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The publication of these pages is somewhat premature. However, I see a need for both me and my partners to look at them.
The main subject of these seminars is defense. I wanted a checklist of what I should do during the bidding when they will probably declare, and before I play a card as a defender. I started with Phil Read's rules. Only two of them are defense oriented, and his "anticipate" rule is really advice. It is important advice, but if you are daydreaming, and it becomes your turn, it is too late to anticipate. I ended with a checklist and an advice list.
The first four chapters are rules and advice.
The next three chapters are system discussions not included in my other notes.
Later chapters discuss experiments related to determining the best opening lead. In the course of the last few years I have written a program that deals and then bids the deals using either the two-over-one system or the big club system. The program then selects deals bid in a specified way, or that have certain distribution and high-card constraints on some of the hands. In honor of Microsoft's attempt to produce Windows 99, I named the program Bid99. Matt Ginsberg, a University of Oregon professor, developed a double-dummy solver that I downloaded from his website. This is more useful for my purposes than his Gib product. Deals from Bid99 are input to the double-dummy solver, and the results are analyzed for a large number of deals, typically 1008 deals, and for several opening leads. The last step in the process is converting the cryptic results to useful tables. The operation is only Evan-friendly and sometimes I refer to the computer as the senorita.
In any experiment, I examine some number of deals, and, if necessary, modify the program until I am satisfied with the computer's bidding. The offensive bidding is good on partscores and games, and the bidding agrees with the way I think the two systems should be used. I can check for defensive bidding, but if there is an overcall, the offensive bidding ceases to be robust.
The outcome is we can evaluate the folklore we have been taught since we were puppies.
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