Leaderboard

No. Even though 2S and 3C do not seem that far apart, they really are worlds different. I will try to explain why I think so. The first difference is being able to make the THIRD shape showing bid. This is very important, because it defines your hand so well. So even though if you bid 2H you can still find a spade fit/bid spades later, you will not get to make the all important third bid. Consider how good an auction like 1H-2D-2S-2N-3 anything goes. If you are 6-4, you show that easily, 5431 with 3 of partners suit? no problem. 544 or a good 5431? no problem. AND you are at quite a low level. Compare this auction to 1H-2D-2H-2N-3S. This auction pretty much sucks. Partner knows much less about your shape, and the auction is higher. Sure, he knows you're minimum, but with so much room minimum vs maximum is not important. The fundamental difference in the 2 level, and the 3 level, is that the 2 level gives partner room to bid 2N which he usually will do. This may not seem like much, but it impacts every 2/1 auction. In the auction 1S-2x-3C, partner really does not have room. 1S-2H-3D is the absolute worst. Partner can now rebid hearts, bid 3S (most people think this promises 3), or bid 3N, or go past 3N. This leaves him extremely few options, and he must guess a lot. At least 1S-2D-3C leaves partner a convenient 3H probing type bid, but it's still pretty murky. The more a bid makes partner guess, the more well defined it would be advised to be. Even if you don't play it as showing extras, playing it as showign 5-5 at least will be a huge advantage, any 5-4 is just too wide of a range. On top of that, if you bid at the 3 level, you are never going to be able to make a fully shape showign bid next. There is not enough room. Even a great auction like 1S-2D-3C-3D, 3H does not show 5314 now (if you can bid 3C with that), it is simply probing for the best spot and might be based on a number of hands (no heart stopper, anti positional heart stopper, slam ambition, etc). So, getting your 2nd bid in the 2 level often allows you to show your almost entire shape at a low level which is great. At the 3 level it will never do that, so shouldn't be a factor in your decision. And then there is the problem of making sure you find a 4-4 spade fit rather than a 5-4 heart fit. If you have 45xx opp 4351, and it goes 1H-2D-2H you will find hearts (partner will bid 3H or 4C). This is not good. Now, if the auction had gone 1H-2C, this problem is potentially even worse. Many modern players (myself included) who bid 2C with a balanced GF will bid 2C on 43xx, in order to create a game force cheaply and then raise hearts. This is to avoid problems that 1H-1S creates in that later you have to both create a GF and raise hearts, and generally have a bad auction (consider 1H-1S-2D-3C-3N-4H or something compared to 1H-2C-2D-2H, partner finishes shape then you can cuebid). So if 4333, 4342, 4324 all bid 2C then you will miss spades a lot if partner bids 2H next. Of course this is a slight tangent, if you don't bid 2C with these hands you don't have to worry about it, but a lot of people do now, and I think with 4324 it should be automatic even if your 2C is not possibly artificial, so that shape will still be a problem. By the way, the third bid thing is why I think 1M p 2N as natural and forcing is awful. This does not allow partner enough room to make a third bid before 3N, so his shape is widely undefined. 1S-2N-3H would be awful, could be 5-4 or 5-5, how do you find the right fit? You could make an artificial reply to 2N (advised) but this hurts your other auctions. Even 1S-2N-3C... you won't get to make a third shape showing bid because your 2nd one was at the 3 level, so again your 3rd bid will be probing for the best spot at best. Compare this to 1M-2C-2 whatever-2N. Now you get to finish your shape exactly. This makes your auction much better. You lose 2C definitely showing 5+ clubs, big deal, that is not nearly as important as being able to make 3 shape showing bids. The third bid thing is also why jump shift auctions are difficult. Again, 1S-1N-3H is a problem auction because it's not known if opener is 5-4 or 5-5 to begin with, and again this has led people to have artificial methods. But all jump shift auctions are really hard because decisions have to be made before a third shape showing bid is made. Compared to something like 1S-1N-2H-2S-3C an auction like 1S-1N-3H is jsut so much wore, but since 2H is not forcing sometimes you just have to make a jump shift and hope it all works out. The third bid thing comes up a lot, and I think bidding systems should be restructured to utilize it more. For instance, over 1D-1H-1N, I think 2S should simply show a game force with 4-5+. This is better than using new minor forcing a lot of the time especially for slam purposes because responder if he doesn't catch a fit can continue with 2N...3x showing his shape. Compared to 1D-1H-1N-2D*-2N this is a much better auction, even if responder bids 3S now he has jsut shown 4-5 and not much else. Getting the third bid in is also important for choice of game decisions, playing a 5-2 major fit with only one stopper in a stiff etc So, in your example auction, while I would recommend a 3 level reverse to show both EXTRAS and 5-5+, I would recommend 2S to always be bid with 4 spades.

Congratulations to Frances Hinden's team (Jeffrey Allerton, Jon Cooke, Graham Osborne) who yesterday won the Schapiro Spring Foursomes, one of the toughest events in the EBU bridge calendar, playing four-handed throughout the five-day event. As the only un-defeated team at the start of the final day, they could have insisted on an extra eight boards if they had been losing either the semi-final or final after 32 boards, but they didn't need this extra chance as they won both matches within the 32 boards.

For a while now I have been collecting threads with useful tidbits on bidding systems, i.e. explanations of specific conventions and treatments or discussion of defenses against various bids and so on. Having just spent an hour stealing some of the forum's style elements (I must say the CSS is incredibly hard to read), I now feel ready to present it to the world at large. Are you ready? Here it is: http://bridge.mgoetze.net/bbf.html Feel free to suggest organisational improvements or to recommend worthy threads for inclusion. I plan to keep this updated for the moment, so if any moderator finds it useful, feel free to pin this thread.

I would like to make the case for allowing a small number of minus votes just one more time. I promise I will shut up on this after this post (ok, after this thread). What now has happened several times, is that - person X makes an insulting or otherwise inappropriate post, - I call out person X on their idiotic behaviour, - people upvote my post calling out person X. (Here X is a variable, not a specific person.) So maybe my posts calling out people are so witty and insightful on their own merit that they deserve all the glory they are getting, and are worthy of being remembered for all times as one of the marvelous contributions to BBF. Yeah right. More likely, those voting are just trying to express their displeasure with X. But instead of discouraging insulting or inappropriate posts, the reputation system rewards at least some of the participants in the flamewar. I hold that allowing downvotes will stop more of these flamewars quietly, and make BBF a friendlier place.

paulg's post in the Water Cooler I hardly ever read that area of the forum given it's for non-bridge topics, and given he was a prominent forum member, I feel like he deserves a thread of his own. I only knew nige1 through his forum posts, so very little compared to many others, but of my memories: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?d=s&a=7SPPP&s=sakqjt98765432&n=hakqjt98765432&w=dakqjt98765432]400|300|I rank: 1. His unique use of the handviewer diagrams, always ranking all available options rather than just giving a single answer 2. The fact that he taught me that 'pusillanimous' was an actual word 3. In forum challenge events where a round is meant to take 2-3 weeks, he would always have all challenges done within a couple of days 4. His clever squeezes and endplays commentary where he would always minimize unimportant spots to emphasize the technique. [/hv]

Congratulations to nige1 who has been selected to represent Scotland in the 2018 Senior Camrose next May. Nige1, and his partner, were not in the winning team but have been added as the third pair after finishing second in the cross imping, having scored more than double the third-placed pair. I believe this is nige1's first international selection and he is rewarded with a trip to Wales. There is a fair chance he will meet lamford at the table, who is competing in the Welsh trials next month. Well done! Paul

Congratulations to Frances Hinden and her team who won the A division of the English Premier League, an achievement all the more praiseworthy because they were the only team in the division with only four players, so played all 420 boards.

I remember this tournament very well, but not fondly. My own contribution was simple: after 1m - (1S) our 2NT response would show 5-5 in hearts and the other minor, at least mildly invitational. I was thrilled when on the very first day I picked up: xx AQJxx Kxxxx x My partner opened 1C, showing either clubs, a balanced hand or any 4-4-4-1 pattern. The garcon on my right overcalled 1S, natural but possibly a major suit canape. Here was my chance for glory, 2NT! LHO started reading their pages of defensive notes and finally bid 3H showing either a weak or a gameforcing spade raise (3S would have been mixed of course, standard since Seville 2001). My partner doubled, showing exactly 3 hearts with possibly longer diamonds, RHO bid a negative 3S and I transfered to 4H, which was doubled by lefty showing either a penalty double or a void (a 3 from Adelaide 2005). LHO led the spade jack and my partner tabled Kxx xxx A10xxx Kx. I went for 800 when hearts split 5-0 and I had no entry to dummy. The canape overcall received a 2, but my own convention was thrown out as crap. The only new convention that received a 3 was my partner's 1C opening, as it prevented the opponents from reaching the cold 6C. My partner was furious though. Given that this event was secretly sponsored by the ACBL, I should have known that RHO had a Flannery opening!

Our game and slam bidding improved greatly since my partner and I started using the losing trick count (LTC). The other day for instance I opened 1S holding Qxxxx x Qxxx QJx, a 7-loser hand. My partner invited holding AJx Axx AJx A10xx and since I was vulnerable I decided to bid the excellent game. At the other table my counterpart passed, probably because he was using stone age evaluation methods. After my teammates preempted with 2H, the opponent holding my partner's hand bid 2NT (counting the 8-loser hand as "18 HCP", LOL!) and even then my hand did not go to game. When will they learn??? In the same match I opened 1S on AKJxxx Ax AKx Ax, a 4-loser hand. When my partner bid a GF 2C on Qxxx x QJxx Qxxxx I was able to show my strong suit and 4-loser hand by jumping to 4S. My partner showed excellent judgement by cuebidding 5H and later admitted to holding the diamond queen, which made me bid 7S. At the other table they did not even find the small slam after overbidding by opening 2C on my hand (counting HCP I am sure) and my teammates again preempted in hearts. Adopting LTC is the best thing that ever happened to our partnership.

I thought that it might be of some use to set out some guide to reverses. In what follows, I am describing NA ideas, since that is the approach I know. My apologies to those who seek help in the context of other methods. Furthermore, these concepts do not translate well into big club methods, because the hands with which stanard or 2/1 bidders reverse are dealt with in big club methods via the 1♣ opening. I am not going to attempt to cover all 'reverses': I am only going to deal with opener's reverse into the 2-level after a 1suit - 1suit start: 1♣ 1♥ 2♦ or 1♦ 1♠ 2♥ etc So I am not dealing with related topics such as whether 1♦ 2♣ 2♥ is a reverse or whether 1♠ 2♥ 3♣ requires additional strength (the 'high level reverse). The first question that any partnership must ask, in terms of reverses, is just how much strength does a reverse show? It is common, to the point of being universal amongst good players, that the reverse is a one round force. While I have seen a post or two questionning why that is, I am not going to try to justify this : not because I can't, but because of space/time constraints and the fact that most players accept that it is. There are many excellent basic bidding texts that can address the issue, and I may even respond to individual questions if I have time. For now, we will treat it as a given that a reverse creates a 1 round force. But this still doesn't answer, completely, the question of just how strong it need be. There are two schools of thought about the strength shown by opener. My preference is for what is known as the strong reverse approach: opener has a good 18 or more, altho even we strong reversers will upgrade 16 or 17 counts with a good 3 card holding in responder's suit. Thus after partner responds to my 1♦ with 1♠, I'll reverse to 2♥ with AQx AJxx KQ10xx x, but not with x AJxx KQ10xx AQx. The other school requires less for the reverse: so they might well reverse with the second hand.. but not with anything less. Note that the quality of the high cards count: the 4321 point count undervalues As and Ks while overvaluing Qs and Js, so bear that in mind when deciding whether to reverse. I am going to assume a 'strong reverse' approach: but, and this is important, what follows makes just as much sense in the 'weak, but still good, reverse' school. Just bear in mind that opposite my preferred approach, responder will be forcing to game on weaker hands than opposite potentially lighter reverses: if I hold a good 6 count, then I know that we have the playing equivalent of 24+ hcp and, with any degree of fit, I'm off to game. Whereas, if opener may have a good but non-fitting 16 count, I'm going to want 8 or 9 to create the gf....or sufficient fit and shape to compensate. Ok, so partner has reversed. How does responder handle this? It is useful for responder to be able to immediately convey the good news when he likes his hand in the context fo the reverse: when he is able to commit to game. In the thread that prompted this post, opener had reversed into 2♥ catching responder with AKxxxx Kxxxx void Qx. The consensus of the experienced players was that 3♥ was forcing, but several expressed doubt that partner would know this. We can all see, I trust, why 3♥ as forcing makes sense, on the actual hand. But what if responder were QJxxx Jxxx xx Qx? Now this hand has to show the ♥ support, but wants to do so while allowing an out for opener who may have Kx AKxx AQJxx Jx. So, one might well argue, 3♥ should be a weakness bid, and responder has to bid around the hand by, for example, bidding 3♣ as artificial, fourth suit. This approach, while having some logic, was soon seen to be inefficient. What if opener, over 3♣, bid 3N or 4♣..... now responder has to bid 4♥ to show the suit, and is that just a gf or is it a slam try? And so on. So years ago, some bright player or two (most inventions are invented several times) hit upon a lebensohl-like approach: use 2N as an artificial bid, usually connoting weakness... this allows all 3 level bids to be game force and natural. 2N asks opener to bid 3♣ unless opener can't stand the thought of playing 3♣. So with Qxxx Jx x QJxxxx, I respond 1♠ to partner's 1♦ and feel ill when partner bids 2♥. I can't pass, and I wouldn't want to because the opps probably have more trump than we do. So I bid the artificial 2N, hoping to hear 3♣ which I will pass. If I am opener with x AKxx AKJxx Axx, I am delighted to bid 3♣. If I am opener with Ax AQJx AQJxxx x, I refuse to bid 3♣: I bid 3♦. (At the risk of adding confusion to a complex topic, I should add that many experts (including me) open 1♦ and rebid 2♥ with 5=6 hands of more than minimal values but far less than the hcp needed for a 'strong reverse'. Thus I would cheerfully open 1♦ and rebid 2♥ on x AQxxx AQJxxx x. So that hand type would rebid 3♥ over responder's rebid after my reverse.) Back to the mainstream: this lebensohl-like approach works quite well and a lot of players still use it. It allows responder to use immediate 3-level raises of either of opener's suits as forcing. With a non-forcing raise of (or preference to) opener's suit, bid 2N and then correct or pass. So with Jxxxx xx QJx Qxx, after you respond 1♠ to partner's 1♣ and he reverses into 2♥, you really don't want to encourage partner at all: you bid 2N and pass 3♣. With AJxxx xx QJx Qxx, and the same auction, you like your hand. It is certainly a gf and slam is possible if partner has extras such as Kx AKxx x AKJxxx, so you bid 3♣. This merely announces we are going to game and I have a fit for ♣s. It is not in itself a slam try, but may be based on a wide range of hand types up to and including hands with grand slam ambition: the point is it is gf. One point that hasn't been addressed so far is when responder has a rebiddable major: say the auction has started 1♦ 1♠ 2♥ and responder has a rebiddable ♠ suit. 2♠ is a one round force, but it may be weak. This apparent paradox arises from the fact that the 2♥ was forcing, so responder has to bid, and using 2N as a weakness bid makes no sense when responder wants/needs to show long ♠s. So responder will rebid 2♠ without in any way limiting his hand. Opener can complete the description of his hand by, for example, rebidding 2N with 5431's short ♠s or 5422 with a good doubleton (AQ is an example) or rebidding a 6 card minor or 5 card major or the 4th suit to create yet another force. Of course, opener can also raise ♠s or bid 3N if certain that that is the right bid: x AJxx AKQJxx AQ.... I'd open that hand 1♦, rebid 2♥ and then, over 2♠, bid 3N... no guarantees but I'm not playing below game even opposite the types of hands I respond on. All of this is fine, and works reasonably well, but for those interested in something even better: use Ingberman. This convention is similar to the lebensohl-type 2N above: in fact, on many hands, it works exactly the same. Ingberman use the cheaper of 2N and 4th suit forcing as the ostensibly negative bid. As with the lebensohl-like 2N, use of the Ingberman bid is the only way that the partnership is allowed to stop short of game. This is an improvement on 2N, when it happens, because it increases the chance of the strong hand declaring notrump. After all, a very common hand pattern for a reverse is 5431 with a stiff in responder's suit. Say you hold x AQx KQxx AKJxx and partner responds to your 1♣ opening with 1♠. You reverse to 2♦. If partner were to have a weak hand, without rebiddable ♠s, he has to bid 2N and now you play 3 of a minor or 3N from the wrong side. By allowing him to use 4th suit 2♥ here as the artificial, usually negative response, you as opener get to bid 2N! From the right side. Change your hand to AQx x KQxx AQJxx and have the same opening, response and reverse. If he has to bid 2N, you are torn between 3♣ and 3♠. If he has 5♠s, 3♠ is definitely best, but if he has 10xxx Kxx xxx Kxx, you want to play 3♣. How do you know? Well, allow him to bid 2♥ and you bid 2♠: a perfect description of your 3=1=4=5 hand. Now you find the 5-3 ♠s (and find decent games when he'd have passed 3♣ over 2N) while allowing him to play 2♠ rather than 3, or allowing him to intelligently decide between playing ♠s and ♣s. Also, responder can now comfortably bid 2N naturally when 4th suit would be available: establishing a gf, showing stopper(s) in the unbid suit and allowing opener free rein at the 3-level to further describe his hand. For this reason, many experts and advancing players use Ingberman. I appreciate that introduction of these devices might seem a bit much for this part of the forum. I do believe that Ingberman is not too tough for Intermediates... once you master the idea that reverses require big hands and are one round forces, then having no discussion about follow-ups is actually worse: the B/I player is led out into the middle of the raging current and left with no boat or bridge to safety: he or she has to wing it as to what various bids mean. Learn Ingberman early, don't be afraid to tell your partners about it, and if partner says 'ok' then you are going to be able to handle reverses almost as well as an expert. Now, is this practical for playing online with B/I players? Not in a casual pickup game, but if the partner is compatible, and you want to arrange other games, why not email or pm him or her and suggest trying Ingberman? If you are dealing with a real life partner: someone you hope to play with on a regular basis, then certainly Ingberman is a gadget that you can add ahead of many other optional devices, such as complex methods over their 1N (Surely Ingberman is no more complex than Cappelletti, a dreadful (imho) method many non-expert players love? If you recognize that you need to understand and use reverses, but are not willing to learn either the lebensohl-like or Ingberman, then probably you should use 4th suit forcing to establish the gf and use bids of opener's suit as weak preferences/raises. That approach, flawed though it is, is better than no agreement at all: as posters in the original thread noted, no one is passing 4th suit no matter whether they understand what you are doing. I am going to close with a few comments on a typical beginner mistake: which is to yield to the temptaion to open, say, 1♦ and reverse into 2♥ on strong 5-5 red suit hands, in order 'to show strength'. In is a fundamental principle of bridge (outside of certain non-standard methods) that one bids long suits before short(er) suits. Any reverse absolutely, without any room for exception whatsoever, promises more length in the first suit than the second. If you hold a good 5-5, your choices are open the higher suit and rebid the lower without jumping or open the higher and jump in the lower. Now, 1♥ 1♠ 3♦ is gameforce. While the upper limit of the hand is the same as the upper limit of a reverse, the lower limit of a jumpshift is higher than that of a reverse. We have seen that advanced players and experts have ways to stop short of game after a reverse: no such way exists after a jumpshift. That can lead to tough decisions: 1♥ 1♠ 2♦ is exceptionally wide range: from whatever your weakest opening 1 bid looks like to just short of an absolute gf...for me, 2♦ could be an 11 count 54 or a bad 18. Another potential source of confusion, to those who watch or read about expert bridge, is that there are hands on which it is appropriate to reverse into a 3 card suit. Let's say we hold Axx x AKx AKJxxx. We open 1♣ and partner bids 1♠. What do we bid? Now, there are players and partnerships who have gadgets for this. I do myself, in one partnership. But what if you don't? A jump to 3♣ is a huge underbid, given that the bid traditionally shows 15-17 hcp, and this hand is worth more than the 19 points we assign it using the 4321 scale: it has Aces and Kings rather than Queens and Jacks and we have Axx in partner's major. So 3♣ is wrong, and no raise of ♠ is right: imagine playing 4♠ opposite xxxx KQx Qxx Qxx. So most experts would manufacture a reverse into 2♦. Sure it is a distortion, but it is the easiest distortion to recover from. I am not encouraging these fake reverses, but I hope I am showing you why they can be, on a very small number of hands, the better alternative to other choices. Now, this post is extremely long and yet merely scratches the surface of an important area of standard bidding. I would be happy to answer questions either here or by email/pm, subject to the caveat that I have limited time: I already spend more time than I can really justify on this forum :)

For those who do not know, I am a Turk. This coup was not attempted by Kemalist group. First I will explain what Kemalism means. It means people like me who are loyal to Mustafa Kemal. He used to be a general of the Ottoman Empire. When Germany surrendered in WW1 so did Ottomans. Our land was occupied, Istanbul by Brits, Izmir by Greeks, Antalya by Italians. Adana and south east by France and Armenians. All the Ottoman army was disarmed and surrendered. Only small piece in Anatolia, Ankara and surrounding was left unoccupied. Having no soldier, Ataturk(Mustafa Kemal) ran from Istanbul to Samsun in 1919 and started gathering rebel groups to fight. At that point the Emperor and his council was trying to decide whether we should be living the rest of our lives under British or French or American protection. After fighting over 600 years, Otoman people were poor, tired and pretty much ran out of men. Although they ruled a HUGE amount of land and people during their rise, they never tried to convert Christians to Muslim, they did not force to change their language or traditions when they concurred. They taxed them. So there was not much help coming from any other nations either. Shortly with whomever left, Ataturk and his men, after long battles, with women and kids vs well armed organised armies made a lot of sacrifice. They won! French and Italians saw what was coming and they turned back. Greeks decided to fight and they lost very badly. Brits, after Greeks lost, did not want to stay in Turkey all by themselves, having all their allies already left. Emperor of Ottoman decided to run away in a British navy ship. Mustafa Kemal was expected to declare his Kingdom and be the new ruler of Ottoman Empire. Instead he said "From now on no emperors or empire, people will vote for their leader" And that was the moment why some people who have been ruled for so long by Islamic rules were upset. Because Ottoman Emperors were also the Khalife of Islam world, who protected them from Crusaders for many years. Ataturk also changed the Arabic alphabet to Latin alphabet because he knew Turks were behind the technology due to being uneducated. But the most they hated about him was, he separated the religion and government from each other. He imported what is mainly Swedish Laws and converted it into our own traditions and life style. He forbid a man to marry more than 1 wife. He gave women equal rights in the court and anywhere else as oppose to Islamic rules. He said "Our future is with the WEST" He was loved by the Turkish people. He was hated by the fanatic Islam. After all he ended an empire that was controlled by Islamic influence, and called it Turkish Republic. He ended the power of people who did nothing but spread hatred towards western culture and Christianity and make money and gain power from it. He allowed Jews and Christians to have their own churches and leaders and protected them by law. He banned discrimination of ANY kind. Now...Turkey is a democratic country since 1923. But some of the big world powers and their idiot leaders, after WW2 decided that fanatic Islam was a good tool to use against communism. They supported, supplied them and helped them to spread for a long time. I remember my father telling me " They have no ***** idea what kind of snake they are feeding in their pocket" In last 40 years they spread so much that now modern world finally started to see what they have done. These people have spread all over the world, in USA, in Britain, France, Germany and wherever you may think of. And they no longer need the financial support of western world to achieve their goals. What happened in Turkey is, there is a guy called Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was ellected. He is representing the religious conservatives. Many people started to lose their democratic rights. I will not get into details but the world knows what he is up to. Turkish military is loyal to Ataturk (Kemal) and to his policy. But military is changed by RTE. He had huge scandals recently both in domestic and foreign policy. Shooting down the Russian plane, his relations with Israel, Syria, Isis were all in question. Recent rising terror bombings and being ignored by the other leaders in the world. His rules against journalism and many other things he started to lose popularity. Except among the fanatic Islam. This so called "coup" was nothing but a joke. Not by Kemalists. We have respect to democracy. Our way of thinking brought democracy at the first place. Not being pleased by the outcome of an election does not mean it is OK to take down a government. TC is being ruled by this government for a long time now. We are not happy with it. But after this joke coup attempt, now he will have more power to limit the democratic rights of people. At the end of the day, he is the only one who profited from this joke coup. His ratings will rise again for standing still against a so called coup, and he will distract people from what is really going on. What really going on is, unfortunately, Turkey is being remodeled again and us Kemalists have no say in this. It will be the Syrians, the Arabs, the Kurds and whomever else have ambitions in getting a piece of it. This coup was made by a VERY small group in military. They were probably convinced that the entire military was behind them. Someone baited them, and they jumped on it. Doesn't it look funny to attempt a coup with only few soldiers, 20 tanks? The country you are trying to take over is officially 90 million and in real it has more than 120 million people living in (they show less to get into EU) and an area of bigger than most European countries. With neighbors such as Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Come on now! But let me tell you something. Turkey is the last bridge between Europe and the darkness! Once it falls, it will be ugly for everyone soon enough.

Yesterday we had the anual Sint Nicholas drive with silly rules. This year the rules were that every pair had to have one illegal communication agreement which they had to describe in a sealed envelope and give to the TD. Players were encouraged to accuse others of cheating and would get a bonus if the accusation turned out to be correct (in a broad sense, i.e. "it is something with the way they space the bidding cards" would be sufficient, even if they can't say what information it conveys). 18 pairs, 25 boards. One pair was trapped: they played a pass in first/second as something like "15-17 balanced OR a normal pass" and had some illegal way of showing which it was. Of course this was without screens, only five boards against each opponent, and it was known apriori that everybody was cheating. So it is not quite comparable to the cheating investigations at high level. Anyway, I thought it was a funny experiment to see how easy/difficult it is to catch cheats. We had the agreement that a double is penalty if you place the handle of the X card towards yourself. I thought it was very noticable how my partner took time to figure out how to rotate the X card, and several times opps asked for the meaning of the double and I could confidently describe it as some non-standard meaning, which must seem unlikely given that we were a first time partnership. But it apparently didn't occur to any of the opps that we were signalling the meaning of the double. Nor did we ever have a clue about how opps were cheating.

It seems to me that an easy solution is available.

One of the regular posters on BBF (wank) was part of the Wolfson team that went on to win the 2019 Vanderbilt. Link here Well done, Alex. It'll be good to have you post some problems faced by you on BBF in the coming days & weeks.

Good morning. This is my 10,000th post on the forums. Well, it's actually Phil's 10,000th post - pclayton had around 9,100 some odd posts through 2010 or 2011 before he gave up when he got tired of some of the personalities. I'm not as active as I used to be here - I spend about 2/3 of my forum time over at Bridgewinners. This morning, I did the following: 1. Mocked a necro Flannery post that was 15 years old. 2. Nitpicked Mr Ace's squeeze line 3. Analyzed an interesting hand from ahydra. Time does fly and things change. Here was my intro post in 2004 or 2005: 1. The kids are all grown up. Our oldest is expecting their first in September and the middle just got engaged. The youngest graduates from her Masters program next month. Kimi is still a bridge widow and just harped on me for being on the computer on a Sunday morning lol. 2. After shopping centers, I transitioned into land development for a few years and had a projects when the music stopped. I would not say it was a riches to rags story, but pretty close. From 2008 to 2012 I got the land use approvals for an automobile race track (look at The Thermal Club) which is up and running. 3. In 2012, I completely pivoted out of real estate and leveraged my PM skills into IT project management and I am now the program management office lead for Toyota. While I do not rate to have huge payday, we are doing just fine. 4. We moved to Dallas last year when Toyota moved. So far we like it. I have some new bridge partners here who you probably have heard of - not sure why they like to play with me :) 5. I think my regional count is around 70 and I got my Diamond LM earlier this year when I had a great tourney in Houston with Mr. Ace. 6. Still chasing that national. Best so far is a 5th and a 7th - both in the NAP's. I led the NAPs in Kansas City going into the final session but we could not close the deal. Also made R32 in Kansas City Vanderbilt. One bad quarter kept us from beating Berg. Work still gets in the way of going to too many nationals, but I am looking forward to a full schedule in Atlanta. 7. My main partnership is with Agumperz. Our system basically looks like what would happen if Welland/Auken had a love child with Fantunes. We call it Martian Standard. No, you cannot have the notes :P

Not a specific comment, but an epic drama in multiple acts: Act 1 Playing at my local club, LHO (I’ll call her W) opened 1N, P passed, and RHO responded 1H. One director call later, E was invited to take back her bid and informed that W would be silenced. E opted for 3N, tabling dummy (2533ish) after my P’s lead, and then fidgeted anxiously until midway through the play, she shouted ‘Why aren’t you running my Hs, P?’ Everyone – her P included – asked her as politely as the circumstances warranted not to comment as dummy. Act 2 After W drifted one off, it seemed to everyone that 4H would have been a better contract. E angrily shouted ‘Why didn’t you bid Hs, P?’. We reminded her of the director’s ruling, and who had been responsible for it, but, not to be deterred, she grabbed her partner’s hand from its wallet, displayed its contents – including 4 hearts – to everyone at the table, and asserted loudly that 4H would in fact have made. Act 3 Feeling that fripperies like reason and table etiquette were obsolete at this stage, we suggested that they could discuss this afterwards, and we should move onto the next hand, given that we were already behind. E testily agreed, and we reached for our cards – at which point W realised that all 13 of hers – including 4 hearts – were lying face up on the table.

Seems unfair. If someone is acting like an #$^*(@!!! they should be treated like an #$^*(@!!!, not an @$^)(!%^!!!. That kind of overreaction doesn't do anyone any good.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2012 Posty Awards, as selected by their peers. Newcomer of the Year: PhilKing Though he didn't join the forums until June, PhilKing was the runaway winner of the Newcomer of the Year award. He was active in numerous subforums, but none more so than Expert-Class Bridge, and it's easy to see why; a top-shelf player, he has effortlessly slipped into the role of respected poster. Perhaps just as important as his obvious qualifications as a player is the easy, conversational tone of his posts; while some newcomers make their mark by ruffling feathers, he made his by creating a high volume of quality content. "Bridge in the Real World" Award: JLOGIC 2012 was another outstanding year for JLOGIC: he started off the year with a bang, winning the Platinum Pairs at the Spring NABC in Memphis, and finished with a workhorse performance in San Francisco, with high finishes in every event he entered. As his partnership with Bob Hamman matures, expect him to become even more dangerous in the biggest events. Thread of the Year: Zelandakh's "Mandatory Falsecarding" With this post, Zelandakh started a fascinating thread about a topic that has received comparatively little attention in the literature. It now includes dozens of at-the-table situations, and has been viewed over 3,100 times. As Zelandakh expressly hoped in his initial post, the thread has become a repository for information that is not readily available anywhere else, for the benefit of and use by all. Informative and entertaining, it is an evolving illustration of the true potential of these forums. Individual Post of the Year: han's memories of the "Secret Bridge Olympics" Those of us who know han personally know him to be an outstanding analyst, a fearsome opponent, a compassionate partner, a reliable teammate, and a truly nice guy. But regular readers of the forums also know him as a satirist with a sense of humor as dry as the Sahara. With this post, he brilliantly skewers the notion of an invitation-only "Secret Bridge Olympics". Most Helpful Poster for N/B Players: helene_t helene_t is a longtime, and prolific, member of the forums, and her posts can be found in a variety of subforums; but she is particularly noteworthy for her contributions to the Novice/Beginner (and formerly the Beginner/Intermediate) Forum. She consistently takes the time to answer questions that many other advanced players overlook or ignore, and to do so in a way that is approachable, succinct, and free of confusing jargon. She doesn't use the N/B Forum as a stage to display her own superior knowledge; rather, she strives to share her knowledge with others in a friendly, matter-of-fact style that encourages newer players to delve deeper into the game. Poster of the Year: gnasher It's no secret that gnasher has long been one of the most respected members of the BBO Forums community. He has one of the highest reputation totals on the forums, but the numbers don't adequately convey how much weight his words here carry. Quite simply, when gnasher posts, people listen. It's not just because he is an expert player, although he is; he's also a gifted writer, with an eloquence and clarity of thought that others would do well to emulate. He is unafraid to challenge others when their arguments don't hold water; at the same time, when he disagrees with other posters, he does so without rancor. He is a worthy recipient of the title, "2012 Poster of the Year." Thanks again to everyone who voted. I feel like the changes to the forum structure made it a little more difficult to find this thread, but I plan to do it again next year, hopefully with increased participation. I continue to feel that it's important to recognize those who contribute to the BBO Forums; it remains a unique online resource for those who wish to improve their game. I am also amazed by how cordial this community is, for the most part; those who have visited other online communities are probably aware of how much bile and vulgarity is sadly the norm for online discourse. Much of the credit goes to the BBOF moderators, who do a uniformly outstanding job of keeping things civil without being intrusive. But I think there is also something particular about bridge players; they like to argue, and will do so heatedly, but it's all in search of some "higher truth". When it comes down to it, we all love bridge, and we tend to appreciate that about each other, regardless of the level at which we play. As BBO continues to grow, so too will the forums; I know I'll be eagerly watching.

http://imageshack.us/a/img33/4222/salidaboda.jpg Yesterday was one of the saddest days for all bachelors, when it was confirmed that the most beatiful, kind and smart woman in the world got married. Its true that many people saw it coming, but it is nevertheless painy to see it happen finally. Not everything is lost, with me out of the market, more fish should be avaible in the pond :)

It all depends how the word 'expert' is defined in each country. In my country (Turkey) if u learn and use any convention beyond stayman and xfers you are promoted to advance level. If you perform an endplay or a simple squeeze that has name in books such as 'coup de vienne' even if accidentally, you become expert. Worldclass level is even easier than all of these, you simply watch a worldclass player in BBO and wait untill they make a mistake that you would not do. As soon as you see this you can claim your world class status but knowing how humble my countrymen are i am not surprised to see most of them settled with only expert status.

Congratulations to nige1 on winning the SBU Arthur Trophy on BBO today (https://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwop/bw.cgi?pid=display_rank&event=20210424_4&club=sbu). The Arthur is the SBU's Ranked Pairs event for Grand Masters. Surprisingly it's his first victory and comes after a bout of poor health, so even more impressive. It also let his partner catch up with his wife's victory in the event. ahh was the previous holder and finished just above average this time.

We may have already moved on from this topic, but I would point out that saying that something someone said is racist is very different than calling the person racist. I don't think it's productive at all to engage in name-calling, which is what calling someone racist would be. I do however believe that everyone is susceptible to racist thoughts, and that the main goal of having a fair and equitable society is to recognize those thoughts (usually coming from a place of fear or ignorance) and not act on them. (And acting includes verbal/written actions.) I also operate from a point of view that very few people actually want to be racist (if someone wants to be, then I really have nothing to say to them), and so pointing out actions that are racist are ways to help people not act in a racist manner. Another example of times I would say something to someone: when someone says something implying "URBAN schools" or "THOSE children" (the latter not said here, but said to me in other locations) - those are clearly codewords about children of color, and if someone doesn't know that, then they need to be told. Going back to the common core thread, I talked about my students, and how I teach them, and what I get them to do. Today I witnessed a teacher doing something extremely similar with 9th graders at my school and having them all on task, forming questions that a certain equation could answer. I know that people in that thread expressed shock when I verified that I taught at a "urban" (90+% Latino/African American students - closer to 100% than 90%) that had about 85% of students on free-or-reduced lunch. I think that showed preconceived notions of what students of color could do, and revealed some racist thoughts. I think that calling those people racist would be a complete overbid, as most when I pointed out where I worked seemed to at least be willing to change their worldview which in my mind shows someone with an open mind. And my goal in life is to reach people who have an open mind (or to open minds, if I can). Basically, calling someone's actions racists allows that they may learn from them, and can change. Calling someone themselves racist will likely entrench them in whatever they're thinking, and not allow that people can grow. The trick, though, is that if it's been pointed out to you that an action/thought was racist (like that employers shouldn't hire African Americans due to fear of litigation) and it has been explained why that thought is racist, you don't then decide that you're being called racist and double-down on your statements.

OK, so those pesky opponents have dared to open the bidding and raise to game. Well, are you going to bid, or are you too scared of going for a number? All hands are from top-level play.If the hand has an L after it, the opening was limited, which means the raise might not be preemptive. 1. ♠AQT73♥43♦K7♣KQJ2, amber. L. 2. ♠KQT75♥54♦AKT2♣K5, white. 3. ♠AQJ943♥4♦973♣T94, amber. 4. ♠KT652♥-♦AK642♣A94, amber. 5. ♠Q76♥Q63♦AK84♣AK4, red. 6. ♠A875♥6♦AKJ74♣K94, white. L. 7. ♠653♥QJ3♦AKJT976♣-, white. 8. ♠AK74♥AT♦JT5♣AK84, amber. L. 9. ♠AK953♥K8♦82♣AKT8, red. 10. ♠AKJ973♥2♦T742♣J4, red. 11. ♠A53♥T♦AJT953♣A87, white. 12. ♠K87432♥-♦A4♣T7643, white. L. 13. ♠AK864♥Q72♦A72♣43, white. L. 14. ♠AQJ72♥Q♦T2♣86543, white. 15. ♠KQ9874♥8♦J6♣AK75, amber. L. 16. ♠KT9♥-♦Q9754♣AK764, white. 17 ♠AQJ9542♥T3♦T98♣2, amber. 18. ♠AJ943♥42♦AKJ6♣Q4, red. 19. ♠KQ74♥4♦63♣AKT976, green. L. 20. ♠AK943♥K2♦JT9842♣-, red. L. 21. ♠KT743♥J♦QT♣AQJ84, red. 22. ♠AK732♥Q♦75♣AKT98, red. 23. ♠AT72♥2♦KQ6♣KQT63, red. Good luck!

Yes - this is an open forum. That's exactly why barking mad ideas like this occasionally surface, but why on earth should they put you off posting?

Come on guys... Patroclo has made several interesting posts here. Unfortunately, his English isn't very good. Can't we just read past that? If we did, we could conclude that it seems that Alfredo Versace has been complaining on an Italian website about the tournament in Sanya: - Too far away from civilization - Everything is way too expensive - Poor format - No wonder so few contestants showed up And Versace goes on to complain that the next European Championship will be in Tromsø, Norway, which again will be: Too far away from civilization and too expensive. He calls for officials to stop this nonsense and make bridge again accessable for young players. I think it is interesting to hear Versace's opinion. Thanks Patroclo, Rik

Cracked (the most successful comedy webpage on the internet) ran my very first article for them today. Go read it, tell your friends, astound your wife and shock your neighbors. http://www.cracked.com/article_20724_5-laws-that-made-sense-paper-and-disasters-in-reality.html As a bonus, you can leverage it into a discussion of gun control or government intervention in general, which is what the people in the comments are doing.

Thx, my first national pair game win, it feels great.

Winner! Seriously, I have often been lucky enough to often be in a situation where I was playing some regional KO against a reasonable but not great flight A teams. I would say every single time the biggest factor in beating them was that they were just outgunned in cardplay. Bidding at imps is pretty easy, you try and bid close games and not do anything stupid. If there were a close slam hand or a freak hand, I would not be happy, since if it was just partscores and games we would probably always beat those teams, slams to me just made the match more random. The fact is, if your team is significantly stronger in cardplay, you will be a big favorite in every match, and if you are significantly weaker, you will be a big dog. It doesn't matter whether you open aggressively or not, or preempt aggressively or not, or bid 40 % games or not, none of those things offer much edge. Maybe you are gaining .05 imps a board with a certain bid. On the other hand if you read the cards well and guess a queen better than your opponent, you might be gaining 3 imps in equity on it. It is not even close how much more important card play is. The only really big edge to be had in bidding at imps is slam bidding, but that doesn't come up that often and presumably your opps won't be completely hopeless at it even if they're inferior, so it's just not a big enough edge. If you are ever lucky enough to play a top 8 seed in the spingold, I think it will be painfully obvious to you that the reason you lose is because your opponents are not making mistakes in the cardplay, and it's winning them a lot of game (and maybe partscore) swings. That is the bread and butter of knockout matches. I find it laughable that anyone thinks they will come away from that experience thinking "Wow, I just got outbid!" or "80 % of the imps I lost were in the bidding :(" And that is imps, MPs is even more about taking tricks. There are 2 reasons people like to think bidding is 80 % of the game. 1) As has been said here, maybe when the blue team played the aces, or the diamond team plays the fleisher team, 80 % of the swings were bidding because their card play was near perfect. I can accept that, but that is only because they are at the very highest level and they all play the hands very well. This does not apply to you if you are not on one of the top 10 teams in the country. 2) Cardplay is harder to improve in, and it is more boring and concrete. Bidding on the other hand you can change your system all the time, make a few things more optimal, and really feel like you are making big improvements to your game. It is also more fun. It is just people lying to themselves. It is the same reason that almost all threads are about bidding and not play, no one can be proven wrong in a bidding thread, and people can debate it endlessly. On a cardplay thread we just get rainer posting the solution and everyone nodding...not that conducive to discussion, or being able to hold a view and keep thinking that you're right! It is the same reason that bridge teachers even at the lowest level teach bidding classes rather than play classes, and *cringe* teach conventions. People want to come away from a lesson feeling like they learned something, like they made some tangible gain. Going home and saying "look, I know kickback, it's going to save me so much room!" is a lot more rewarding than saying "well we went over some hands and I counted winners and losers and figured out what to do with my losers, blah, basically the same stuff I already knew..." As roger said, there is no shortage of people who WANT to believe that bidding is 80 % of the game, unfortunately it is more like 10 %.

This is my 2500th post here. One-quarter of the way to Phil's milestone :) Thought I'd use it to introduce myself and describe my experience so far with this wonderful game we call bridge. My name is Colin, I'm 32 and from the UK but I emigrated (permanently) to NZ last year. I much prefer it here in NZ (working conditions aside) and currently play bridge once a week at the Wellington Bridge Club. I'm a software engineer, working on telecoms systems. Here in NZ I continue to work for a sub-branch of the same company I worked for in the UK. A book on bridge on my uncle's shelf piqued my interest in the game, and one night he sat down and guided me plus a couple of other family members through a hand. Having a grand slam bid and made against you on your first ever hand is probably not the most appealing introduction! At 19 I found myself in hospital for a while with a pack of cards, a book by Klinger and... erm, someone else I forget, and very little to do; I was hooked and my bridge "career" started soon after. Attempts to learn bridge locally failed due to the teacher being rather unwelcoming, so I joined BBO, and played mostly online and at Avenue Bridge Club in Hove where a lovely lady named Gwyneth mentored me a while. A highlight was finishing 4th, where on one hand I jumped to 4D, she looked puzzled, bid 5D and said "what are you going to do now, bid 6?" and I did - making! My first club win was also at that club, playing with a pickup partner. I made 6C on a crossruff on the last board, which remains one of my favourite bridge memories. I tried to teach my brother bridge, but despite scoring up a 7NT, he was never really keen on the game - no doubt not helped by my tendency to invent over-complex systems, nor the attitude of some rather unkind individuals at the club in Eastbourne. It was a shame, as his cardplay was pretty good. I went to Cambridge Uni to study maths, and afterwards moved to Hertfordshire for my job. There I found a regular partner named Ian and we played together for about 5-6 years, enjoying a good amount of success locally including winning a couple of Swiss team events. We represented our county at the Pachabo Cup and managed to hold our own against the likes of Jeffrey Allerton and Victor Silverstone. We also came top at an Open Pairs event at the EBU Summer Congress one year (I pulled off a triple squeeze on one hand), and might have put in a good showing in the teams too if it wasn't for a couple of... erm, ambitious* bids on my part. :) *When you overbid, it's "ambitious"; when partner or team-mates overbid, it's "reckless" or "crazy", of course. ;) Ian and I developed a 5cM "clubs or balanced" system with transfer Walsh and a weak NT, which remains my favoured system to this day. Strong NT I don't mind, but I am not a fan of 2/1 due to the wide-ranging 1NT response which really cramps your ability to open light. I have also dabbled in strong club (but feel you need detailed agreements on handling aggressive pre-empts which are all the rage these days), as well as a "tribal" aka "split range balanced" system, which I think could be a very powerful system if a serious partnership were to invest time with it. My bridge has since progressed significantly - I can now spot a simple squeeze or endplay at 50 paces, but am yet to pull off my first double squeeze (I almost managed it once, only by the time I'd spotted it, I'd messed up the entries!). I hope one day to play for NZ, but first must really work on some weak spots such as my declarer play and bidding after opposing pre-empts. I'd also like to teach just about every single player in NZ that a TOX does not just mean "an opening hand" but also a shortage in the opened suit and 3+ support for everything else...! For some reason I find defence easier than declarer play - I think a lot of it is because declarer is often kind enough to tell you quite a lot about his shape during the auction. My current life goals are to save money to buy a house, and find a partner both in bridge and in life. If you're in the Wellington area and want a regular partner for local play/tournaments, please do send me a PM. I'm also a keen musician, having learnt piano from a very young age and taught myself guitar at uni. I wish I had more spare time so that I could write some music (and play more bridge, of course!). So, that's me, looking forward to building my life here in NZ and the next 2500 posts. This forum is a great place to talk bridge - you get kind, detailed, insightful input on any problem or subject, and I'm very grateful to all who have helped me develop my game so far. I also love BBO, particularly vugraph which is where I picked up almost all my knowledge on bidding. I had the pleasure of doing some vugraph operating last year and plan to help out again at the NZ Congress in October. I'm considering registering over at Bridgewinners as well, perhaps those who are registered there can recommend it (or advise against it?!). ahydra

I think that Fisher, Schwartz , Fantoni and Nunes all should lose their BBO Stars.

Part 2 is up: We talk about the trials, basketball, poker, chess, maths, HCP/LTC, the Rodwell Files, why I suck at bridge (and so can you!), and finally, life. I enjoyed making it a lot, thanks a lot Justin!

ximp poster 1229 karlson 966 Mbodell 903 foobar 834 Gordontd 707 Rhm 582 mikeh 567 Poky 454 NickRW 441 cherdano 438 Jinksy 406 BenLessard 392 Zelandakh 338 manudude03 331 PhantomSac 260 Nige1 157 cyberyeti -19 WesleyC -35 gnasher -68 PaulG -81 wanoff -121 y66 -144 eagles123 -153 eilidh -179 AyunuS -235 JoeFortune -341 gwnn -566 helene_t -649 Remnard -882 KurtGodel -1002 Hanoi5 -1390 MrAce -1554 gszes -1586 wbartley I have ignored the 4S bid by Gnasher which PhilKing assumed was a typo. I have ignored those bids that were posted after PK revealed the "solutions".

Honestly the best part of the expert forum is it made the beginner forum much better, and it makes I/A better. Let's not forget what it was like when it was b/I and a/e. There was tons of bickering since everyone thought they were advanced and would post in a/e. Then people would say zomg post in b/I! This also made the beginner area non accessible to true beginners since hands like end plays and squeezes might be posted in b/I since some people thought intermediates could obv do this. The truth is 90+ percent of posters are intermediate or advanced. Many intermediates think they are advanced. I/A is a logical forum since it crosses over and there are less feelings hurt. As a result this makes the beginner forum a place where true beginners can get their hands answered in a suitable forum for them and everyone plays nice. The expert forum has had some good stuff though it is largely dead right now I think it has a place. It does seem like there is a rise in people saying this doesn't belong here or whatever but it's nothing like when it was a/e. I guess you could just have I/a/e but I think there have been times when the expert forum produced some good stuff.

It's almost like right-siding isn't the main advantage of transfers

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.

hi Roland, the last session of the world mind games is coming up and your last as VG coordinator, so i wanted to say: thank you for all you have done these many years to make VG into what it is and thank you for bringing me into it as well. you have done an amazing job and VG would certainly not be the same without you bye for now :) Hedy

I have rather strong views about this. Why it is bad to play weak + strong, with intermediate hands bidding out The common reason given for playing this is that having a split range helps partners bidding, and that when you bid one suit and later bid another suit, you will be known to have an intermediate range. The problem with that is that you often don't get a chance to bid both suits, and you might miss out on a big fit. Competitive auctions are about finding fits, they are not about figuring out precisely how many values you have. The other problem is that bridge is not as cut and dried as I have 5-5 weak, intermediate, or strong. There may be several reasons where you would try to bid out rather than show a 2 suiter. Like, if it goes (1S) 2D (2S) p (p) ? and you bid 3C. This does not just show an intermediate 5-5. You may have 3154 with a very strong hand and be balancing, etc. If it was michaels, an auction like (1S) 1S (2D) p (p) 2H would be even worse, you could be 5-4, 6-4, etc. How to narrow your range The obvious way to narrow your range is to eliminate the "weak" variety hand types of unusual 2N. To be honest, I would never bid unusual 2N with a hand considered weak. Your weak hands should be the intermediate hands. Why is this? unusual 2N is not a preempt Just because you can overcall 3C on 7 clubs and a weak hand doesn't mean you can overcall 2N on 5-5 in the minors and a weak hand. For starters, you have much less safety. Secondly, you are telling them much more about how to play the hand, which is bad when you have a weak hand since that's what they'll end up doing most of the time. You are much less likely to have a profitable save. And your preempt is much less effective, they hve 2 cuebids, and a double followed by double/pass, and a pass followed by double, and two suits are out of the game. So, if we are not preempting, and we are telling them a lot about the hand, what is the purpose of our bid? It's to find making games, or making partscores, or good saves when partner has a big fit. So I would say just pass or in the case of H+D or H+C, overcall 1H when you have a bad hand, and bid unusual 2N on the medium to strong hands. You are committing to the 3 level while offering up a VERY easy penalty (they have double to say they want to penalize, as opposed to a preempt where double is negative), and telling them a LOT about the hand. You need a good hand to make that committment. You need upside. What is the upside vs downside in bidding with x xx KJxxx KJxxx at equal vulnerability? It is not there, and I see people make worse unusual 2Ns than that. It is a little bit different with michaels, but I would say split range there is also bad, for slightly different reasons depending on the exact auction.

For people who use Greasemonkey (an add-on to your browser that lets you write custom scripts to parse web pages. http://www.greasespot.net/), I'm attaching a script that filters out the "Interests" field in people's profiles here. I'm not exactly a web expert and I did this in 10 minutes so there's no option to filter by poster name or to turn it off (other than shutting the script down). But still, if it helps someone else, why not. function removeInterests() { var user_fields = document.getElementsByClassName("user_fields"); for (var j = user_fields.length - 1; j >= 0; --j) { var fieldList = user_fields[j].getElementsByTagName("span"); for (var i = 0; i < fieldList.length; ++i) { var txt = fieldList[i].textContent; if ("Interests:" == txt) { fieldList[i].parentNode.removeChild(fieldList[i+1]); fieldList[i].parentNode.removeChild(fieldList[i]); break; } } } } removeInterests();

I play it as a general invite to 4♠. Doesn't say anything about hearts.

From Jan 6th 2011 to Jan 9th 2011, some of us partcipated in a high prize money (Rs 11 lakhs or about $25,000 total prize money) tournament at Indore, the capital of erstwhile Holkar Kingdom. The tournament itself was named after one of the most famous rulers of this dynasty and sponsored by the Kalani Industries. It was a cold and misty Sunday morning on the 9th. It would have passed by as another prize money tournament and gathering of Bridge friends, that day being the last day of the tournament. 23 out of about 130 pairs who participated would play the IMP Pairs finals. There was a side event for the non-qualifiers. As we walked into the venue, we were all surprised to see a few gentlemen in rustic village dresses. All of them were from this village about 200 Km from Indore city. These were 8 pairs of never before seen players who appeared on this Sunday morning. On enquiry, we found that they had come from a village called Raibeedpura belonging to the Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh (part of the old Indore kingdom). Most of them were local farm owners or farm labourers. They must have got up at an unearthly hour of about 3:00 am, caught a bus to the district headquarters at Khargone (about 20 Km from the village) and then another bus to Indore to reach the tournament venue at 9:30 am. Here is the story as was told to me by one Mr Ramesh Mukati, aged 40 years. Bridge was played even before his birth in this village. Many people who are 30 years or more and have primary school education (all Men folk only) play Bridge here. They have an old building which is empty where the serious ones get together and play. Those who are not able to get there play informally at multiple "chowpats" (literal translation - where four roads meet) as casual games. Origin of Bridge at this village is shrouded by passage of time. Most old timers remember Bridge being always played there. It is known that Bridge was taught by a teacher (called Khan "Saab" - a school Master named Khan) at the local school. He is now no more, so we do not know from whence he came or how he got to know the game. Some more details were revealed on conversation. They play a strong club system with weak NT and two level natural minor openings. None of the modern advances in the game is even known there. Bidding system as taught by the mystic Khan Saab is preserved pristinely maybe with some local advancements. I do not think they have a system document, they probably follow the age-old and time tested method in India - by word of mouth - from one generation to another. They admitted that all play for enjoyment and passing time. They had no clue on the scoring systems we used, or even the right way to score a hand in Contract Bridge. What a contrast, this years Indore tourament was the first time ever in India when all the boards were computer dealt and multiplicated, and scoring was done by Bridgemates at all tables with VU Graph for the team KOs. None of the villagers have ever played a tournament before, they didnt know that we existed!!! By now I am sure you must be curious to know just how good they play. The best performers at Indore were one Mr Mulchand Jawra and Mr Kemal Verma who, after being -7 IMPs at the end of first session (they were sheepish when they admitted that they were slighlty overawed in the first ever tournament they played), pickedup +43 IMPs in the second session to finish with a tally of +36 and a respectable 21st out of 79 pairs who participated. I do not know who was responsible for getting them to participate in the first place, whoever it was, the entire bridge community should be thankful to him or her. I was told that there are about 300 to 400 people who know the game and about 200 regular players in this village of about 5000 people. Unfortunately, there is no internet facility with computer at the village, so e-mail communication is not possible. The only way that Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh (state) Bridge associations can keep them updated is by way of normal post. Most people have mobile phones, I suppose that is the way to go for disseminating information. There is a saying that "India lives in its villages". Certainly, for Bridge as a game to live beyond this new century in India, it should live and floursh in villages such as Raibeedpura. I suppose, it is a little sad, but that can also be true for many other parts of the world. As an after thought, as a pure comparitive exercise, it would be interesting to look at the demographics of this village vis a vis a few neighbouring non-bridge playing villages. Afterall Bridge play is supposed to have many indirect benefits in all areas of life. Reported by Manoj Kumar K (joemanjo on BBO) Bangalore India

Folks might find the following of interest (Please note, I was not the one who operationalized the crack, however, did the the initial leg work to run this all down. Then, as is oft the case, having satisfied myself that this was pretty easy, pointed some other folks in the right direction and sat back and watched the fireworks) Begin quote ___________ On Monday August 22, 2016 there was a post on the Cryptography mailing list (see http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2016-August/029965.html) about the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) encryption algorithm used to generate hand records for its tournaments. This same algorithm is used by the Canadian Bridge Federation (CBF) and the United States Bridge Federation (USBF). This Bridge algorithm has been cracked. Earlier this month (September 2016) I was shown code (not written by me) that successfully performs a brute force search on the 2^48 key space. It has taken some time to verify this claim, along with checking which organisations are affected. The crack requires three consecutive hands. Once you have a key from one hand to the next, it takes a few seconds to find the key from the second to the third. Given both keys, one can find out all the remaining hands in the set. As a test, I selected hands from the last National tournament of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), the Canadian Bridge Federation (CBF) and from the recent United States Bridge Federation (USBF) Mixed Pairs Championship. In all cases, it is possible, given three consecutive hands, to reasonably quickly find keys which could be verified by printing the remaining hands and comparing to the hands on the Internet. As a final test, I selected hands from a recently concluded ACBL tournament. I am currently in Poland for the Bridge World Championship. The ACBL event was played on Saturday, September 10, 2016. The complete hand record was cracked in under 2 hours. The code takes 50 hours to run on a single general purpose computer. The published ACBL algorithm makes it open for parallel processing. 50 computers would find the key within an hour. A key will be found, on average, in half the time. Bridge events are typically either pair (team of 2) events, or team (team of 6, but only 4 playing at any time) events. For pair events, a player would need to excuse themselves to the toilet, upload 3 hands, and come back later for all remaining hands. Given a typical pairs movement of two boards/round, this will work if sitting North/South. East/West will typically need to have played just over half the boards before they have 3 consecutive boards before they have sufficient data for a crack. For high level team events, it is common to field a team of 6, with two players sitting out. The events in question are normally shown live on the Internet so you have immediate access to hand records as they are played. For example, the recent USBF Mixed Teams was 4 quarters of 15 boards. After the first quarter - typically about 2 hours long - the team can substitute players. The hand records for the first two quarters of the last USBF trials are at http://usbf.org/docs/vugraphs/MUSBC2016/hands/MUSBC2016_F_Q1&2.PDF. These hands have been cracked. The same key was used for each quarter within a half. If you have the key for the first quarter, you can generate the hands for the second quarter. A team would have about 90 minutes after seeing the first three hands on the Internet to crack the hands. The pair that substitutes in would have full knowledge of the hands in the quarter they are about to play. I had speculated it would take about 1-2 weeks to write code to do the crack. The author(s) did it in less time than that. One must therefore assume that there are probably other cracks out there, but not public. There is some evidence (sorry, can't reveal - wish I could!) that some private crack-code already existed and has been used in tournaments. Responsible disclosure: I have waited to post these details until I was certain that the various organisations have had time to prepare to change their procedures. I met with the USBF President today. On my suggestion he had meetings last week with representatives from the World Bridge Federation (WBF) who use a more secure program - Big Deal. USBF will implement Big Deal and has plenty of time to do this. I don't have any CBF contacts, if they are in Wroclaw, ask them to contact me and I'll introduce them to the people they need to meet. For ACBL, they already have a replacement ready in house. The ACBLscore+ replacement for ACBLscore contains code that uses the industry standard Big Deal and not the home-grown ACBL solution. To help ACBL with its transition, I created a video for them, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2nxCzIniPc. It should take less than an hour to get the new system up and running from the original source code. It is possible to automate the task so you don't have to use manual typing/clicks. If I have enough time I will create the script for ACBL, but this is very simple code so they should be able to do this by themselves. I have not asked the author(s) if it is possible to generate hand records for events not played yet, i.e. to use the hand record for one event to predict the hand records for future sessions. This is a text book case of a failure to understand how to write cryptographic code which opened up the implementation of dealing cards to some simple cryptanalysis. After all the various organisations have stopped using the broken algorithm, I'll see what details I can make public. At the moment I have the metaphoric ACBL 'keys to the kingdom' but do not plan to use them. I'd like to thank those that wrote the code; at the moment they wish to remain anonymous. Also to thank them for choosing to make this information public, rather than profit from it. Nicolas Hammond

I don't understand this hostility to immigrants. Virtually all Americans have ancestors who were immigrants. Most of these immigrants were not well educated, were from ethnic groups which people discriminated against at the time they came over, were accused of being criminals or taking jobs from "real Americans" -- and nonetheless they turned out okay. Many of our greatest citizens (in all fields of accomplishment) were immigrants or the children of immigrants. The words on the statue of liberty are "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" -- not "give me your best and brightest, all others need not apply." The vast majority of people crossing the US border are here to make a better life for themselves or their families. They come because there's work here, or because they have relatives here, or because they are oppressed or mistreated in their home country. This is the reason my great grandparents came, and the reason most Americans' ancestors came. Recently illegal immigration has been net zero for a number of years. Nonetheless we have cases where parents of American-born children are deported -- having a US citizen baby does not prevent deportation, and one of my wife's (US citizen) students recently had her mom threatened with deportation. The unemployment rate has been falling for a long time now, and Americans don't want jobs picking vegetables in the fields for minimum wage anyway. Immigrants do the awful jobs that need to be done to maintain standard of living for the rest of us, and they do them because it's better than what they had in their home country, and because they want a better life for their children. For the most part they are hard-working people that we should respect and help out where we can. Yes, there are a few criminals in every group, but we catch them and punish them... and some of the petty crime would be reduced if we let these folks out of the shadows to make a living legitimately. Further, "welfare" has not existed in this country since the nineties. We have one of the stingiest welfare states of any major nation on earth. If people wanted to immigrate so they could "live on welfare" they would go to Canada (or Europe, or heck, Cuba... virtually every major country has a stronger welfare state than us). Sure, we have SNAP benefits but do we really want to be in the business of starving children to death? Even if they are children with Mexican parents? Seriously? The other major "welfare" program is the earned income tax credit, which of course undocumented people are ineligible for (because they lack a taxpayer ID). As for world population, this has not been a real issue for a long time, since the population growth rate has gone down and our ability to grow crops efficiently has gone up. China has near-zero growth, the US is slightly positive, Europe and Japan are negative. The best way to reduce population growth is to improve education (especially for women) and availability of birth control -- the lack of such things is why population in India and Africa is still increasing rapidly. Guess which politician's party is opposed to planned parenthood? Our country faces many problems. We need to do something about climate change. We need to make education more affordable. We need to make it easier to start a business, and stop writing different rules for big companies than apply to small startups. We need to make sure the benefits of increased automation and international trade are shared by all, instead of just a few at the top. We need to make sure there isn't another big economic crash. We need to do something about police forces that shoot unarmed African Americans while letting the bankers who almost crashed the world economy walk free. We need to cut trillions in military spending that the armed forces don't want, for weapons systems that won't work in a modern war... while making sure not to crater the economy in small towns built around a military base or plant. We need to do something about our infrastructure. Immigration is pretty far down the list, and if we do want to address it, why not create more legal visas so people with jobs and relatives waiting for them in the US can walk over instead of sneaking over a wall that the Mexican government isn't really going to pay for?

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.

It's time for the results. I have decided to use aggregate scoring, so you are scoring against each other rather than with the other table. It looks as though anything under -3000 is a cracking total. But first a few awards .... The "4♥ is a transfer to 4♠" award goes to Jinsky and Eagles123. They both stepped into the breach 14 times. Quite remarkable given that the lowest number was 4. Eagles also had the equal fewest passes with gordontd. The "flexible double" award goes to WesleyC, who kept his options open on 12 hands. And the "take a plus" award goes to Remnart, who resisted temptation on 14 hands. Now the scores .... 1. ♠AQT73♥43♦K7♣KQJ2. Pass -650, 4S -100, Dbl -100 The opponents can make 5♥ on a finesse, but in practice they sold to 4♠, and you will get there via an overcall or a double. 2. ♠KQT75♥54♦AKT2♣K5. Pass +50, 4S +450, Dbl +450 Again, either positive action gets you to 4♠, so the passers lose out again. 3. ♠AQJ943♥4♦973♣T94. Pass -650, 4S -1100 In practice, the 4♠ overcall led to -1400 in 5♠, but that's because partner had not bought the best-selling new bridge book "Know your partner's overcall style," and competed over 5♥ with ♠T85♥J92♦KQJ5♣K83. I have credited partner with a pass, but by the same token LHO did not have an automatic 5♥ bid, so I have gone with a compromise score of -1100. 4. ♠KT652♥-♦AK642♣A94. 4S +200, Dbl +200 Whichever action you take, you should go plus against 5♥. 5. ♠Q76♥Q63♦AK84♣AK4. Pass +100, Dbl -200 I think pass is obvious. Your hand screams defence, and you know partner will remove a double. Partner was very suitable: ♠KJT93♥J5♦9♣J8653, SO 4♠ had a play, but defending was right this time. 6. ♠A875♥6♦AKJ74♣K94. Pass -420, Dbl -690 (I am assuming Gnasher's 4S overcall is a typo) Partner had balanced junk on this occasion. 7. ♠653♥QJ3♦AKJT976♣-. Pass +50, 5D +300 Ron Smith passed. It's not clear how well you do if you overcall. Partner has ♠KQT♥2♦Q8432♣A642, but if he has read "Know your partner's overcall style," he will take the money over 5♥. 8. ♠AK74♥AT♦JT5♣AK84. Pass -620, Dbl -200 Taking the money does not work this time. Declarer should make 4♥. In practice it was butchered, but I am not crediting the passers with a plus, since he went down on a somewhat different auction. Double gets you to 4♠ one off. 9. ♠AK953♥K8♦82♣AKT8. Pass -420, 4S +100, Dbl +100 Any positive action pushes them to 5♥ one off. 10. ♠AKJ973♥2♦T742♣J4. Pass -450, 4S -1100 4♠ gets stretchered. I thought I liked overcalling 4♠ as much as anybody before this thread, but I would leave this one alone. We have defence, and you have to respect the vulnerability a bit. 11. ♠A53♥T♦AJT953♣A87. Pass -420, 5D -800, Dbl -800 This looks like a defensive hand. It's possible that double leads to -590, but only if partner stands it with ♠T864♥93♦Q76♣T643. You might end up being brutalised in 4♠. 12. ♠K87432♥-♦A4♣T7643. Pass +50, 4S +420 4♠ was an extremely popular choice amogst the quizzers, and Versace also chose that action at the table. 13. ♠AK864♥Q72♦A72♣43. Pass +100, 4S -100 You catch partner with five spades and a few bits and pieces, yet bidding was still wrong. They could have made 4♥, but with no real clues, declarer wandered a couple off. 14. ♠AQJ72♥Q♦T2♣86543. Pass -450, 4S -100 The points go to the brave here. Trendafilov passed at the table. 15. ♠KQ9874♥8♦J6♣AK75. 4S -800 The better your hand, the worse the dummy will be. :( 16. ♠KT9♥-♦Q9754♣AK764. Pass -420, 4NT +50, Dbl +450 I have sympathy for the 4NT bidders. Double works because partner has five spades and a hand that might of overcalled. The oppo ended up letting through 5♠ on a misdefence. 17. ♠AQJ9542♥T3♦T98♣2. Pass -650, 4S -500 The overcall wins a few imps. It looks pretty borderline to me. 18. ♠AJ943♥42♦AKJ6♣Q4. Pass -420, 4S -200, Dbl -590 Both tables doubled and conceded 590. I think the 4♠ overcallers would have done very well. Although it could be double for two down, I don't think it would. 19. ♠KQ74♥4♦63♣AKT976. Pass -650, 4S -500, 5C -500, Dbl -100 Double gets you to 4♠ one off, but comes with risks of its own. I presume all the 4♠ overcallers plan on running to 5♣, and that goes for 500 because spades are 4-1. 20. ♠AK943♥K2♦JT9842♣-. Pass +100, 4S +500, Dbl +300 After a 4♠ overcall, a wild auction in which both sides diagnosed a double fit ended in 7♣X down three despite 4♠ being the limit. Four hearts is down two on club ruffs. 21. ♠KT743♥J♦QT♣AQJ84. Pass -420, 4S -200, Dbl -200 Helgemo passed. In another match Fitzgibbon doubled and got to 4♠. 22. ♠AK732♥Q♦75♣AKT98. Dbl +100, 4S -200 You go plus if you double, but at the colours I think 4♠ is right. Levin overcalled 4♠, but ran to 5♣ when it went p-p-x, so shelled out 500. 23. ♠AT72♥2♦KQ6♣KQT63. Pass +50, Dbl +300 Double looks clear, because you have quite a lot of offensive potential, and there is usually more to gain than lose. 4♠ was booked to fail, but the opponents misjudged at multiple tables and went on to 5♥.

1) Opening bid is much better than my normal. 2) Can handle any opening lead partner intelligently chooses. 3) Lefty will be playing this entirely out of his own hand (No dummy entries likely). If I don't pass this double, what DOES it take to pass?

Thx mike! I actually told them this and they totally agreed and will have a different system now.

i blame south - he had so many other options, like what kind of selfish player responds to blackwood by showing his number of aces rather than introducing his qjxx?

I think this is an extraordinarily unnecessary post. I, for one, appreciate MrAce's consideration in writing in English so that I don't need to use Google Translate.

As I understand it, until now bboskill has used an automated process to extract data from BBO's "myhands" page. By doing this, they used "myhands" for a purpose for which it was obviously not designed. This could be expected to subject it to a greater load than it is designed for, probably slowing it down for legitimate users and/or using resources that BBO would prefer to use elsewhere. Bboskill seem to have done this without first obtaining BBO's permission. They included the name "BBO" in the name of their service, thereby benefiting from BBO's brand and potentially causing confusion about the status of their service. And now they hope that BBO will cooperate with them?

The previous posts contain a lot of wisdom, but unfortunately completely neglect the most important aspect of being an expert. How to write BBF posts like an expert (without having to be one) To show how subtle your judgment is, never forget to mention if changing a 7 to an 8, or moving a Jack from one suit to another, would push you the other way on a close decision. Always refuse to answer questions that don't give the vulnerability (even if it would not affect your decision at all). Never forget to mention that you prefer low-variance bids, as obviously you expect to beat the other team. As in 1., you should explain now and then why you would make one bid in a long match and another in a short match. If you aren't sure which bid would actually be better in a short match versus in a long match - don't worry, your readers will be impressed by your fine distinction in any case. Make sure to only interact directly with a few of the best BBF posters that you choose to consider your peers. You can still address others, either by generously giving friendly advice, or by explaining the errors in their posts just to prevent other readers from being misled, but a back-and-forth is beneath you. (If you find it difficult to stick to this rule, it might be best to install a Firefox extension that masks the name of all forum posters except for your chosen peers and whereagles.) When you reply to play problems, always mention that your line will be influenced by your superior table feel, and that it will probably lead you to the solution you are going to present - that way, you can never be proven completely wrong. If there is no good basis for using table feel, it is best to reload the thread until rhm has posted, and immediately make a follow-up post explaining that you were just typing up a post with the same solution. If you can't stick to the previous rule, it is best to avoid play problems altogether. If you feel you have to contribute, it is best to mention that you only thought about the problem as long as you would at the table. (How very generous of you to allow others to follow your at-the-table thought process!) A lot of general advice on posting like an insider also applies to posting on BBF. Use acronyms where possible. "Unfortunately, I haven't discussed NSDs with my current partner yet." "The PLM on your left forced his client to play CP leads (yeah I know he is crazy)." Similarly, mention all your famous bridge friends that you frequently discuss bridge problems with. If there are only very few of them, do not worry; after you mention your famous ones a couple of times, readers will assume your other bridge friends are famous also by association. It might be best to imply that they are actually seeking your advice: "Rosenberg asked me about the following play problem." "Rodwell was wondering about the following convention." Finally, always post with confidence, and avoid unbecoming modesty. If another post makes a strong case that you are wrong, it might be best to ignore it - see rule no. 5. Rather than arguing on the merits, it is often best to ask everyone to trust your long experience with similar situations. Of course, you should never admit that you were wrong.