rmnka447

I'm also switching to ♥ Q. Missing honors - ♠ AK ♥ AJ ♦ Q ♣ A West and North have 22 HCP between them, so partner can have 4-6 HCP depending on Opener's hand. Declarer has been shown to have ♠ A and ♣ A (by virtue of play to 1st trick). Declarer can't have both ♥ A and ♠ K for a 1 NT opening because that's too many points (15). Partner should a doubleton ♣ as declarer played 2 low ♣ and has the A yet. With ♠ AKxx, Declarer might well have finessed the ♠ J at trick 2. If declarer has ♥ A, then Declarer has 7 tricks (3 ♣, 2 ♥, 1 ♦, 1 ♠). ♥ Q might give up a trick if Declarer has ♥ J10x(x) but doesn't hurt if Declarer has ♥ Jxx(x). But ♥ look like the best chance for tricks for our side.

Not that hard. Heck, we've had more trouble when not discussing our system. Once each going to and coming from Gatlinburg, we missed exits. Once was heading down to Gatlinburg. Taking I-74 East from Indianapolis, we took I-275 to bypass Cincinnati and catch I-75 South in Kentucky. It was a rainy night and we missed the exit from I-275 to I-75 South in Kentucky. We figured out that we had made a mistake when we recrossed the Ohio River back into Ohio. The other time was coming back from Gatlinburg. Heading North on I-75, we were on the section of I-75 that it shares with I-64 (thus I-75/I-64). We realized something was wrong when we started seeing signs for Frankfort, KY which we knew wasn't passed through by I-75. :o

I'm not sure that the weak no trump(12-14) is necessarily dying out over here. The vast majority of players here use the strong NT (15-17), but there may notably be more players playing weak no trump here now. 30 or 40 years ago, we could literally go for months and not run into anyone playing them like we do. But now almost every tournament we play in, there are some pairs playing them. That might be because we are playing against top level competition more, but it sure is noticeable.

My favorite partner and I travel on a semi-regular basis to play in a few regional tournaments with friends. We both play with a number of partners locally and are located some distance apart so we don't play on a regular basis. When we travel together to these tournaments, we go over about 5-6 pages of notes covering all our bidding and carding agreements. We call these notes "car questions". It's extremely beneficial in helping us get attuned to playing together again and doing well. The big advantage of a long time partnership is all those understandings. You know what your partner will do or is likely to do in any situation even if no detailed understanding is in place. So partnership checklists do make a difference.

Looking ♥ 432 in the East hand, the ♥ 5 is the lowest outstanding ♥, it must be led from either three ♥ to an honor or a singleton ♥. If it's a singleton, then Declarer(South) must have ♥ AQ98 and what you play doesn't matter. If it's from three to an honor, declarer has only 2 ♥ and as others pointed out the correct play is the king. When East wins the trick with the ♥ K, East should return the ♥ 4, your original 4th best. It may allow to use the Rule of 11 to figure out the situation, especially if Declarer ducked from A9 on the first trick.

Ok, that's an opinion, but perfectly fair as such. It might be fair to say that certain other key facts have not been included if you know what they are. But unless you have "alternate facts" to present that contradict the facts in the memo, you can't say the facts are false. You can say that you don't believe what the facts seem to imply which is an opinion. Did the FBI obtain a FISA warrant to wiretap/spy on Carter Page? Was the "Trump Dossier" part of the application for that warrant? Was the "Trump Dossier" ultimately paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC? If the answer to those questions is Yes, then you have a partisan political document being used to support or justify spying by the government on citizens of differing political persuasion. This is the USA and the FBI is supposed to be the FBI, not the KGB. The claim was that releasing the memo would do damage to the FBI and DOJ. Do you see anything in the memo that does that? Allen Dershowitz said "99% of the time such claims by the government are unfounded. Similar claims were made by the government against the release of the Pentagon Papers. The government took that fight all the way to the Supreme Court. In the end, their claims of damage to national security didn't materialize." Since the FISA court is a secret court granting powers to surveil and wiretap that may tread on Americans 4th amendment rights, the bar for obtaining a warrant is necessarily higher than search warrants and wiretap warrants obtained in open court. So the integrity of the information that provides that "probable cause" needs to be held to a higher standard. Yeah, and it also happens that when key information is left out, convictions get thrown out and/or evidence may be excluded. The above assertion says if law enforcement can get away with it, it's OK. See the previous point. It doesn't matter whether Steele knew he was working for the Dems or not. The question is whether Steele had any personal animus against Donald Trump that would bring the credibility of his work into question. The memo provides some facts based on testimony that would seem to show such animus. I thought the opposition research done on Trump by GPS funded by the Washington Free Beacon was prior to the development of the dossier by Steele. I believe the first warrant application being reported on in the memo was in October 2016. In January 2017, James Comey did a couple things that I think are germane to the memo. He made the President aware of the dossier and represented it as the kind of salacious thing out there. He also testified under oath to Congress that the dossier was unverified. It can't be both credible in October and of unknown veracity in the following January.

Yes, I agree with ggwhiz that you should convey the meaning of the bid not just the convention name. So if you interpret the double as a DONT bid, you might say "The double requires a relay to 2 ♣ and shows a 1 suited hand." Of course, after you alert, you don't volunteer that information, but only give it in response to a request for information about the alert.

Most players will extend whatever tools they use in the direct seat over 1 NT to the pass out seat. You can play it differently if you like by partnership agreement, but then you have two ways of competing that you have to remember, remember when they apply, and then use them properly. In the interests of keeping it simple, most people will just use one.

I'm passing as I don't think any action at this point is clear cut. If 2 ♥ is weak, then the re-raise to 4 ♥ is ludicrous. The raise to 3 ♥ could have been made on nothing. If partner finds a double, I'll sit even though my hand is underpowered for a 2 ♠ bid. 5 ♦ is a complete shot in the dark. I'd prefer to choose what battles I fight elsewhere.

I'm also winning the ♣ A at trick 1. Let's do a little analysis. Missing honors when you see dummy ♠ KQ ♥ AQ ♦ K ♣ K. From the opening lead, Declarer should have ♣ K. The opening lead seems to be a singleton or doubleton. Looking at dummy, you can see that if any cards need to sit right for Declarer to make they do. So 4 ♥ is a big favorite to make. So the big concern is to get all the tricks normally due to your side than risking a remote chance to beat the contract. Consider Declarer's overcall and the missing honors. It looks like Declarer has to have at least 3 of the 5 remaining missing honors for any decent 3 level overcall. It would seem like one of them is surely ♥ A. Furthermore, dummy's ♦ AQJ might be a source for pitching Declarer's losing ♣ if you duck the ♣ A and Declarer wins ♣ K and holds ♦ Kx. So take the ♣ A After taking the ♣ A, the question is "What to return?". Any ♠ or ♦ looks to help Declarer set up tricks in those suits. A trump might be right if we knew partner doesn't have a singleton and it could also give away a potential trump trick. ♣ Q might be interpreted as wanting a ♠ return which could be disastrous if partner has a singleton and holds something like ♠ K10x. I'm going to return the ♣ 10 which Declarer might interpret as a request for a ♦ return if partner does have a stiff ♣. If Declarer holds ♦ K it may not make any difference, but if not maybe it will cause Declarer to misplay the hand.

2 ♠ At both Matchpoints and IMPs you need to contest the part scores. At IMPs, you need to temper that because of possible number sets. This hand is an absolutely clear cut 2 ♠ bid at Matchpoints at this vulnerability. Your initial pass showed 0-4, but an unknown number of ♠. 2 ♠ shows a fit and the 3-4 hand.

Of course, with 5 trumps you should be able to ruff out partner's ♣ losers, if any, if that's partner's second suit. I also agree with Cyberyeti's "nightmare" hand as a problem, but think it's definitely worth the risk of that hand to move forward.

Isn't it something like 200+ companies and approximately 3 M+ plus people who are getting "bonuses"? But I guess from some people's filters of reality that qualifies as very few people. Most of these announcements are from fairly large companies. There may be smaller companies taking similar actions that aren't receiving any publicity at all. Just remember that these payments are being made just as the new tax laws are kicking in. That doesn't preclude any of these companies from taking further actions to improve employees compensation and/or benefits as the full effect of the tax laws are felt. So tell me how many progressives voted for any tax cuts at all for everyday people?

4 ♠ Sorry, but if partner is bidding 3 ♠ as a Michaels bid and forcing to the 4 level vulnerable, then partner can't have a lousy hand. If partner does, that's on partner. No matter which minor partner has, this is a very good hand in support of partner's hand. Give partner as little as ♠ x ♥ AKxxx ♦ AJxxx ♣ xx and slam is a good bet. Partner ought to have much more than that hand.

Double If the decision were at the 4 level, 4 ♥ would be logical. But without any distribution in "their" suits, I find it hard to make a 5 level call. There's just no way to know what's in partner's hand and too much chance of a crossruff between the opponents in their suits.

Some place between 6 months and forever? You raise a very good question. I think if you want to claim that it took the full 8 years of the Obama administration that would be too long. But it would be also be unfair to expect a full recovery and be back on an even keel in a year or two. If you want to set that period at 3 or 4 years I have no problem with that. But there's a problem with the way some pundits wax on about the economy. When their person is in charge, good economic news is always portrayed as the result of that person's effort. But when a switch occurs and the opposition gets in, any good news isn't portrayed as the result of the person in charge, but a carryover from the previous administration under their person. That's trying to have it both ways and basically being dishonest.

You must have difficulty looking at real data then. If you will notice, the economy turned around in the last 3 quarters after President Trump took over. I not sure how they'd aggregate it for that period, but a simple average of the quarterly growth rates would be about 3%. So it looks to me like your OPINION is wrong.

Of course, they wouldn't. They believe that government is the source of business success and profits, not the entrepreneurs/management/employees. They've stated that several times. Unfortunately, Barack Obama pursued distinctly anti-business policies that stunted the economy. So he got what he sowed insipid economic growth, stagnant wages, and jobs lost overseas. Despite progressive efforts to put lipstick on the economy's performance to make it look better, everyday people recognized it for what it was, ugly.

It sure does when you try to make arguments based on isolated opinions, not facts. :D Here are some real data to chew over. GDP Growth Rate Obama years: 2016 1.5% 2015 2.6% 2014 2.4% 2013 1.5% 2012 2.3% 2011 1.6% GDP Growth Rate Trump 2017 2017 2.3% 1st Qtr 1.2% 2nd Qtr 3.1% 3rd Qtr 3.2% 4th Qtr 2.6% Since Trump didn't take office until the end of January, the 1st quarter would seem to be more a carryover of Obama's policies than Trump's policies. In any case, there would be a lag in the economy adjusting to a new President in charge. But it looks so far like once Trump was in charge and started to progress a pro growth agenda, the economy perked up considerably.

Some of the worst movies for me are the brainless action movies that seem to be more about how much computer generated mayhem they can stick into the allotted time than anything else. OTOH, a recent movie I very much enjoyed was "Darkest Hour" which basically covers about the first three week period of Winston Churchill's term as Prime Minister of Great Britain during WWII. Easy peasy, right. Churchill takes over as everyone's choice to lead a united country through the war and stand against the Nazis. Umm...No. The film shows us that the after-the-fact idealized view of history that we have is often far from the reality actually faced at the time. Nothing was as clear cut as we take for granted now. The film fairly faithfully covers this short, but very crucial period in British and World history. It shows that history is made by imperfect people that have flaws and foibles yet overcome them to prevail. The film has some humor (mostly plays on Churchill's foibles), romance, and compelling drama about events in momentous times. Gary Oldman is superb as Winston Churchill. Kristin Scott Thomas also is very good as Winston's wife, Clementine. There are a few sops to Hollywood. One is an unexpected visit by the King to Winston. The other is a subsequent underground (subway) ride by Winston to consult with common people. They probably never happened, but are dramatic devices to provide necessary information that would otherwise been available to him but been hard to portray on film. I'm also not sure that Winston had as much input into formulating the rescue at Dunkirk as shown in the film. One other thing to keep in mind is that the outcome of the Dunkirk operation is in the future and unknown to those in this film. For all they knew, the whole British army might be lost there. I recommended this film to some progressive friends. One indicated that he had seen it over Christmas and also thought it was a terrific film. He did point out that Churchill was known to disappear from time to time during his time as Prime Minister, so the underground trip might not be far off the mark. A third friend went to see the film on our recommendation and very much enjoyd it.

I guess you missed something. The Dems said all along that they wouldn't vote for a continuing resolution for temporary government funding without a DACA fix. What seems insane about that stance is that legislators from both sides were working on DACA to come up with a law that legalizes dreamers before the DACA termination deadline in March. And there is strong support for a DACA fix in both parties. Ultimately 60+ votes were required to allow the continuing resolution to progress, but the Reps only have 51 Senators, so without some Dem support the continuing resolution couldn't be enacted. That support was withheld and the government shutdown. The whole DACA issue was fomented when President Trump scheduled an end to the temporary DACA program set up by executive order of President Obama. President Trump (and most conservatives) view President Obama's DACA actions as an unconstitutional executive overreach. Obama himself said a number of times he couldn't legally do it, then did it anyway. Since the action affected such a large group of people, it is rightfully something that should have been addressed through legislation. What Obama did was essentially create law by decree which is unconstitutional and strikes at the heart of our democracy. Dreamers were not on as strong legal grounds as they believed. AFAIK, Obama's DACA action hasn't been fully tested in the courts, but there's reason to believe it would be struck down as unconstitutional. So, President Trump provided a sunset timetable that provided time for Congress to pass a permanent legal fix for DACA. Apparently, the Dems believed they could bring things to a head by shutting down the government. This was a political decision on their part. Polls seemed to show that Republicans would be blamed for such a shutdown, so maybe they thought there wouldn't be much political damage for doing it. But once the shutdown occurred, the Dems words in the past came back to haunt them. IMO, the most telling was on Sunday when CNN's Jake Tapper (not exactly a Trump fan) on his program State of the Union played Sen. Schumer's comments in 2013 where he said "shutting down the government over a single like immigration is idiocy." On Monday, the Dems decide to provide the votes to reopen the government for what was available by voting the continuing resolution through on Friday. Border security enters into the immigration issue due to the last major comprehensive immigration settlement during the Reagan administration. In that settlement, a comprehensive amnesty was provided for all illegal immigrants with the understanding that comprehensive border security would follow. The amnesty happened, the security didn't. Here we are 30 years later with an even larger issue of what to do with illegal immigrants. This time though there won't be any comprehensive solution without significant real improvements in border security. Without reasonable control of our border, there's reason to believe that we'll be facing the same immigration problems again in the future. As for a "wall", I think my opinion was changed a number of years ago when one of the Democratic Congressman from a border district vehemently expressed how much improved border security was needed. Places where any significant amount of illegal activities (such as drug smuggling, human trafficking, etc.) occur aren't likely to be particularly safe. This was one of the things that the Congressman reiterated. As for the Harvard/Harris poll, if it's a reasonably representative sample of Americans, it's results show that President Trump's position on immigration is line with large majority of Americans. I was using it to refute Hrothgar's assertion that Trump didn't know or understand policy positions/issues.

I'd bid 2 ♣ planning to raise ♠ next if partner makes a forward going bid. It isn't clear what partner holds at this point. If we're on a 4-3 fit and partner has ♥ shortness, ♠ could be terrible if the opponents force long hand ruffs in ♥. There's also the possibility that partner could be 5-4 in the majors and rebids ♥.

Well, it seems the President has some feel for what the American people want. The latest Harvard/Harris poll conducted 1/17-1/19 contained a section on immigration policy (before the shutdown). Here are the results DACA -- 78% think Dreamers should be given work permits. 77% think Dreamers should have a path to citizenship. 60% oppose letting the Dreamers bring their parents to the US. 40% support it. Other immigration issues -- 79% want merit based immigration based on the contribution the individual can make to the US. 81% favor 1 million or less immigrants per year. 19% favor more 1 million per year. 61% think border security is inadequate. 79% want secure borders. 54% support electronic or physical barriers at the border. 68% oppose the immigration lottery. 58% oppose a government shutdown for DACA 65% are for a DACA deal that includes a path to citizenship, ending chain migration, ending the immigration lottery, and providing funding for border security.

I should have signed up here long ago. I play a lot of KS with my tournament partners.

Winnie, the problem might be finding and NOMINATING a "reasonable alternative". If the Dems go much further left, they'll have to replace donkey as a party symbol with a hammer and sickle. Assuming MSNBC didn't pack the piece with Trump diehards (which is highly unlikely), the surprising thing was none had flipped because of Trump's flaws. So while progressive zealots are myopic about how unacceptable Trump is and Russian collusion, they may be a lot less of an issue for most everyday people. They're more worried about living paycheck to paycheck than anything else. But then again there was a Dem President whose mantra was "It's about the economy, stupid." President Trump has certainly kept his word and concentrated on jobs and the economy. It'll be interesting to see where his approval ratings go when the full effect of the tax cuts kick in.