u/SyllabubRadiant8876

Any ideas how to improve the consistency of (good) PR?

Of my last 12 x 9pt matches against the bot (pip count hidden, all between 4 and 10 games): five were between 2 and 5 PR; six were between 5 and 9 PR, one was 15 PR(!). Long-term average is around 6 (5.6 checker, 8.2 cube) and I feel it's realistic to drive it down closer to 5.

Some of this will be luck in terms of whether positions come up that I don't understand as well. And when I'm 50-50 between 2 options some days I pick correctly, other days I get it wrong.

But I feel like there is something about the mental approach. Maybe some days I am feeling bolder or more risk-averse, sometimes maybe I'm lazy about counting the race or counting all the shots, maybe I forget to consider the cube, lose track of the match score etc. There are definitely situations where I consider ABCD and the answer is E that I never saw as a possibility. I think more of my biggest blunders come from these "silly" errors than from the positions that I genuinely don't understand, so I'm trying to work on my psychology for a while rather than theory.

Any tips for consistency, or for a more robust/reliable mental approach to become a bit more consistent and reduce these lapses?

I bought XG many years ago and use it on a daily basis.

Suddenly yesterday the application won't open on my Windows laptop. It is saying that my version has expired and it hopes I enjoyed my trial period (to be clear, my free trial ended in around 2018 when I bought the full version!). When I try to "activate" my existing key again, I get an error message that it can't connect to the activation server.

I have emailed the XG contact address, but I know that XG is not an organisation with lots of staff and I don't even know if they would be checking those emails. No idea whether the new owners are even actively working on anything, never mind responding to customer queries.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I need to do to fix this?

Currentl

Looking for any feedback on this itinerary. For context, we are quite busy travellers and like to do a lot of activities. Love walking and impressive landscapes - happy to do long hikes and climb hills but not exposed summits (too scary!). Also into history, unique sights and exploring atmospheric areas. Not really into food or art, nor sitting in bars/cafes - we often get an apartment and cook some pasta rather than eating out.

Is this a realistic itinerary? We are trying to balance seeing a lot but also getting to know two different regions and not moving every day. Of course we would love to see everywhere in more detail, but time and money are not infinite!

Any specific recommendations around Bilbao for other must-sees or hikes would be really welcome. Also suggestions for vegetarian food would be great - we have not visited Spain for around 10 years, but in the past we found it a bit difficult for veggies.

Day 1 - Arrive Bilbao airport lunchtime, flying from the UK. Collect hire car and drive to Burgos. Overnight Burgos (visit Cathedral and Museum of Human Evolution either this afternoon or the following morning).

Day 2 - Continue to explore Burgos, then drive to León.

Days 3 4 5 - Explore León, with day trip to Las Médulas, possibly also Cueva de Valporquero. Stay in apartment in León

Day 6 - Scenic drive León to Bilbao through Picos de Europa, via Riaño, Puerto de San Glorio, Potes.

Days 7 8 9 - Explore Bilbao and the Basque Country, including Guernika and hopefully some hiking along the coast and/or some of the nature parks. Stay in apartment somewhere in or near to Bilbao.

Day 10 - Depart Bilbao airport

I have initiated a transfer for my Lifetime ISA into a new LISA account with a different provider. The original provider has incorrectly deducted an early withdrawal charge, as if I had simply withdrawn the funds. I have been paying in the maximum for several years, so this penalty is a significant sum. They have admitted that this was their mistake and are starting the process to rectify it, but this apparently involves reclaiming the penalty from HMRC. I have asked for an realistic timeline and am waiting for an answer.

An additional problem is that the transfer to the new provider is marked as "incomplete". I cannot therefore reinvest those funds, so this is a large sum sitting in cash gaining zero interest.

Does anyone here have any experience of this situation? E.g. how long it should take to get this corrected? I assume that I should be due some kind of compensation for lost growth on the full LISA balance - any idea what I should be asking for, how to claim it, and/or how to calculate a reasonable figure? I was making monthly investments until requesting the transfer, so I should be due bonus payments for the last couple of months - should this just get fixed automatically or am I likely to need to chase (expecting this to be complicated because the bonus always takes a few weeks to come through...)?

Any other advice of what I should be doing to get this sorted?

I have been at a tournament in the UK this weekend. It's a fairly low-key 60 player event, but nevertheless had a few UK top-50 players in attendance. I noticed that, only 10 of the top 20 entrants (on UKBGF ratings), and only 5 of the top 8, made it through Saturday qualifying to the Top 32 Main event on the Sunday. From a quick spot check on BMAB these top 20 players have PRs ranging from about 4.5 to 7.5*. The top BMAB registered player (M1, PR 4.5) did not qualify. The four semi finalists' UKBGF ratings ranked them 18th, 20th, 36th and 44th out of the 60 entrants.

Is this a typical pattern in live tournament play, i.e. high-rated players seem not much more likely to come through than intermediates?

It seems strange than not one of the top 15 entrants (top 25% rated of the field) even got to a SF. This feels like either the mid-tier players have really stepped up, or the luck factor has gone wild this weekend! Interested in any thoughts...

*I suspect some of the BMAB PRs are quite out-of-date - I am certain that most of these folks currently play closer to PR 6.

I am learning bridge, mainly online via No Fear Bridge lessons, and really struggling in practice with "planning the play" as declarer. E.g. when to count winners versus losers and what to do with that information, drawing trumps first or later, when to discard versus ruff a loser, which order to play the suits (i.e. everything!).

When I do a quiz on any of these topics, I get pretty much everything right, but when I am presented with a hand, it all goes horribly wrong, even at a total beginners' level. After going down, I can always understand the solution given, but the steps/order seem quite different each time. Obviously NT vs suit contract is a fundamental difference, which might be part of my confusion.

Is this just a case of playing 100s of hands and getting it wrong loads to build up experience through learning from mistakes? Or is there any "rule" like a certain type of hand calls for a particular approach? Any good resources to help with this?

It seems to be happening more and more often online that people are asking what's taking me so long to roll/move. When they have selected the time settings for the match and challenged me.

E.g. this morning I was 1-4 behind in a 7pt match, had about 12 minutes left on my clock, and was giving serious thought to sending an aggressive cube - after about 30 seconds the opponent was typing "???". I sometimes point out that speed settings are available if they prefer a quick match, but usually just ignore them.

I would think nothing over the board of spending a couple of minutes on a crucial decision like that - am I being unreasonable doing so online?