32519

With the 4♣ bid vacant in the scheme proposed, you can use it over 3♦ to show 5/5 in the majors. Then.. ..4♦ = signoff, no 3-card major ..4♥ = signoff, 3-card major ..4♠ = signoff, 3-card major Using this you can find your 5/3 fits. The downside is that the strong hand ends up on table.

If you want to go this route you might be better off by flipping your 3NT and 4♦ responses i.e. over 3♠, 3NT = doubleton ♠; 4♦ = singleton or void in ♠. The full monty would then be - 3♣.. ....3♦ = 5/5 in the majors, asking for a 3-card major ......3♥ = 3-card ♠ suit ......3♠ = 3-card ♥ suit ......4♣ = no 3-card major ....3♥ = 5+ ♥, asking for 3-card support ......3♠ = doubleton ♥, no honours in the suit ......3NT = doubleton ♥, 1 of top 3 ♥ honours ......4♣ = singleton or void in ♥ ....3♠ = 5+ ♠, asking for 3-card support ......3NT = doubleton ♠ (no room available to distinguish if the doubleton contains an honour card or not) ......4♣ = singleton or void in ♠ 3♦.. ....3♥ = 5+♥, asking for 3-card support ......3♠ = doubleton ♥, no honours in the suit ......3NT = doubleton ♥, 1 of top 3 ♥ honours ......[4♣ is available for some other use] ......4♦ = singleton or void in ♥ ....3♠ = 5+ ♠, asking for 3-card support ......3NT = doubleton ♠, no honours in the suit ......4♣ = doubleton ♠, 1 of top 3 honours ......4♦ = singleton or void in ♠ I have no idea how to show 5/5 in the majors over 3♦?

Global assets under management to exceed $100 trillion by 2020 So how much of this is your pension funding being managed by some or other parasite (sorry, retirement funding institution). What do you think the new figure will be when the stock market implodes?

Openness the key to entrench Bitcoin as currency

I stick to what I posted earlier – it is better for responder to “ask” about the holding in a specific major than having opener “tell” what he has. Finding out that opener has 3-cards in the major that responder does not have helps squat. Based purely on frequency of occurrence here is my final offer in this thread. 6.92% = the probability of being dealt a 5-card major and 14+ HCP 1.98% = the probability of being dealt a 6-card major and 14+ HCP 0.32% = the probability of being dealt a 7-card club suit, 2♥, 6-11 HCP 0.15% = the probability of being dealt a 7-card club suit, 3♥, 6-11 HCP 0.01% = the probability of being dealt a 3307 hand, 6-11 HCP So if responder is afraid of going past opener’s suit when replying to the “asking” bid in the following auction – 3♣-3♠-? 3NT (1 step) = singleton or void in spades 4♣ (2 steps) = doubleton spade Depending on responders overall hand strength and club fit, he can, a) pass 4♣ to play, b) bid 4♠ on a 6-2 fit, c) bid 4♠ on a 5-2 fit holding the top 3 honours in the spade suit, d) bid 5♣ to play 4♠ = 3-card spade support

Paulg started this thread and then vanished. 1. What is the minimum HCP responder can be expected to hold to start this inquiry sequence? 2. What is responder’s expected distribution? Ken’s post makes sense if responder has a 5/5 holding in the majors and wants to know about 3-cards in either suit from opener. 0.47% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card club suit and 6-11 HCP 0.44% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card club suit, 1♥, and 6-11 HCP 0.32% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card club suit, 2♥, and 6-11 HCP 0.15% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card club suit, 3♥, and 6-11 HCP 0.01% = Probability of being dealt a 3307 hand and 6-11 HCP [This is so low that you might only find partner with it once every five years] 0.15% = Probability of being dealt 3316 hand and 6-11 HCP [This is better – pre-empt with a 6-card club suit and Ken’s post can work more often] 0.18% = Probability of being dealt 5/5 in the majors and 14+ HCP 6.92% = Probability of being dealt a 5-card major and 14+ HCP 1.98% = Probability of being dealt a 6-card major and 14+ HCP [This is a considerable drop-off by adding in the sixth card]

I find this thread of yours intriguing. To remove a 3-level pre-empt you obviously have a very good reason to do so. Help me to get a better understanding of what responder's hand looks like to remove the pre-empt - 1. What is the minimum number of HCP opener can expect to find responder with? 2. What sort of distribution are we talking about here with responder? In looking for a 3-card major, are you implying that responder is 5/5 in the majors? 3. Does the 3♦ asking bid absolutely deny any sort of fit with opener?

Check out my first post in this thread. You can still find your 6-2 major fits. I firmly believe that you are better off with responder "asking" about support for a specific major, than with opener "telling" what he has. It helps you squat with opener "telling" you about 3-card support in the major responder does not have.

I ran some numbers through BBOs deal generator. To find partner with a 7-card ♣ suit and a 3-card major is tiny. These are the numbers: 0.47% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card ♣ suit, 6-11 HCP 0.44% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card ♣ suit, 6-11 HCP, AND 1X♥ 0.32% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card ♣ suit, 6-11 HCP, AND 2X♥ 0.15% = Probability of being dealt a 7-card ♣ suit, 6-11 HCP, AND 3X♥ To have 3-cards in the specific major responder has, drops off the probability even further. Referring back to my previous post, ask for 3-cards in the specific major wanted, instead of having opener tell. It helps squat having 3-cards in the major responder does not have.

Try this - RESPONDER NEEDS A VERY GOOD REASON TO REMOVE THE PRE-EMP, AS OPENER’S HAND MAY BE COMPLETELY USELESS OUTSIDE OF THE SUIT BID, WHEREAS RESPONDER’S HAND CAN PROVIDE TRICKS IN THE OTHER 3 SUITS TO TAKE CARE OF OPENER’S LOSERS RESPONSES AFTER 3♣ PRE-EMPT: Pass (The hand belongs to the opponents) 3♦: 3♦ over 3♣ is own 7-card minor suit, no support for opener’s suit, not much anywhere else 3♥: Natural, at least a 5-card suit, may or may not have support for the suit opened, asking for a stopper in the suit bid, forcing for 1 round. CONTINUATION AFTER A REPLY OF 3♥ 1. 3♠: 1 step (cheapest bid), singleton or void in ♥, no ♥ stopper a) Responder places the final contract 2. 3NT: I have a ♥ stopper e.g. Ax, Kx, Qxx a) Responder places the final contract (often 4♥ on a good 5-2 trump fit) 3. 4♣: 2 steps (excluding 3NT), doubleton in ♥ a) Responder places the final contract 4. 4♥: Game in asking suit = 3-card support 3♠: Natural, at least a 5-card suit, may or may not have support for the suit opened, asking for a stopper in the suit bid, forcing for 1 round. CONTINUATION AFTER A REPLY OF 3♠ 1. 3NT: I have a ♠ stopper e.g. Ax, Kx, Qxx a) Responder places the final contract (often 4♠ on a good 5-2 trump fit) 2. 4♣: 1 step (cheapest bid excluding 3NT), singleton or void in ♠, no ♠ stopper a. Responder places the final contract 3. 4♦: 2 steps (excluding 3NT), doubleton in ♠ 4. 4♠: Game in asking suit = 3-card support

At our local club the opponents opened a strong NT, and this auction followed - (1NT)-P-(2♦)-P (2♥)-All pass 2♦ was alerted as a transfer to hearts. When dummy hits the table, the guy had a 2344 distribution and 7 HCP. This guy had made a transfer into a 3-card ♥ suit! Here declarer got lucky playing in a 4-3 ♥ fit when she was able to trump a ♠ loser on table. The 2♥ contract made 8 tricks, where, as the cards were lying, declarer can only make 7 tricks in a 1NT contract. This crazy anti-field transfer bid got our side a bottom board!

You need the computer geeks to pick up the IP address of the spammers, and then block it. Problem solved.

Seems like Drury is useful after all as it can be used for a Controlled Psyche.

Wow! I had to Google this, Murder of Barry Crane. Quote: Robbery was apparently not a motive. To this day, the murder remains unsolved. In any event, the bridge world lost one of its greatest and most colorful players.

True to form, you guys have all missed the point. Douglas Drury died in 1967. In his era players were opening 13 counts. The game is becoming more and more aggressive. Today the side who opens the bidding gets in the first blow, taking away bidding space from the opponents at the same time. In todays game, Drury has become obsolete.

The Rule of Eighteen is a rule employed by the World Bridge Federation to define the boundary between light opening bids and Highly Unusual Methods, known as HUM, in which bad hands are regularly opened. The Rule of Nineteen is a rule employed by the bridge players in England to satisfy the requirements of the World Bridge Federation to define the boundary between light opening bids and Highly Unusual Methods, known as HUM, in which bad hands are regularly opened. In the original Precision system all 11 counts were opened. Nowadays I see more and more Precision players opening all 10 counts and then splitting opener’s second bid into two ranges as follows – 1. A minimum opening = 10-12 HCP (3 point range) 2. A maximum opening = 13-15 HCP (3 point range) Any non-jump or non-reverse second bid by opener would show a minimum. Conversely, any jump or reverse second bid by opener would show a maximum. Furthermore, having watched plenty of VuGraph live broadcasts I see others opening 10 counts as well. So the issue here is – if more and more players are opening 8 counts (the rule of 18), 9 counts (the rule of 19), or all 10 counts – then Drury / Reverse Drury has become obsolete and can be confined to the dustbin.

The LHC is already just below the speed of light. This from the LHC Design. Quote: At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 0.999999991 c, or about 3 metres per second slower than the speed of light ©. The LHC is currently undergoing upgrades which will probably take it to the speed of light, maybe even beyond. So let me repeat the question – What happens when these collisions start going beyond the speed of light?

Any takers on this one?

Abolish the euro for Europe's sake

Some questions: 1. What is the ceiling speed that these colliders can be built to collide particles? 2. What happens when you go beyond the ceiling speed? 3. How close are you already at the ceiling speed? 4. If you are already at the ceiling speed with the current LHC, what’s the point of building a bigger and more expensive one?

OK, I took up your challenge but I don't need to publish any paper to disprove all of the (non) progress the LHC made. I think this post will be enough! The Large Electron-Positron Collider also failed to deliver. Around 2001 it was dismantled to make way for the LHC, which re-used the LEP tunnel. As of 2014, the LHC remains one of the largest and most complex experimental facilities ever built. But hidden underneath all the hype of supposedly having found the Higgs boson you guys have already admitted defeat with plans for an International Linear Collider. Japan is considered the most likely candidate, as the Japanese government is willing to contribute half of the costs. CERN is known to be experiencing cashflow problems. So now the Japanese taxpayer has been suckered into carrying the cost for your next toy. But when the International Linear Collider also fails to produce you have another planned toy, the Compact Linear Collider competing against it.

How are you guys progressing with your theory of Supersummetry? In case you can’t remember here is an extract from the article. Quote: The failure of the Large Hadron Collider to find evidence for supersymmetry has led some physicists to suggest that the theory should be abandoned. Experiments with the Large Hadron Collider also yielded an extremely rare particle decay event which casts doubt on supersymmetry. A major weakness of SUSY is that it is not falsifiable, because its breaking mechanism and the minimum mass above which it is restored are unknown. This minimum mass can be pushed upwards to arbitrarily large values, without disproving the symmetry. Never mind – Maybe the new generation LHC will find evidence for SUSY? Like maybe in the year 3,014? Unsuspecting school kids are being filled with all this nonsense.

Now physicists prepare to construct the even Larger Hadron Collider Quote: Barely five years after the Large Hadron Collider began smashing atoms together in a bid to solve the mysteries of the universe, scientists are already planning to replace it with an enormous machine four times as large. Another quote: Scientists are also in dispute about which particles should be tested. Some experts favour colliding protons, as is done in the 27km-long LHC, citing the ability to reach far higher energies and extremes of conditions in an attempt to simulate “Big Bang”-style conditions. Others are in favour of using electrons, as they are easier to direct and the results of tests easier to interpret. Let me put it to you guys yet again – the fact that you are still attempting to simulate “Big Bang”-style conditions must be glaringly obvious that the pressure is building up on you to start producing tangible results. I have posted it higher up in this thread but it needs to be repeated again – THE FLAW IN THE BBT IS GOING TO BRING DOWN THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION AS WELL. THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION IS 100% DEPENDANT ON THE BBT. WITH NO BBT YOU HAVE NO UNIVERSE. WITH NO UNIVERSE YOU HAVE NO EARTH. WITH NO EARTH YOU HAVE NO THEORY OF EVOLUTION. BYE-BYE TO BOTH! You guys must be entering panic mode. When the guys in the Bible belt in the USA are successful in their counter protest campaign, banning science fiction from being taught in schools, the pressure on you is going to increase. I bet you a BBO dollar any day that more and more sober minded people are starting to shove the flaw in the BBT back into your faces. Man, how I would just love to witness all your squirming and pathetic counter arguments as you try and face down your adversaries. The fun is just starting!

So who’s fooling who here? In the first 7 years of schooling (after newcomers have learnt to read, write and count) basic education covers things like elementary maths, elementary history (especially that of your own country), elementary geography, elementary biology, elementary literature (punctuation etc.). In the next 2 years things like accountancy, science, economics, business economics, arts, additional languages etc are introduced. In the last 3 years of schooling the pupils choose those subjects which they have an interest in. Under U.S. law, religious education is forbidden in public schools, except from a neutral, academic perspective. My argument was that all this unproven speculative crap should also be forbidden to keep the playing ground even. An easy solution for both sides of the argument is to introduce religion and science fiction as optional subjects for those who have an interest therein to exercise their freedom of choice under the constitution. When I was at school we had so-called “physical exercise classes” which were immensely popular amongst most of the kids. They covered anything from swimming to athletics training, or just a fun game of sport where mixed teams of boys and girls played against each other, whether that was hockey, soccer, netball, baseball etc. These fun games were used for talent spotting as well, for those who never realized they were any good in whatever sport, and were subsequently invited to join formal coaching classes after schooling hours in the relevant sport. To make room for these optional subjects in a 5-day school week should be fairly simple. So I put to you again – those who have seen through this façade fobbing itself off as physical science should stand up and launch a counter protest campaign to have it forbidden in public schools as well. In what way does the constitution of the USA force you to subject yourself to being taught all sorts of unproven theoretical crap when even those dreaming up these wilder and weirder theories are in disagreement amongst themselves about them!

You guys have continued your search for the Higgs boson for the past 50 years and counting, despite the obvious flaw in the BBT. Even more amazing is that after the dismal failure of the first three colliders you guys went and built a fourth one (soon to be upgraded at a further cost of $8 billion). During the past 50 years none of you guys have come up with new science fiction (sorry, theories) to displace the dogged search for the Higgs boson. I just couldn’t get my head around this so I started digging a bit deeper. Here is a foretaste: In 1964, three teams wrote scientific papers which proposed related but different approaches to explain how mass could arise in local gauge theories. These three papers are immortalised as 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers. Peter Higgs was on one of these teams. His Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass". This is a most-important property of almost all elementary particles. In the Standard Model, quarks, hadrons, leptons and the three weak bosons gain mass through the Higgs mechanism by interacting with the Higgs field that permeates all space. You better read what this says on the Mass Generation Mechanism as well, yet another unproven theory. Once you have read that you will understand why for the past 50 years and counting, these guys have been searching for this Higgs boson. Quote: “Physicists have proposed a number of models that advocate different views of the origin of mass. The problem is complicated because mass is strongly connected to gravitational interaction, and no theory of gravitational interaction reconciles with the currently popular Standard Model of particle physics.” Here is a reminder of what was posted higher up in this thread: If the Higgs doesn't exist, it will be back to the drawing board on science that's dominated for decades, so you can expect to see a range of "Higgsless" models that may contain even more novel mechanisms. Disproving its existence would be even more substantial, as this would lead to a tearing up of current scientific textbooks and a major rethink about the way the universe works. How much of all this crap of yours is currently being taught in schools across the USA? You guys launched a protest campaign and managed to get any Bible teaching removed from the school curriculum. Then you took it a step further and managed to include all these unproven theories of yours into the school science textbooks about the origins of the universe, brainwashing unsuspecting children who are still too innocent to see through the pretense of all these unproven theories of yours being taught as science. There has to be at least one member in these forums who is from the Bible belt in the south of the USA. Come and post here for us the following – 1. The name of the person/group of people who managed to put an end to any Bible teaching at your schools. 2. In what year did this take place? 3. The name of the person/group of people who managed to get all these unproven theories included in the school science textbooks. 4. In what year did they make their first appearance? Now you guys from the Bible belt, start mobilizing your own counter protest action to get all these unproven theories removed from the school curriculum as well. At least the playing field should be even; if the one is forbidden, then so should the other. Higher up in this thread I have already posted that the flaw in the BBT is about to be rammed down the throats of all these physicists until they start gagging on it. Get your pastors and fellow believers to start launching the counter protest action.