Author Topic: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)  (Read 14899 times)

kenberg

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #15 on: April 10, 2018, 01:50:42 AM »
Ken - is there a way to access what Todd has already done on BWS?  I would love to see it.  Thanks!

I will send a link to you on your bbo mail.

Imo it is in fine shape right now but Todd was hoping I would proofread it and I have been lazy. He might not want it up in public yet, at any rate that's his choice. But I feel confident he would be happy to have another pair of eyes look it over. So I will send you the link. I think you will like it. The idea of holding off on general publication until he gets some private checking and response is understandable.

PS Time for me to get my act, together.. I will look it over with care tomorrow, and then I expect very soon we could encourage Todd to put the link up for everyone. In many ways, putting up the NT auctions, already a substantial amount but less than the whole monster, might be exactly right. People could look at it, I think they would say "Yeah, I can do that" and then if that works well for them they could think of trying the whole gulp. Maybe not the 1m-2M thing. I really never heard of that before.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2018, 02:00:40 AM by kenberg »
Ken

ian84

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #16 on: April 13, 2018, 10:22:07 AM »
The Wily Coyote is currently proof-reading Todd's first document and it will probably be released soon. I think more docs are due to follow.

As far as putting it all into a spreadsheet, that will probably take some considerable work and time. I think Todd feels that its doable, but it will require some skilful Excel programming. I have offered to help him, though my own Excel skills will probably need to be upgraded to be of much use to him.
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bAbsG

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #17 on: April 13, 2018, 01:42:35 PM »
The 1m-2M thing is called 'Umjoomo" - Unusual Major Jump Over One Minor Opening (Reverse Flannery responses).   Some play it just over a diamond opening in which case it is dubbed "Umjoodo".   I play it with one partner - invitational hands.


kenberg

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #18 on: April 13, 2018, 03:54:29 PM »
The 1m-2M thing is called 'Umjoomo" - Unusual Major Jump Over One Minor Opening (Reverse Flannery responses).   Some play it just over a diamond opening in which case it is dubbed "Umjoodo".   I play it with one partner - invitational hands.

Consider the auctions
Auction A:
1 !C - 2  !H

Auction B:
1 !C - 2 !S


At least in BWS these both show 5+ spades and 4+ hearts, so one of them needs to be stronger than the other.

BWS Section H: "A jump-shift to the two-level is limited with majors if two of a major (five-plus spades, four-plus hearts, game-invitational if two spades, weaker than game-invitational if two hearts), strong [see section G, above, for requirements] if two diamonds."

So B is invit, A is weaker than invit. I take this to mean that opener should pass.correct or, if needed because of extreme shape, he could rebid his minor. He should only rarely raise hearts even if he has four. Presumably sometimes he would do so.

Of course we also have

Auction C:
1 !C - 1 !S
2 !C - 2 !H
The meaning is covered in Section I: "(b) a third-suit non-reverse at the two-level is forcing for one round, and responder may pass if opener bids two of responder's first suit or three of opener's suit;"

Yes, may pass. But maybe not often. Bids that cannot be passed are potentially stronger than bids that cannot be passed. Here a pass is possible in both A and B, but not in C.

Auction A allows us to play in 2 !H: 1 !C - 2 !H - Pass. Neither auction B nor auction C allows us to play in 2 !H since in B we are already at 2 !S and in C the 2 !H is forcing for one round. But both B and C allow us to play in 2 !S.
But. Since C is forcing for one round, responder can use this route when he is strong, even very strong as long as we are on the same page that C is absolutely forcing for one round. This does not mean that C always will be very strong, but it could be.

So what I get from BWS is that B is invit, A is basically pass/correct but raise maybe sometimes, and C is forcing and thus potentially quite strong.

The work in writing up something for BWS is not just the work of a spreadsheet. There is the preliminary work of understanding what they are saying. It's not exactly that they aren't clear, it's more that there are a lot of things going on so it just inherently requires effort. No way around that.

This post illustrates a view of mine. I play bridge a decent amount. maybe an indecent amount, but I have no thought of someday playing in the Reisinger.  Not beyond the first round or two anyway. In practice this means I am up for trying to at least partially understand and adopt a fairly extensively documented system such as BWS, but creating a system from scratch is more than I want to do. A bridge too far, I guess you could say. I enjoy the game, I sometimes enjoy hammering out agreements, but I have a strong tendency to look to a standard write-up, one that has been around for a while and worked over,  and just say "Let's do that".


 
Ken

ian84

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #19 on: April 13, 2018, 05:09:53 PM »
As an ex computer programmer, I'm very much in favour of clear and extensive documentation, something I saw very rarely saw in my professional career :(. So I'm looking forward very much to seeing what Todd comes up with. If you know Fazzoola, you might be interested to see the documentation of his home developed system, known as Galwood. I think his website is www.galwood.com. I was good friends with him in the BIL and he asked me to join his team to iron out the wrinkles of the system about 3 years ago. I was too busy to devote much time to it, so declined and subsequently Lioncub took the lead position. Both Alan (lioncub) and Fazz's partner died soon afterwards and I've only recently seen Fazz being active again.
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kenberg

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #20 on: April 13, 2018, 07:14:19 PM »
I don't know fazoola. Or at least I didn't, and I have not yet played it.

Do I think it is good. Or bad? I can see how using 1 !C - 2 !H in that way could be useful. But I can also see why weak jump shifts are useful, why Soloway jump shifts are useful and so on. In my ideal world, people who have not played together would, when plating in a tourney, say "BWS pard?" " Ok." What actually happens is they say "2/1 pard?"  "ok" and then they each play 2/1 as they understand it, often they have different, maybe very different, understandings.  If, after "BWS pard?" " Ok. ",  they start to play together with any regularity, one or the other might say "I really prefer Soloway jump shits to fazoola, what do you say we change it?" and then they do or don't change it.  But until they have this conversation, the meaning of 1 !C - 2 !H, and a good many other bids,  has been set by the simple interchange "BWS pard?" " Ok."

So now, having read this approach to 1 !C - 2 !H, I am prepared for this aspect of BWS. It really doesn't matter all that much to me whether that is the optimal use for the sequence. Just so we have pretty much the same idea of the meaning.


But it did take a little pondering to sort out exactly what was being advocated for various sequences when responder has five spades and four hearts.

To push my point just a bit more. I think 90 % or so of my bad results are due to making a bad choice. At most 10% are due to not playing some super system. So my thought is to play something reasonable that someone else has largely debugged (nothing is perfect but there certainly are degrees of imperfection) and then try to concentrate on making good choices. BWS seems like a candidate. I have never played it to any large degree, but it was designed to accommodate people who wish to fairly quickly get some substantial agreement and then to start playing the cards.  Sounds right.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2018, 09:15:44 PM by kenberg »
Ken

kenberg

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Re: Please welcome new member Robert_Bot (known as Ro_Bott to his friends)
« Reply #21 on: April 18, 2018, 11:30:49 AM »
The 1m-2M thing is called 'Umjoomo" - Unusual Major Jump Over One Minor Opening (Reverse Flannery responses).   Some play it just over a diamond opening in which case it is dubbed "Umjoodo".   I play it with one partner - invitational hands.

I woke up in the middle of the night with the thought: How does this impact agreements after 1m-1 !S -1NT?  I think that it would have a substantial effect.

BWS is not very explicit about the strength of the 1m-2 !H and 1m - 2 !S responses but net browsing suggests that with 5=4 the 1m-2 !H  is about 6-10 hcps and 1m - 2 !S about 11-12. This would mean that after 1m - 1 !S -1NT responder does not have five spades and four hearts unless he also has game forcing values, since with less the auction would have begun 1m-2M. Surely that has an effect on how we proceed over 1m - 1 !S - 1NT .
For example: 1 !D - 1 !S - 1NT - 2 !H. The absolutely standard meaning is the responder has five spades, four hearts, and a modest han opener should pass/correct, only very rarely raise hearts.  But if responder has five spades, four hearts and a modest hand why did he not bid 2 !H over 1 !D?  So there appears to be something undiscussed going on in this simple auction.


A hope I have for BWS, or any published system, is that the people who wrote it up have thought through the various interactions of the conventions that they recommend. Given the stature of Bridge World I would expect them to have done this. I am getting a little skeptical but I am cautious about drawing too many conclusions.

Added: I raised  this issue on the  BBO Forum
http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/78539-bridge-world-standard-2017/page__gopid__949355#entry949355


Phil Clayton gave a useful response. There might well be others.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2018, 02:29:50 PM by kenberg »
Ken