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I've added the counts of suit-signalled-for and impossible-suits to the spreadsheet. paul

"High" is a dated metaphore. Its time to Get Schwifty! I'm going to start with a negative double and see what happens next.

Much depends on your agreements about 4C here. Much also depends for your agreements on strength for micheals originally. We are limited by failure to double first, so I would not use it for slam going here given the choice, but more doubt about strain. Then 4h direct would be 5-5 hearts, and 4c followed by 4h suggests 4h and longer spades.

When I get a hand like this as a bidding problem it's usually from a Director.

4S, might miss slam, but pre-empts sometimes work.

I was gonna make a raise but then I got high... 4♠ from me.

You know that partner has a decent hand here, but just couldn't take action. Your RHO generally had the chance to invite but didn't Given that he has 3 spades, he is unlikely to force an off shape takeout double without 4 hearts, which seems unlikely given your hand. He didnt bid NT naturally, so he isnt 15-17 with a spade stop, but that is almost good news, as you will need v little with no wasted spade values. I think its really close, and I might well bid here. I think that when you have short spades you should strain to take action, You need literally so little here: xxx AQx KQxxx xx would be a good game. I think that bidding will likely win here. Even if it might lose in theory its a situation where it might win in practice, as they cannot always double when you are -2 and they were making 3 spades. I would think that you are about 30% to be making game here, 40% it not to matter too much, -1 vs 3s or -1 vs -1, and 30% to be -2 or more, and only some of that time will they double. So I guess that you are pretty flat in expectation. I bid in these situations, I think it gives the opponents more of a problem. They don't know if you are speculating or have a good hand. You have to play in a style where partner knows that you will push with short spades, and that he shouldn't be trying to push to slam just cause he has a 15 count with xxx spades!

Brady is a member of a union that has a collective bargaining agreement with the NFL. His case went to arbitration as the agreement calls for, then he went to court to claim that the process was not neutral. The Olympics and other sport organizations also specify that the Court of Arbitration for Sport is the sole body that has jurisdiction to hear disputes. Its decisions can be appealed to the Swiss supreme court. Narrowing the choice of jurisdiction seems like a sensible step, otherwise actions could be filed pretty much anywhere.

he went for it on 4th and 3. that deserves some credit

Pass! Remember responder could have as much as a minimum opener and make the 3 ♠ raise. Entering the auction at this point is a leap into the unknown. You might land OK, but you might also go for a number. If you're going to compete, you want a hand good enough to limit the penalties. You've only got a smattering of points and a weak suit -- not good enough. If game is on your way, partner has to have substantial values. But partner wasn't able to T/O double or bid NT, so the chances of that happening seem a bit remote. So, pass and see if partner can reopen the auction. If not, you've probably not missed much. Which would you rather do in the post mortem -- explain how you sold out to 3 ♠ or explain how you went for -1100 on a part score hand?

I'm also doubling at MPs. You're looking at 8 HCP and partner has shown 15+ HCP BEHIND opener. So your side has the majority of HCP in this hand. But partner doesn't know this. Now's the time to tell him/her.

Yes, if partner's double was penalty, which I would suspect it was undiscussed, then double now. If it was takeout, I would have bid 3♦ a round earlier.

I'm not sure if I understand the situation but new suits by a passed hand are non-forcing.

Timo I have read all of the posts on BW and here, and accept that, on balance, there appears to be sufficient evidence to be fairly sure that F-S cheated. However, there have been a huge number of posts, here and on BW, that seem to me to reflect an incredible desire to convict without any pretence to objectivity. Even Woolsey demonstrated flawed thinking. Remember the videos he reviewed, after the board-placement code had been cracked? He went through an entire match and kept a running tab of hands on which the code predicted what suit partner wanted and what suit was led, and he claimed a perfect match. Yet on one hand, the code specified a certain action for a spade lead. The action taken was different. A spade was led. An intellectually honest response would have been: 'Maybe we haven't yet fully understood the code...we thought that to suggest a spade lead, he would do 'x', but he did 'y'. Either we don't yet have the code, or they changed this part of the code, or maybe we are just wrong about this'. Instead, he wrote, paraphrased: we must have the code wrong...'y' must be the code...he did 'y'...this is proof of cheating! It was nonsense. It made me feel ill to read it. This is the best we can do? When the evidence contradicts our theory, we maintain that the evidence confirms our theory? In a similar vein, there were several hands on which no signal was made. Woolsey doesn't simply note that no signal was made. He argues that no signal was needed, or that signalling would have been too obvious, so that the lack of a signal is twisted into being proof of cheating. Ish did much the same in his analysis. Wherever the evidence didn't meet with expectations, based on 'knowing' that these guys were cheating, Woolsey and Ish come up with 'explanations' that reinforce their view that these people are cheating. They even tell us what F-S were thinking....and of course what they were thinking was that they were cheating. In effect the 'investigation' showed: - lots of hands on which it appears that a coded message was sent and acted on. This is good evidence -at least one hand on which it appears that a mistake of some kind was made by the analysts OR that maybe no cheating was going on. That hand was twisted into becoming compelling evidence of cheating. This is preposterous evidence, indicating bias on the observer not guilt of the observed. -several hands on which it appears that no signalling was made or the lead was inconsistent with the signal. In each case, the analysis was twisted so that the lack of a signal or the lack of a requested lead somehow became further evidence of cheating. Again, the only thing this proves is that the analyst has already determined the outcome. This was so unnecessary. The incredible level of confirmation bias present even in the most widely praised 'analysis' is sickening and disappointing. I think there is good evidence of cheating, but it hurts the case, if ever argued before dispassionate observers, when the analysts are so obviously willing to commit basic logical fallacies to make sure that they gain a conviction. Process matters. Process is important even when the outcome seems certain....one could argue that process is even more important than normal in that case, because the temptation to cut corners becomes far more attractive when we 'know' the outcome we all desire. I repeat what I have written before. Blood-lust and confirmation bias raise the concern that in the future an innocent but not popular player or pair will be subjected to the same flawed public annihilation using similar tactics. Most people here and on BW are so convinced that they are right and that the Ish's and Woolsey's are heroes, that I suspect this post, and others to similar effect, are a waste of time.

Even with no carry-over, it's still important for your NGS rating. ;)

The 4.5 billion year history of the earth includes only about 100+ years of industrialization and fossil fuel use - I would say that fossil fuel use is more in line with "messing with earth" than reducing the use of fossil fuels.