[inquiry]

Thinking with Mike is the first of what is now two movies by Mike. The hyperlink will open this free BBO Movie in a new window.

In this movie, Mike presents just a single hand, and it will take you under 10 minutes or less to view the movie. Mike provides step-by-step analysis of issues you should think about as a defender on this hand (against a slam!!). The movie advances you through the hand, one bid at a time (a good example for those making their own movies), and one trick at a time. This gives you the feeling that you are kibitzing even playing the hand.

Mike uses quizes to ask you what you would do as the player (no scores assigned).

After the auction is over, the opening lead is made by your partner, and Mike pauses to allow you to view the dummy and offer some analysis. Making the opening lead and pausing is another example of good movie making. At this point, after the lead is tabled, he spends four frames discussing what you should be thinking as a defender.

The hand he uses for this presentation is excellent, and the analysis will lead to what might be a surprising twist that will be new to many people viewing this movie.

There is no voice track to this movie, so you can easily spend as much, or as little time on each frame without it auto-advancing. That is useful here where you are being asked to think a bit before answering some of the questions he ask to force you to think about issues on the hand.

Rating this movie might help others decide which movies they might want to "watch".

This post has been edited by barmar: 2012-November-16, 10:01
Reason for edit: Replaced URL

[FM75]

Nice idea.
Can you create the link in such a way that it opens in another tab?

[barmar]

The forum software uses the same window if the link is within the same domain (www.bridgebase.com), otherwise it uses a new window/tab. I've replaced the link with a tinyurl to trick it into thinking it's a different domain.

You know that you can always get a new window/tab by pressing Control (or Command on a Mac) while you click on a link, don't you?

[ahydra]

Very good, would love to see more of these.

ahydra

[fromageGB]

Very good.

I was holding my breath on frame 15. North had made the opening lead, and the question was "What should East be thinking at this point?". I clicked the arrow, thinking ... Should I put the kettle on? Pour another glass of wine? Replenish the bowl of peanuts?

Maybe an opportunity was lost, here!

[inquiry]

ahydra, on 2012-November-16, 11:21, said:

Very good, would love to see more of these.

ahydra

If the Movies become popular, authors like Mike and Larry Cohen, and others, would be willing to write more of them. And if they become popular, the BBO might create a way for the popular authors to make money creating these. Of course, if no one goes and views these, then I think the authors will just be people who have interesting hands and want to share them, or teachers who want to prepare some study material for their students.

I assume you saw Thinking with Mike II, the article by Billy Miller, both of Movies by Larry Cohen, the two on chthonic that I reported on. In addition there are many "deal of the weeks" that Fred Gitelman wrote a decade alone that have been converted to this format. I have a few that are already published as well. The one on endplays is much too long for this format, it has 14 different "endplay" hands. It was meant as educational material aimed at intermediate and lower-level advanced players. Then there my Discover play one, which has gotten some positive feedback, i will post a link to it along with my own "review" of it. There is a total, right now, of 42 different movies (that includes the tutorial one) for people to look at. I haven't seen all of them either, but I plan viewing all of them as time goes on.

[y66]

Good stuff. I wonder how many people know this material exists. You may want to do more to promote this.

[barmar]

y66, on 2012-November-24, 20:35, said:

Good stuff. I wonder how many people know this material exists. You may want to do more to promote this.

It's front-and-center on the BBO main screen and we announced it in Lobby News (and this weekend announced these reviews). I think we may even have sent everyone a BBO mail message about it. How much more promotion can we do without really annoying everyone?

[y66]

barmar, on 2012-November-24, 21:16, said:

It's front-and-center on the BBO main screen and we announced it in Lobby News (and this weekend announced these reviews). I think we may even have sent everyone a BBO mail message about it. How much more promotion can we do without really annoying everyone?

That all sounds good. I made that comment after noticing the low # of views of this thread to-date (< 200 as of today). I got more views than that for the last poem I posted in the water cooler!!! Have you considered placing ads in Gmail?

[barmar]

Sometime this week I'll be updating the movie store so that each item will have a link to its thread. That should hopefully increase the views here.

[inquiry]

barmar, on 2012-November-25, 15:29, said:

Sometime this week I'll be updating the movie store so that each item will have a link to its thread. That should hopefully increase the views here.

I will create links for Larry Cohen's two articles (deja vu, and the one on LOTT), they have been reviewed before. I wasn't up to creating one for all the Fred deal of the weeks that have been converted to movie format yet. There was too many for me to tackle... and all of those are great...

[PhilKing]

I would much rather give someone half a dozen play problems on this theme that they could practice against the computer than use the Bridge Movie format. Let them try and probably fail, then read a concise explanation.

I think Bridge Movies have the tendency to become laboured and overly verbose at times, and this one is no exception. They are well suited to meaty multi-stage expert problems - not intermediate problems with one theme dragged out over 97 pages.

And Mike's prose is usually on point with rarely a wasted word - I'm generally a big fan. What happened here?

[CarlRitner]

I think Mike Lawrence's Conventions and Two Over One System CDs by BridgeBase are fabulous products and I would like to see more like them. This movie reminded me of Lawrence's style, which is highly informative.

Definitely would like to see more.

[SimonFa]

barmar, on 2012-November-24, 21:16, said:

It's front-and-center on the BBO main screen and we announced it in Lobby News (and this weekend announced these reviews). I think we may even have sent everyone a BBO mail message about it. How much more promotion can we do without really annoying everyone?

It needs wider coverage than that and I have just written to the EBU and asked them to include my letter with a link, or better still a short review.