f0rdy

Purely out of interest, is Mini-Roman (with no anchor suit) the only BSC allowed on the GCC?

How often does the intervening side actually get to take a penalty? I've always played something similar to what you describe, but I've rarely come up against assumed-fit methods for more than a board or two in a pairs event, and so I can't remember ever getting to the point of penalising. The combination of encountering assumed-fit fairly infrequently and (in my case) usually playing in semi-pickup partnerships means that actually I think what we've generally played is: Sit down and see they play Ekrens; entire discussion is "Same defense as Multi? Major overcalls are natural, try to penalise them?". But as nearly everyone I play with tends to agree Dixon by default as a Multi defense, that means we end up with a double for weak-ish balanced hands.

Oh, I assumed that if you wanted to play something like this (showing equal interest in either minor) it would over be a "frequently 2" 1C opening, the kind including many (443)2 and maybe 3352 hands; there I could start to see the logic. But you didn't allow overcaller to have 6 diamonds, or be unbalanced?

IME (in the same jurisdiction, but obviously there may be variation between regions/clubs), it varies with the auction; I think in a protracted auction the declaring side (at least) will leave the cards out 95+% of the time, whereas after 1NT - 3NT either 3 or 4 players will remove their cards pretty swiftly. I think it's the "minor" (as opposed to major rules like making sufficient bids and bidding in turn) rule concerning the auction followed most frequently; failing to make a 2nd or 3rd pass, ignoring the Stop card by Stopper or Stoppee, and half-pulling cards from the box are much more common.

... and actually, because of your point 2, you need a better diamond suit to safely open a Lee 2D than a natural 3D. Defenders have several more calls available to decide whether to play or defend. Same reason 2N = weak minors needs a better hand than 3C = weak minors.

False. Standard bidders can split the range 11-22 into at least three sub-ranges (eg 1D - 1X - 2C - 2D - P, 1D - 1X - 2C - 2D - 3D, 1D - 1X - 3C) But having exchanged much more information. False. 25-30% of level 2. They can't overcall 2D, but they can double, or pass then act to show marginal hands. False, at least according to your next paragraph. Well done. Making bids in a constructive auction which say nothing about your hand is only rarely a good idea... ... exactly as opposite a natural weak 2? A lie, or a fundamental misunderstanding of pretty much all system regulations (and the phrase "anchor suit")? I haven't been following this very carefully, so I don't know whether anyone has yet come up with a jurisdiction in which it would be legal to play this convention? (Slightly obscurely, if the minor two-suiters were 15+, and the weak option were single-suited clubs rather than single-suited diamonds, this would be legal in the EBU)

Doesn't online instant messaging predate online bridge? Or at least, predate most online bridge; I wasn't playing so I don't know much about what was happening with online bridge before 2001, but plenty of people were using MSN Messenger back then. And obviously other modes of online communication before that. I don't see that smartphones make much difference? If I'm sitting at a computer playing BBO, then if I want to speak to someone online for whatever reason I'm going to use one of the myriad means of doing so on my computer, not fiddle around on my phone.

I agree, but: can you imagine more than a very small percentage of the general bridge population taking any notice of an instruction to use the STOP card in competitive auctions? My impressions1 of use of the STOP card in the EBU at the moment is that perhaps 1-2% use it as directed by the regulations, and another 10-20% hold it out for 5 seconds or so at the appropriate times. Are there jurisdictions in which a STOP card regulation is followed accurately by most of the bridge players there? 1gained in either provincial club bridge, or meandering around the middle (45-65% of max VPs) of Brighton Swiss events; I don't think there's a meaningful difference in levels of compliance between the two.

Alternatively: [hv=pc=n&s=s9hdaqjt92cakq972&n=skq6hq632dk643c63&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=2d(Weak M or strong m or bal)2hpp4d4h4sp6cp6dppp]266|200[/hv] We were a bit surprised that 2♦, rather than the strong 1♣, was the opening of choice for our south. After this we wondered whether anyone plays a Michaels bid after a Multi opening? We've always had 4m showing that minor and a major, but have now agreed to use 4♣ to show majors when the Multi could be a "strong" minor.

4♥ 6♠ AP at both tables for a flat board in our match... One auction had a much longer tank by responder considering 7♥, though.

My experience of playing a lot of near-pickup (a couple of emails exchanged before the game is usually about the extent of the preparation) in local leagues etc is that having fewer agreements and/or less common experience will, compared to an experienced partnership of similar standard: Reduce accuracy of bidding somewhat (at an IMP cost I don't feel I can guess very accurately) Massively increase variance of IMPs won or lost due to bidding. Possible mechanisms include: playing a poor but luckily making contract; being unsure about meanings of bids so sticking a game contract on the table, leaving an uninformative auction for defenders. I'm not sure I expect the cardplay to be particularly affected1 by a being a scratch partnership, other than in partnerships of quite unequal skill in which the better player has got used to the likely mistakes by the weaker. 1 Apart from when (having played standard count, attitude either way for the entirety of my bridge career) I agreed to play upside down count, and even after a few sessions seemed to be using 90% of my mental effort to remember to play the "wrong" card when following suit.

I'm fairly sure I'd open 1♦ and expect most of my partners to (all playing strong 2C systems, ie not limited openers). However, 2♦?! If I wanted to preempt at my first call, I'd rather open 5♦ than 2♦ or 3♦. I've been in debates here about whether opening 6-5s with a call showing only the 6 card suit is unwise, because partner will misevaluate her hand so badly, and with 6-6 it seems about a trick crazier. I don't think I count as better qualified than you, though!

I can think of at least two variants I've experienced, with near-pickup partners (but friends, so aware of each other's style): A) A cue of opponents suit in a slightly complicated auction "I'm sure it's not natural, but I'm not sure whether it's showing support or asking for a stop." B) A cue of opponents suit in a slightly complicated auction "I'm sure it's not natural, but I'm not sure whether it's showing a stop or asking for one." (And C, I've just been reading a thread where there seems to be a number of views on what 1H P 1S 2C 3C shows, including disagreement within a partnership. I'm sure none of them what ever have considered it to be natural)

Really? If this came up in one of my regular partnerships, then: a) We would not have explicitly agreed a meaning for the 3D call. b) Experience of playing with my partners would tell me that they were unlikely to introduce both of the opponent's suits as suggestions of places to play. The false apparent dichotomy you introduce seems to be a consequence of overloading the term "agreement" in bridge terminology. However, IANAD and perhaps I've misunderstood one or both of "partnership agreement" and "implicit agreement".

It does seem an interesting idea; I've played unbalanced (or nearly unbalanced eg 1D = unbalanced or 18-19 5D332) diamond systems a bit, and it seemed like one issue was that unbalanced 11-15 club hands are a 'halfway house' between the weak NT and the stronger hands. If they've been removed to a 2c opener, then a lot of competitive auctions will become cleaner; when it starts 1♣ - 1♠ - something - 2♠ - ? you can now just pass with the weak NT, and bid or double with the unbalanced 16+ or 18-19 balanced, rather than having a 1426 14 count to worry about. Obviously you give up a 2D pre-empt (and a bit of accuracy with the GF openers), but it seems a much better reason than some of the things people give up a 2m pre-empt for. Edit: Just realised I've just been making arguments for swedish club, essentially; are there good reasons either way for having the GF hands in 2D or 1C?

This is what I haven't understood throughout this discussion. Those who believe they can unobtrusively make use of the opponents' CC during the bidding, how/where do you put it? Do you memorise the back and then hook it under a bidding box open at the inside? Keep it on your lap? The only part of the card I think I can unobtrusively read is the carding methods, which is useful because I've never found a way of phrasing the question "What are your carding methods" which produces useful answers from more than one pair in a hundred.

I think the point is that a long weakish suit gets a lot better if partner shows 4 card support. The best scenario is that partner has ♠xx ♥Kxxx and then has 12-14 points in the minors to provide 4 tricks for at most one loser; that's extremely unlikely to fail. A bit worse is when partner has "wasted" heart honours: ♠xx ♥KQJx leaving him with fewer points in the minors to cover your losers. I think the worst possible major holding consistent with the auction is ♠Jx ♥KQJx and even that still has a few minor holdings with play for game, eg ♦AQTx ♣Axx

Once you include determining whether the rules have been followed, I imagine there are zero sports which don't involve subjective decision making. Even in running a mile, surely one of the 'purest' sports, I think it's relatively common for a judge to have to decide whether the fall that brought down the leader was due to a foul or a 'racing incident'. Once you separate "judges required to enforce the rules, however complicated that might be" from "judges required to assess technical/artistic merit" I think you get a fairly clear distinction between sports, and pursuits I would consider competitive artistic endeavour. This isn't a complete definition, of course; it still includes all the mind sports, speed eating, and probably some competitive activities I haven't thought of. This came up in conversation quite a lot during the summer (Synchronised swimming? Rhythmic gymnastics??), and I think it's hard to produce a definition of sport which encompasses all the things you want it to, and excludes all the right things. Competitive activity requiring high levels of physical skill? Solo violin competitions. (and arguably close to excluding something like powerlifting?) Requiring high levels of fitness/power? Includes ballet, probably excludes archery (or possibly one of the other "shooting" sports, I'm not an expert) Competitive activity requiring high levels of physical skill, and special footwear? Organ competitions... To return to the quoted post, the fact that football condones/encourages extensive deliberate rule-breaking may be distasteful, but I don't think it quite excludes it from being a sport. The point of my original definition is that a group of honest players could play a game of football without a referee, and any difficulties arising would be minor, and would be resolvable with better information (eg a video replay); when they finished the game they would know the winner. In contrast, when a diving/figure skating/piano competition finishes, in general nobody can tell who the winner was until the judges announce the result: crucially not even a computer with 'perfect' information could.

Huh. OK, I thought I'd read the Orange book quite carefully a few years ago, but apparently I've forgotten relevant bits. I think I'm being confused by a disputed ruling about 1C p 3C a few years back, but presumably the debate was about what "not pre-emptive" meant, rather than what the regulations said. I apologise for maligning the EBU regulations! I feel the problem (there being no definitive source) still exists in principle, but I'd have to trawl my memory + crosscheck OB sections to find the non-silly examples. While I have such a well-informed audience, could I check an ACBL equivalent? What meanings aren't alertable in (first two bids natural) 1♥ P 2♥ P 2♠ ? I was bemused by most aspects of the bridge* during my summer in Bermuda, but being gently chastised for not alerting a long-suit trial bid surprised me somewhat. Thanks, Peter *The most confusing thing being a social stalemate, rather than strictly a regulations issue: Whenever I was about to declare a hand, my opponents would wait until "the auction was over" before leading, and I would wait until they led before removing my bidding cards...

This is my biggest issue with type 2 regulations as well. If my partner (perhaps experienced, but only recently arrived in the UK) would like to know which natural meanings for the following calls are not alertable: 1♣ - P - 2♥ 1♣ - X - 2♥ 1♣ - P - 3♣ 1♣ - X - 3♣ how might she go about finding out? As far as I understand it, she needs to somehow determine what 'the normal meanings' for these 4 calls are. From this discussion, she would be led to believe that determining what everyone at the local club plays in these situations is of no help, because they might not be representative of English norms (indeed, I would expect this not to work for these particular auctions). Unfortunately, the Orange Book has no helpful appendix defining even these simple auctions, so there is no definitive answer to her questions. Of course, where she would naturally start would be to ask me if our agreements in these auctions are alertable. Unfortunately, in several years of playing bridge in the UK, I've also never found definitive answers to these questions, so I tell her what I think is true; the uncertainty continues to propagate. (As an aside to my point, my guesses are: Natural (4+ suit), GF Natural (4+ suit), GF?? I have little idea Invitational raise, or GF raise? Invitational raise? ) Peter

I'm only 90% sure I've got this the right way round, but those I've come across have: 2D = bad wk2 in ♥ or good wk2 in ♠ 2H = good wk2 in ♥ 2S = bad wk2 in ♠ This does mean you should probably pass 2♦ less often than opposite an "all-bad" multi, but takes note of the asymmetry between the majors: Assuming "good" means "pure", the good option will be less frequent, so playing this allows you to start 2♠ P 4♠ more often, which is by far the harder start to the auction of the two 2M p 4M ? possibilities. It also allows/forces responder to make more considered decisions opposite the better ♠ hand; an invitational responder will usually want to play in 2♥ opposite the bad ♥ hand.

We played this for a while, and it wasn't obviously brilliant; I think we got to one or two good 3NT contracts after the "good" 3m openings which we might not have otherwise, but with the "bad" openers you both tell them that your hand is definitely bad, and give them an extra half or full round of bidding to decide whether to penalise you.

We would also not call the director in a few other situations, I feel; notably when both pairs at the table contain a director, everyone at the table is experienced, and the irregularity is a simple one to correct. Eg an immediately corrected revoke by a defender while declarer is running a suit, with declarer confident he doesn't want to do anything other than continue running the suit. Obviously all these conditions have to be met, and care needs to be taken; as soon as declarer could have gained by putting revoker's partner on lead and restricting her lead, and didn't know about this, the ruling is at danger of being wrong. But that's just a footnote; it's still a means of getting a ruling we can be confident is correct, just without having to bother the director over something trivial. I can't remember coming across anything as bad as described in the OP; the only thing close was playing in Bermuda: I miscounted a suit and made an incorrect claim, and in spite of my protestations that we should call the (non-playing) director, the other 3 people at the table were utterly convinced that we should just play on. I was fairly sure the number of tricks I made was more than the number I would have received from a ruling, but I was the newcomer (causing great confusion by leaving by bidding cards on the table at the end of the auction, and being greatly confused by the alerting regulations) in the club, and couldn't find the willpower to continue arguing. Thankfully it made no difference to the matchpoints (it left me with a great impression of Flannery; playing 3NT is much easier when you know the distribution to within 1 card at trick 1!), but it was a strange experience for me, to have everyone so convinced of their incorrect impressions of the laws.

Sure, it's not the best convention in the world. My feeling was that, particularly given partner can't raise you most of the time, it made sense to open it a lot more undisciplined than I would want to with a natural weak 2. In the end we concluded the whole 2-level structure, (2C strong or wkD, 2D multi, 2M lucas, 2N another multi) was based on "picking on unprepared opponents and much worse vs good ones" (particularly the multi) and retired it after the junior camrose, I've just played 3 (or 4) weak twos for the last few years. I think it's a slightly tricky situation; the majority of people I play against count as "unprepared" for slightly unfamiliar things, either because they're not very experienced or because they're in a relatively scratch partnership. Even if the good players in unpractised pairings will get to the right game most of the time when you open some random pre-empt in 3rd, you don't need many mid-auction system disagreements after eg 2D* x 2S* x to pick up a bunch of IMPs. Maybe the winning strategy would be to bring two cards every time you sit down for a teams match and give them one depending on your guess of how well-prepared they'll be... it would probably be disapproved of.

When we played this (but with just GF or 22+ bal as the strong options), we found it was usually pretty easy to tell which hand partner had; if 2nd seat asks about the 2C opening, partner has a weak 2 in diamonds. If they call without asking, partner has a strong hand. Less facetiously, it's a question of frequency. If you lose accuracy on some fraction of strong openers (which are rare to start with), but gain much more frequently by being able to open 2D, you're winning. Particularly at matchpoints, one nice pickup which came up surprisingly often was how keen people are to bid over your 2C openings (once they know what they are). When the field are playing 2N after 2C - P - 2D - P - 2N (or a 2N opening), there are plenty of ways it can go well: they overcall and you pass the re-opening double to pick up a penalty against +120; they overcall and turn 2N-1 into 2M-1 the other way. Obviously some of the time they pick up +140 against +100 or whatever, but it felt like competitive auctions worked out well for us on the whole. (On level 3 issues, that did come up with us, but we just dropped the weak 2 when necessary; it doesn't affect system, just decisions) This may be different with more strong options; in our 2C, the probability of having wk2D >> 22+ bal >> GF unbalanced, so it's simpler.