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LOL Anyway, you should not be allowed to post in this specific forum because novice/beginner group may think that they may be getting advice from someone better. Unlikely but it may still happen.

When you go for a target, consider collateral damage. When a thread regarding a real-life happening has run and then branches into "but, what if...?" --- do you then split it, shut it down, re-label it? Oops, my question is a hypothetical.

If you rise ♥A and take the spade finesse, you will go off if the finesse loses, and make if the finesse wins. 50%. If you finesse ♥Q and it wins, you will make almost always (unless you lose a spade trick and a diamond ruff). Call that 98%. If you finesse ♥Q and it loses, you are not in practice going to get to dummy with a club ruff. If you play a club they'll switch to diamonds (what else, with ♠K onside), occasionally getting a diamond ruff and otherwise threatening a ruff. Are you going to play another club? So you might as well lay down ♠A at once. That's 26%. If you estimate the probability of LHO having ♥K and for this lead as p, you should finesse if 0.98p + 0.26 > 0.5. Roughly, if p > 0.25. [correction: you should finesse if 0.98p + 0.26(1-p) > 0.5. That is, if p > 1/3] What do you think LHO would have led from ♥KJ10(x)(x) and small cards in one of the minors? If a heart, you should finesse. If a minor, then the heart finesse is playing for a specific hand (♠K, ♥KJ10, ♦A, ♣A or ♣K. (Would he have doubled 4♠ with that hand?)

Please allow more than one vote per person. Are there really people who think that all threads on the laws should be about something we have seen with our own eyes? No questions about meanings, no practical guidance to help in future rulings? I am pretty sure that most people here do not, as we do, have telephone access to top-level directors and referees when they need assistance. So the "no" is pretty strange. Anyway obviously these threads interest some people. Maybe they are a minority, who knows. Does that mean that they cannot have the discussions they find instructive and constructive? If some people don't like chocolate ice cream, should Sainsbury's offer only vanilla?

Technically, South should neither ask nor double. If it turns out that 2♦ was artificial, the score will be adjusted if the opponents were damaged by presuming it was natural. As a practical matter at a level of play below the most serious, South might ask then double. In the vast majority of cases this will enable normal play of the board without resort to the local constabulary (whose competence might not extend to providing the correct level of redress if South adopts the technical approach).

May I nominate this for Overstatement Of The Year? What sort of rental market do you think there would be without buy-to-let?

I have never been in this position, and I never will be. Even if I started the board being absolutely certain of the meaning of 2♦, the non-alert would introduce at least a tiny amount of uncertainty.

Why is this rule reasonable, as clarified by what I consider to be an unfunny minute? I'll answer that: 1) We have an elaborate penalty card rule, designed (50D in particular) so that in most circumstances a pair can't benefit from its own penalty card, and with a catch-all (50E3) to cover anything it misses. Perhaps you wouldn't write it like that if you started from scratch today, but there it is. 2) However, we do not want this rule to be punitive in itself. (In this respect, it's unlike the revoke law, which is usually punitive, and rightly so because revokes can easily go undiscovered and we don't want to put temptation in the way of any unscrupulous player.) 3) Because the rule is not intended to be punitive, we don't want it to force a defender to make a ridiculous play, like crashing honours or leading a card for partner to ruff when he's not allowed to ruff it. So we allow the defender to know the identity of the penalty card. This is specified, albeit somewhat ambiguously, by 50E1. 4) The concession to the offending side in 50E1 would make it more likely that the non-offending side would be disadvantaged by the penalty card, for example if the penalty card were a singleton honour which might have been crashed anyway, but we needn't worry about that because we have the catch-all 50E3. 5) Noting the ambiguity of 50E1, the WBFLC has issued its unambiguous and unfunny minute. I understand that some people prefer a different reading of 50E1, and therefore object to the minute. But I think they go too far in protesting that the minute contradicts 50E - it's not a strain to read "the requirements for playing a penalty card" as including the identity of the penalty card. I strongly object to lamford's suggestion that a player should suffer a procedural penalty for following the law as clarified by the minute.

For example, I voted "yes, in their own subforum", because I think that is the best solution, but would much prefer to allow them without restriction than to disallow them. I would be happy with any of the first three options, and unhappy with any of the others.

If you are playing the Michaels cuebid, you have the perfect solution. But since you asked the question you are probably not playing it, so double and await developments.

Hypothetical or constructed situations can be useful in exploring how we administer the laws and regulations of our game. Sometimes, though, they go deeply into minutiae of the rules and while they may provide interesting discussion for some of the folks here, they don't provide much practical help to those who are mostly unfamiliar with the rules, and trying to learn the basics. So the question arises, to what extent do we want to allow these kinds of topics to be started here? If you answer "other", or you want to add anything to another answer, please explain your thoughts in this topic.

Btw they sorta are marked already, Lamford's signature says that they are fictive.

Unsolicited advice from a non-regular contributor but a frequent reader of the Laws forum: The SB scenarios were definitely my favourite group of posts in this subforums and among the favourites in all of the forums. I would hate to have them go, so I voted "yes, unconditionally." Even new members can IMO identify that these are constructed posts ("looks and behaves exactly like the Secretary Bird"), but if people want a separate subforum for constructed scenarios, I suppose that can't hurt. All that said, the tone of said SB threads got slowly preachier in the past few months, with the opening poster (OK who are we kidding I am talking about lamford) often becoming quite short-tempered and going into mockery mode, even insulting the whole country of a particular dissenting poster at one point, and calling ambiguous laws unambiguous because that is what his interpretation is. I hope we can have more SB posts from a more amiable lamford, but I know that I am not writing any of these invariably creative, educational, and entertaining cases, so perhaps I'm not in a position to complain about the tone of their creator. But I think this recent shift in tone towards hostility and caricature of disagreeing opinions is one reason why some people complain about these threads and they are misidentifying the reason somewhat. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

As W did not lead a club honour he is unlikely to hold AK, so assume E has at least one honour, possibly both. He could also hold DA. So if the H finesse is losing it is unlikely that E also holds the SK. OK, it's all a bit iffy, but it suggests that taking the finesse at trick one does have a lot going for it. Don't forget E is a passed hand, and with ten hearts outstanding could hold length, so might easily open 2H with HK and a club honour, or 1H with an additional honour.

I certainly don't want you to quit. I've an inkling about the amount of work moderating and maintaining this forum must be and I'm grateful for that. Losing both you and lamford would be really too bad. Joost

I don't think there's anything wrong with artificial or constructed problems in themselves. I do think there's a need to distinguish between practical problems and threads that are intended to highlight a flaw in the Laws, argue for a reinterpretation or the Laws, or initiate some other theoretical discussion. Hence I suggest adding a forum called "Theoretical discussions", and that Ed should freely use his powers to move threads into that forum. (I voted "Other")

Well, then rents become more affordable! If you increase property supply, then property prices will come down. This really shouldn't be controversial.

I don't think this is consistent. If you shouldn't double without asking then asking is for your benefit (it allows you to double) so you are entitled to ask.

No, of course not. We (lamford, Vampyr and I) are saying the opposite: the fact that South must play his penalty card at the earliest legal opportunity is AI to North. What we are denying is that North is allowed to know what that penalty card actually is. Consider (Aardv and the author of that joke minute might consider this as well): In the normal run of events, I as West lead a card. North follows suit. Before I led, I knew that East would be required to play a card at his earliest legal opportunity, which happens to be now. But (saving inferences from the bidding or play) I had no way of knowing, nor was I in any way entitled to know, what that card would be until he played it - if I had known, I might have led a different card altogether. Why should this entitlement or lack of it change simply because East has illegally shown me one or more of his cards?

If West has only one penalty card, and declarer has forbidden a trump lead, then it is AI to East that West will have to ruff the suit East leads if West cannot follow. This information does not derive from the sight of the penalty card; it is an evident logical conclusion from the fact that declarer has forbidden a trump lead (therefore West's penalty card must be a trump) and is thus AI per Law 16A1c. But if declarer had merely left West's card as a penalty card, the knowledge that it was a trump would be UI to East, who is allowed to know only that West must play whatever card this is at his first legal opportunity. If it turns out that West ruffs East's ace and the defenders lose thereby, so be it.

Yes, that is additional concrete evidence of the accelerating loss of freshwater ice from Antarctic glaciers. The melting freshwater is lighter than saltwater and freezes before saltwater does. The Antarctic freshwater melt spreads over the saltwater and expands the area of sea ice, now at a record-breaking pace. Indeed, "What more needs to be said...?"

Haha, it comes with the territory if you do something like put a video up on the interwebz. Maybe in the part 2 I will do a line every 15 minutes :P

The level of debate in this thread is amazing, even by BBF standards. E.g. - Making arguments based on the population density of the US - that doesn't even deserve a LOL. - Yes, there is a housing crisis in London. The reason is that people aren't allowed to build enough houses. I know a solution to that! - Then there is this stupid idea that the economy has a fixed size, and if there are more people coming in, then everyone gets a smaller size of the pie. By the same logic, everyone in England would have become 10% richer if Scotland had voted "Yes" in the referendum. - If your infrastructure is broken, fix your infrastructure. You won't fix it by keeping immigrants broke. I know that 14% in England voted for a jerk making a political career off xenophobic fears - for some reason it's still disappointing to see that same B.S. here. Yeah I should know better than reading watercooler's political threads.

not really hopeless comment more funny comment but it goes p 1s 1n p p I am 1n bidder 1s bidder asks "15-17?" my p "yes but could be 16"

You mean "it doesn't happen to make on the lie of the cards this time." Swap ♦K and ♦J and see what happens. I'm not saying it's a good slam, but it's far from "no play".

I pass. maybe opp can make 5♣ or 3N, good luck to them. I and my partners have been known to bid 3♦ on 6 cards so see no point in raising the pre-empt.

Oh, definitely. I mean, I'm pretty sure that the best thing about playing strong club is the limited openings, and the 1♣ opening is something you live with so you can get the other stuff, but if you feel you actually gain on the 16-20 hands... well, good for you but I just have to suspect you're either wrong or playing against poor opposition.