This is a carry-over of the Outpost thread 2020 MSC
The Bridge World founded by Eli Culbertson in 1929, is the world’s leading bridge magazine. Monthly, almost from the beginning, they had monthly “what’s the best bid?” contests. Those contests are now called The Master Solvers Club. For many years now, it has been 8 problems per month, and almost always the last, (problem H of A thru H) is an opening lead problem, not a bidding problem. This months’s H is not typical.
Very important: bidding is based on Bridge World Standard 2017 a souped-up version of the 2-over-1 bidding style. If you don’t check meanings of BWS, some of your natural reactions are likely to be ridiculous.
Individuals can enter here Each month the announce the top 50 or so scorers (the Honor Roll). Similarly there’s an annual honor roll, which will be the top 100 or so for the year. That’s total for the 12 months, so you (as an individual) would have no chance for the 2020 honor roll starting now. You might make the honor roll for the November or December contest.
So what’s this thread for? It’s an opportunity to collaborate, and then I’ll enter our consensus choices. That’s the plan, anyway. I’ll be submitting answers by October 9 (deadline, if you want to enter your own, is 10 AM eastern time Oct 10). I choices only for myself and Been There Done That so far.
Generally, whatever I personally think, I submit the plurality choice, assuming it has at least 3 votes. The main exception to that would be if some other choices (like 2nd and 3rd) were similar, so it’s reasonable to think that their supporters would prefer either of those to whatever’s leading. Or, since the entry is in my name, I could always override the consensus and go with what I think will be best, but I don’t think that has ever happened. I also need to break some ties, trying to be guided by whatever comments were made all the votes.
Attached are the November problems, answers to be submitted by Oct 9.
Anyone is welcome to vote and will get included in our results summary. However, especially in the first few months on GoActuary, I may not strictly follow the overall voting as much as I would when I knew the normal participants. If you want to contribute to the GoActuary voting,here are the problems.
:swear: I can download the problems as a pdf, and do post those pdfs on the AO. I couldn’t see how to upload a pdf here. That means the problems won’t be available here beyond about Jan 10. (The problem link, starting Oct 10, will have the December problems instead. The scoring of the Nov problems, which will include the problems, will be available until about Jan 10.)