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I'm more worried that partner with Qxxx / xxx / xx / Kxxx decides to pass, and declarer rings up 5 diamonds and the ace of hearts and maybe the spade king if we lead a spade. [note that we make 4S on the hook]. Even if we lead the heart, which is not totally obvious since presumably we are shooting for +300/+500 here, we only get +100, which is still losing the partscore battle (or maybe at the other table, it goes 2C-2S-2N-3C-4S, and we are bringing back 100 vs 620). I agree that there's a decent chance that we miss a game here, but I think there's a lot of downside to doubling.

The internet can be a harsh world. There is essentially nothing that BBO, or any other site host, can do to stop an abuser from making new accounts and continuing the abuse. In general, you are on your own for self protection. Probably the best way to handle a stalker is to mark them as enemy and totally ignore them. Above all, never speak to them in any way. No matter what the content of your comments, they like it, and it encourages them to continue. To a stalker, investing hundreds of contacts to receive one "go away" is a good trade and shows them the harassment is working to get you to talk to them. Don't do it, not a single word ever. You could also consider making a new account for yourself, with a "nick" that does not identify you as female. (I wonder if BBO can transfer your friend/enemy lists to a new account; that seems like it should be possible, even if it must be done manually.) If you really don't want to do this, then you will have to make do with adding them to the enemy list. You can do this much faster than they can make new accounts, so you have a sort of advantage. As long as you never respond ever, eventually they will go bother someone else who does respond.

I have a 2-suiter and not enough strength to double. I have a bid to show not only the precise 2 suits that I hold but also their respective lengths. How is this not clear? If your concern is partner dropping us in 2M with game on then my answer would be either to gain some trust, since partner knows we can hold this hand, or, if that is not possible, to agree that 2NT over 2♦ shows a maximum, over which 3♣ is a re-ask for the longer major.

What about this? 1NT-2C; 2D-3M = Smolen, could be 5-3 majors 1NT-2C; 2M-3NT = Choice of games with 3 card support and 5 cards in the other major In other words: Game forcing hands with 5-3 majors starts with Stayman. In this version game forcing hands with a 4 card major (but not both) starts with Puppet Stayman.

If you are walking by the river and see a kid drowning, do you: A. Save them B. Let the kid drown because 400,000 other people drown every year so rescuing that kid won't fix the problem C. Let them drown but spend some time organising swimming classes because that is more effective D. Let them drown because you never liked the kid anyway but use B and C as excuses if anyone asks questions

I'm not an economist either but some things need to be noticed. In Canada, " in order to save jobs" the government handed over millions of dollars to companies who were threatening to move out of the country. At least two of them moved out of the country anyway asap. So what exactly did we gain for all that taxpayer money? A few months worth of work..it would likely have been cheaper and more productive to give it to the workers instead, to retrain or to start new small businesses. Polls consistently say most people want to do that and even though most of those may fail, it's small businesses which keep a country alive, not the monolithic ones which replace as many workers as possible as quickly as possible with robotics etc. We have bailed out subsidiaries of American car companies twice (Ford only once ..so far..)yet have still fallen from 3rd to eleventh in production. Air Canada has been bailed out at least twice, and Blue Sky, a huge conglomerate of pig farms which was finally sold to new investors last year, had been bailed out by taxpayer money twice just in the four or so years previously. If bailing out companies works, why does it need to be redone? As an aside, taxpayer money was simultaneously being given to Blue Sky to keep them going at the same time as small pig farmers were being paid pennies on the dollar to kill their breeding sows because of overproduction of pigs. Why is it that for the companies which employ many workers some form of the following is apparently never up for consideration? " It's really too bad you can't meet your obligations and have to close down shop. I guess we will have to take it over and keep it going with the workers who are already doing the job, and promote some of them to management with a panel of expert advisors to help. Good luck now, you hear?" Is it that McCarthyism still exerts a gangrenous influence over common sense or something else? It seems as though there is almost a deliberate decision to ignore the concept of consequences. Yet Pavlov clearly demonstrated that consequences drive learning. What do you suppose the bankers who walked away from the debacle they were responsible for, have learned? to say nothing of everyone else, corporate or individual, who was watching this? Perhaps the problem is that it is a whole lot simpler to hand a whack of money over to one entity than to deal with hundreds. Too bad nobody seems to have noticed that bailouts "because the company is too big to fail" seem to be ineffective at best and even if passively, encourage huge companies to be careless if not actually misbehave at worst.

Tell that to kids nowadays and they won't believe you

Barnet Shenkin wrote about a hand where he underled an ace against a suit contract when the auction indicated it could well succeed; declarer misguessed with KJxx in dummy and went down as a result. As they were leaving the table, Shenkin heard declarer's partner say, "It's too bad you had to play that hand against a beginner."

There are exceptions, such as when a business makes a mixture of taxable and exempt supplies, but for the most part any VAT incurred by an intermediary business in the chain of supply can be reclaimed by that business, so that in the end it is just the final 20% that gets collected by the Exchequer.

What does a 2♠ jump from west show after he has not been able to bid 1♠ over 1♥?

I used to learn quite a lot from reading the Water Cooler. It has been a while. But today I learned the secret on how to create a unanimous poll.

Win and play ♦3. Plan is to ruff all of the diamonds, making 8 trump tricks and 2 aces.