rmnka447

a) I'm with Kaitlyn S on this hand. I'd bid 3 ♠. As she suggests, 2 ♠ can be bid on just about any hand with 6 ♠ that can't sit for 2 ♦. So 3 ♠ shows a strong hand with good ♠. Here the "strength" is more in the length and quality of the ♠ suit then on high card points. b) Losing trick count on this hand is 4. So this is a big 2 suited player. I'm bidding 3 ♣ to show this hand. c) In reopening position, you're asking partner to bid unless they have a trump stack and want to penalize the overcaller. In this hand, that's impossible, so partner is going to bid and that may cause a problem. Here, you can see that the opponent's are in a terrible contract, so it's best to just pass and take your positive. d) I'm also with the 2 NT gang.

A $5000 deductible makes that "affordable care" effectively a very costly catastrophic healthcare insurance. Another example, after the election, a Trump voter in Wisconsin -- a small business owner -- said he was paying $1000 a month for family healthcare coverage with a $12,000 deductible -- more essentially catastrophic healthcare insurance. The mantra has been "repeal and replace" but it's standard for Obamacare proponents to just focus on the "repeal" part as a scare tactic. The thing I find funny is that I thought I saw there was only something like 11 million signed up for Obamacare which was causing the death spiral. In any case, there'll have to be a several year transition period even if it is repealed. Maybe both parties can work together to get it right this time.

Double should be almost automatic with this specific hand. The stiff ♥ and RHO's lack of a raise suggests that partner might have a ♥ stack and be trap passing. I'd reserve a 3 ♣ call for something like AKQ10x Jxx - KQJxx.

I think North's hand is too strong for a 1 NT advance. I think the two bids North should consider are either 2 NT or 2 ♣. North does have a 13 count and 2 QTs. ♥ also could be a problem at NT, so I'd lean towards a 2 ♣ advance to see what partner says. Once North does that there's less pressure to make a "make up" double of 5 ♥. South let emotion get the better of him/her because of a minor irregularity. I'd be delighted to be playing 4 ♠x with that hand. As a corollary to passing when you know the opponents are in a bad contract so they can't run, when you're in a good spot, one shouldn't do anything that may let the opponents push you out of it. 4 ♠ making rates to be an IMP winner. Good hand and story though.

Pass I think most people play doubles of preempts thru 4 ♥ as takeout. Doubles of 4 ♠ and higher show values. Here, you've got a 12 count of which 3 are in the opponent's suit. Partner is a passed hand, so a 5 level contract is unlikely to make. If preemptor has the normal 8+ ♠, partner has at most a stiff ♠ and is very likely to pull a double. You have 2 tricks in the ♠ suit and can see that they are in a bad spot. Let them play it there.

3 ♣ Whatever points partner has are possibly useful to you in a ♣ contract, but your ♣ are unlikely to be useful to partner in any contract. So, you want to play in ♣. so the question is how high to go in ♣. Even with a bad break, it looks like you've got at least 6 winners and with anywhere near an even break probably 7 winners in hand. So, 3 ♣ looks like it has a good chance to make or at worse go off 1. Off 1 only costs you if they can find a double which may be problematic for them. I think 3 ♣ stands out because part of good IMP playing is fighting for part scores. 3 ♣ forces them to try to find their fit at the 3 level preventing them from exchanging valuable information at the 2 level about fit and strength. And, occasionally, 3 ♣ may steal the contract. If it's a really bad day and 3 ♣x goes for -500, the hand's a good enough player to defend that call in the post mortem. What you don't want to do is try to defend a 2 ♣ bid when it lets the opponents find the right strain and level in a pointed suit. That's especially true when your teammates can't compete over a 3 ♣ call and you give away a double part score swing.

I'm passing because when I come in with this type of hand, Dummy usually shows up with both black kings and ♦A .

Close, but I'd probably pass the hand with such terrible ♣. If the auction goes (no competition) 1 ♣ - 1 ♠, I don't particularly like rebidding either 1 NT or 2 ♣. Anyhow, there's no way to know what either partner or RHO has except partner has something -- 9-10 -- for the negative double. So there's no guarantee 2 ♥x can be defeated. 3 ♣ on Q98 fifth is insane. So the practical bid is 2 NT. If partner has a 10 pointer with a long suit, it can be bid at the 3 level. If partner is flat, you'll just have to struggle in 2 NT.

The problem with Obamacare was that the pre-existing condition folks had to be offset by a group that is only a fraction of the whole healthcare pool. I suspect that ultimately the solution is to spread the cost of the pre-existing condition folks across the whole healthcare pool. In effect, everyone would have to agree to a "tax" increase in the form of higher health care plan costs to employers and employees. It won't be an easy sell to everyone especially if the cost has a negative impact on their healthcare plan such as reduction in benefits, loss of employer plan, etc..

We may differ on our views of the outcome of the election, but I can agree with your views regarding the election as outlined in your points here.

The confirmation is made by a majority vote of the Senate. The process is required for Cabinet members and certain other high ranking members of the government. Typically what happens is the President nominates individuals for the posts, then the nominees go through a hearing or hearings with the appropriate Senate committee(s). The committee makes a recommendation on the nominee to the Senate and then the Senate votes to confirm or not. The length of the hearings and timing of the Senate vote is entirely up to the Senate. In the past, the minority was ultimately able to use the filibuster to prevent a nominee from coming up for a vote. (A filibuster is an ongoing 24 hour a day speech by a Senator [or group to Senators] to stop Senate business by retaining the floor. It can only be stopped by a vote of cloture which requires 60 votes.) However, the last time the Democrats had control of the Senate, they changed the Senate rules over the vociferous objections of the Republicans to eliminate filibusters for nominees to be able to always bring these nominees up for a vote. This "nuclear option" is now available to Republicans. The nuclear option is, however, not available for nominees to the Federal Judiciary (including the Supreme Court) as these are lifetime appointments and it is felt that there should be substantial agreement for confirmation.

As East, can you assure there aren't 2 quick losers even if 4 ♠ is a cue? That would require West to hold either both pointed suit As or ♠ AK. There's just no way to know if West has either. Even if West does have one of those holdings, it's still possible that 2 tricks could be lost. So, IMO at IMPs especially, bidding 6 is a big overbid. It's better to "stay fixed" and bid your most likely positive of 5 ♣.

I'm for no blame also. Their preempt worked in this case not leaving enough room to properly ascertain 12 tricks are available.

Sorry for the late reply, been having some connectivity problems. +1 for mikeh's reply. I'm also for starting with bidding 3 ♠ cue bid over the 3 ♦ shortness response to Jacoby. After opener's next bid, you'll still have time to RKC if you want. With ♦ shortness in opener's hand, you're hand looks like small slam is pretty certain and grand slam is a distinct possibility. So after opener's 3 ♦, it doesn't hurt to take some time to figure out how to get the information you need for grand or how to tell opener about your assets so opener can bid grand if it's there.

Pass. You're off by one card from what would be a "normal" 4 ♠ bid suit length. You have less losers because of the solid suit. But, in any case, partner has a decent idea of what you hold and chose to double 5 ♥ for penalties. If you judge 4 ♠ is the right first bid, then I think it's right to keep faith with that judgment and pass. IMO, bidding on is a makeup bid for "underbidding" the first round. But you have no idea what partner's hand is. So pass. If they make 5♥x, the onus will be on partner's double. If you bid 5 ♠ and 5 ♥x goes for -500 or -800, it'll be on you no matter whether 5 ♠ makes or not.

I also would bid 2 ♦ in first round. Now I'm bidding 2 ♠. Partner should know it's not a 3+ card raise else I'd have raised the first round. If they bid on, I'm passing.

1. 4 ♠ - If nothing else it makes them guess at the 5 level and possibly picks up a game swing if partner has the right cards 2. A pretty good 13 albeit 4-3-3-3, so I'm bidding on. Give me ♣ Q10x and I'd be very tempted to bid 3 NT. With ♣ Qxx, I'm less confident 3 NT is right, so I'd probably bid 4 ♥. 3. Pass, you have a nice hand, but no more than you showed with your 1st bid. Bidding on is rebidding the same values twice. 4. 5 ♦. Let them try to figure out if the 5 ♦ bid is to make or preempting. Partner "ought" to have 8+ ♦ to bid 4 with a suit headed by K10?xx... meaning 0 ♦ tricks. Even, if it's a 7 card suit we take no more than 1 ♦ trick. There's a good chance they can make 10 tricks. 5. Pass, partner's spade values look to be wasted, so there's no telling how well our hands mesh. If I would bid anything, it would be 4 ♣.

4 ♦ is a slam try in ♦. North has gone by 3 NT, so it must show ♦. If North were simply interested in a NT slam, then 6 NT or an invite of 4 NT could be used. 4 ♥ hearts is a control bid agreeing ♦. 5 NT is pick a slam, which must be a choice between 6 ♦ and 6 NT because those are the only possible strains in this auction. Unless you've specifically agreed that the bidding sequence as given through 4 ♦ makes 4 ♦ a transfer, it's probably best to just treat it as natural. Keeping it simple saves straining your memory. Save the very specific bidding sequence meanings for those sequences that solve more frequent bidding problems or cover holes in your bidding system. I don't see pushing for slam as being too pushy with this 12 point hand, it's a very good 12 pointer (2 1/2 QTs)

Pass. As Kaitlyn says, 3 ♠ might push them to 4 ♥ and with LHO having a big red hand, you look like maybe 2 tricks at most on defense. Not revealing the ♠ fit here makes the situation much more ambiguious and more difficult for them to bid game.

Playing "new suit forcing" over partner's overcall allows advancer a little more freedom to introduce a new suit with a hand where you can preference back to overcaller's suit. I see no problem with East using it here to bid 2 ♥. If one of West's ♠ were a ♥, it would lead to a nice ♥ partial. Once advancer has forced, it's up to overcaller to define the nature of the overcall. This follows a key principle of good bidding that, as soon as possible in any auction, someone has to limit their hand. This helps the partnership know what ballpark they are playing in. If South had passed instead of bidding 3 ♣, I believe West's bid should have been 2 ♠ showing less than an opener. It's close, but the West hand has made a VUL overcall on a very poor suit and just an 11 count. IMO, any other bid by West in this sequence should show opening values or more. Once South has bid 3 ♣, a similar logic applies, any direct free call other than pass by West should show opening values. A pass in this situation denies opening values. IMO, pass is definitely the right call with West's hand. Then in pass-out seat, East has to make a decision whether to compete further. If East decides to compete, I think Double is the clear choice. It should say "I'd like to compete further, but am not sure what to bid." But I'd find it hard to criticize anyone who chooses pass when partner can be aggressively overcalling. I don't like the 3 NT call either. East does have a stopper, but South should be showing 6+ ♣ with the free 3 ♣ call. Even though West has doubled, there's no guarantee that West holds anything in ♣. That means that 9 running tricks would need to available after the stop is knocked out. With all the quacks in East's hand, West would have to hold a lot of cards/controls to make that happen.

Pass. 2 ♠ is described as strong with 8+ tricks, so 4 ♥ has to be a preempt. Once you preempt, partner is in control. At this vulnerability, your preempt should be within a trick or 2 of making, so should be based on an 8+ card suit. Yet, partner bid ♦ as an alternative suggesting ♥ shortness. You've gotten them to the 5 level. So, it's time to leave it up to partner to compete further, if at all. You don't know partner's hand but partner has a decent gauge on your hand.

Pass. Satisfies the rule of 20 but has only 1 1/2 QTs. Change it to KQ9xx x xx KQ10xx and I'd have no problem opening it 1 ♠.

Ok, whatever! The Republicans were worried about losing the Senate because they had a lot of Senators up for reelection quite a few in tossup or normally blue states. Democrats were talking about picking up 20+ seats in the House, regaining control of the Senate, and winning the Presidency. None of those things happened. Normally, in a change election which I think most people agree this election was, the side in power loses big time. That didn't happen this time. Republican politicians were shocked and happy. If you want to cast what happened as a small victory, fine. But there seemed to be a lot of glum Democratic politicians after the election. All I can say is that whenever I'd discuss politics with my liberal/Democratic friends, they'd tell how well we were doing -- unemployment was below 5%, jobs were being created, we've got ISIS contained, etc. But I'd say "Working class people are really struggling and they're pretty upset." But my observations were dismissed out of hand as baseless. Dennis Kucinich, a staunch Cleveland Democrat (he used to be a Congressman, not sure if he still is), had some astute comments the other night. He said that he and his wife liked to go to ethnic/folk festivals in Cleveland (huge central and eastern European population) and had noticed over the past couple years "a lot of real anger due to their struggles to just get by." So he saw it, too. Then why didn't the Democratic pundits recognize the problem?

I'd guess that someone in a state that voted differently than the popular vote would issue a court challenge to such an agreement. Who knows what would happen after that? I think we should all remember that no matter how many votes "our" candidate got neither candidate got more than about 26-27% of all the citizens to vote for them.

Yes, the closest you could come to a pure popular vote without amending the Constitution would be for each state to enact proportional distribution of its electoral college votes. As I recall, the electoral college votes each state has is equal to the numbers of elected members of Congress they have. So the electoral college isn't perfectly proportional to population. The Constitution lays out the electoral college as the means of electing the President and the process in which they do so. But the out is that they delegate how the electors are chosen to the individual states. So a couple states, Nebraska and Maine come to mind, already do this. There are a few sticking points: 1) There's no way to split the electoral votes in the same exact proportionality as the popular vote, 2) There could be a holdout from adopting proportional distribution of electoral college votes that might skew future elections. Say, Texas decided to stay "winner take all" while all 49 other states did so. It might then ensure that a Republican was always elected. Conversely, same scenario but California decided to be the holdout, then a Democrat would always be elected, and, 3) If a third party candidate got enough votes to draw electoral college votes away from the two major candidates, no one might get enough electoral college votes to become President. But it isn't a problem as the Constitutional would then leave the election of the President up to the House of Representatives. If you want to chuck the Electoral college completely and use the popular vote directly, you'd have to amend the Constitution to remove the Electoral college and substitute in direct election.