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I was North. The auction presented is incorrect in a number of places (I've not checked if it was wrong on vugraph). It was actually pretty natural other than 1♦ showing hearts and 4♠ keycard for hearts. At some point, my partner bid 6♠ over 6♥, obviously asking me to choose between 6NT and a grand-slam. Without conviction, I accepted, and cuebid the opponent's suit as a choice of strains - or so I thought - it turned out I had remembered RHO as doubling 5♦ but he had actually doubled 5♣. I was a little surprised when partner passed! As Lamford referenced, I was having some temporary health issue, although I hadn't actually asked my NPC if I could sit out - I realised 5 minutes before the set that I shouldn't play, but line-ups had already been submitted and I thought it was too late to change them. Live and learn :rolleyes:

1S. I'm not doubling with a void.

Except that she did apologise. Over and over again. Starting in September 2015. Moreover, she did have her lawyers turn over all work-related emails to the state department. That was early/mid 2015. That's all she can do - she cannot turn over state department emails to the public on her own, that's not her decision. You are proving my point. She did turn over all her emails, yet somehow Ken Berg is convinced that she didn't. I am not aware of any evidence that the Weiner emails were not emails the FBI had already seen. But in Ken Berg's mind they are, "proving" it was Hillary's fault for not "putting this issue away". Obviously, it's is pointless to argue about 2016. Except I am 100% convinced it will repeat itself. There will be an "issue" dominating news coverage about the 2020 Democratic nominee. And somehow, the Democratic candidate will be unable to put the issue away. Just proving a lack of judgement on their side, because if only they had done X or Y or Z, the issue would have gone away. And the same will happen in 2024. And in 2028. And in 2032. And at some point, some voters, and perhaps even some journalists, will learn that just because an issue doesn't "go away" doesn't prove that there is merit to the topic. That you actually have to look at the merits yourself, and not just treat is as an issue because everyone else treats it as an issue. Because if you do that, you cede your agenda to Fox news and twitter trolls. https://www.vox.com/2018/10/23/18004478/hack-gap-explained

She did apologize. When the media has decided on a narrative, they are loathe to give it up regardless of the facts.

I think it would have helped. When the issue first arose, long before October, she could have acknowledged error and made sure all errors were covered. When it re-surfaced in October, that might have been too late. The opportunity had passed her by. As I said, you cannot stop crazies from being crazy. But most people are not crazy. I am a little reluctant to get far into the 2016 email issue, it was not me that brought it up, but imagine that in late October or whenever it was there was a claim that some emails had not been examined. Now imagine that within one hour of that claim, HC could have said "The emails you are speaking of were fully disclosed along with all of my other emails. They were all available, all of them together, there are no undisclosed emails anywhere". I really do not recall the details, but I think that was not what happened. The problem arose when in the course of different investigation involving some sort of computer sex stuff of her aide's spouse out popped these emails. You do not want new emails coming out and you definitely do not want them coming out in this manner. A quick look at Wikipedia produces: This suggests my memory is approximately right. So the crazies might think this relates to the child sex ring HC was running. Non-crazies look at what happened and say "Can't she do something right? Turning over emails is not a highly difficult task, she should have been able to get this right". Add to this the fact that suddenly her name and Anthony Weiner's name are in the same story. And then look and see that her support fell sharply after this. I see a connection. So only a crazy thinks she was running a sex ring. Others, not at all crazy, might question her judgment and her ability to kill a problem so that it stays dead. Ok, history doesn't disclose its alternatives, but I think there are lessons to be learned. HC and supporters are very good at explaining how unfair it was that she lost. I hope for a different ending in 2020. Complain about unfairness or learn a lesson, that's always a choice.

ThePossum appears to be off his meds once more...

The Olymic committee are looking at how to manage the relay race and that's just one baton. I wonder that they would do if EBU had won its claim to have Bridge as an Olympic sport?

Actually they do. There are (at least) 2 different strains of coronavirus (S and L) going around and the one prevalent in Italy (L) is stronger, more deadly and more aggressively transmitted than the one that initially dominated in East Asia (S). The strange thing is that according to Italian authorities, the strain there in Italy is the same as that that arrived in Bavaria (where I live) and set the ball rolling in Germany and yet, as pescetom mentioned, the death rate in Germany is unusually low. The good news is that the 2 strains are genetically so similar that they should not require different vaccines and a person should not get infected with one after having already suffered the other.

One reason that coronavirus is getting so much attention is that that there is enormous uncertainty about the right hand tail of the distribution. Flu is relatively well understood. It comes around every year. We understand the morbidity rates. We know the R factor. We know how likely the virus is to mutate. We're pretty sure about how many people are going to die. None of this holds true about coronavirus. It might be less serious than the fle OR it could end up being many many times worse. And, as such it has people quite concerned. In addition, coronavirus appears to be very contagious and, for certain populations it can be extremely lethal. The countries that are dealing well with this virus are ones like China that (eventually) adopted draconian policies around quarantine. Conversely, countries like Iran and Italy that failed to do so are seeing the virus spread throughout the population. Finally, its nice that you are good at math. However, in trying to understand this type of issue I'm alot more interested in the opinion of epidemiologist who are good both in math AND in medicine and who study this sort of problem. This disease has them scared shitless. Yehudit wrote a nice article on this theme on bridge winners. https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/what-is-acceptable-risk/

Say you are missing QJ in suit and have AKT9 and combined 8-9 cards in the suit. Also, assume no entry problems etc. Normally if opponents play Q or J after you play Ace it is a 2-1 favourite to finesse next time suit is played. Theory If GIB defender has QJ doubleton it will always play the Q. So, if Gib plays the Q restricted choice doesn't apply and you have normal odds for that suit. However, if Gib plays the J it is now a 100% play to finesse as GIB won't have QJ. Is this theory correct?

I think you might be right. A while ago I did some probability analysis on 2000 GIB challenge hands - once you restrict it to one of West/East holding QJ and someone playing a high honor earlier in the trick, that reduced it to a tiny sample of 8, but 8/8 of those occasions GIB dropped the queen. That must have been deleted from the code along with the other notes about signalling etc. That is awful. Perhaps spreading the news about this might be the catalyst needed to get BBO to actually do something about the code (at least opening it up to others), rather than say it's too hard to fix anything but bidding holes.

That’s an unusual agreement. Most would play, I think, that 4H then double showed a good hand, where one bid 4H to make, rather than as a preeempt. Plus how the heck does partner know what to do? Usually you’ve offered him a choice between -790/990 or - 800/1100. Neither are viable long term ideas

We don't need to assume. But when you have a president saying clearly out loud "I like the numbers where they are", and his economic idiot advisor repeatedly proclaiming that the virus has been "contained", it becomes just a little bit harder to make that assumption. In fact, as some friendly advice for our American citizens on this board: in a normal government, it is health experts not economic experts commenting on the status of an epidemic. You might try getting yourself one. (A normal government.) Though to be fair to Larry Kudlow, it's probably best not to consider him an economic expert, either.

Small but important correction. It seems most deaths occur 10-14 after infection. So if there are 20 confirmed deaths in the US, this means there were probably already 2000+ cases in the US 10-14 days ago. Similarly, Italy must have a huge number of undiagnosed cases (unless Italians have a much much higher fatality rate than e.g. South Koreans).

I would open 4H. Then I pass should the opps come in. Bidding 5D, over 4S, is an insult to the opps. Do you think that they won't know what you hold when you bid this way? Remember that partner did not raise hearts, or if it went, say, (x) P (4S), he can still compete to 5H should he wish to do so (though he will rarely wish to do so) Therefore, for 5D to be 'right', you almost surely need partner to have long diamonds and little defence. Meanwhile, you have given the opps a second chance. When RHO bids, say, 4S, he was under pressure. That comes in several forms: one is he has a weakish hand with borderline trump and partner has good defence. You risk turning a plus into a minus. Another risk is that one or both of the opps has extra values, but not enough to risk going beyond 4S. Say it goes 5D (P) P (5S): that may let LHO bump to slam, since his vulnerable partner won't be saving with his 5SD bid. Note that the risks of this depend to some degree on whether LHO's pass of 5D is forcing, which I think it ought to be: after all LHO had to be prepared for a 5D call by his partner. Thirdly, any red suit at the 5-level may be a complete disaster: picture partner with 5=1=2=5 or worse And lastly, how tough will it be for the opps to play the hand should they declare? This is something a lot of players ignore when they preempt, and preempting twice here is about the same as showing declarer your hand

I agree the hand is nowhere near an upgrade but I don't see that the proper 1♥ opening would have worked better as it happens. After 1NT all North has to do to avoid the grand slam is bid 5NT, or ask about Kings if he knows partner's upgrades by now. Whereas after 1♥ I suspect it would be a tricky auction for some intermediate pairs, maybe leading to 6♣ or even sputtering out in 3NT.

It's a lot easier to avoid the grand slam if partner opens 1♥ if you are using a 15-17 1NT opening. (The South hand doesn't look good to upgrade. Kaplan & Rubens put it at 13.05 for the record.)

It might have been a terrible grand, the ♥J is important here, not sure if the finesse or the squeeze is better play. Would however be thoroughly embarrassing to find the spade finesse losing when the ♣K was single.

As the cards lie, the spade finesse isn't needed (West can be squeezed in the black suits). I can hardly be critical of the line though. As for the bidding, there's no reason not to check for the club king if you have the means to do so.

The reason why you preempt is to make life hard on the opponents. You turn the auction into a guessing competition, rather than something scientific. It is important to make sure that the opponents make the last guess. Whatever action they take after your initial action will be a guess. Nobody can say anything sensible about whether they guessed right: Game may go down or slam may be cold. Do not give them a chance to improve their guess. So, chose your preemptive action, whether it is 2♥ or 5♥, or anything in between, and after that stay out of the mess you have created. Just hope that they guessed wrong and accept that they will guess right some of the time. Rik

Max von Sydow a Swedish actor. One of his most memorable film roles include Knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal the first of his 11 films with Bergman which includes the iconic scenes in which he plays chess with Death.[

4H then pass

The commentary on this starts "if more than 52 cards are dealt". We are told that the extra ace came from a previous deal, not a 53rd card dealt to this deal.

The mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson; the link shows the extraordinary range of his activity.