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Slam-seeking Conventions
Slam-seeking conventions are codified artificial bids used in the card game contract bridge. Bidding and making a small slam (12 tricks) or grand slam (13 tricks) yields high bonuses ranging from 500 to 1500 points. However, the risk is also high as failure to fulfill the slam contract also means failure to score the bonus points for a game (300-500). Conventions have been devised to maximise the opportunity for success whilst minimising the risk of failure. Contract bridge bidding systems are mainly "natural" (most bids have an obvious meaning) or "artificial" (many bids have a meaning unrelated to the denomination mentioned). However, even natural systems such as Acol find occasional need to resort to artificial means called conventions. A very common type of conventional bid is of the slam-seeking variety to be used in situations when a small slam or a grand slam appears possible but more information is needed before the optimum contract can be determined. In order to make ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Card Game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card games played with traditional decks have formally standardized rules with international tournaments being held, but most are folk games whose rules vary by region, culture, and person. Traditional card games are played with a ''deck'' or ''pack'' of playing cards which are identical in size and shape. Each card has two sides, the ''face'' and the ''back''. Normally the backs of the cards are indistinguishable. The faces of the cards may all be unique, or there can be duplicates. The composition of a deck is known to each player. In some cases several decks are shuffled together to form a single ''pack'' or ''shoe''. Modern card games usually have bespoke decks, often with a vast amount of cards, and can include number or action cards. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ely Culbertson
Elie Almon Culbertson (July 22, 1891 – December 27, 1955), known as Ely Culbertson, was an American contract bridge entrepreneur and personality dominant during the 1930s. He played a major role in the popularization of the new game and was widely regarded as "the man who made contract bridge". He was a great showman who became rich, was highly extravagant, and lost and gained fortunes several times over. Life Culbertson was born in Poiana Vărbilău in Romania to an American mining engineer, Almon Culbertson, and his Russian wife, Xenya Rogoznaya. He attended the École des sciences économiques et politiques at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the University of Geneva. His facility for languages was extraordinary: he spoke Russian, English, French, German, Czech and Spanish fluently, with a reading knowledge of five others, and a knowledge of Latin and classical Greek. In spite of his education, his erudition was largely self-acquired: he was a born autodidact. After the Russian Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackwood (bridge)
Blackwood may refer to: Botany * African blackwood (''Dalbergia melanoxylon''), a timber tree of Africa * African blackwood (''Erythrophleum africanum''), (''Peltophorum africanum'') also Rhodesian blackwood, trees from Africa * Australian blackwood (''Senegalia modesta'' Syn.: ''Acacia modesta''), a tree from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Himalaya * Australian blackwood ('' Diospyros longibracteata''), from Laos * Australian or Tasmanian, Paluma blackwood ('' Acacia melanoxylon''), a tree of eastern Australia * Bombay, Malabar, Nilghiri or (East) Indian blackwood (''Dalbergia latifolia''), a timber tree of India * Burmese Blackwood ('' Dalbergia cultrata'', ''Dalbergia oliveri''), trees from South China, Southeast Asia * Cape blackwood (''Diospyros whyteana''), Southern East and South Africa, ('' Maytenus peduncularis''), from South Africa * Chinese blackwood, East African blackwood (''Dalbergia melanoxylon''), from Africa, India * Indian blackwood (''Hardwickia binata''), from Indi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bridge Conventions
A bridge convention is an agreement about an artificial or a set of related artificial calls. Calls made during the auction phase of a contract bridge game convey information about the player's card holdings. Calls may be "natural" (that is, are based on a holding of the suit bid, or a balanced distribution in the case of a notrump bid) or "" (show a feature unrelated to the named denomination). Purpose Contract bridge is a trick-taking card game played by four players in two competing partnerships in which a sequence of , also known as the auction, precedes the play of the cards. The purpose of this bidding is for players to inform their partners of the content of their hand and to arrive at a suitable contract at which to play the hand (or to prevent the opponents from arriving at a suitable contract). Although bidding is often "natural" (describing a hand by simple reference to possession, shape, and strength of the named suit), players may also bid using conventions, which as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faber And Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Founded in 1929, in 2006 the company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year. Faber and Faber Inc., formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Faber and Faber ended the partnership with FSG in 2015 and began distributing its books directly in the United States. History Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originates in the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine ''The Nursing Mirror.'' The Gwyers' desire to expand into trade publishing led them to Geoffrey Fab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Convention
The San Francisco convention (sometimes called the Warren convention after an otherwise-unknown American bridge player with that surname) is a slam seeking convention in the game of contract bridge. It was devised in the 1930s, but soon became obsolete. The convention is of the type where one partner bids four notrump as an artificial inquiry, and the other partner shows high cards (aces and kings) using an agreed set of codified responses. (The Blackwood convention In the partnership card game contract bridge, the Blackwood convention is a bidding convention developed by Easley Blackwood in 1933 and still widely used in the modern game. Its purpose is to enable the partnership to explore its possession of ac ... and its variants have since the 1930s been the best-known example of this type.) In the Blackwood convention family, aces (and in many variants the king of the agreed suit also) are treated as equal. The San Francisco convention uses a different approach. Responder to four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Four Notrump
Norman four notrump (also Norman) is a slam bidding convention in the partnership card game contract bridge designed to help the partnership choose among the five-, six-, and seven-levels for the final contract. Norman four notrump is an alternative to the Blackwood convention family. Used when the contract level can be better determined by knowing the numbers of aces and kings that are "missing" in the partnership's two hands, the convention is initiated by a bid of 4NT to ask that partner provide information about his ace and king holdings. The response is coded to enable inference about the precise numbers of aces and kings in the replying hand. The Norman scale, where an ace counts as one control and a king as half a control, is the basis of the following responses to the 4NT asking bid: :5: 0 to 1 controls indicating either (a) no aces or kings, or (b) one or two kings or (c) one ace :5: 1½ controls indicating either (a) one ace and one king or (b) three kings :5: 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spiral Scan
In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point. Helices Two major definitions of "spiral" in the American Heritage Dictionary are:Spiral ''American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', Houghton Mifflin Company, Fourth Edition, 2009. # a curve on a plane that winds around a fixed center point at a continuously increasing or decreasing distance from the point. # a three-dimensional curve that turns around an axis at a constant or continuously varying distance while moving parallel to the axis; a . The first definition describes a |
Precision Club
Precision Club is a bidding system in the game of contract bridge. It is a strong club system developed in 1969 for C. C. Wei by Alan Truscott, and used by Taiwan teams in 1969. Their success in placing second at the 1969 Bermuda Bowl (and Wei's multimillion-dollar publicity campaign) launched the system's popularity. The central feature of the Precision system is that an opening bid of one club is used for any hand with 16 or more high card points (HCP), regardless of distribution. An opening bid of one of a major suit signifies a five-card suit and 11–15 HCP. A one notrump opening bid signifies a balanced hand (no five-card major suit) and 13–15 HCP. Popularity After the success of Taiwan teams in 1969 and 1970 Bermuda Bowls with the system, the entire Italian Blue team switched to Precision Club and won yet another World Team Olympiad in 1972. The modifications to the system were made chiefly by Benito Garozzo and he titled it Super Precision. Today, multiple world ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cue Bid
In contract bridge, a cue bid (also, cuebid or cue-bid) is either a bid of the opponents' suit, or "slam seeking": a slam-investigating bid made during an auction's later rounds that shows control of a suit. Traditionally a cue bid is "slam seeking", but in the early 21st century the usage appears to be giving way to ''control bid''. Bid of the opponents' suit After the opponents have bid a suit, a cue bid of that suit is normally intended as a forcing bid. It shows interest in contesting the contract and asks partner to describe their hand. Immediate cue bid An immediate cue bid is made directly over opponent's opening bid. Traditionally, it denotes a hand unsuited for a takeout double. For example, after RHO opens 1, a hand such as would prefer not to double for takeout, because partner might make a penalty pass. A cue bid of 2, as traditionally used, would be appropriate: it tends to show great high card strength, probably with a hand pattern unsuited to defense. Partner is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Moorehead
Alan McCrae Moorehead, (22 July 1910 – 29 September 1983) was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, ''The White Nile'' (1960) and ''The Blue Nile'' (1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937. Biography Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne, Australia. He was educated at Scotch College, with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne. He travelled to England in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London ''Daily Express''. Writer, world traveller, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. He married Lucy Milner, who at the ''Daily Express'' in 1937 "presided over a women's page free of the patronising sentimentality which marked much writing for women at the time". During World War II he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East and As ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contract Bridge
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level. The game consists of a number of , each progressing through four phases. The cards are dealt to the players; then the players ''call'' (or ''bid'') in an auction seeking to take the , specifying how many tricks the partnership receiving the contract (the declaring side) needs to take to receive points for the deal. During the auction, partners use their bids to also exchange information about their hands, including o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
