mrdct

How does that work? You have the norths back-to-back with the easts and the souths back-to-back with the wests. The screens themselves have the compass positions labled so there is no need for the tables to be orientated the same way. It is certainly best practice to box the tables, unless you have each table in its own visually obscured area. Boxing often cuts down on noise as each cluster of four tables is "boxed-in" by the diagonal screens of the four tables. I would be moderately surprised if the WBF doesn't have the tables boxed for the Rosenblum and Youth Teams events, so I'll try to take a photo that illustrates the arrangement.

Yes one can. In an event played pursuant to the WBF System Policy, a "short spade" system would almost certainly be caught by the concept of "may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament". Every man and his dog would readily understand, anticipate and expect to play against "short club" systems, but the same could not be said about "short spade". As far as I can recall, I've never seen anyone playing a "short spade" system with the possible exception of an alcohol-fueled late-night speedball.

Well can you give me some examples of potential comments by declarer that you would consider a suggestion that play be curtailed for the purposes of Law 68A?

The statement "I claim" includes but does not mean "I suggest play be curtailed". A suggestion that play be curtailed can come in many shapes and sizes, and to my mind would include: "It doesn't make any difference what you do"; "Don't bother thinking too hard about this"; "I think I've got the rest"; "I was thinking of claiming". The laws clearly contemplate claims being made without uttering the C-word nor showing one's hand. Pretty much any gratuitous comment implying a desire, belief or intent to bring proceedings to an end sooner rather than later is a claim.

If we aren't treating it as a claim, it's very obviously a Law 73F situation:

The situation of declarer trying to hurry-up the defenders because it's obvious to him how the hand is going to play-out is exactly what Law 68A was designed to capture as a claim. Quite overtly in the Laws you don't need to say you are claiming and you don't need to show your hand; all you need to do is suggest that play be curtailed. To my mind any comment by declarer along the lines of: "it doesn't matter what you do", "I wouldn't think too long on this one if I was you", etc. are clearly claims under Law 68A. Josh's rationale of "I was thinking of claiming" should not be interpreted identically to "I claim" is irrelevant. The real question is can the statement "I was thinking of claiming" be reasonably interpreted as "I suggest play be curtailed". I think pretty much anything coming out of declarer's mouth that indicates a desire to hurry things along is a suggestion to curtail play and should be dealt with as a claim.

The front page of Bulletin #2 has a nice photo of all the screened tables. Interestingly, the organisers chose not to "box" the tables (basically rotating every second table by 90 degrees so that a player catching a glimpse of cards at another table will only be able to see his own hand) but I guess they can squeeze more tables into the playing area if they orientate them all the same way. The screens look fairly new and, if I'm not mistaken, are Biasov screens from Poland who are a BBO advertiser. I look forward to having a closer look at them when I arrive in Philly on Friday. I wonder if these screens will become the property of the ACBL and/or USBF at the end of the event; which would leave a great legacy of bridge infrastucture for major North American events.

Perhaps a better standard response is, "are you suggesting that play be curtailed"? Then, if they say "yes" they won't have a leg to stand on when the director comes to the table to determine whether or not a claim has been been. When declarer looks at LHO and says "I was thinking of claiming" what else ciould he be suggesting other than that play be curtailed? Law 68A purposefully uses the word "suggests" and this situation looks tailor-made for it.

Yet again no hand, no auction, no jurisdiction, etc. but this is totally, unambiguously, clearly, obviously and incontrovertibly a claim. Having been a victim of this sort of nonsense before, it's time to stand-up for Law 68A "a contestant claims when he suggests that play be curtailed". Cards played after the claim is made are disregarded, and we rule favourably for the non-claiming side.

I was saddened to learn of Jim "Flash" Gordon's sudden death in Philadelphia overnight. I'd never met him face-to-face but had commentated with him on many occasions and it was alway a pleasure. My thoughts are with his family.

Is there any coverage planned for the youth tournament?

Is an artificial 2♠ bid alertable in your jurisduction? In any case, I'm going to ask what 2♠ at my turn to call as I can't really work out what 3♥ means unless I know what 2♠ means. I think asking about 2♠ in an auction like this gives away minimal information as it's just bridge - you can't possibly know what to do over 3♥ unless you know what 2♠ means.

Hard to say what south should do when we haven't seen his hand. Do north-south have any agreements about transfering to one of the opponents suits? Did north have a natural ♣ overcall available over the 1♣ opening? Does south have a super-accept of ♣?

What cards did declarer play to the first two tricks and in what tempo?

It seems incorrect to have offered south the option to accept the 5♥ bid. The irregularity of the attempted substitution of pass for 5♥ due to a "change of mind" was perpetrated by east and it doesn't look like he has a leg to stand on if he wants to argue that the pass was "inadvertant" or "unintended". As north-south are solely responsible for the movement of the bidding tray, if north pushed the tray through he has accepted the irregular bid of 5♥ on his side's behalf and the auction proceeds normally. If the tray had not been pushed through, the director simply reinstates the pass and the auction proceeds normally. Save that in both cases there may be some UI for west due to the curfuffle on the other side of the screen.

A not dissimilar thing happened to me just a couple of days ago. I live in a town on the Murray River on the Victoria/NSW border where golf and gambling are big earners for the local tourism industry. One of Australia's "bridge holiday" operators has a group of 50 or so retirees here for the week for a programme of workshops, walk-ins and little two-session events. To pad out his numbers, he encourages members of the local bridge club to participate, so my son and I played in the two-session matchpoint pairs "championship" on Monday and Tuesday night (winning quite comfortably with 67% in the qualifying and 68% in the final). The qualifying had two six-table sections playing a share-mitchell movement with an arrow-switch in the last round so that each section would produce a top-six to progress to Tuesday night's final. At the end of the second of six rounds, the table next to us (from which we were receiving our boards) called the director to advise him that a card was on the floor. The director had everyone count their cards from the set that they just played and it was 13 all round so in the interests of keeping things moving, he called the move expecting that at some point he will be called by a player with only 12 cards and can reinstate the correct hand and work out how to score the board at the tables where it was fouled. As it happens nobody every called him. At the end of the round, the north-south pair at the table which found the card on the floor grabbed the boards from their first round and after counting all the hands, discovered the deficient board from their first round which had been played at all five of the other tables (including my own table) without anyone noticing. As it happens the north-south cards had 13 top tricks in NT and the deficient hand was west with a balanced 3-count. At my table we bid and made 7NT and I claimed at trick one. The other five tables were all in various small slams, but I doubt any table played beyond trick 4 or 5 so it is understandable that nobody noticed the deficient hand. In the context of this being a bridge holiday event the director scored the board as though it had been in its correct state throughout. He also declined the opportunity to assess any procedural penalties, even though it was obvious who had fouled the board and five wests had failed to count their cards. Personally I think it was a sensible "ruling".

Who won?

strange part of the world If you think that's strange, wait until you see what happens when you flush a toilet here!

As noted in my original post, 2NT showed ♦ and major. This a fairly common treatment in my part of the world.

In the the jurisdiction where this hand was played, pass/correct bids are explicitly alertable by regulation, although I would suggest that even in the absense of a specific regulation a pass/correct bid would be unambiguously artificial.

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=sj432hk7d95cqj1095&w=s1075hqj4d732ck742&e=sakq6h102dq104ca863&s=s98ha98653dakj86c]399|300|Scoring: BAM[/hv] I had an interesting situation last night playing board-a-match. RHO deals and opens 1♣ (better minor) and holding a very attractive 2650 I bid 2NT showing ♦ and a major intending to bid-on even if partner bids 3♦ or 3♥ and to make a slam-try if he bids 3♠. Partner unfortuntely pulled out an insufficient 2♥ bid which my RHO did not accept. Having regard to Law 27B1: Do you think the auction can proceed normally without penalty if 2♥ is substituted with a sufficient bid of 3♥? Off-topic, what do you think the best line is after the defence starts with ♠AKQ and either no signals or no reliable signals from west?

Playing lebensohl, I bid 3NT directly if it's majors and 3NT via 2NT if it's ♥ and a minor. If I'm not playing lebensohl, I think I'll bid 3NT immediately as in both cases as I don't really want to be in 5♦ at matchpoints and I don't want to give the opps any clues as to what to lead.

I think you are both misquoting Jan and taking her seriously out of context. Jan's original comment from which the "sensible" approach has been taken was: Without wanting to put words into Jan's mouth, I think she is quite rightly observing that there is a huge grey area between Green and Yellow which requires interpretation and judgement on the part of players to decide how to classify their systems. My interpretation of Jan's comment is that she considers it "sensible" to treat a system which isn't overtly Red and is pretty close to Green as Green. Discounting the non-authoritative email sent to Paul, which doesn't directly say that having a short club makes your system Red anyway, one only needs to look at the WBF System Policy and its tie-in to the Law 40B1(a) concept of "may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players in the tournament" to conclude that having a short club does not of itself make a system Red.

I don't think it does - it says that a 2 card 1♣ opening bid is artificial, but falls into the same trap that many of the people posting to this thread do of thinking that an artificial BID = an artificial SYSTEM. The quote is: "You will see there that a 1C opener that can be two cards is artificial. Artificial systems are Red category." This seems perfectly clear to me. It's not clear to me for several reasons: 1. We have no idea who the author of the sentence is and, in particular, whether the sentence represents an official WBF position. 2. If the author had intended to convey the concept that a system with an artificial bid in it is an artificial system, he could quite easily have just said so, but he deliberately chose to separate the bid and system categorisations into two sentences. 3. The authoritative WBF System Policy has a convoluted example of what would qualify as a red system which only captures variable methods and systems employing multi-meaning bids in contestable auctions. If the intent had been to capture a short 1♣ opening, it surely would have said so. Accordingly, by omission it seems reasonable to assume that having a short 1♣ does not of itself make your system red.

Yes. Every hand needs to be evaluated on its own merits. It is always going to be a case of working out what the hesitation suggested and whether or not the partner of the hesitator had any logical alternatives.