Cthulhu D

I am happy to provide some studies, there are approximately a billion. However, to facilitate this process, we first need to define the principles that you want to see in understanding what makes a healthcare system 'effective' - as a starting point I would suggest A) Cost per capita B) Patient Satisfaction (for people admitted to hospital or present at an ER, measuring the satisfaction of people who don't use the healthcare system's satisfaction with it is a pointless exercise in futility). C) Some measure of quality. This is the most difficult to measure so I would like your thoughts. If it's population health measures I need you to understand that the drivers of this are diet and smoking rates which mask the small differences in outcomes between the healthcare systems. If it's delivery of WHO recommended care, I will note that no study has been performed other than a single one which says there is no difference between the NHS and the USA. Please note: No country in the OECD has as large a population as the USA. If smaller countries are not legitimate examples, there is no evidence that can pursade you. If you have some other set of preferred principles please suggest them. It is impossible to proceed until it is clear what factors would satisfy you prior to gathering information. Which step? A. Not wearing helmets increases medical costs B. Not wearing helmets is unauthorized in my country C. At-least 40% of medical costs of motorcycle accidents are covered by the public or written off as loses by care providers regardless of jurisdiction D. The remaining 40% or more is covered directly or indirectly by taxpayers and healthcare users (US numbers, higher in oz). E. If costs are covered by taxpayers that results in increased tax burden F. If costs are covered by care providers they amortise the loss over other patients, resulting in increased costs for healthcare users G. I am a taxpayer and healthcare user H. Therefore I pay for the medical care of people who have motorcycle accidents without a helmet I. Non consensual re-purposing of funds is 'embezzlement' J. Embezzlement is colloquially known as theft. K. As this re-purposing of my funds is unauthorized (by the accident haver), they are committing theft. This is insane. I presume you are going to stop pasteurising milk? Just because colonial imperialism is bad, all products of Europe ever are bad? Amazing. Of course, people are really defending this system, so I guess things are beyond help?

On what rational basis? It's pretty clear cut: Idiots on motorcycles without helmets costs society a lot of money. Whatever marginal utility idiots get for not wearing motorcycle helmets is far, far outweighed by the loss from injuries. It's theft. It would be a completely different situation if we didn't live in a world where the paramedics will pick the dude up and treat him regardless of his helmet wearing status or otherwise, but we don't (which is good), so helmets should be mandatory. Both of these points are objectively wrong. Consider the NHS: It is both massively cheaper than US healthcare and just as effective (when considered as an entire system)! But the NHS is kinda shitty so let's move somewhere colder. The Finns have a healthcare system that is massively cheaper and more effective! What's not to love? I guess everyone has a right to an opinion, but this one is factually incorrect. See: Finland. Check out patient satisfaction rates in one of the cuddly european countries. Like Finland! They have less waiting times, they do a better job, less people die and you'd save a fat chunk of cash. Exactly what do you possibly want from a healthcare system that isn't getting done here? Cheaper, more effective and more satisfying! Amusingly I worked out if you could have the high levels of public sector efficiency (hahaha) associated with a country like the UK, for what the US government pays out in Medicare, Medicaid etc you could deliver NHS quality universal healthcare for your entire country. The conclusion I draw is that Americans are somehow intrinsically masochistic and are willing to fight to the death to protect their right to be overcharged for bad service. I honestly cannot understand what the rationale here is. Does America just not like money, or the idea of a healthy population or something? Seriously, people are defending their right to pay extra so poor people die of preventable illnesses. It is literally madness.

I'm a yes voter for option one, but I might just be rationalising my own behaviour. If it's just some random club night with nothing at stake, I'd rather play against the strongest pairs because that is more likely to generate interesting lessons for the washup.

Forcing to 3NT makes sense and I find the good out find/replace action in my partnership notes after getting passed in 4m with a new partner. The target window is to small compared to the benefit of letting opener sandbag a bit. I only did some basic sims but I reckon any hand that wants to stop in 4m wants to punt 3NT, especially at IMPs.

It's obvious from every field of human enterprise that the evaluations based on 'well, I reckon' without a solid statistical or theoretical underpinning are wrong. Attempting to assess your systematic failures on this basis is ridiculous. Pick any random sport to see this in action, though the statisticians are taking over now.

Why not do whatever you are doing with 20-21 with the 18-19 hands and put the 20-21 in with the 15-17 after a positive response. Then there a greater chance responder will want to move again over 4NT.

Yah, the biggest problem is it means that any card played after period N cannot be a singleton.

I've seen pros who are watching a fairly simple scene for the purposes of an observation test fail to notice that two people standing in front of the camera blatantly and without any concealment pass a large package to each other (a cube with each face the size of a vinyl record). It's actually amazing how bad people are at seeing things imho.

There is a second point here - one of the big advantages of Michaels is that it doesn't have much opportunity cost - a natural 2NT overcall and a 'natural' cue are bids you can toss without even noticing. If you want specified two suited over-calls you either need to play some bids multiway which is a large degree of complexity to sort out with partner (after (1C)-2D!-(X) where 2D! was a a pre-empt in an unspecified major, what exactly do your bids mean? It's obvious that 2S should be a paradox advance, but how high does that authorise the 2D bidder to go and what hand types should go?) or sacrifice weak jumps - a relatively common handtype. Despite the recommendations to play specified two suited bids from Partnership Bidding at Bridge guys, and how helpful knowing what the second suit is in a two suited overcall is to competitive bidding generally, this cost of complexity or oppotunity is, imho, a key reason Michaels remains very popular. It's simple AND effective.

Critical infomation you need to add - what timezone? :) Edit: Derp.

I reckon you don't want to use the profile feature for this, and you also don't want to present options like 'ACOL' because no-one knows if you mean dutch or english. I reckon a better idea is to provide a matchmaking service. I am aware this is my solution to every problem, but in this case it is a useful solution. This is broadly in line with Zelandakh's idea, but subtly different. When you use the matchmaker you specify which of BBO's stock convention cards you want to use (note: This is very different from the previous proposals), and it matchmakes you with a random partner that has picked the same stock CC. You can also have a 'don't care' and 'natural bidding' option. Ideally it would be a full disclosure card so people can mouse over their bids and see what they mean :) This solves Fred's problem, and mostly solves Ken Free's problem. A typical user experience might be: You click on the 'take me to a table!' button. The system then prompts 'which system do you want to play?' and shows a list of the convention cards on BBO with 'don't care' and 'natural bidding' at the top. You click on the one you want and then BBO grinds its gears until it finds you a like minded partner, then dumps you at a table. The first time you use the feature, it can also prompt 'would you like to set this as your default system selection? This can be changed at any time <whereever it can be changed>' Users who have made a default system selection are not shown the second prompt. Instead their preference is used. This will greatly increase the efficiency of getting you at the table with a like minded partner. I'd recommend ordering the convention cards something like this: Don't care Natural bidding <-- potentially cut this one SAYC BBO Standard or whatever it is that the GIBs use. The national system of the user playing, determined by country <-- populate this for the big countries, so Taiwan and China = Precision but Belize = unspecified and not used. I define 'big' as 'played in the last bermuda bowl' This is important as it gets something familiar to the top! The US gets a miss because SAYC and 2/1 GF are already entries 1 and 2. English ACOL Precision Dutch ACOL WJ2000 SEF Whatever else.

Yeah, rebid 2D. Seems perfectly normal, if P bids again you can support hearts. I prefer a style where you raise on 3 only with a difficult bidding problem otherwise. For example: S: x H: Kxx D: KJxxx C: KJxx 1NT is a bit of a joke, 2S is of course out, not hugely enthused to rebid diamonds, leaving me with 2C or 2H.

http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/brx_brn0.htm Pretty much sums it up I reckon.

Is it? We always have hand records with deep finesse trick totals printed on them at the end of every club (team and pairs) game, and when we go through the results of a MP game against the deep finesse results most contracts come up the same, and of those that don't, 60-70%+ are the result of clear defensive errors. The percentage of hands where deep finesse can roll it home taking some absurd line of play is very small. If contract selection was being done by Deep Finesse that's a different question. It can often see that you want to be in some absurd 6C= in your 5-1 club fit rather than 4S+1 in your 9 card spade fit or whatever, but when you consider the strain selected by the room the results are usually pretty accurate.

Isn't the only correct answer to, say, about questions regarded partner's play to your first first lead to say something like: 'we play <insert name of whatever we play here>, and in this situation our signal priority is attitude-count-suit preference. so in this case if partner intends the card as attitude, a low card would be encouraging and a high card is discouraging. If partner intends the card as count, high-low is even. If partner intends the card as suit preference, we play a high card asks for the next suit up in suit order (I include an example here if the suit is spades), or the next suit down (I include an example here if the suit is clubs).' Then the reality is most people cut you off at the first part or whichever part they wanted to know and then you go on with your life. e: vvvvv Playing standard carding is a big advantage there lol.

Opener surely has to to find another bid after deciding the hand is to strong for 1NT, or if playing a weak NT because doubling shows this hand. But yeah, the 2S is unfortunate.

Yes. Australia, banned in EBU and ACBL

Zelandakh's method here is very clever. The cues are a bit overloaded making it hard to extend, but everyone is usually in the dark. http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/52797-canape-overcalls/page__view__findpost__p__633114

Plenty of stuff to consider. As Mdodell comments even just a trash mini multi + solid weak 2s (or visa versa) has something to recommend it because you can better judge preempt extension. Alternatively, 2S intermediate, 2H flannery and 2D multi?

Sure, but the only way to determine that is if you got an abnormal result. In my case though I can still preempt at the two level in diamonds, but I generally agree you must consider other uses for the bids. This is why multiway bids (e.g. 2C: strong or weak 2 in diamonds) are the hardest to examine.

I suspect the solution heavily depends on your skill level and the homogeneity of the field you are playing in. While I agree that the comprehensive approach is better, separating out systemic factors from the general noise of factors like opponent competence is probably practically impossible. So for example, I track abnormal results and also where we make a highly unusual pre-empt (I define 'highly unusal' as 'only people in the room to open the hand'). Conversely, I've never bothered really trying to evaluate the effect of the multi 2D if our opponents got to the normal spot. It's possible that the 2D might have made it easier than a natural weak 2S for example, but determining that for sure is impossible.

Another possibility is 2D: Multi, 2H: Majors, Ekrens style, 2S: Unspecified two suiter (not majors obv), 2NT natural. Mostly because you can pass 2S and have an extra step to bid. Alternatively, to avoid brown stickers: 2D - Multi, 2H: Majors, 2S: minors or the reds, 2NT: rounded suits. Then put weak diamonds in 2C and you're gold, missing only a weak pre-empt in clubs. Altenatively lose the H+C pre-empt in 2NT and leave it natural. Not as effective as 2S is obviously forcing. Maybe another combine is 2C: Strong or majors 2D: minors or reds 2H: Either major 2S: spades + another 2NT: Natural. Loses weak 2D which is a shame.

Makes sense for ACOL, but what about SAYC? Rebidding spades there feels.. bad.

Weird. What are you supposed to bid with a similar hand and more mild shape. Say: S: AQJxx H: xx D: x C: KJxxx

How is opening 1S and bidding 3C over 2H reversing? It denies a balanced minimum sure, but it isn't a reverse.