Cthulhu D

Cash the king, calling for an upside down attitude signal from partner (Ace is for unblock). Partner has a bust or a misfit if he didn't support me so I'm not expecting much.

Okay, but that is how fractional reserve banking works - the bank takes a deposit from person A, then lends the money to person B. Then Person B buys some beer from Person A, who then deposits the money with the bank. Now the bank has another $10 which it lends out. Of course it's the same $10 they actually took on deposit orginally, but according to Ron Paul "$10 has been created" and this is bad. If you're going to ban Fractional reserve banking (what ron paul wants to do), you have to crack down on people doing exactly that. Otherwise the banks will just restructure as a partnership or whatever and continue as before. The US gives a corporation many of the same legal rights as a person. The fact you don't belive it doesn't make it any less true.

Unless you buy into the Austrian school of economics, which most analysis does not, his proposal to ban fractional reserve banking is either unworkable or insane. For example - he's proposing the government would ban you from borrowing $10 from one friend, then lending $10 to another - which is not workable and certainly in conflict with the rest of his stated ideals. However, if he did implement this, the resultant credit crunch would be of unimaginable proportions. It's almost impossible to ascertain what the impact of this would be, but it would likely require withdrawing in excess of $1 trillion from the economy, and likely much more than that (up to $6 trillion). The deflationary impact and credit crunch would be vast. It would almost certainly cause a recession, but it's hard to say for certain because no-one has considered doing anything this big ever. However, the funniest part of his record is that he published a news letter entitled "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" which shows a considered lack of judgement at best. Also publishing something under your name where it is suggested that you'll never be able to catch a purse snatcher because 'black men are so fleet of foot' is equally poorly judged whether you wrote it or not. Same for publishing a headline under your name: 'Animal's take over the D.C. Zoo.' This is an extremely poorly judged choice of words when talking about predominately black urban unrest in the D.C. area. As an Australian I'm all in favour of ron paul getting elected and the no doubt hilarious consequences.

Cheers, I'd noticed that suction hadn't really been working out over a weak NT (actually inverted psycho suction which actually had worked out nicely, but for all the wrong reasons), so we'd switched to HELLO but yeah hadn't really twigged as to why that was the case.

Semi related question - do people here play different methods over a strong and weak 1NT? With my two regular partners, we play the same defense just to ease memory strain, the field typically has ACOL 12-14, SAYC style 15-17 and the odd precision 13/14 to 15/16 in it. What's the gain with a specialist method vs playing, say, suction over both?

9/10 the answer to that is 'Okay so I need to set up <longest suit> by <taking a finesse, trying to drop, whatever>, so I need to start <now/after drawing trumps>' and then you proceed. Try the express tournaments, they force you to be quick!

What's wrong with Minorwood? I see why Gerber can be easily mis-used (I play it only on over an inital opening of NT), but was considering minorwood as it sort of made sense maybe so I'm curious to know what's wrong with it. Aside from seemingly being easy to misunderstand which is a big negative.

As a humble beginner, I'm pretty sure planning the play (and the defence!) prior to playing into trick one is the second most fundamental skill in bridge after counting trumps (and not revoking).

Is there a chat lobby or a IRC channel to hang around and shoot the breeze with like minded people? It seems hard to 'meet' people and a lobby or similar would help greatly. I've used the search function and it certainly implies there has been one, but there may not be one now. Can anyone fill me in? Cheers Cthulhu

Amusingly I don't think any of these could be played in Australia despite being legal in the US - our system regulations prevent a pass with a hand that has values typically associated with opening strength (defined elsewhere), even if there are other, weak options. Precision pass is clearly ruled out for example. It's a shame, because I really like that precision pass system.

After thinking about it, I agree with you. Unless I can bid 5/5 or better in the majors, I'm bidding 1S. Ekrens is underselling my hand.

Wow, with 3 weak 2s (i.e. no two suited opener), I'd open it 1S. However both my regular partnerships have a two suited opening (one is 4/4 in the majors and one is 5/5 in the majors) so I'd try those. A bit of a lie for the Ekrens 2D, but I think partner would forgive me for pretending this was a 5/5 max.

Would it be possible to obtain a copy as well please? Mostly for my own intrest. cthulhu.dreams@gmail.com Regards, Cthulhu.

Would anyone consider opening in first seat? I'd probably open (not playing precision, but in an environment where aggressive bidding is frequent from even LOLs).

I concur with the others. It seems like a high variance swinging move, and if you're being gifted overtricks at matchpoint scoring, you don't need to start swinging, particularly 1st seat in! 3rd seat white on red though, and playing with a regular partner, and if I need to swing, I might consider a psyche of 1D (retiring to 1S if partner redoubles for SOS). LHO rates to have atleast 17 HCP and some shape, and isn't likely to have 4 spades so won't make a takeout double. With a pickup partner though a psyche rates to be a terrible idea, so this hand has no future.

The bias's should cancel each other out because the same 'player' is in all 8 seats in the simulated teams match. The advantage is you can easily play a very large number of boards (say, 200+) with the same weak 2. The way I'd do it is: Choose your 2 level opening, and determine which one of the three standard weak 2s it replaces. Caculate the relative frequence on the traditional weak 2 opening vs whatever you are opening. Create a reference set of 200+ boards split between traditional weak 2 openings and whatever your new pre-empt is in the ratio of the relative frequences of the two bids. So if the tradiational weak 2D comes up (disclaimer: Number is made up), 4% of the time, and your Ekrens 2D comes up 6% of the time (disclaimer: number equally made up), you'd generate 80 boards with a weak 2 diamonds opener, and 120 boards with a Ekrens 2D opener. Obviously if your different structure incorporates multiple openings (say, a 2D mini-multi, Ekrens 2H, and some intermediate spades hand), you're going to need to do the reference boards split between all three weak 2s, the mini multi, ekrens 2H and some intermediate spades stuff. The main issue would be the strength of the defence the computer was given against the 2<x> opening, and the difficulty the computer would have in responding to the pass/correct weak 2s in the 2h: Hearts or spades vein. I would suggest having a well recognised expert design the defence, and not using the very strange 2H: Hearts or Spades style weak 2s in testing. While the computer bridge programs are weaker than top humans, this controls for field strength and bidding style very effectively.

Yeah, we both haven't played for a long time either, so starting with a clean sheet and no presumptions on either side made sense to me. Amusingly a strong jump shift has never come up - I'm aware of the problem (if 1H - 2C is game forcing, we need 3C for a an invite with good clubs). So we're only playing strong jump shifts with very strong hands to a suit infront of the suit partner opened (1H-2S).

Cheers for the advice - will nail down that 1C-1H-1NT-2H is weak! We are playing fourth suit forcing to game, I might discuss some sort of new minor forcing treatment or something, but I suspect just clarifying that that bidding sequence is weak and promises 6 will solve our problems. I thought it should be something like that, thanks for the thoughts. I might agree that a very good five is worth a rebid to prevent having to missort my cards.

Playing 2/1 with an inexperinced partner (and I am just as inexperinced, combined bridge experince.. 4 months, and I've never played anything other than precision before, and he used to SAYC afaik), we have recently agreed to play 2/1 game forcing with strong jump shifts. So a really fundamental question: Twice in a recent club night partner opened 1 of a minor when I was very weak (5 and 7 HCP respectively) with a 6 card major and no fit in the minor. Obviously this rates some sort of bid, so both times I bid 1 of the major. Opener has then bid the other major or 1NT (and I have an unbalanced hand and/or no tolerance for his major), and I want to rebid my major to communicate my extra length. The problem we are having is that partner isn't sure if he should pull or bid a new suit on the basis of having a decent balanced hand and wanting to play somewhere else rather than a 5-2 fit, or if I have a six card suit and therefore 2 of the major rates to be a better place to play. What agreements do people have for dealing with that situation? If I'm weak do I just rebid my major to declare that I'm willing to play there? Is it always 6, a good 5 or stuck for another bid?