EricK

It might be an improvement in overall system to play an immediate 3♦ response as the sort of hand which would want to make a NF 3♦ bid in your first sequence. You probably currently play it as a splinter, and you've very possibly never had a suitable hand!

Two evenings at a local club come to mind. First was the club pairs cahampionship. Playing with my father, the cards lay our way all evening and we bid and made a number of slams including a lay down grand (2♣ 2♠ 3♣ 3♠ 5NT 7♠). We won the evening by a huge margin. The other was just a normal night at the club. Again playing with my father the cards were against us all night, and we ended up defending 20 of the 24 boards (and we should really have defended on one of the ones we played, but you know exasperating it can be to constantly get outbid!). Anyway, our defence was tight all evening and again we emerged as victors by quite a margin - which shows that it doesn't always pay to be aggressive at pairs.

This page covers this sort of issue: http://www.rpbridge.net/7z75.htm

OK. This can happen occasionally. But is does require your opponent to make the moves in the line you have learnt - and you would also be able to point out where you got those moves from if asked. But once out of book, even GMs can't make the best moves consistently (unless there is a forcing line leading to victory); it is basically impossible for non-rated players to do it.

Yes, but they still make bad moves. Nobody with a lowish rating can replicate a long series of computer moves except by cheating. So it is generally easy to tell when somebody has cheated in this way - often you can even tell which program they used. The other give away is that they won't be able to explain what they were thinking about during the game. Most chess games end with a post-mortem where the players discuss what they might have done, and what they saw and didn't see. Someone relying on computer moves will find it very hard to take part in a convincing post-mortem.

I think the main change was that you had to bid game or slam to get the bonus - the petty differences in scores between the different denominations were a part of auction bridge. So maybe it is that fact alone which led to the explosion in popularity. Every complication to the scoring table adds an element of skill (or luck!) and makes the game harder, but that doesn't mean that every complication makes the game better. Undertricks are the same score no matter what the denomination, whereas undoubled overtricks depend on the denomination. He could have added another layer of complication by making undertricks denomination-dependent, or he could have removed a level of complication by making overtricks denomination-independent. But I don't think it is necessarily the case that making undertricks denomination-dependent would make the game more interesting, nor that making overtricks denomination-independent would make it less interesting. Doubled overtricks, on the other hand, are not dependent on the denomination. So really, the whole thing is a mess, and I doubt this helped the popularity of bridge.

There's bound to be a few anomolies or things which aren't quite as good as they could be. Far too few variants have been tried out for long enough periods of time for the best version of the scoring rules to have evolved. Arguably the whole scoring table is too complicated and this dilutes the essence of bridge (in some vague, undefinable, way). Part-score, game or slam; making or defeating contracts: this, to me, is the essence. The somewhat arbitrary, fine gradations of scoring - 90 for that result, but 110 for that etc - seem more like a distraction.

For a while now I've been wondering if the best way to use a double of 1♣ is primarily as a weak NT hand; with Transfer Walsh responses by 4th hand if 3rd hand passes. Obviously you can include the classic 4441 take out hands and hands too strong for a normal overcall in there as well.

I agree that 4♦ might be a better initial slam try than 4♣, but blasting 6♦ is worse (IMO) than blasting 6♠. The main downside is that it increases the chances that the defense get off to the best lead. You know that partner's ♠ are overwhelmingly likely to be better than his ♦ (stronger and longer), so you will nearly always get a preference back to ♠ anyway.

Having looked at the hand I don't like the 3♠ bid at all. While "support with support" is a good general principle, I don't think 3 small qualifies as 3 level support when there are a number of other possible places to play which might well be better. Obviously your partner was wrong with the final pass as well, but if I were playing with a weak partner and suspected the bidding might come off the rails in a cue-bidding sequence then I would have just blasted 6♠ on the second round. Note that your bidding sequence didn't actually tell you what you needed to know anyway. If partner had bid 5♠ instead of pass, you wouldn't have known whether to go on or not!

Might it have to do with the strength of the stop in the unbid suit (great v. non-existent)?

KJT will very often be 2 tricks when defending a ♥ contract, and will very rarely be 2 tricks when declaring a ♠ contract. If partner is short, you might be able to set up a trick but not cash it. If partner has length the high cards will be ruffed before they are set up.

I think I would have preferred to bid 3♣ with the North hand rather than 2NT. I want partner to double on a 1-4-3-5 hand even if he is quite weak, so 2NT would show a much better ♠ stop. Obviously the South hand is not a double in normal methods. But maybe South thought he was playing negative free bids in this position, so double followed by a ♣ bid is the only way to show a strong hand. Are there any places in the world where NFBs are commonly applied in this position (even if not by experts from that place)?

I pass. I don't want partner to get too excited. If partner has the sort of hand which can use my ♥, then the opponent's will likely be able to get a few ♥ ruffs in before that happens. So I have a completely flat hand, with 10 losers, fewer than 6 effective points and no intermediates except in the opponent's suit. I certainly don't want to encourage partner to sacrifice in 4♠ if LHO jumps to 4♥

I was guessing maybe the ♠2 for a commonest lead. I have heard a number of people say, against NT, "If in doubt leads ♠", and I have heard a number of people say "If in doubt lead trumps." [i am not advocating for or against either of these rules of thumb]. You are most likely to be in doubt against NT if you have a choice of 4 card suits to lead (I reckon), and ♠ is the most likely trump suit.

Results: http://www.ny-bridge.com/allevy/computerbridge/2012scores.html Convention cards and allowable conventions are also available on that site. I have not found any hand records, though.

Try to rebid or open 1NT if feasible.

2♣ - strong hand, no clear direction - not single suited, probably not primary ♥ support, not suitable for NT.

If you get a #VALUE then OpenOffice is definitiely not interpreting the cell as a date (and perhaps doesn't like performing implicit conversions!). Another possibility which springs to mind is that there are some leading or trailing spaces in the string. If in your extra column you try =len(S1) you will see how many characters are actually in the string. If it is more than 10 then you have some leading/trailing spaces. If so, try =TRIM(S1)+0 to see if it will implictily convert that. And if that doesn't work, use the longer formula but replace each reference to "S1" with "TRIM(S1)"

Assume the data is in column A, starting at cell 1. Insert a column to the right of that, and then put this formula in cell B1. =DATE(MID(A1,7,4),MID(A1,1,2),MID(A1,4,2)) Then copy that formula down the entire column. At least that is how I would do it in Excel if the problem is as I suspect. Another possibility is to try to force it to convert to a date. Again insert an extra column and simply type the formula: =A1+0 [Where A1 is the the relevant cell reference]. Then see if that column can be formatted as a date. As this is simpler, I would try this latter approach first.

If the spreadsheet doesn't change the format then I suspect it is because is doesn't recognize those fields as dates, but is just treating them as strings. I don't know Open Office well, but you should be able to turn them into dates via a formula. In Excel i would use the MID function to extract the left 2 characters, the 4th & 5th characters, and the right 4 characters and then use the DATE function to construct a date from them. I expect Open Office has the same functionality even if the function names are not exactly the same. Once you have done that, you should be able to format the dates as you please and sort them how you like.

Suppose a pair actually does count tens and 9 in HCP - T=1/2; 9=1/4 (and so use a 43 point deck), what are the % now for 24, 25, 26 "HCP" games (where these are based on the 43 HCP total)? Would this make for more accurate bidding?

This has twice happened to me. The first time the deal was very distinctive (one hand had 8 ♥ to the Jack); the second was a more normal hand however it had been left over from a simultaneous pairs that had been played the week before (so everyone had received a booklet with all the hands and some commentary). In neither case did anyone else notice what had happened. The first time I was young and I kept quiet about it and collected my good score; the second time I felt I should mention it to the director who seemed doubtful that it could have happened. But even when I did persuade him of what had happened he did nothing. My partner, unfortunately, did not remember the hand so completely misplayed it - my fault, I should have bid the making 3NT rather than let him struggle in a 5-3 major fit. Both times it was more than half way through the evening, so it is understandable that the director didn't want to do anything drastic like cancelling the board. To be honest, it doesn't surprise me how few average club players remember the hands from one week to the next - they generally can't remember them from one minute to the next. How often at the end of a hand do you hear declarer ask partner how many points dummy had etc?

IMO 5/5 is not enough shape to remove partner's 3NT to 4♥. He could have expressed doubt as to final destination with FSF and chose not to. You need a lot more extra distribution than just one more card in your second suit to override him.

It seems a reasonable way to estimate the effect of bidding system. The number of IMPS gained when the contract is the same is a reasonable estimate of the difference in skill in the play. Obviously system has some effect here - if it reveals more about declarer's hand the defense will be easier, if it reveals less, defense will be harder; also it might make it easier or harder for the opps to enter the auction (but this can work both ways, sometimes bids by the defenders help the defense, sometimes they help declarer). All in all, though, these effects should largely cancel out. So given this figure, it is reasonable to assume that the difference in skill carries over to hands where they contract is not the same. So if they win more IMPS per hand on those hands, then it is reasonable to attribute those extra IMPS to the bidding system. Or am I missing something?