Recently  even the GIBs have been doing this sort of thing, including trumping my good trick in 3rd seat in order to finesse me for declarer. They virtually never ever return  the opening lead, ( and seldom  lead the bid suit)  so perhaps all the people playing with the GIBs are being  "taught"  this sort of thing, believing that the GIBs are set up for optimum play.

Certainly the other night playing in BBO, human  opps  who I would have assumed would know better were taking  their tricks off the top in NT and very cooperatively setting up suits for me. so perhaps it's a trend.

 I read somewhere that 2 /4 leads are 4rth from a good suit, 2nd from a bad one. Since the 7 cannot be 4rth then presumably partner has the Tx left  Unless it was a singleton or possibly even a doubleton, not sure how doubletons fit into it.   It's unlikely to be a singleton though as that would have left declarer with 5 and unlikely to bypass them to bid 2 C OR to have opened 1!D.

I would probably take the 2!c bid as saying name your major  I've got it  and  dont want to play NT, so possibly 2344 distribution or maybe even 1444. 

Not that i would have thought of that at the table.....most of the time knowing if we are playing standard or udca carding is about as far as agreements go.

even  just listening to the commentary was interesting, thanks for posting this.

another thought was that catering to the 5 minute a hand crowd is not useful over the long run. People SAID they wanted speedballs, so we offered them, that lasted about three weeks, Even the people that said they wanted them weren't showing up.  Same with shortened tourneys, the 10 board tourneys were in response to a request for shorter tourneys. We have an ongoing request from one member for 5 board 5 minute a board tourneys. I am strongly opposed to making IAC a promoter of quickie bridge. Experts can indeed play two cards and claim, that's decidedly not the case for probably 99% of our semi active members. Even if some could, they'd likely be playing vs people who couldn't see how the claim worked and I think I MAY have once seen the planned play of the hand described in the claim, as BBO rules say it must be.

Often it is as fast to play it out as to plod through the process of claiming and then wait for the opps to work it out.

We cannot and never will be able to compete with robot tourneys or the systems BBO offers  for playing with 3 robots, always available to play exactly how many hands at the exact time and at the precise pace wanted. So we may as well try to focus on promoting good bridge as far as we are able.

Well, the Total Points club seems to manage to get people to wait, although they do have a limit on the time people are allowed to take for each segment. they also have someone running sessions though to monitor and keep everything moving smoothly. However, only the people moving on have to wait, they use a knockout system after each round.

I  like the idea of a system which doesn't require a lot of tracking and "paperwork" as unless there is  good participation it's just a lot of work and time that someone has to do for not much gratification.

My experience with the team matches strongly suggests that a time needs to be set, whatever time that might be. If players have to organize 8 people starting from scratch every time it will fail, it's just too much hassle for people to bother with for long. It's late when I'm writing this and I confess I don't have a clear idea of what you intend.. a sort of Total Points tourney? On the download version that's already an option, so that wouldn't be a problem to set up at all, at least until they pull  the rug out.

If you aren't playing then you could move from match to match and set up the tables/hands.  You would need to have permission to set multiple matches, or use the IAC Id as generally  people are only allowed to set one match, but that's easilly worked out. It's more complicated if you are playing and I'm not sure it's possible,  maybe if you set your own match last it would work.

one thing to consider, too, with more than one match people will be ending at all sorts of different times, not normally an issue, but it is if you're waiting for everyone to finish so the  review can start.

 Starting out with two tables ( have to have two to have  a match) would be wise simply because then we have to ask only 8 people to be patient while any glitches are dealt with,  otherwise sure as taxes  some will get restless,  messages start flying about, all of which are distracting and have either to be ignored or if not, cause everything you are trying to fix revert to stage 1 etc. It's needlessly stressful.

 I am still clutching onto the  download version so can tell you the basics about setting up matches on the web version but not the more esoteric stuff like setting 3 or 4 matches simultaneously with preselected hands.  Someone in the ACOL club  can do this. or at least could on the download version, and sent me the program a couple of years ago but it's on a defunct computer. I wanted to do that for the team matches but they never got running smoothly enough at the start to feel any sort of hope that it would work very well.  It depended on everyone doing what they are supposed to when they were supposed to do it and although some teams could be relied on, others were almost always in some sort of crisis at the start.  

To do the other, have only one table would work and be easier but I honestly don't know how many members are keen to go through the hands like that. People are odd, they supposedly come to BBO to play but then park themselves in kib boxes and  put down roots. I expect that if you set up such a table at any sort of regular time, there would likely soon be a regular group who showed up. That could then be expanded, perhaps?

As far as experts: some years ago now I organized play tables in IAC and had an expert come to be "on call" as it were for people who were having difficulties deciding what to do, a bid or a lead or a play, whatever.

 People showed up to play, we usually had about 5 tables, BUT... NOBODY would ever ask for any help!! So the poor experts would be wandering from table to table, and eventually started just  offering comments if  they saw something they felt deserved comment.  That came to  halt when a member took fairly direct offense at having his bidding/play remarked upon, albeit nonjudgementally. So between that and the total lack of participation by the players,  I cancelled the sessions.

I'd thought people would be keeping the expert running from table to table, not wandering like a lost soul wasting his time.  At least one of the experts said at the time  he'd be perfectly willing to return if we started that up again, but of course things may well be different now.  To be honest don't now remember everyone who was doing that for us.

that's possibly not pertinent other than to demonstrate how totally unpredictable the members are. At least to me.
 

it's an interesting idea.  Hoki does something  similar  in that the hands he brings to his play and discuss sessions are generally hands from Vugraph or some international   tourney, or sometimes from a bridge text.  I think they're great but it's frequently a battle to get people to sit.

What is the thinking behind all the players at a table being on the same team? Wouldn't that be likely to  lead to  some possibly questionably cooperative  bidding and play?

It's very difficult not to feel defeated when we have 900 members and cannot get more than 30 of them out to anything, usually fewer. It's not that they are not online, they just aren't involved with IAC, some apparently would rather kib or play with bots.

That's their choice, clearly, but then why are they members? They can't even be involved enough to tell us. Or they say it's because the times are wrong but when we put on events at the time they say they wanted they still don't play with us.  Why did 600+ people scream bloody murder when BBO dropped their memberships? It's beyond me to explain why they even noticed much less care.

They won't tell us why they want to be members, they won't tell us what drives them to spend their bridge time elsewhere so we can try to  adapt.  It leads to a feeling of defeat when people offer their time to direct or teach and nobody shows up. It is even more depressing  when IAC members play in BIL instead of IAC, if they belong in BIL then why are they members of IAC? We struggle to get people to play in teaching sessions, but  members will apparently eagerly sit in teaching sessions in BIL.  Sometimes it's even the same teacher  at the same time of day and everyone sitting at the table in BIL is an IAC member, as well as half the kibs.  One day I dropped in and there were only two people NOT IAC members, the teacher and one other.

So sometimes it feels like swimming in molasses in the dark having no sense of what direction to go to reach anywhere at all.