EarlPurple

ok hearts are 4-4 and West as Ax in clubs and East QJx, so yeah of course I can make it by the line I just said (except that I can't afford to play any rounds of trumps) if West ducks the first club they take 1 club and 1 trump, if he plays his ace then they take 2 clubs but no trump tricks. Of course, if this is the lie of the cards then they could have beaten me simply by leading ace and another club.

actually my reply can't be right because I'm still one down. If East started with 3 hearts then he will not be discarding a club on the 4th round of hearts, he will be ruffing in with his SJ and exiting with a trump or a club and I will have to lose 2 club tricks.

Looking at the hands but at none of the answers, my immediate instinct is to play 2 rounds of hearts throwing a diamond, cash a top trump (West will show out, I presume), ruff a heart, ruff a diamond and lead a heart (I don't think East can well by ruffing in high) to ruff and now a club to the 9, endplaying East even in trumps.

Me too, I would like to experiment with my strong diamond system. I will get the full system here sometime, but the basis is: 1 :): - strong bid showing 17+ 1 :h: / 1 :s: natural opening bid no more than 16 points 1NT: 11-13 nv, 12-14 vuln 1 :c: all other opening hands (response of 1 :): is artificial showing a 4-card major, 1 :h: and 1 :s: show 5) 2 :c: hearts + another suit 2 :): spades + another suit (At least 5-4. With 5-4 in majors, show the shorter suit) 2 :h: / 2 :s: weak 2 bids

If you are going to be a good teacher it might help for you to type in a clear manner. That means, proper spelling (write you rather than y) etc.

When playing in a tourney, it would be useful when one player freezes out if the other 3 players can request a substitute. If that happens, then the substitution can occur automatically instead of requiring the director to make the substitution. In addition, if a player leaves BBO (or loses connection) then a substitution could automatically be made after say 1 minute without requiring director. Also a useful feature would be a button whereby director could request subs with a default message (without having to type out the full message). In fact it might be useful if this would happen on any tourney with more than one round to play where there are fewer than 2 subs registered.

Wouldn't it be better if the software were to allow players to register as subs in advance of a tourney, so that if someone registered to play prior to the tourney isn't there they will automatically be entered instead. For pairs tournaments, prior to the tourney starting, pairs could register as subs as a pair, i.e. to play together.