[inquiry]

Echognome, on Mar 11 2008, 02:15 AM, said:

I also didn't care for Ben's criticizing people for their poor searches.

I take strong exception to the characterization of what I did as "criticizing people" for poor searches. This is simply not what I was doing. 1eyedjack complained about something stephen did to him. I explained what happened, and why stephen did it.... and that it was an offer to help. If we had given each user his own login name, stephen would have know who 1eyedjack was and sent him an email or private message directly to offer help. Since he didn't know who he was, he did it this way (the offer to han was different, stephen was able to determine who han was somehow based upon ip address I think).

Likewise in awn's case, it was the same thing. I explained his situation was exactly the same as 1eyed'd and there was a better way (ie, orders of magnitude faster) to do the search. If both are allowed to complete, they will give the same data. This is not, at least in my mind, remote close to being critical I even mentioned that I too have done searches the "hard way" (ok the "wrong way"). Those searches work, but I think 1eyedjack expression about going to bed to let it do its thing is a good description of the amount of time those take. When using "the program" if you build your index of the hands you want, you can find all the hands in a database that match your criteria in a few minutes... if you set your criteria too broadly so that it finds hundreds of thousands of hands, of course, that will take much longer. One advantage of the current small free program, even "wrong way" searches take no time at all... there is just too few hands to make it so painfully slow.

[sfbp]

pclayton, on Mar 11 2008, 08:23 AM, said:

Stephen isn't exactly denying this happened, which is sad.

I am denying his version of it. Absolutely.

I think Justin's self-serving account speaks for itself, if you divorce the rhetoric from the facts.

[gnasher]

awm, on Mar 11 2008, 05:32 PM, said:

(1) Surely bidding 3♣ is better than bidding 4NT, which is what basically all the other auctions did.

Yes, much better. My point was that having bid 3C and had the game try accepted, responder would still like either to hear his partner cue-bid CK or to ask his partner about his suitability for slam, which is not the same as suitability for game.

[sfbp]

han, on Mar 11 2008, 08:38 AM, said:

If you ever post a hand I played as a personal attack then I will take serious offense.

I have already taken serious offence at your attacks on me. Certainly you won't ever be invited to try BRBR for free again, and if I had you coming to me begging to be a customer, I would turn you down.

'Nuff said.

[jdonn]

Jlall, on Mar 11 2008, 02:52 AM, said:

and I have good understanding friends, several of whom also steam at times.

LIAR!

[jdonn]

sfbp, on Mar 11 2008, 11:41 AM, said:

I think Justin's self-serving account speaks for itself, if you divorce the rhetoric from the facts.

Could you give your account? It certainly looks bad for you the way he told it, but I try my best to withhold judgment till I hear both sides of a story.

[han]

Ouch, I was hoping I would be asked as beta tester for bridgebrowser but I guess I ruined that. Shake hands?

[sfbp]

han, on Mar 11 2008, 08:57 AM, said:

Ouch, I was hoping I would be asked as beta tester for bridgebrowser but I guess I ruined that. Shake hands?

Obviously you're joking

In any event BRBR is not a beta-test product, and I apologise to anyone who received that impression. I doubt that it will make it to version 3 unless I win the lottery.

[han]

OK, I accept your apology, let that be the end of this flamewar.

[Echognome]

inquiry, on Mar 11 2008, 08:40 AM, said:

Echognome, on Mar 11 2008, 02:15 AM, said:

I also didn't care for Ben's criticizing people for their poor searches.

I take strong exception to the characterization of what I did as "criticizing people" for poor searches. This is simply not what I was doing. 1eyedjack complained about something stephen did to him. I explained what happened, and why stephen did it.... and that it was an offer to help. If we had given each user his own login name, stephen would have know who 1eyedjack was and sent him an email or private message directly to offer help. Since he didn't know who he was, he did it this way (the offer to han was different, stephen was able to determine who han was somehow based upon ip address I think).

Likewise in awn's case, it was the same thing. I explained his situation was exactly the same as 1eyed'd and there was a better way (ie, orders of magnitude faster) to do the search. If both are allowed to complete, they will give the same data. This is not, at least in my mind, remote close to being critical I even mentioned that I too have done searches the "hard way" (ok the "wrong way"). Those searches work, but I think 1eyedjack expression about going to bed to let it do its thing is a good description of the amount of time those take. When using "the program" if you build your index of the hands you want, you can find all the hands in a database that match your criteria in a few minutes... if you set your criteria too broadly so that it finds hundreds of thousands of hands, of course, that will take much longer. One advantage of the current small free program, even "wrong way" searches take no time at all... there is just too few hands to make it so painfully slow.

Maybe I should have used the term critical rather than criticize. You did at least help them.

Inquiry, on Mar 8 2008, 07:13 PM, said:

This is a poor design for a search...

However, I don't have a grave concern, because you did spend the time to help them.

[matmat]

sfbp, on Mar 11 2008, 11:45 AM, said:

I have already taken serious offence at your attacks on me. Certainly you won't ever be invited to try BRBR for free again, and if I had you coming to me begging to be a customer, I would turn you down.

'Nuff said.

Great business plan for someone who gets no business. wonder why that is?


I wasn't planning on "contributing" to this thread and piling on, but the comments you've made to/about some of my friends are ridiculous. I'm not going to claim to be unbiased now, but I was at the time of the latest free trial;

I took a few minutes to try this "program." I found it cumbersome and slow, i found the interface cluttered and completely non-intuitive; I have no idea about the algorithms used, but the GUI is p!$$-poor, too many buttons, check-boxes, combo boxes, tabs, panels, menus, etc.;

If i were given access to the full blown BBO database I could probably throw together some sort of search engine for myself in a few days of concentrated effort, that I would be much happier with; it probably would not be marketable, but so what? I feel like the draw to this software is the data itself not the interface being used to look at it. In fact, I'd be more likely to shell out $ on a dvd or two of BBO data than on this home-brew piece of code. Besides, why are we reinventing the wheel here? I'd guess there are plenty of good database programs out there that would be perfect for this task if only the data were available in suitable form. I know there is a scripting language that we use in my field that is designed precisely for this sort of manipulation, cutting/trimming data, selecting subsets, plotting in a useful way. heck, it even has a way you can output TeX strings and postscript files.

Bringing up sob stories and digging up past events that you appear to have contributed to significantly and is pretty petty, no? you asked for a beta test. you got it; people didn't like your work and now you're crying that you invested so much time and money in it? what do you want from us, a pat on the head and a candy bar? If you don't care about the negative or constructive comments , don't do anything, if you do care, fix it so that people don't have them anymore.

[sfbp]

matmat, on Mar 11 2008, 10:32 AM, said:

If i were given access to the full blown BBO database I could probably throw together some sort of search engine for myself in a few days of concentrated effort

Go try it.

[inquiry]

han, on Mar 11 2008, 12:02 PM, said:

OK, I accept your apology, let that be the end of this flamewar.

As a moderator, taking off the hat as a pusher of the illicit program i am no longer mentioning by name, I am going to agree with Han that the flames here stop. The ashes will remain, I am not pruning any earlier post/attacks. But any additional post that event have a slight smell of a personal attacks and that entire post will be deleted (not the thread, but the post).

This means that Jdonn's request to hear stephens side of the whatever the story with justin is will go unanswered. This means stephens request for matmat to build a better program that servers the same function will go unanswered. This is not necessary the choice of the people already attacked, etc. But enough is enough. Feel free to attack the the program, its data, its usefulness... or to defend the same, but take the personal attacks out or I will. After all, that is my job here, and I will do it from now on. I let it go this long, since I was one of the "attacked", with at least some justification, although less vigorously than some others.

And I will end up by apologizing to the BBO community, if I had ever imagined free access (something I have been working towards) to that program was going to cause so much problems, I would have never pushed for opening it more and more to be free. IMHO, those of you who will not willing to try it are making a mistake, but then, everyone has their own preferences, and I can easily accept your decisions.

Also just so no one thinks I am making up the stuff about someone asking about being able to cull all the bids for one out of the database, it took me a while to find it...here is a link to it.... Post on Homebase forum, pigpenz asked the question, and in my reply on March the 4th I said there was no way to do it. It turns out, I have discovered today that on march the 4th I was correct. Once stephen saw the request, this was a feature he added to the program. I just didn't understand that this was a newly added feature (the plotting is a recently added feature too). I thought the request had been made in this forum somewhere, that is why I added the footnote about it.

[gerry]

Pard and I would bid

1nt-3♠
4♣-etc.
Good hand for wk nt

[jdonn]

Auction 6 seems good to me. This is a good hand for a three card raise IMO, and no reason to get fancy after that. I also like hiding my hand as south, maybe they lead a club from the king, or ace of diamonds.

[inquiry]

gerry, on Mar 11 2008, 04:40 PM, said:

Pard and I would bid

1nt-3♠
4♣-etc.
Good hand for wk nt

I wonder how many weak notrumpers open 1NT with a five card major? When i play weak notrump, i tend not to do so, but with strong notrump i nearly always open such hands 1NT.

[gwnn]

You are forced into rebidding a bad 5 card major or rebidding a bad 3 card minor or make an unlikely upgrade otherwise, Ben, after 1♥-1♠.

[Zelandakh]

inquiry, on Mar 11 2008, 05:46 PM, said:

gerry, on Mar 11 2008, 04:40 PM, said:

Pard and I would bid

1nt-3♠
4♣-etc. 
Good hand for wk nt

I wonder how many weak notrumpers open 1NT with a five card major? When i play weak notrump, i tend not to do so, but with strong notrump i nearly always open such hands 1NT.

I know several weak NTers who open 1NT with 5-2 in majors but not 5-3 (they raise if partner bids the other major). Increasingly people over here are opening nearly all 11-14 5332 hands as 1NT though. As long as you run some form of 5-card major Stayman, why would this be a problem?

However, for many weak NTers this would be a bad hand as they would transfer then splinter. It's definitely a good hand for Stone Age Acol though!


(-: Zel :-)

[Cascade]

inquiry, on Mar 12 2008, 11:46 AM, said:

gerry, on Mar 11 2008, 04:40 PM, said:

Pard and I would bid

1nt-3♠
4♣-etc. 
Good hand for wk nt

I wonder how many weak notrumpers open 1NT with a five card major? When i play weak notrump, i tend not to do so, but with strong notrump i nearly always open such hands 1NT.

We always open a weak NT with 5-3-3-2 in range.

[Yogeshdg]

Did North actually pass with 12 HCP?