, but when there is a bidding error some of these people become complete assholes, is there some sort of reason for it

I can't exactly answer this, but count the number of threads on BBO about bidding, and compare to the number on play or defence. I find the play threads much more interesting, but I'm definitely in a minority.

Declarer play is definitely different from defence or bidding because it's not a partnership part of the game. If you partner misplays a hand, you had no involvement so you don't feel as if you have been insulted or hurt to anything like the same extent.

Quote

5/. Why are play and defence errors acceptable and bidding errors a complete no no by the majority of people (in my humble opinion)

Because most people don't realise the defensive errors happened in the first place.

The most impassioned debates I have with my partners and team-mates are usually about defence.

[Free]

How can this East player know what to do after a RKC response??? Will he bid 6♠ or 6NT?
- If he bids 6♠, how does he know his partner has support?
- If he bids 6NT, why did he transfer to ♠?

4NT is quantitative, plain and simple. If he wants RKC, he should start with a 4-level transfer followed by 4NT. He was wrong, you were right, don't worry

[han]

I agree with most of the responses. Your partner was extremely rude and without reason. If I was table host then I probably would have booted this opponent, online bridge works differently than f2f bridge. (Of course I agree with Frances that in f2f bridge it is none of my business how the opponents act towards eachother.)

I do want to point out that there are a lot of really friendly people out there. Playing bridge on BBO with people you know are friendly can be a very good experience, I (almost) never encounter the rude behavior you describe.

[sceptic]

Quote

I (almost) never encounter the rude behavior you describe

Thats cos you don't bid like me on occasions (hahahah)

[mikeh]

FrancesHinden, on Apr 10 2006, 10:59 AM, said:

I can't exactly answer this, but count the number of threads on BBO about bidding, and compare to the number on play or defence. I find the play threads much more interesting, but I'm definitely in a minority.

I was interested in reading this, becuase this is precisely what Rosenberg describes in his great book 'Bridge, Zia and Me': when he played in the UK, most of the bridge discussions he had with his peers involved play problems but in the US the vast majority were bidding problems. So it seems to be a trans-atlantic thing: I wonder why?

Maybe because there are usually fewer technically 'right' answers to most play problems? Maybe because everyone, of almost any skill level, can have an opinion on bidding, with no clear way of demonstrating fallacies? Whereas, on a play problem, one can usually show convincingly why one line is better than the other?

Witness the multiplicity of posts on bidding issues compared to the sparse response on play problems.

[Trumpace]

Play problems are much more interesting than bidding problems to me...

A bunch of people I used to play with, claimed very often without any evidence whatsoever that a certain bid is obvious, based on the result of the particular hand in question. This had become so annoying that I now play with them only very rarely. Maybe that is one reason I started liking play problems better, where there is a way to decide then and there what a reasonable line is, instead of running simulations to decide if a bid is correct...

Actually no. That is not the reason. Play of the hand can present _extremely_ beautiful challenges, which (IMO) bidding does not.

[hotShot]

An established partnership, with an agreed system and trust in partners judgement, will only have play problems to discuss.
Further more once you have accepted that your system cannot work with all hands, you can stop to change your system after every board that did not work well.

[mikeh]

hotShot, on Apr 10 2006, 02:11 PM, said:

An established partnership, with an agreed system and trust in partners judgement, will only have play problems to discuss.

That may be correct in theory, but, at least in my experience, far from correct in practice. Look at Meckwell and compare the methods they play now to the ones they played 10 or 20 years ago.

Personally, in my strongest-ever partnership, we played for 6 years and my recollection is that we made changes to our methods after (or during) each event we played together. Some of them were major reconstructions (at one point we made a complete change in our response structure to 2N openings) while others were tweaks. They were not result driven, in the sense that we would tinker the methods to respond to a particular poor result: they were based on estimates of frequency and assessment of risk-benefit factors, albeit the discussion was often prompted by a particular hand: often a hand on which we had done okay but realized that there was a better method available.

[pigpenz]

sceptic, on Apr 10 2006, 03:09 AM, said:

I was playing with an Advanced Turkish person, who up until then had seemed pleasant

thats your problem right there, you should have been playing with a Turkish Expert