Help
"The Initial 1D response to the Polish Club opening often conceals certain strong hand types"
And Laird replied
"Is this another example of withholding information which should be available to the opposition.... I guess the best way to compete against this system is to learn it... but then where does it end."
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I sincerely believe that online bridge represents the future of this great card game. However, it must be recognized that many of BBOs best features also create a series of new challenges. Most noteably, online bridge provides an environment in which players from all over the world can compete against one another. For better or worse, the online playing environment is going to have large blocks of players from different regions who
(a) Speak a different language
(
Have very different ideas about what is "standard" bidding© Are used to a different set of alert rules
I don't seen any easy way to "solve" this issue.
I'm not even sure whether I would want to.
[I like diversity. I think that its a good thing]
Over time, I suspect that technology will evolve to the point that it can mitigate many of these issues. For example, there is an amusing little website called Babelfish that does an OK job of translating between languages. I suspect that 10 years from now, there will be a Babelfish plug in for BBO that is automatially able to translate between conversational English and Turkish/Polish/Chinese. In a similar fashion, I suspect that there will be some type of technical fix for the whole issue with alerting/full disclosure.
I've tried to foster the idea of hypertext based convention cards.
I wish that more people were willing to develop them (or even consult them during a game) [It seems that every time we try to idiot-proof the system, the world goes out and builds a bigger idiot]
With regards to bidding systems, the best advice I can give is the following:
Relax, its only a game. If you run into something new and different, look at this as a chance to learn something. In the long run, you'll be much happier than if you start obsessing about what "should" happen.
