c_corgi

West gets a large slice of the blame for not returning the ♠K at trick 3. That leaves declarer needing to find the ♦J, which he is unlikely to achieve. There seems to be little else left to play for.

"Never" is going a bit far, but 50% of the time seems a lot. It seems to me quite a leap of faith [from East] to expect the result of South's number crunching to protect you from the horrible occasion when you have the K♣, you do switch from it and partner had the J♣ and the Spades were not coming in. When declarer does not have the J♣, (from East's POV, just as likely as the true layout, and once he has switched to a club, the Jack) he will see: Case A: East's club switch was from the King and no-one holds ♠Qxx Case D: East's club switch was not from the King and a defender holds ♠Qxx Case A = East holds K♣ x He doesn't have J♣ x He switches to a Club x Spades not coming in = 50% x 50% x 50% x 72% = 9% Case D = 14% So when you add in the times when Declarer doesn't have the Jack you get: Play East for KC: (18%+9%)/2 = 13.5% Play for Spades: (14%+14%)/2= 14% Which, admittedly is rather closer than I estimated before my first post. In fact I suspect I have demonstrated that in this case the defender is still conveying the impression that playing on Spades is an option, rather than it being right to do so. That is not what I thought I was doing when I began this post! In fact it looks like it is right to finesse in clubs when you do have the Jack and play on Spades when you don't. Confusing is right: the defender has to guess whether declarer thinks like jallerton, c_corgi, or like neither. Then declarer has to guess what the defender concluded! In any case, all East has to do is adjust his frequency of switching to a Club from the King away from 50% (or 80%) and suddenly the analysis gives a different answer.

3S. It seems like they are having a misunderstanding, or partner has psyched. In the former case I want to describe my hand as quickly and accurately as possible and in the latter I don't want to field it.

Yes.

Once he has bared the ♥A you can set up a heart trick, providing you have retained communication in diamonds.

Quite so, but when scoring up with team-mates I find it a lot easier to put up with a bad board than with resultist hyperbole.

Whoever described it as a cold grand in the post-mortem is most to blame.

East knows the whole hand apart from the Jack of clubs, so if he is confident that you will analyse that his club switch will not be from the King (unless the spades were coming in), he will expect you to go up with the ace of clubs whether or not you hold the Jack. That would put him in a position to switch to clubs from the king, assuming that with Axxx you would rely on the legitimate chance of the spades coming in rather than the "gift" of the club finesse. In reality I doubt East would risk a club switch from the King when the spades weren't coming in, so I go up with the ace.

And apologies from me if this is also rubbish, but I don't think the stated end position can be reached without irregularity. I was going to put it down to less relevant cards being transcribed wrongly, but on second thoughts it does seem somewhat unlikely that a materially similar end position would arise with the lead in hand. Perhaps there are murkier aspects to this ruling than I thought!

This possibility is difficult to evaluate due to interference at quantum level induced by hrothgar's fridge magnets.

Correct on both counts. Oops.

I didn't think you were advocating violence, but I did think terms like "line of fire" implied a hostility (not necessarily on your part) towards religious moderates. There are too many examples throughout history of a hostile attitude between two groups degenerating into violence, often when it furthers political causes. It is better to avoid the hostile attitude if possible. For what its worth I agree that, for instance, we should not have an established church forming part of our constitution. However, there are many aspects of our constitution that I don't approve of and disestablishment would not be high on my list of priorities. I doubt if many people want to be told their beliefs are harmful to society: it sounds like rather a PITA. In the case of religious moderates, it seems unfair to do so. I don't know exactly what people consider a religious moderate to be, but I would think that "Someone who doesn't think better or worse of other people because they agree or disagree with their own beliefs" would be a pre-requisite. To me, like (I think) you, the ideas of religious faith seem far fetched, but when society starts blaming its ills on religious moderates it is going too far. If a society has a problem with religious fundamentalists, that society probably should be more concerned with setting its own house in order than with looking for scapegoats.

If moderates need a buffer zone to protect them from attacks by non-believers, that is indeed a problem. Many of the problems associated with religion derive from attacking or being attacked by those with different beliefs. It is unfortunate if non-religious people are going to fall into this trap as well.

The auction suggests that North has at least an 8 count. North might well have had a hand that wanted to double 2S, but lacked the high card strength to do so. The slow pass on the first round suggests that North had the high card strength to double 2S, so the lack of double on the second round suggests a non-defensive hand. I rule that pass was an LA and that bidding was suggested by the UI, so I adjust to 2S.

He took a convoluted line which specifically caters for spade length in the West hand. Whether that was wise or not is debatable, but there seems good reason to think that he chose his line because of the MI that West had made a penalty double of spades.

From the OP it sounds as though N/S have no agreement about whether South would pass with 11-13 balanced and xxx or Hxx in diamonds. Is North's pass what is expected with his hand? If so it seems like South needs most of his actual diamond holding to pass. If not, or if it is uncharted territory, N/S got lucky. It sounds likely that E/W don't have an understanding of what their double means. If that is the case, West was probably hedging that the double might have been based on diamonds and might not be stood anyway, a position he would not be likely to take if South's pass showed genuine diamonds. West may have been misinformed by failure to alert if South's pass had a "potentially unexpected meaning". I would be inclined to interpret that as "pass should have been alerted if it showed longer diamonds than clubs, not if it just shows any weak NT or similar" but if it shows more than xxx or some particular holding then maybe it should be alerted. Even if he has been misinformed, an experienced West should protect himself; what degree of diamond tolerance needs to be shown by the pass before I start to feel sympathetic towards West's "I wouldn't pass if I'd known that" position is an interesting question.

If the system notes are admitted as limited-weight evidence then, together with the convention card, they create sufficient confusion to conclude that the proper disclosure is "no specific agreement for this situation, but we have these conflicting meta-agreements:..." Hence there is MI whether or not the notes are admitted. While declarer's line of play may be inferior, it seems unlikely he would have selected it without the MI, so there is damage. I don't believe declarer is close to SEWoG, but even if any errors he made were serious they involved failing to successfully deduce what the opponents were doing, by balancing inferences from the play with information from the auction. Since much of that information from the auction is the MI, I don't see how any serious error can be unrelated to the infraction. It seems clear to adjust to 2SX=.

In my experience hands which pass initially but then will actually overcall at the 3-level are vanishingly rare. It is much more common to have a passed-hand on which overcalling at the 3-level might work well.

If a player has a genuine problem he is likely to break tempo. If a player does not have a genuine problem he is only likely to break tempo if he fails to realise that he doesn't have a problem. Therefore if a player breaks tempo the chances of him having a genuine problem are increased. In the OP case, he only has a genuine problem if his values are offensive, so the BIT increases the chances of his values being offensive. It might be argued that whether a problem is genuine or not depends on the class of player, but I think pretty much any player would realise offensive values were more likely to require action than defensive ones here.

The underlying cause is people who want to manipulate or exploit others for their own benefit. Belief systems that lack objective verification have proved a powerful and malleable tool for such people, but eliminating them will not address the underlying cause, it will just mean that different tools are favoured.

I find bridge is more enjoyable with reversed emoticons and a change of emphasis, thus: The poor beginners committed an infraction by inadvertently failing to disclose their methods properly, so they may incur an adjusted score :( It turns out there was no damage due to the infraction, so no adjustment is necessary :)

Suggest they play at Brighton instead.

Cashing the Ace instead also makes when a defender has 3 trumps and 4 clubs.

If bad breaks are likely, then all the more reason to play your 5-2 or 5-3 fit with great intermediates at the 2-level, rather than risk finding your 3-4 or 3-5 fit with unknown intermediates at the 3-level.

If we are going to play in no-trumps then my valuation of this hand is much lower if it will be dummy. I don't like opening NT with this shape, but I will make an exception here. I think it is too good for 12-14 1NT though.