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I play it as a general invite to 4♠. Doesn't say anything about hearts.

I do not subscribe to the theory that if we were bidding over a pass we should bid over a double (and bid the same thing). For instance, we would often respond on a subminimum hand to keep the auction open/perhaps steal from the opps, both of those are unneccessary reasons to bid now. This does not just include hands like QT9xx Jxxx x xxx which are subminimum responses that might have game in a major or at least a better spot than diamonds, to me it includes a hand like Qxxx Qxxx xx Qxx which is a normal response but a normal pass when they X imo. That said, this time we have a good hand and I see no reason not to bid 1S.

I think that 5C is a good bid. It's possible we miss a slam, but it is extremely hard to investigate slam with this hand. I don't think that there is any reasonable auction that makes me want to play 3NT, so that's not an issue either. On the other hand, it is quite likely that the opponents will be in the auction and either bid over 5C when it is right, or will be able to defend better after a competitive auction to 5C.

Actually they were not. If you change your password on half a dozen systems every week, you need to learn 6 passwords every week. After a few weeks you will start to mix them up or you will start to invent some systemic change. e.g. use the same password, with the number of the week in the end or you will violate rule 4 and write them down. So rules 1 and 2 force you to violate rules 3 and 4. Does changing the password help? No really. Assume it takes 7 days to try all possible passwords, and assume that you change the password at the end of day 1. If your password was hacked at day 1, the damage was already done. If it was not hacked, than changing the password has a 6 to 1 chance that the new password is still in the set that hast to be tested. So changing the password will not slow down that hack in 6/7 of the cases. Obviously changing the password will help more if it happens at the end of the 7 day period. If your password is created in a way that it takes much longer than 7 days to hack you will hardly ever benefit from the change. But ... if you change your system settings in a way that only on login try is allowed in 15 minutes, hacking an insecure 4 digit password will on average take 5000 times 15 minutes which is about 21 hours. Allowing one try every millisecond will allow the hack to be done in about 1.25 seconds. So if these guys where really aware of security, they would have allowed you to pick a long password that you can remember and implemented a slow login retry. This would allow you to follow rules 1,3 and 4. As to rule 4, if you write down your password and put the paper with the password into a locked drawer of your desk. It can usually only be accessed by someone who is allowed to enter your office. If your office is inside an access restricted area, the risk from writing down your passwords is very small. In fact if you are able to use a password that is longer and more complicated, by writing it down the fact that it is more difficult to hack can over compensate for the small risk of writing it down.

i hear it's this guy

Well the system does serve one purpose: the number of one-liners and flames has been reduced because some of those people who would otherwise post one-liners now can just up- or downvote. So the threads get less contaminated. And threads that show up in the "new content" are likely to have real new content. Before the voting system, many of the new posts were one-liners.

I think you should write it yourself.

I think partner should do more than just bid 1NT. 2♣ seems reasonably descriptive - a good hand, no club stop, not primary spades, and nothing extra to show in a red suit. But I'd have overcalled 1♠ and probably played it there.

The recommended method is to ask what he meant by the insufficient bid. Despite what you say, we have a Law many of us think dreadful but whether we do or not we have to apply it. If the WBFLC has decided that an insufficient bid has a meaning we have to live with that. So we have to find out the meaning and use it as part of our ruling. You don't like it? Neither do I, but liking the Laws is not relevant to applying them correctly.

:) You don't buy beer, you rent it.

Therein lies the problem. The misleading turns rapidly into illegal communication.

Op never confirmed that s/he determined by communication with the vugraph operator that there actually was a tank, and until s/he does that, this thread is hypothetical, and is merely a discussion of theory

Was this on vu graph? Often when there are screens the operator cannot see one side of the screen so you dont know whether it was defender or declarer who hesititated. That seems much the most likely explanation. If it was on BBO he was mostly like stirring his tea or something.

This is not a case of guessing what the problems are. IE's breakage of standards is well documented and objectively verifiable.

I used to get these messages all the time. In my case, i had played in some of their tournaments. I presume they added me as friend and just messaged whenever i logged in or before tournament starts. Anyway, the frequent messaging really started irritating me after a while. So, i asked them to remove me from the list a few times. When that didn't happen, I complained to BBO and they took care of it.

Good luck for you all!

Sorry if this subject has been hashed out before, no doubt it has. I was stumped what to do here. I'm primarily curious what 'standard expert' is but if you have a specific nonstandard agreement (maybe double or 3N,) do share. All red, IMPs ♠T62 ♥J6 ♦KJT4 ♣AQ93 P - P - 1♠ - 3♥ ? Edit: Hmmm, unanimous conservatism so far. If you're a 3♠ bidder are you also a 3♠ bidder with JT6 62 in the majors?

I've heard others say that partner should bid 4D over 3H. I'm not sure I believe it. Do people bid 3 small before they rebid there solid 6-card suit?

Another rough hand. With your hand you are stuck over 3♦, but I think a temporizing 3♥ call would be better than 4♣. You still have interest in 3N, and don't want to bypass it if you can avoid it. The cuebid in an auction like this is the only non-committal call below 3N, and is generally used as a catchall for a lot of hands lacking a stopper but still interested in 3N if partner has one. I guess this could be considered a Western cue situation. 4♣ here should be 5-5 usually, and with your partner's hand I probably would have raised to 5♣, which ironically has chances, but is significantly inferior to 5♦. Even 5♦ is on the diamond finesse on best defense, or if it's offside with bad defense still on setting up enough spade pitches in time. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I might wind up in 3N on this hand if I was feeling a little like Brad Moss... Otherwise over 3♥, West would bid 4♦, and that'd probably end the auction.

Rejoice. Shubi lives: http://www.bridgebas...opic/46417-tst/ I confidently expect the quality of posts to rise imminently. (I have low aspirations. My goal is to reach "Excellent")

Err... nearly everyone?

Actually they were not. They were very conscious of security, but not actually secure. Those signs evidently eased the concerns of some managers.

:D

"If we had our way, there wouldn't be any users!" -- US Navy LT, assigned to NSA, at a conference on computer security.

Sorry to waste your time, ArtK78,. FWIW, suit-setting jumps after 2♣ openers are fairly standard and main-stream. They date back many decades.

Reminds me of a time I did some contracting for a company in Atlanta and needed a half dozen passwords to get at the various systems involved. Huge red-on-white signs hung in every room: 1. Use a different password for each system! 2. Change your passwords every week or lose your privileges! 3. Never use the same password twice! 4. Never write down your passwords! They were very security conscious. <_<

I don't "get" the multiple downvoting of this thread: http://www.bridgebas...rious-students/ Rain has already posted that commercial advertisements are allowed. I have absolutely no knowledge of the tutor concerned. It may be that those who are voting him down do have inside knowledge. Purely on the strength of the content of the post, however, it would not occur to me to vote it down. I might decide not to take up his offer, but hey, it's an open market. It is not as if he has concealed either his credentials or his charging structure. I might be persuaded that downvoting is not so great an idea, if this is how it will turn out. [EDIT 2011-06-17 00:04 BST (=GMT+1)] At the time of posting, the linked thread had a vote count of -3 for the OP and -2 for the first response

OK, I can accept that, and therefore it needs the Law to read: Until he has played a card to that trick, declarer may change an unintended designation if he does so without pause for thought. Until a defender's partner has played a card to that trick, a defender may also change an unintended designation. And while the law as interpreted may work fine, that does not mean improving it is not worthwhile. Which presumably is the purpose of this section of the forum?

The problem with Ghestem is that pairs are permitted to keep it on their convention card even when both halves of a partnership have never remembered they were playing it on the same hand. Even if there were a mechanism for reporting it, most players would feel slightly churlish calling the director to do so in the middle of writing down the +800 that is the routime result of opponents' Ghestem. But one time in maybe 10, the Ghestem players will manage to land on their feet (generally when there was a misbid and not a misexplanation). The opponents are never able to untangle the auction and get a bad result, and can get no recourse even though it is highly quetionable whether the opponents can be said to have been playing Ghestem.

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You are a minimum for doubling and bidding, you've shown the sixth spade, you're 6322, and partner invited -- I see no reason to bid on. I pass. What was partner's hand? Were the ♣QJ onside with a club lead?

Extras without four hearts. Something like a 4324 16-count. 3♥ shows four hearts.

You're missing out defenders, who were presumably meant to be included (although in practice I've not seen this law used by them).

Everybody should have equal rights to vote. Every other choice is hardly in a democratic spirit. If controversial views are excluded how do you plan to improve? If someone is wrong you should take the time to explain why (s)he is wrong, so that (s)he can improve or ignore it. Of cause voting can be abused, but where should we draw the line? Isn't it also abuse when "friends" always upvote each other? Isn't it abuse if "fans" downvote anybody who has a different opinion that their "idol"? If this up- and down-vote thing helps us to get rid of those "lol" and "Agree with ..." posts, it's an improvement. This forum reputation is mainly a popularity measure and not directly correlated with the bridge skills. (But of cause championship winners are popular and have great bridge skills.) Downvoting is new, people play around with the feature now, things will calm down in a few days.

I would bid two of the minor with either of those examples and don't consider it close.

GIB - or Deep Finesse, or any other Double Dummy software - is merely an aid. Rulings are given on the TD's view of how the play would or might go, not how a double dummy play will go.

No, he hasn't. You see, "declarer plays a card from dummy by naming the card" - dummy does not, indeed cannot, actually play a card himself. Declarer, who may change an unintended designation "until his partner has played a card", may certainly therefore change it after he has played a card from his own hand, and after his left-hand opponent has played a card, since his partner has not played a card (and cannot do so until at least the start of the play period on the next hand). You didn't think that was what the Law said? To tell you the truth, neither did I until recently. We were wrong.

Not acceptable to whom? You do not get to make up Laws, Stephanie, even if you think they are reasonable. If the opposition tell you their agreements, the fact that their agreements are poor is no reason for redress. :ph34r: Experience. :ph34r: It would be ridiculous if that is what he was doing. But he is not. If the relevant pair have not committed an infraction then you cannot refer to their opponents as "the" innocent side: both sides are Innocent. Furthermore, you are not "punishing" anyone: if there is no infraction but someone has suffered a rub-of-the-green disadvantage they have not been punished.

There is an enormous difference between failing to restore equity and actively "punishing" the non offending side. The Laws are not intended to restore equity in each and every case.

The big problems occur not so much when one tanks, as there there is often more than one possible reason, but when one plays (or bids) unusually brisky compared to one's normal tempo. A lot of players also "flip" a singlton out of their hand as they play it. The only real solution to these sorts of things is to play & bid in tempo as much as u can, and occasionally allow a tank to pass by without comment. If one allows no tanks, thinking goes away -- bad idea. If one allows all manner of bluffs, a pard on defence will soon be able to learn his/her pard's mannerism tendencies... seriously unbalancing the game for pick up partnerships & declarers.

Via India? :P

Rain, you are absolustely right, being held accountable for your votes leads to less frequent downvoting. But, as you indicated in the first paragraph of that post, that is a good thing. I agree with you that downvotes should be less frequent than upvotes. I also think that you should not be making a downvote that you wouldn't want someone else to see. As far as vote wars, communities seem to correct themselves and if you receive a non frivolous downvote from someone and your options are to suck it up and post better (presumably since you care about rep), or otherwise engage in a vote war that cannot end well for you, usually you suck it up. Vote wars only end up happening if someone is downvoting a person an excessive amount of times because they don't like them, however the threat of a vote war is enough to stop people from downvoting someone all the time simply because they don't like them. This works well. This is much better than a system where you can downvote someone you dont like 100 times without worry, that is not what the rep system is supposed to be about. I think anonymous vote wars are much more likely to happen in the given system. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work if you can just sign up for 5 new accounts and get 100 votes a day to work with though. If you don't like someone, you can still simply make anonymous accounts and give someone 100 downvotes. That is a lot, I'm not sure if I have the most rep but I have about 260 so it would take 3 days to get me to -40 with only 5 accounts, and of course I'd never know who you are. I do not understand how failure to have the ability to downvote or upvote until you have 100 points would intimidate new users, and make them less likely to participate because of their lack of rights. Honestly that seems ridiculous, most new users won't know anything about rep yet, and if they did it would incentivize them to make 100 posts so they could rep people. It is like video games that unlock certain features after a certain amount of play (pretty much every video game has this). Can you really imagine a scenario where people sign up, make 50 posts, realize what rep is and that they cannot use it and say "wow, that sucks, I wanted to rep but I'm being opressed, I'm quitting the forums." Most likely it won't matter at all to them, a few will try harder to get 50 more posts and that's fine. And it basically solves the problem of someone being able to have enough ifluence with new accounts to kill the entire rep system (I will assume no one would be pathetic enough to try and make 100 posts on gimmick accounts just for this). The difference between a regular member and advanced member doesn't mean anything, as you can have unlimited accounts if a new account can get 10 votes a day instead of 20, all it means is creating 10 accounts instead of 5. It does not mean anything at all. If it took 100 posts before you could use rep, that would mean a lot.

Perhaps N/S should follow the Laws of bridge and then their opponents will not get rescued by adjustments.

No doubt East did not ask North what 2♣ meant because: [a] North did not alert 2♣; and it was obvious (to East and North at any rate) what 2♣ meant - it showed clubs. South's second-round double was takeout of hearts, so club bids by North and South should be as natural as they would be if the auction had started 1♥ - double - pass - 2♣ (as indeed it had started for practical purposes). East in all innocence cue-bid 3♣, and then the tray went over to the dark side of the screen. There, a profoundly confused South and an even more profoundly confused West contrived to confuse one another even more profoundly by saying and doing some nonsensical things. By his own admission, West was about to pass out 3♣ when it occurred to him to ask South what 2♣ meant. It was perhaps fortunate for West that he did so, for upon hearing South say that 2♣ was a cue bid (despite not having alerted it), West felt on firmer ground in leaving East in 3♣. That South gave West MI because of some discussion involving the meaning of 3♣ is neither here nor there; the fact is that South did misinform West as to the meaning of 2♣, and West was damaged thereby (had South correctly explained 2♣ as natural, West would not have passed out 3♣). One could of course take the view that West's pass of 3♣ was a serious error unrelated to the infraction, but I would not be so inclined; West's pass of 3♣ was certainly a serious error, but West's confusion in passing was directly related to South's infraction in misexplaining 2♣. That West committed an infraction of his own in misexplaining 3♣ is true but irrelevant; it was South's duty correctly to explain 2♣ in the context of his partnership methods, not in the context of some alternate universe that was at least partly of his own making. In short (and, be it said, not for the first time) I find myself in complete agreement with my learned brother bluejak, whose analysis of the position appears to me flawless. I have not troubled to assess in detail his weightings of the various possible outcomes had West bid 3♥; I am sure that they are at least reasonable and very probably better than that.

Which law says so? What we (as directors and committee members) must do is to rule in accordance with the laws and regulations in force.

Some strange posts here. Clever, Nigel, to pick up on a trivial pedantic error: of course when he said "there was no systemic bid for the hand" he meant "there was no systemic call for the hand" and I think your suggestion that that enforces a pass very silly indeed. I think that if you rule there was MI and believe that the correct defence would be found 100% of the time you are living in cloud cuckoo land. The correct explanation was [possibly] it shows 3+ hearts, but there are a few shapes that are not biddable under our methods. Anyone who believes that a defender knowing this will always play the bidder to have only two hearts seems an incredible optimist: that is just not what players do. Perhaps the most interesting suggestion is whether a pair has committed an infraction in not disclosing that there is a hole in their system of which they are not aware. My view is simple: no. But I understand the argument for yes. I think people get too much affected by the artificiality of such a system: if you play a simple natural system you will often get to a state where a hand seems unbiddable, but no-one really suggests that you should have told the opponents if you had not realised this previously. You want an example of hole in a simple natural system? Ok, how do you bid the following playing Acol or Standard American: [hv=pc=n&e=sj654h8d54ckq7654&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1hp]133|200[/hv] I shall tell you the answer in a day or so. One view that intrigued me is the one that they did know there was a hole in the system because if you devise a complex system you will know the holes. From experience of many years this is plain wrong: there are always unknown holes, and I have devised a few in my time!

Sorry but you've got this totally wrong. The question is whether "defend undoubled" is a possible outcome, i.e. whether you are setting up a forcing pass. If you open a weak hand at the 3-level you are definitely willing to let your opponents play an undoubled contract.

I hope the OP can edit his hand to show 13 cards. Anyhow, OP's pd should be wary of raising to 5 with a void.

The problem was in no agreement as to what 4♦ means, obviously. Arguing about the merits of 2♥ or 3♥ is silliness, missing the point.