Antraxxx

The drop seems unlikely - the K♥ lead suggest he also has the queen and the Q♦ switch suggests the jack, though even without it the K♣ would put him on 10 HCP. Moreover, the opponents only bid to 3H with a 10-card fit, which probably means the opening leader has more than the promised 6 cards in hearts, I think. Otherwise it just seems really likely that his partner would've raised to game, with 4 hearts including the A and enough points to know they split evenly. So the K♣ is wrong and won't drop, which is why I personally have no clue how to go about this.

Thanks a lot. I didn't think about the fact I'd be ruffing in the long hand :( (though the story has a happy end, 3H made and 4H would've also made because they didn't defend correctly)

[hv=pc=n&s=s98765haq852d74c2&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1c1np]133|200[/hv] 1NT overcalls were discussed as showing 15-18. At the table I reasoned that since P is balanced we must have a fit somewhere, even if it's those horrible spades, so the club singleton has to be worth something. So I judged my hand worthy of an invite to 4 of either major. So the first question is, was this reasonable? The opponents, which seemed like good players, questioned my judgment after the hand. Secondly, how do I go about bidding this? At the table, it continued like this: [hv=d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1c1np2dp2hp2sp2np3hppp]133|100[/hv] Was this reasonable? Thanks.

Thanks for the excellent answers.

Thanks. So assuming I understood correctly (same requirements and it's worth having two bids to state exactly how many trumps you have), some follow up questions: a ) How come people sometimes open weak 2 with a 5 card suit? Would they open a weak 3 with a six-card suit under the same circumstances? b ) Is the importance of the extra trump reflected somewhere else in the bidding? Let's assume a non competitive auction. Partner opens 1♠. With balanced 6 HCP and 3 spades, I reply 2♠. But with balanced 6 HCP and 4 spades I still reply 2♠, no?

Currently I play that 2♦♥♠ are "weak", meaning 6-9 HCP, a six-card suit headed by some honour cards, no four card major / void / two aces. 3 anything is the same except with a 7 card suit. Is the difference really supposed to be just the one card? Or are there other/less requirements for 3 compared to 2? If so, isn't this a terrible waste of bids for a relatively minor distinction?

I'm not sure when the discussion shifted to "adding mods". I thought it was just a matter of changing the policy they enforce. Even something as simple as PMing people telling them "hey, that post you made in B/I was really out of place" would probably solve the problem within a matter of weeks.

Thanks. Ironically, that's another example of the "Meckwell would punt with gazilli" style of answer that's plaguing B/I. I think it's a good guideline to assume people aren't aware of everything that goes on in these boards, and to bother giving an answer in consideration for those of us still new to drawing inferences. If it's of any interest to you, Inquiry, I had no idea of whatever history you have with mgoetze and thought that part of your post was a sort of vague warning that my own posts are out of line, which was pretty baffling.

I will willingly admit this. I must also admit that I don't read every forum (I only noticed this topic because it popped up in those "recent topics opened" box that shows all forums), so I would have greatly benefited from an answer, even if it were a link to where you already posted an answer. Being a bridge beginner doesn't mean I was born yesterday - just that my bridge playing career was. This isn't the first or only forum I participate in. So, I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're getting at. I don't understand why you think I was referring to any particular post. This is why it may have been better had you seen fit to reply to my PM. I always lurk for a while before registering to forums, to get a feel of what's acceptable and what isn't, and in a way absorb the atmosphere of the place. My lurking nearly discouraged me from ever registering or continuing to read the B/I forum. I kept seeing people insult each other and belittle other people's opinions, as well as give answers using slang terms that said nothing to me as a beginner (like using abbreviations for convention names, or acronyms that were not in the thread explaining acronyms). So, when I said I feel the B/I forum isn't very welcoming, I meant a general atmosphere that it's okay to give incomplete answers, to hijack threads and most prominently to insult other people's opinions. That's why I suggested (or rather, inquired about) the possibility of more moderation, at least in B/I.

Definite yes, and I even PMed Inquiry to that effect (which he promptly ignored). I don't think you people realise how unfriendly the B/I forum is to newcomers.

Not to start a flame war, but I did sense an insulting tone in your first reply. I generally assume good faith on the part of others, so I assumed it's some culture/language barrier and not that you'd actually go and invest time at insulting a self-professed beginner's bidding skill. The reason I upvoted other posts and not yours is because I'm generally more interested in lengthier answers that include reasoning, as it's easier to learn from them towards future, different cases.

Thanks FrancesHinden. For the record, I'm not from the UK, I just prefer the British spelling of some words. I was taught a 2c as responder shows a five-card suit with 11+ HCP, but at the table was worried that maybe 1NT with a 6-5 hand is worse than inventing another ace in my hand, hence the original question.

This is probably a silly question, but why isn't opener's second bid (after 1♦) 1♠?

This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks a lot.

Sorry, I was referring to rules about things like what to alert and how, as well as what you mentioned about things like unauthorized information, tempo, etc. What happened basically is I played in a club game where everyone knew about it but me, so throughout the evening they made comments that were pretty incomprehensible to me - one of my opponents told my partner he should've used the stop card after he reversed, for instance, but I'm glad he didn't because honestly I never knew what the card that says STOP does, things like that.

Okay, thanks. Out of curiosity, would you expect 1NT to make if it ended up being the final contract?

Thank you. Some followups: 1) Can 1NT really be the right spot? Assuming he doesn't have okay clubs, my hand is practically non-existent for 1NT, no? 2) Based on your answer, I think I may be misplaying as declarer. When I open a hand in the 12-14 range and hear a 1NT reply, I tend to leave it alone if I don't think my hand is really suitable for a suit contract. So for instance with something like 5 spades, 4 hearts and 2-2 in the minors I would pass after 1S-1NT. I'm guessing now this is wrong, so when do I strain to show other suits (or repeat a 6+ carder) and how much? Or in another way, what does my hand need to look like to pass a 1NT response, taking into account partner may be weak and very imbalanced?

Reading the entire rulebook seems a bit extraneous for a player just wanting to not break the simple rules at club games, but it would be nice to have a quick summary of the relevant rules. Thanks.

It's not a trick question. Maybe I should continue prefacing my posts with "I am a beginner" as we don't get to self-rate here. I am asking because while I know 1NT doesn't promise a balanced hand and does give a correct point range, it has the disadvantage of possibly landing us in a 1NT contract, which I thought was likely to go down.

[hv=pc=n&e=shq9632dt7cajt532&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1sp]133|200[/hv]

Nothing is 100% safe. There was an old saying that the only way to secure a computer system is to disconnect all the cables, cover it in cement and throw it into the ocean, and even then don't count on it. That's an exaggeration, but in real life, your PC will never be safe. However, the common user doesn't have an evil hacker bent on destroying his specific computer, so any de-standardization will usually provide some degree of defense as the primary motivation for most attacks (money) leads attackers to target the most commonly used system (Windows, Internet Explorer, etc). Besides, Unix/Linux has some things going for it that make it generally safer - it's been around longer, it's open source and its basic design was more security oriented to begin with. Nothing is secure. At home I indeed have a HW firewall. It's certainly better than a SW one, but I disagree that a SW one is useless. I like SW firewalls because they're much easier to use and they take less of a toll on your system, compared to anti virus software. Moreover, the root problem they attempt to solve is decidable (unlike anti viruses), which is how I like the problems I'm trying to solve :)BTW I suggest you give Windows another try. Over the years it's evolved, so while it's still bloated compared to Linux, the crashes are a thing of the past and the security design is improved. Kenberg, if you have time to play around with it, there's a Linux distribution called Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, there's some difference there but it applies to both) that's supposedly very nice and friendly and cool for Windows users. I personally can't stand it, but many people I know can, and you can run it from a CD with no commitment just to get a feel of what it's like.

(Whoo, my chance to give something back) That's correct, but it's (almost) irrelevant to the topic of anti virus software. Generally speaking, if your computer isn't infected with specific software (and assuming your bank isn't fly-by-night), then your communication is adequately secure, meaning that even if someone were to mediate between your and your bank as you're conducting your business, he'd still be unable to gain anything from it, neither information nor the ability to create, modify or replicate transactions. Generally speaking, if you see "https" and your browser doesn't draw broken locks in red all over the place, then you should be fine. However, it's important to never click "https" links from within emails, so if your bank emails you and asks you to please login using the following link, never do. The exception to this is if you're infected with specific malware that's designed to log your keystrokes as you enter your passwords, then sends them to the bad guys. That's been done before, though relatively rarely. The other question you seem to be asking is what kind of protective software should an average user get. While I agree that an expert can certainly get by without any specialized software, I don't think an average user, even computer savvy, would fall under the definition of such an expert. For an average user, I would recommend one of two options: either install one of the good free anti virus programs (AVG, Avast, Alvira, probably best to get a recommendation from someone who uses them) and install one of the good free firewall programs (comodo, zone alarm, I'm sure there are more), or commit to habitually (twice a year) format and reinstall everything. The reason is that malware today isn't as polite as viruses were back in DOS days. Back then you'd get a sign that something's wrong - either all your data would be lost, or funny drawings appeared on your screen, etc. Today it's a commercial business, and there's nothing to gain from butchering the sheep instead of fleecing them. Malware today generally tries to make money one of two ways: the obvious one is to trick people into buying software they don't need, a sort of mafia tactic where the malware itself starts warning you habitually about malware that'll only go away if you buy their specific brand of antivirus. The less obvious, sneakier and much more common way is simply allowing a remote user to gain control of your computer. These guys then rent out huge networks of computers all over the world for cyber attacks of all sorts. I don't *think* you'd be legally liable if your computer were found to be an unknown participant in an attack on some server, but it's still a good bet that you wouldn't want it to be. What I'm trying to say is, people's testimonies about how easily they get by without an antivirus can be misleading, as they may be infected and not realize it. The reason I'm recommending a firewall along with an antivirus is the aforementioned keylogging spyware. If it can't phone home, then they can't steal your passwords. Antivirus software is geared at stopping things from getting in - it identifies programs that do things they're probably not meant to do and stops them. Firewalls control the net traffic - so they can stop data from getting out, as well as stop some attacks that try to get in not by some piece of code, but by remotely abusing some service on your computer. Lastly, and I apologise this is so lengthy, there was a question about the attack vectors. The notion that if you don't open attachments and don't download lady gaga you'd be safe is inaccurate. It certainly helps never to open email from untrusted sources, to question email from trusted sources (they may have been infected and sent it without their knowledge) and to not download programs. However, bad stuff can also get in through bugs in the operating system, like the aforementioned JPEG menace. It can also get in through bugs in your web browser, skype and any other program you're using - a bug in it can allow the bad guys to get the program to do what they want. In XP that's enough to inject something, in Win7 it usually needs to be coupled with a bug in Windows that lets a program do more than it should've been able to, but the end result is a silent injection of a piece of code that can do whatever it wants, and what it most often wants to do is spread the joy around before Microsoft patches it.

North deals and opens 2NT (20-21, favorable vulnerability if it matters). I'm holding [hv=pc=n&s=sq743h743dk4c9872]133|100[/hv] So with 5 HCP we probably want to be in game. I 3♣, he 3♠ and I raise to game in spades. His hand was this: [hv=pc=n&n=sakj5hk95daj5ca53]133|100[/hv] Despite the Ah and Qd being onside, after a Qc lead partner gave two hearts and two clubs for one down. So in hindsight we belonged in 3NT. I remember a post in this forum that gave some guidelines on when to prefer a NT game to a major suit game, but it was geared more towards the 1NT opener - as a responder to 2NT it's difficult to know if the honors are in the short suits or not, for instance. So, how could this have been avoided? Should north have downgraded his hand for being 4-3-3-3 and opened something else? Or maybe declined stayman because of his shape? Or should south have recognized some feature of his hand and avoided stayman? Thanks.

What's Sandwich and what's Michaels? If I understood correctly, then 2♣, 2♠ are natural, what do you do with a strong balanced hand? Double and then NT?

Thanks. So if RHO's call shows five cards (for instance, if partner also overcalled), is there less incentive to overcall?