EricK

I understand the purpose of the regulation. My (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) comment was suggesting that it would make for a better bridge experience to try to mask UI by forcing people to spend less time when they have a problem, rather than more when they don't.

"The slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable" (Henry Buckle, 19th Century chess player). It's bad enough when Bermuda Bowl contestants sit and think for an age before deciding what to do - but at least their thoughts are pertinent to the problem at hand. Non-experts do not play better if given more time to think, and so encouraging them to think for 10 seconds does nothing to improve their results, and just infuriates everyone else. On the other hand, banning most people from ever thinking for 10 seconds would improve the game no end without a noticeable drop in the level of play.

Not sure I understand this. There are lots of hands less than opening bid on which partner would bid opposite an overcall - so there is no reason to lower the requirements for an overcall just because partner has passed.

4♣ looks obvious. I have shown 5♠ and 4♥, now I have the chance to show 3♣, extras and deny a 5th ♥ or a 6th ♠. If this information doesn't help partner find the correct contract, there's not much more I can do, really.

You could buy a computer bridge program. Then you can play as slow as you like but practice counting in a proper bridge environment.

The actual hand is kind of irrelevant as partner did not have what anybody (myself included) would consider a 1NT response. For one thing he had ♥QJT9! North didn't really have a 4♥ bid either - 7 ♥ to the King a ♣ void and some scattered honours in the other suits. I chose to bid 5♣ which wasn't a success. Although I don't think 4♥ could have gone more than 1 down, so we were destined for a bad result anyway: 4♥*-1 would have allowed us to beat the pair who defended 4♥ undoubled; everyone else was making a contract our way (3♣ or some number of NT)

I'll risk a pass (assuming I have some way to show a two suiter later in the auction). It's just too easy seeing partner take us too high on a misfit (or even on a fitting hand!). Obviously, if I had a way to show a weak hand with both majors, I'd use that.

I think you massively overestimate how many hands are genuinely "routine" i.e. there is no subtlety to the play at all, even to take account of very extreme distributions. As to your last point, when, at the end of a session, an expert goes over the hands they played (which I'm sure they do), isn't one of the things they look for any deductions they might have missed?

But because the rule says 10s and 'nobody' can stay fake interested for 10s they ignore it altogether. I reckon if the rule said 5s fewer people would bid after 1s.

Does anybody know why 10 seconds was chosen as the appropriate length of time that people should have to wait after a jump bid? Were any other lengths of time tried beforehand and found to be too short or too long? My feeling is that 10 seconds is way too long, especially in anything other than the most serious of competitions - I don't recall ever coming across a situation where I make a better call in 10 seconds than I would in 5 (on the other hand I have frequently seen people make worse calls than they otherwise would have because they tried to think too hard about what to do - but that, I suppose, is a different issue). Aren't most of the problems with the (non-)use od the "Stop" procedure down to people not following it because trying to appear interested for 10 seconds is so much harder than for, say, 5? Also, why were only jump bids chosen rather than competitive bids? There is so much potential UI due to hesitations in competitive auctions without jumps that it seems odd to restrict this to just jumps - especially when many of these are in obviously uncompetitive auctions!

It seems to be a peculiarity of Reese. In "The Mistakes you Make at Bridge" by Reese and Trezel, there is a hand where the commentary says something like "North opens 3♣ after which South transfers to 3NT" and he clearly means the bidding simply went 3♣ 3NT. I don't think I have heard anybody else use it in quite this way. Of course that's not to say that some people won't understand it this way if presented in an ambiguous setting. Clearly EW did on the given hand, and my father did when I gave him the auction and explanation - although I personally didn't see the ambiguity (and understood it how NS intended) until I had read the thread.

It may not be exactly the sort of thing you are looking for, but responder having a weak hand with a 6/7 card suit and opener having a minimum balanced hand with a 5 card major. eg 1♠ 1NT 2♣ 2♥ vs 1♠ 1NT P Other examples could depend on exactly what agreements you have about how far you are forced following a 2/1 (which is itself one of the advantages of having a very clear definition such as 2/1 GF!). eg After 1♠ 2♣ in 2/1 GF opener has the option of supporting ♣ immediately, or temporizing and supporting ♣ on the next round. With probably the former showing extras and at least some interest in a ♣ slam. You might lose this ability if opener isn't guaranteed another chance - or if an immediate 3♣ rebid by opener was passable.

I don't think I know anyone who would pass this.

5♣ is the bid I would make against any opponent. The only reason I wouldn't is if my partner and I had an agreement that this sort of hand is opened something else (eg 3NT) - and here we don't have any such agreement.

[hv=pc=n&e=st842hda93cakt753&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=1cp1n4h]133|200[/hv] What would you call here? How would different vulnerabilities affect your decision? If you pass and partner doubles do you leave it in? Do you consider your answers to be clear-cut?

Approximately what proportion of hands does an expert player declare perfectly? And how about on defense? By perfect play, I mean not only playing the right card (on a single dummy basis), but playing it for all the right reasons.

It looks like you should have doubled them!

I would just have bid 4♥ first time around. I have weak trumps and no aces so from my point of view slam is incredibly unlikely. But we are vulnerable, so partner will expect enough strength to think we have a shot of making. I would think that 3♣ followed by bidding game (we're not staying short of game here, are we?) must show more slam potential. 3♠ seems wrong on a number of counts - partner would misjudge what ♠ holdings are useful, and it gives East a cheap way of suggesting a ♠ contract.

It's this last point which I was partly thinking about. Where opener has shown 9 of his cards, there is surely a good chance, with sensible use of cheap relays, that responder can find out everything he needs to know at a low level. using a slightly more expensive relay, or responder often trying to show what he has, seem to be inferior.

Surely on this auction it makes more sense to use 2♥ as a forcing relay.

The hand is too strong for a 15-17 1NT. Apart from that, there is a very good chance that you will be able to describe your hand accurately if you open 1♥. I expect this poll to be near unanimous.

On a normal club night, the boards are given out to the people who arrive early, and they shuffle and deal them. For the simultaneous pairs, my understanding is that the travellers were provided with the hands printed on them, and someone who was not playing set up all the boards based on these.

Last week our club took part in a simultaneous pairs for Charity, so the hands were predealt. This week, I picked up the curtain card for Board 25 and thought "I think I've had this hand last week". The hand was the same, but the cards themselves were different i.e. it was a new pack of cards but the bridge hand was the same. Indeed the whole hand was exactly the same as the board 25 from the previous week. I have no idea how this could have happened (barring deliberate foul play). i.e. Why should someone, this week, set up the hand to be exactly the same as last week with a new pack of cards? Where would they find the time without anybody else noticing? Nobody else at the table seemed to have noticed, so I bid it the same way as I did the previous week (making the same substandard vulnerable 2 level overcall!) - largely as an experiment to see if my partner's reactions were the same as last week (they were - the same facial expressions and contortions during the bidding, and the same misbids). This was very near the end of the evening and after the hand - I went to the director's table and asked if they'd played it. They hadn't yet, but were due to play it in the last round. So I said nothing and went back at the end and asked them if they'd noticed anything unusual. They hadn't. When I pointed out it was a repeat of last week, director's partner said her hand looked a little familiar (she had 0 points, and a 0463 distribution, so it was a bit unusual), but it couldn't have been because the pack of cards was new. I can't say that nobody else at the club noticed, but certainly nobody else had mentioned it to the director.

Not appreciating how the value of a hand changes during the auction. Bidding or playing one bid/trick at a time rather than forming a plan for the future.

Definitely bid 2♣ on the first round. Probably bid 3NT if raised. But then I bid 3NT way too much!