Cthulhu D

NAE, but those two suiters all have good playing strength. Using LTC, 7 losers is an average opening hand, the last one has 6!

It boils down to how much does facing one of the best pairs in the room who have a very difficult decision that they get right wreck your score. At butlered IMPs it can be very difficult to claw it back.

Disclaimer, I have no practical experience with this, but I was thinking... A variable NT seems to work better if you are playing 1C includes all balanced hands without a 5cM (or perhaps with), an unbalanced diamond and transfer responses to 1C, because you can avoid horribly mangling your response structure. Then you can do say: 1st & 2nd: 11-13 opens 1NT, and 14-16 accepts the transfer while 17-19 bids 1NT, 3rd + 4th: 14-16 opens, 11-13 accepts the transfer. It's not as plug and play with a mini. Say 1NT = 9-12, accepting the transfer is 13-15 bal, 16-18 bids 1NT, and 19-20 opens 2NT. The 2NT is awful, but we can use your range extension concept here. 1NT = 9-12, accepting is 13-15 bal, 1NT is 16-19 and 2NT is 20-21, which works nicely! Edit: Downside is sometimes you are going to end up playing some rather rubbish 2D contracts after 1S responses and partner's 1NT response must be limited to 9 otherwise the sequence 1C-1NT will be awful. 2NT should probably then be 10-11? 12? bal.. I think you need to play a Fantunes alike then. Maybe it doesn't work.

I think for anyone who isn't a national champion player like yourself, it's worth starting with whatever the latest in cutting edge thinking is, and then changing it to meet whatever your defined objectives are. Edit: In starting with, I mean that you need to think about why expert X has structured the system like that. If you don't understand it's not wise tinkering with it, but trying to understand is an important effort.

Yeah if a superstar turns up you can probably do it by hand, the alternative is the chess solution. You make established players grades more resistant to change and new players very flexible on the basis that you have confidence that your established ratings are right. This also protects established players from damage because the adjustment from losing to someone is pretty low. This also protects established players who turn up and have a disaster session for external reasons.

Mitch McConnell is about as relevant to Foreign Policy of American as Ahmadinejad is to Iran's. Actually he's probably more relevant because he reflects the feelings of a faction that might actually come to power. Israel, the US and Iran are packed with hardliners that say mean things about each other all the time. I used Mitch because he was the one to most recently make a completely preposterous remark about bombing Iran. What I don't understand is why you are identifying Ahmadinejad as a key player in the problem? Both sides are big on inflammatory rhetoric (remember the Axis of evil speech?). Ahmadinejad is just a bit player - like Mitch McConnell or Santorum. He could have the title of 'Supreme Emperor of all Iran' and it wouldn't make his statements any more or less relevant. I mean yes, it would be nice if people didn't say mean things about each other, but this isn't going to happen. I think you are overrating the significance of his remarks because his title is 'President' but that title isn't worth 2/5ths of bugger all. It's purely ornamental. Literally the only difference between him and the previous reformist is now that Guardian council doesn't need to veto stuff. It's even more puzzling because both sides are actually engaged in a proxy war (in Iraq) and a covert war (in Iran) with each other in which people are actually dying. Pretty sure funding anti US militas and political parties and assassinating government researchers makes dialogue more 'difficult' than any contribution from Ahmadinejad.

I'm a pragmatist here - the problem is who's disowning Mitch McConnell.. no-one? Yup, thought so. Pandering is politico 101, and unfortunately you cannot make them shut up.

Serious question - is the 'go to' bid double or 3S? I'd double, but I'm not sure that is right.

My mental rule of thumb is that after partner has played a suit twice they are likely to be so strapped for cards that they will be unable to signal, but one the first round of a given suit (or if partner discards that suit before it has been lead), partner will be making the best signal they can with the cards they have. So I'd say yeah, dropping signalling after a particular trick is bad, but use some judgement about when partner is likely to be able to afford to signal (first round of a suit), and when they are not (3rd round of a suit).

Is Bergen raises the default in the US to the extent that agreeing 2/1 means that 1S-3C is going to be a Bergen raise? It seems so much more playable for it to be invitational with clubs, faciliates 1NT semi forcing to.

Given Saudi Arabia's laughable average education level, and relentless hatred of S'hia Muslims taught by Whabbists who literally run the entire education system, a random Saudi off the street is most likely to not care in the slightest, and if they do, they won't like him much. The Saudi elite doesn't like him, but that's because they hate Iran, so that's sort of a generalized hatred. In Iran the conservatives generally like him - he's a conservative activist, and the liberal reformists will not like him. They heavily protested his re-election (you may remember this). Also, everyone in Iran knows that the Republican Guard and the Clerics run things really.

I gather the poles lead the 2nd from a small doubleton yeah. So in A they lead 4th, B 2nd, C 2nd, D 2nd and E 2nd.

It's better than that, the OP is from the UK based on their posting history. Not sure who else could be unfamiliar with 'American Systems' and refer people to the EBU TD Handbook. That said, the topic was probably legitimately changed.

Iran's messaging is no accident, but I would bet a large sum of money against the primary motivation for the banners being externally looking. Iran has serious internal problems, and they follow the established playbook - blame a external party for all your problems to distract the population. Government's total failure to invest in infrastructure, resulting in petrol shortages in a large oil producing country? Peg it on a Jewish conspiracy rather than a failure of a corrupt government. As the Government is literally pre-selected by the Supreme Leader and his minions, any failing would be his failing and call the very structure of government into question. Those questions are bad because they feed directly into the student activist movements and social unrest, so mobilising the anger against some one else is critical. Of course when Israel actual is running a covert assassination campaign in Iran, it becomes much more believable to boot. There is a risk with this sort of brinkmanship is that it can all go horribly wrong, and it has at-least once in the last decade.

Not sure 4S at your second turn will achieve this. Giving the hand to Wbridge5 and coming in with 4S on a number of random deals for the remaining hands, they always find 5 of a red suit which is usually the par score. Bidding 4S on the first turn doesn't always achieve this on the same deals, but has a high success rate. If 5H/D is going off, 4S is making. Sample size is only 15 though so I may be wrong.

I'm vul at imps, so I'm going to try 3NT.

You do not understand the role of the President. Ahmadinejad's job is to appeal to the audience at home and shift the blame for, say, high petrol prices onto the US and Israel. They are not going to stop him making outrageous statements because his job is to make outrageous statements and pander to the base at home. It's like how the GOP hasn't disowned Santorum for making insane comments about pink bowling balls. His job is to pander to the Christian right, and he does that just fine.

Yeah, you prompted me to look up the polish carding and 2/4 or 3/5 makes a lot of sense.

What would 2H have been on the first round? Assuming that is a fitted jump (showing perhaps 5+ hearts and 4+ clubs, and F1) I would have tried that, then 5NT perhaps over whatever partner did, except maybe 3C. I don't need much for the grand slam to be good (Axxx of clubs and a Hx in hearts, or even a stiff K? Perhaps?). If it's not that I want to make a forcing raise then bid lots of hearts.

All the things you outline can be achieved in a public system - indeed, it has been demonstrated they can be delivered more effectively if you want to live in some of the colder parts of Europe. The reality is when you compare 'care delivered' against 'care recommended by the WHO' (as the only yardstick we have for 'what you should do') the NHS delivers roughly the same amount as the US. The FUNNY part is that that is only like 60% on average (topping out at like 70% in some categories, wooo). The different countries are also better at different things - the US delivers better cancer care than the NHS, but the NHS has got your back if you have chronic illnesses of different types. At the end of the day, your care experience is pretty similar. The problems are really A) It's REALLY HARD to get from A to B. Look at the political cost Obama paid for Obamacare, which is frankly weak. Full Finlandisation (bwahaha) would probably be impossible politically as well as purely from an implementation point of view. B) It's not possible for the US government to implement something equivalent to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme due to the influence of lobbyists - or more frankly governmental corruption in both the GOP and Democrats. Collective bargining here is critical and no achievable for the US C) It relies on other social structures outside of the healthcare system. Part of the huge cost savings that the UK and Finland can produce is a massive decrease in the cost of supply. This is because they spend a tiny part of their education budget on free training for doctors. Also, collective bargaining is more accepted, and they are willing to pressure big pharma. Ultimately the US is tooling around a local maxima. Getting to the absolute maxima requires traversing a huge gulf that no-one has the willpower to do.

I'm not sure why people think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements mean anything. It's like suggesting that Dmitry Medvedev's statements on any topic are 100% reflective of Russia's policy on that topic. The guy is about as relevant as Nikolay Shvernik in 1950.

That's this thing isn't it: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~forster/bridge/development/slawinski/69.html That's actually pretty cool. Some research also turns up Fantunes system, which is a related development (and makes sense to me) your lowest spot card show an odd number of cards with an honour or an even number without an honour the highest spot card that isn't a working card shows an even number of cards with an honour or an odd number without That's actually pretty nifty as well, and fits in well with Slawinski's ideas.

So basically, what's best to lead from three and four small? There is probably a question about leads more generally here. I suggested top of nothing, partner really likes MUD and 2nd highest respective, and you so rarely lead from 3 or 4 small I'm not hugely sure it matters, but I figured I'd ask anyway. I ran a forums search but didn't turn up any interesting discussions.

They apply to all tricks during the play. However, always remember they are only guidelines, not rules.

I struggle with counting to 13, so this shouldn't be surprising haha. Whoops. Do note that the government could never harvest most of those savings, but returning money to the citizens is good too!