broze

As South you hold: AQxxx Txx x J976. Love all. How do you act on these two similar auctions? And how much consideration to give to "the LAW". Auction 1: [hv=d=e&v=0&b=14&a=1n(12-14)pp2h(5H%20and%20a%20minor)ppdp3c]133|100[/hv] Auction 2: [hv=d=e&v=0&b=14&a=1n(12-14)pp2h(5H%20and%20a%20minor)ppdp3d]133|100[/hv] Partner will almost never have 6H here so you can ignore that possibility. The scoring was MPs but please comment how your reasoning might differ at Teams. These opponents had no agreements about what 2NT would be instead of 3m - does that change a lot?

I'm astounded that this is even controversial. Would double with that in my sleep.

Is this Jlall way still in vogue? I know it is not GUCI but perhaps there are analogous auctions.

Why haven't the ACBL released their videos by the way? They might have discussed that in their statement but chose not to.

Okay, I should have expected that. :P

Let's try some bridge. How do you allocate blame here? East, West, some systemic failure? Or unlucky? East's 3H raise was weak, with one eye on the vulnerability. 2D would have been a constructive raise to 2H. 2NT would have been limit+. Scoring is MPs Swiss. [hv=pc=n&s=st3h74dakj853c874&w=skqj6hajt53dct932&n=sa872h96dq942caq5&e=s954hkq82dt76ckj6&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=1hd3h4dppp]399|300[/hv]

I would imagine they have the 'what', and a theory as to the 'how' but nothing definitive. Total speculation of course.

The suspicious deals are mounting and mounting. Ish del Monte has just added a load on BW. Now forget the "how". Others have said that we do not need this aspect to catch cheaters and I totally agree. But what I would like to see is some indication by the accusers of *what* information exactly is being transmitted. Some have said heart honours, club length etc but afaics they do not fit into all the examples (even where F-S are NS). In fact some of the actions are so odd that you might believe they have knowledge of the travellers. So what info are they alleged to have? Perhaps further details will come in the QKA♠. I guess it is wait-and-see time.

I find these deals from BB and particularly one or two from Bessis incredibly compelling evidence. I understand the misgivings that some have about "cherry-picking" deals to prove guilt, but several of these plays aren't 'pushy' or 'swingy' - they're just so bad, and ianae. I think the problem the bridge world with a fair-trial approach to high level cheating is that those most suited to analyse the evidence and try the cheaters, are those who lose most by the cheating, i.e. other professionals. Nevertheless I was worried about that these claims would not be enough and might jeopardise any official route. If this is just the 'tip of the iceberg' I am no longer worried.

"outskilled by people like Helgemo/Meck and cheated out by others" would have been a nice Chiasmus." B-)

This seems really interesting, and I agree it's all about having big data sets. With this approach you might be able to give each pair a ratio: good results in category 1 vs good results in category 2. Any pairs with anomalous ratios could be more closely monitored.

Gotta say it makes me laugh. From what I can remember when I watched this, John Kranyak appears two or three times in the documentary and every time he is saying something along the lines of "lets get the beers in!"

Ah darn.

Yes. Imo it is an auto 2N. AKAK and a 5 card suit. Only bean counters need 15 to 2NT.

I would have said the 3♣ bid is forcing so no danger of being dropped there, although apparently GIB has it as 11+ so maybe it is a style thing. 4♦ is a very poor bid and probably wouldn't occur to a human with AKJ♠. It should be no problem to reach 3N.

It's not particularly constructive to assign much blame on these goulash deals but East's bid seems ridiculously unilateral. He deserved to find Jx opposite instead of QJ to 6! 100% East, even if the pen x is a bit weird.

But you can gain a lot of system by having 3S as a relay so there is another upside. Agree that the leakage may outweigh this.

Pretty obvious double now. Not nearly good enough for 6D and 5M risks a ridiculous spot.

I have had actually had a lot of bugs with Deep Finesse. Sometimes it will take you through to trick 8 and suddenly decide to say that DD is a different number of tricks. I have switched over to Bridge Solver which has given me no trouble at all and has lots of great capabilities.

(2H) x (p) 3C[not leb] (p) 3s (p) 3N. And yes I absolutely want to be there. Why can't clubs be 2-2 or spades 3-3 etc?

Honestly me too. I had 'clickety click' syndrome. I hope to be able to try again soon!

A rather heavy loss - sorry teamies. Some very trigger happy stuff from our side.

I can play. And I have a partner (ibraves).

Fair enough. I probably should have started the OP with "bid these hands using your favourite methods". I appreciate there are a lot of variables.

Well, not really. You could say how your auction would go for example. In fact you don't even say what your call would be with the South hand.