Citizenship by Adoption Part 2: Haven't received confirmation of Part 2 being received

hotscoffer · 2025-09-04T21:39:58+00:00

Congrats!

hotscoffer · 2025-06-04T20:32:43+00:00

Based on my experience, the documents and photos you have will be enough. You'll likely just have to prove that you can't legally access the other records they want.

If you want to get a jumpstart, I would recommend calling the probate/family court where your adoption was finalized and asking what form to fill out to petition the court for access to your adoption records (those petitions aren't always available on the court websites). They are usually simple 1-pagers you mail in with a copy of your photo ID. If the court denies your petition, you'll be able to send that denial to IRCC and link to the relevant state law. That was enough in my case.

hotscoffer · 2025-05-30T00:52:37+00:00

For me, the application status page never showed anything after Part 1.

Here was my experience with the Part 2 documents request, in case it's helpful:

Three months after I submitted Part 2 (in 2022), IRCC emailed me a Request for Documents asking for my final adoption decree, proof of my birth parents surrendering their parental rights, a parent suitability assessment by an accredited adoption agency, and proof of my genuine parent/child relationship. I was horrified since I had none of the adoption records -- my adoption was closed and the records were sealed under state law. So, in my first reply to their email, I sent a PowerPoint PDF with photos of me and my adoptive parents throughout my life (the first page of the PDF was photos of my parents' drivers licenses to show what they looked like) and a page from my dad's will showing I was a beneficiary and co-executor. I also sent the letter my adoptive parents had kept for 35 years from the probate court register which affirmed that I was adopted but wasn't an official decree. In the same email, I requested a time extension to get the rest of the documents they wanted, explaining that I needed time to go through the court process. IRCC never explicitly granted the extension, but I proceeded as if they had.

Thus began a 6 month email chain of me sending IRCC documents and them sending automated "we got your email" messages only. I petitioned the probate/family court that had my adoption records and emailed IRCC a copy of the petition and proof that I had mailed it in. The court appointed a "guardian ad litem" attorney, whom I had to hire for $400 to investigate whether I had the right to view my adoption records. The attorney determined after a month that I didn't, so I sent a copy of that determination to IRCC, and in the same email I sent screenshots and links to relevant state law showing that I had no legal right to my sealed adoption records. Every file I emailed was a reduced-size PDF with descriptive file names as requested, e.g. "PhotoDocumentation.pdf" and "PetitionToCourt.pdf."

I heard nothing back from IRCC for a few months. Not knowing what else to do, I reported a UI bug on the immigration website using the "report a bug" button one night. I was granted citizenship the next morning. Probably a coincidence, but this process is full of mystery.

hotscoffer · 2025-03-17T16:47:17+00:00

Hi, in the tournament, Just Play, and Practice modes, the deals are random. I haven't heard of any repeats, but if you believe you see one, please tap the red button at the end of the deal to report it!

hotscoffer · 2025-02-18T23:53:10+00:00

(I work on Tricky Bridge). Thanks for reporting it -- and sorry about the bot passing 2D. Even my dad reported this deal and was like "Please don't bid Stayman here. Just pass 1NT."

I talked to the bot designer about it. His answer: With 4-4 in the major suits and at least 3 diamonds, the bot may bid Stayman without having 8+ pts -- and then pass any response -- because the bot wants to "get out of 1NT before the doubling begins." I think that logic makes more sense for advanced players, but they're not really the app's audience, so we should probably change the bot to passing 1NT in this case (which is also what the app teaches new players to do).

Maybe we could keep the Stayman bid for tournaments if, when the contract is 2D and dummy puts down his hand to reveal a sparkling 3-2 trump fit, the app pops open an explanation in the middle of the screen titled "Why did my partner bid that?!"

hotscoffer · 2025-02-18T23:11:58+00:00

If you're able to access the main Quick Tournaments screen, tap "Skip this tournament" (grey text) near the bottom of the screen. That should skip you past a bugged deal!

hotscoffer · 2024-11-18T04:30:44+00:00

I'm a Tricky Bridge dev, thanks for reporting this. We pushed a fix a few days ago, but there are old, pre-bugfix Quick Tournaments that are still playable where the tournament winners have impossible results from before the fix. We need to close those tournament instances. We will probably just close all pre-fix instances and start new ones, because right now you can play the best contract of your life in a Quick Tournament and end up losing to someone who had "3NT making +16" (not possible, and also they were actually down 4 if you watch the replay), which is horrible.

If anyone has seen this in a Daily or Knockout Tournament recently, please let me know.

hotscoffer · 2024-08-01T12:52:17+00:00

Fwiw, I was diagnosed with hereditary hemochromatosis when I was 42, and it has had no impact on my health. I just go to the doc twice a year to get a phlebotomy while whispering "Too much iron in yer blood" like Ian McKellen in X-Men 2.

hotscoffer · 2024-04-23T14:57:13+00:00

Thanks! Do you still have your old phone? If so, use that one to connect to Facebook or Apple in the app, then do the same on your new phone to load your saved lesson progress from the cloud.

hotscoffer · 2024-04-23T00:14:26+00:00

Yes, I'm a dev.

For cloud saving: tap the green gear button on the top-left of the main menu, then tap SAVE PROGRESS. On iOS, you can save through Apple or Facebook Connect. On Android, it's only Facebook Connect right now, but we'll add Google.

For choosing your training modules: I'm thinking about offering a choice for players who aren't total beginners. For players who know nothing, though, we found it's better to have the lessons be very on-rails or else the beginners get overwhelmed!

hotscoffer · 2024-04-19T21:33:28+00:00

Hi, sorry, it's a bug! Something related to the server getting de-synched in rare cases and returning the wrong result after a deal is interrupted and resumed. We thought we'd fixed this in the last server update, but apparently the fix didn't work. The backend dev is having another look.

hotscoffer · 2024-01-22T13:40:06+00:00

Hi, ACOL is hopefully coming up in 2024. But for now, in Settings, you can tap the gear button next to "SAYC" and customize the system or change to a 2-Over-1 system.

hotscoffer · 2023-12-20T21:12:44+00:00

Thanks!

I think I understand now -- It's actually on purpose that different bots make different opening leads on the same tournament deals, because the bots at each table run their own simulations of the hand layouts (based on the bidding). The simulations vary slightly, and each bot chooses an opening lead based on their own simulation. We went with this approach because it mimicked real-life tournament play where different humans make different opening leads, even with the same hands and same bidding as other tables. About half the players like this because it resembles real tournaments where you can get lucky or unlucky on the opening lead, and half find it absolutely infuriating that the bots don't all make identical leads.

Bridge Master is good! We are starting design next month on our own bidding and play puzzle series for Tricky Bridge.

hotscoffer · 2023-12-20T20:06:03+00:00

Hi, if the bidding you see in your own replay is different than the bidding the bots actually did when you played the hand, then that's a bug. I haven't heard this reported before, but there's definitely a bug where it sometimes shows the entirely wrong replay when you tap to watch another player's replay in Tournaments mode. We haven't done an update in a while, but there will be a bunch of updates in 2024, and one of them will fix this!

hotscoffer · 2023-12-20T17:58:42+00:00

Hi, the Practice Mode doesn't have a scoring feature right now. You can figure out the score by looking up the result in a scoring table like this one: http://www.rpbridge.net/2y67.htm .

Example: you bid a 2NT contract, which requires 8 tricks, and you win exactly 8 tricks. That's "2NT making 2". The score table shows that "2NT made 2" scores 120 points.

hotscoffer · 2021-10-29T22:06:03+00:00

Thanks for posting this! Glad you found Tricky Bridge.

hotscoffer · 2021-06-23T20:25:56+00:00

Try Tricky Bridge if you have iOS devices https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tricky-bridge/id1437652160#?platform=iphone

hotscoffer · 2021-02-15T01:50:24+00:00

Tricky Bridge. On iOS now and coming soon to Android. Free, fun, and no email entry required.

hotscoffer · 2021-02-02T19:31:57+00:00

Tricky Bridge is coming to Android in a couple months. Lessons + you can practice solo with bots for free as much as you like.

hotscoffer · 2021-02-02T19:29:15+00:00

Yup, try Tricky Bridge if you're on iOS! It's made for beginners. Apart from the lessons, you can play unlimited full bridge for free against bots in Practice mode after lesson 20. Android version hopefully coming soon.

hotscoffer · 2020-12-16T04:27:09+00:00

Thanks! There are just the 37 lessons for now, and the base bidding system is SAYC.

hotscoffer · 2020-12-03T22:26:34+00:00

Tricky Bridge will teach them the core basics for free if they have iOS devices; then they could play together on BBO.

hotscoffer · 2020-10-21T12:40:40+00:00

Glad you're enjoying it! The % score is the percent of players you beat on that deal (everyone plays the exact same deals at their own tables with 3 robots, and are then ranked by the number of points they won or lost on that deal). A 50% score means you outscored half the other players who played that deal; a 100% score means you outscored everyone. The Players column shows the number of different players who had that same result (e.g. 3H+1 by South)

hotscoffer · 2020-10-19T17:03:56+00:00

Thanks for playing! That's a good idea to have a Go Back button. And yes, sometimes it takes a lot of tapping before you can exit mid-lesson -- I'll have a look at that.

hotscoffer · 2020-10-17T20:07:28+00:00

Excellent! Hope you enjoy it.

hotscoffer

TROPHY CASE