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i'm perplexed why pre-emptive raises are so popular in america. if i had the luxury of having 4 jump raises available, e.g. through playing bergen, to cover GF, invitational, mixed and pre-emptive then all well and good, but if i had to sacrifice one, it would assuredly be pre-emptive. How often does it really go 1M (p) to you when you've got 4 trumps and less than 5 points? Mixed raises are much more frequent and if you do get dealt a pre-emptive raise you've always got the option of starting with 1NT which will often work surprisingly well as a pre-empt.

Carbon tax makes renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels. From then on the private sector will do it. It has proved incredibly adept at profit maximisation, you just have to set up a market so that profit maximisation runs in the direction that is also good for the country.

This thread is meant as a repository of mandatory and semi-mandatory falsecards. I feel that this is an area where most I/A players can benefit from the advice and examples of the experts in the community. I will try to edit in suggestions to this post as they are given - if the experienced posters can check them and give a heads up for any that are incorrect then that would be very helpful ;) . To start off, I am going to include the examples that Justin gave in the stem thread. Please jump in with further examples! A. Offering a pin play (or drop) 1. You hold T9x and Dummy on your right holds AJ8xx. Play the T or 9. (If Declarer holds Qxx (partner Kx) then this gives the losing option of playing for T9 doubleton). 2. You hold JTx. Declarer has a suit of AQ9xxxxx opposite a void (either way) giving partner Kx. Drop the J or T under the ace. (This gives Declarer the losing option of playing for JT doubleton). 3. You hold JTx. Declarer holds x on your left and KQ98xxx on your right. When Declarer plays up to the K or Q you must drop an honour. (This give Declarer a guess as to whether we started with JTx opp Ax or JT opp Axx.) 4. You hold Txx. Declarer has Ax on your left and KJ98x on your right. Drop the T under the ace to give Declarer the chance of playing you for QT bare. (Otherwise Declarer will have to play partner for Qxx to pick up the suit.) B. Offering a two-way finesse 1. You hold J9xx. Declarer holds AK8x on your right and QTxx on your left. Drop the 9 under the ace to set up a two-way finesse for the jack. 2. As above but AKTx on your left and Q8xx on your right. 3. You hold KJx. Declarer has Axx on your left and QT98 on your right and plays up to the T on the first round. Win the king to allow Declarer to finesse partner for the jack. (If you win the J Declarer has no choice but to finesse you for the K.) C. Creating a losing finesse position 1. You hold KT. Declarer has AQxxx on your left and J9x on your right. When Declarer leads low to the Q you must play the king. (This gives Declarer the losing option of finessing the 9, playing your partner for Txxx.) 2. You hold QT. Declarer has AKxxx on your left and J9x on your right. When Declarer leads low to the AK you must play the queen. (This gives Declarer the losing option of finessing the 9, playing your partner for Txxx.) 3. You hold JTx with AK9xxx on your right. When Declarer plays the queen from your left, drop an honour. (This gives Declarer the option of playing us for a singleton and taking the finesse.) 4. You hold KT8x. Declarer has Q9xx left and AJ7x right. When Declarer finesses the J you can try dropping the 8 under it. (This gives Declarer the possibility of trying to run the Q next, potentially creating a second trick in the suit. 5. You hold QJ9x. Declarer has KT876 on your left and Axx to the right. When Declarer plays a small card on your left, play the 9. (This gives Declarer the option of going up with the K to try running the T.) 6. You hold KJ bare with AQxxx on our left and T8x on our right (partner 9xx). Declarer leads the x from our right. Playing the K means Declarer will most likely play to the T allowing our J to win a trick. 7. You hold Jx with AKTx on your left and declarer on your right has shown 5. When declarer plays up to the AKT it cannot hurt to drop the jack. If partner holds Qx then declarer might decide you split honours and finesse on the second round. Not quite falsecarding but related is the concept of playing the card you are known to hold. Some examples of this (there are probably too many to include them all): D: Playing the known card 1. You hold T8x with AJ9xx on your left. Declarer finesses the 9 drawing an honour from partner. When Declarer now plays towards the AJxx you must play the T. (Declarer might now play you for HTx.) 2. You hold QTx. Declarer has AJx on your left with K9xx on your right and begins by finessing the J. When Declarer play the A on the second round you must play the Q. (Declarer can play you for Qx bare.) E: Non-mandatory falsecards 1. Winning a trick with the ace instead of the queen from AQx(x) to encourage declarer to continue the suit when you can see another suit is breaking well for her/him. 2. Dropping an honour to encourage declarer to use up an important entry. As an example, you hold JTxx with K98x on your left and AQ76 on your right. If you drop the jack, declarer will almost certainly cross to the king next. In addition, if there is interest we could also add standard positions where you must randomise your cards. I suspect that might be a large topic though and perhaps a separate thread for it would be better - opinions gladly accepted on this.

Hello Everyone I know Luis has started a topic on signalling in tha advance section but could someone please do something similar here, but at a basic level. Using a hand to show how such signalling could be helpful...or otherwise... attitude, count, suit preference etc. What happened to Revolving Lavinthal discards? What is the advantage/disadvantage of using them? Fred's learn to play bridge 2 program gives some very useful information regarding signalling. regards John

[hv=pc=n&s=st7hkt4daj73cjt32&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=pp1s1nd2hppdp2sdp4dpp]133|200[/hv] Playing online with a strong partner you have the above auction. What do you do now?

So West, who is hard of hearing, knew he hadn't heard everything, but decided to assume the part he hadn't heard was meaningless rather than finding out what it was? It sounds like West should have gotten nothing.

The nonagenarian has had in excess of 90 years to learn that this comment is grossly inappropriate so the PP should not be a warning but a chunky fine coupled with the directors sternest finger wagging.

I guess if I played a convention where a 3S bid shows a 4S bid, I would bid 3S.

The hypothetical argument you mentioned is what puts the cart before the horse: it starts from the assumption that the player would always have made the same call and deduces (unsurprisingly) that there are no LAs.

hey :) really ? your lead against 3nt from 4 cards is higher without sequence ? with 10 is to accept yet but from J9xx lead J only making mix in head your part , try like all 4th and your part will count by use rule we all good knows :)

Partner psyched in 3rd. I can't say anything about the opponents' bidding. The full hand: [hv=pc=n&s=st7hkt4daj73cjt32&w=sahq9652dk9852c74&n=sj5432h873d6cq985&e=skq986hajdqt4cak6&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=pp1s1nd2hppdp2sdp4dppdppp]399|300[/hv] Unfortunately, I doubled 4!d, turning a good result into a bad one. My partner suggested I had shown my hand with my first two doubles, so I should have passed. From the poll so far, I guess he was right.

This is an important scenario, which comes up time and again. Asking for the meaning of the double shows that people think Bridge problems can be solved by agreements rather than by Bridge logic. The triple jump to game makes it clear that opponents have a good fit in spades. Obviously North believes 4♠ will either make or be a cheap save. East, sitting under the 1♠ opener must be showing cards no matter how you define the double. This is true today as much as it would have been 50 years ago. East had a 4NT takeout available but choose to double. Probable reason: More than one spade and short diamonds. From West perspective: If opponents have a fit so do we. If it is not in diamonds, guess where it will be. I would probably takeout into 5♣ on the theory that there are at least 19 tricks in the black suits, too close for playing 4♠ doubled at all white. At worst taking out into 5♣ will convert plus 100 into minus 100. At best there will be a double game swing. So I blame mostly West for not taking out insurance. Rainer Herrmann

I blame the system, if N had weak jump available there is no problem. I would have opened the South hand 2N, but after opening 1♣, i dont see any alternative to 3N......

Pass not even close. Partner opened 3rd seat non vulnerable and then made the weakest possible bid. I dont think we will defeat this more than 2 tricks, and when I double declarer will play it better and will even make on a bad day. I would have passed 1N. I can see that we could miss game if partner has 15-16 and cant bid again, but on the other hand I wouldnt be happy if p has a light opener and we dont have a fit. Opponents are certainly not making anything and conceding to 300-500 is not unthinkable if I start with a X. Of course opposite a sound opener doubling 1N is clear.

one of the strongest players in the world isn't going to be introducing jxxx in a slammy auction.

Preemptive weak raises have an extra value of just that - preempt, and even so you wont find a lot of experts that would bid them religiously at any vulnerability and any distribution......its ill advised for example to raise 1♠ to 3 with xxxx,KQx,xxx,xxx red vs white. So even with the additional value of preempt - good players still use judgement. Some authors call judgement "adjustments" some call it "hand (re)evaluation" some "common sense", but essentially these are the same. It is easier to convey the idea and convince less experienced players to use it if you present it as "law" and an ordered list of "adjustments", than just list factors that come into consideration when you are competing - which will improve the judgement of these players, just because it makes them pay attention to some of the relevant info they weren't using before. Experts use this kind of logic and these factors in competetive situation regardless of the law concept. They dont think "I have extra trump - so I am protected by law", they reevaluate their hand with every round of bidding, and extra trump length is one of the things that typically makes your hand better for offense....just like holding tricks in opponents trump makes your hand better for defense etc...another important factor is ow likely you to get doubled? MP or IMPs? So using the law will either improve or worsen your results, based on what type of factors influenced your bidding before it - if trump length, position of honors and vulnerability are something you neglected and the "law" gets you to consider them - by all means be lawfull, if this is something you used to account for, but now would bid to lawfull level based on trumps count alone -this is unlikely to improve your results :) Personally, I find that calling something that describes only a portion of cases as "law" is misleading - math laws hold till shown otherwise, and this one was shown otherwise plenty of times.....so at best it is a guideline. http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gifYu

The total number of points won by participation in this "bridge-related game" cannot possibly have a large effect on stratifying or bracketing since you state that this has such a low level of participation.

The first hand of world junior team championships 2006 that I watched on vugraph, jlogic won his team a swing dropping the T under the A on the first round of this suit. KJ98x Qxx Txx Ax

Some play that you can never stop in 4m in a GF auction. Another approach is to allow a stop in certain circumstances. These should be that partner is limited, that we have made a try for 3NT but rejected it because of an unstopped suit, and that there was an alternative way of making a slam try in the agreed suit. On this particular auction, the crux of it comes down to whether 3♥ followed by 4♦ could be a slam try with an advance heart cue, or if this is always a minimum hand looking for 3NT. I think most undiscussed partnerships would allow the former case and therefore 4♦ has to be forcing here. FWiiW I would not have made a game force on the East hand but then I tend to open quite light and 2/1 is not a system I have ever played extensively.

No idea why you seem to be getting angry at me in your follow up response. I was simply responding to Zelandakh's statement, "In addition to that, it has become clear from reading various threads here that the ACBL use these MPs for seeding purposes. Do you not think that seeding should be based on performance playing Bridge and not various bridge-related games?" Seeding is a term used when top level expert teams/partnerships are essentially pre ranked at the beginning of an event in order to fairly distribute the top teams/pairs.

No, because it would lay us open to the accusation that our alerting regulations are simply bananas.

It sure made me smile just now.

The ACBL does not use these MPs for seeding purposes, with the exception of the miniscule impact potential on a team entering into a Vanderbilt or Spingold of being seeded higher because a member of the team has alot of MPs from ACBL best hand robot tournaments. In pairs events in which seeding is based on another individual's relative rankings of various expert partnerships entering into the event, an individual that earns a large number of masterpoints through robot tournaments is given a lower relative seed as a result.

ACBL does setup a "separate ladder/rating" by disallowing any online "monsterpoints" earned from counting in certain trophy races (Mini-McKenney, Barry Crane Top 500 for example).

What is more important to the ACBL than anything else is to continue to foster interest and participation and keep the game going strong in the future. Fred Gitelman and all of the workers for BBO deserve our continued praise and thanks for all that they do to promote the game of bridge. The ACBL robot tournaments have seen a large number of members participating. This has meant great news for the ACBL by offering another way for gathering additional members, as well as increased participation in ACBL events from many of the members that choose to play in the ACBL robot tournaments. While it is true that there will always be disagreement as to whether these tournaments should be offered as another way for members to earn masterpoints, there is no argument against the fact that regular participation in these events will improve an individual's declarer play. The quote "Please, ACBL, credit me with the points I need. No, I haven't earned them, but apparently that doesn't matter" is very disrespectful.

We don't give out MP for those games because there isn't a demand for it. If there was one, someone would start giving out masterpoints for those games as long as they were allowed to do so. Most people would think that is totally backwards, and that getting people interested in a game which is like bridge but simpler is in fact a great way to attract people to bridge. Didn't lots of people learn whist or something else like that before bridge? Besides, to receive their masterpoints these people have to join the ACBL. They have officially become members of a large bridge organization. That sounds pretty good for bridge! Also, since you seem to feel this game is better than bridge as it's similar but lacking in misunderstandings, grumpy opps, and TD rulings, you should consider it a good thing that this game is becoming more popular. I can assure you this is the least of what you should be worried about if you were concerned about the (in)accuracy of masterpoints and seeding done by the ACBL.

I was once a smoker. I look back on that, and I simply cannot explain it. There are other things of that sort. Women once could not vote? People with black skin had to sit in the back of the bus? Were we nuts? I think there will come a time when we look back at letting people buy armor piercing weaponry and ask "What were we thinking?" Once we get our heads out of our butts, I imagine we can resolve the various issues sensibly.

I didn't notice any negative comments about these two great players, the system, or the stats presented. What I noticed were quite appropriate questions about whether we can "conclude" from those stats --or from any stats--anything about the effectiveness of that, or any, system.

Discarding and signaling in a suit to which you are following suit are two different animals. They are not the same thing. So there is no conflict between Revolving Discards and your partnership agreed signals for attitude or count or suit preference when following suit. Signaling and discarding are two different pieces of a defensive strategy. Even if you play Lavinthal discards, you still play standard, UDCA, Odd/Even, or whatever type of signals partnership agrees to. You don't use Lavinthal for suit preference when returning a suit for partner to ruff or when signaling in a suit to which you are following suit and you certainly don't worry about it if you play Revolving either.

These lists are useful, though I think the hands you displayed are not the simplest examples. (This is intended for beginners). Also, I would encourage beginners (as well as any other players) not to go into "signal-mania". Not every card has to be a signal. If I follow 3-6-7 instead of 3-7-6 I am not necessarily signalling anything. I may vary the order so as not to help declarer, particularly with a higher sequence like JTx. Here I will give a simple example of why lavinthal-style discards are a good thing. You're defending 3NT after the auction 1NT pass 3NT, and you lead the SJ. [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [sp] Axx [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [he] Qxx [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [di] QJxxx [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [space] [cl] Jx [sp] J9xx [he] xxx [di] Axx [cl] xxx You try a spade lead, which goes to your partner's queen and declarer's king, and declarer starts playing diamonds (king from hand first). You hold up, not because you can block off dummy, but because you want to get a signal from partner. Second round your partner shows out - so his first diamond can't be a signal!. Partner's discard should here tell you what to lead. You may need to cash out fast. Maybe he has AKQx(x) in clubs or AKQx(x) in hearts. Or perhaps he has stoppers in both hearts and clubs and wants spades continued, so you can set up tricks. (Some examples) Partner's (whole) hand is: ♠Qxxx ♥Axx ♦x ♣Axxxx You must continue spades and your side will get 2 spades and 3 other aces. But if partner has thrown a spade, declarer will hold up the next round and your side will get just 1 spade trick and 3 aces. Partner's (whole) hand is: ♠Qxxx ♥AKJx ♦x ♣xxxx You must lead a heart and grab those tricks now. Partner's (whole) hand is: ♠Qxxx ♥xxx ♦x ♣AKQxx A club lead for 2 off

Sorry about the error, corrected it now, ;D.

Hello All I hope you are finding these posts as interesting as I do.... One small point.. Cave_Draco when discussing 'Revolving Lavinthal' discards states that when asking for a 'Heart' then a small Spade or high Heart should be played ( should be a high Diamond I believe)..... Is there any reason that revolving lavinthal didnt seem to catch on. To my mind it seems so logical and offers some flexibility if you cannot afford to play a high card for instance? Thank you for your contributions and I look forward to the next episode. Kind regards John :)

Revolving discards More confusing than Lavinthal... However, the contract is 3NT, Diamonds are led & you wish a Spade from P; how do you signal with a discard? Playing Lavinthal a high Heart or a high Club; playing Revolving? A high Heart or a low Club! You wish a Heart? A low Spade or a high Club, etc. They are also played the other way round... Partnership agreement, which opps should be informed of. The difference is... Can I afford a high card signal? Revolving is an attempt to avoid that probem, ;D.

As a short addendum to Ben's post... Remember, bridge is a partnership game, ;D. Communication in the bidding is important; communication in defence can be vital. Especially on the opening lead, partner did not have the information avalable that you do! In the light of that, consider what your partner needs/wants to know. Like most things in bridge, there is no quick-fix. However, experience guides your judgement as to what partner needs/wants to know; and when you should keep your own council.