EricK

Doubling might make it easier for the opps not harder. For one thing it gives LHO an extra bid (redouble). Also, passing might put LHO in an awkward position if has a nice, but not great, hand without a ♥ fit. I have found that it pays to pass on a lot of hands with 3 cards in RHO's suit and no fit for partner's suit. When it is our hand, partner usually competes and when it is theirs, they are often in the wrong contract. Obviously with a strong enough hand you have to make some positive sounding noise as letting them declare a bad part score undoubled won't compensate for our possible game.

When a building has been ravaged by fire it is often easy for firefighters to tell that it is bound to collapse imminently. Since this is almost certainly what happend to WTC7 it is not too difficult to see how a report of "It is about to collapse" could morph into "It has collapsed" by the time it reaches a foreign news station. Certainly it is more believable than the "conspirators" accidentally informed a foreign news station that a building had collapsed half an hour before they "blew it up".

I will use officeglen's system from the other thread. (P) 3NT All Pass

Which is why the rational action is to ignore editorials. In fact, if an editorial (or any argument for that matter) primarily uses demagoguery rather than facts to make its case then there is a good reason to take the opposing line (after all, they would surely use facts if the facts helped their case).

A handy rule of thumb is that any piece of journalism which compares a country or a government to apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union etc is not trying to advance anyone's understanding of the region but is using simple triggers to instil a negative perception of that country in their readers. Most people don't have a clue what life was like in a Bantustan under apartheid. Similarly for the other examples. All they know is that they were "bad". So any such comparison rarely serves a constructive purpose.

If West has the bright idea of passing 6♦ then North needs to find the unlikely ♥ lead!

But what about if ♣ are trumps 4NT is never Blackwood. That is a much more useful agreement if you ask me.

South Africa are now the top-rated one day side in the world. I think what the latest results show is that even the best sides which appear to have massive strength in depth are still dependent on a few superstar players if they want to win consistently.

It partly depends on what bidding system you are playing. If you are playing a strong NT and are prepared to raise a major suit repsonse with 3 card support then 1♣ seems a fine opening bid. You can support ♦ or ♠ and bid 1NT over a ♥ response. Playing the above methods, the responding hand looks like a 1♦ response to me. If partner supports ♦ (as he would here) you are happy. If he bids a major suit to show an unbalanced hand you can show your ♣ support, and if he bids NT that also looks OK.

The advanatge is that more hands become biddable. Presumably if there hadn't been an intervening bid of 1♥ you'd have been happy to mention your ♠ with 4 of them - the intervention needn't make any difference. But what if you were going to bid ♦? Now the interference has done just what it says - interfered with your preferred bid. It makes sense to use the double to show that. After the 1♠ interference you need some way to show your ♥ if you have them and double is a good way to do that. Unfortunately you have no way to show ♦ on this auction, but you can't have everything!

That would put the actual percentage somewhere around 0%, wouldn't it? Amen. No person, other than Christ, has ever or can ever succeed in being Holy. One can strive, though. That's not really what I meant. Consider the Acol system. Probably something like 50-80% of club players in the UK claim that they play Acol. But in reality what they attempt to play is not really much like the original Acol system as outlined by Marx, Simon etc. The vast majority of them fall short of perfectly playing the systems they are trying to play, but it is not that lack of perfection which makes them not be Acolites - it is that the systems they are trying to play are Acol in name only. It is a similar situation with Christianity. None of the Christian denominations have teachings which coincide with the teachings of Christ. The whole thing has been distorted and corrupted through the ages. The fact that people fall short of their religious ideals is not the real reason they fail at being Christians - the reason is that their ideals are not the same as Christ's i.e. their religion is Christianity in name only.

That would put the actual percentage somewhere around 0%, wouldn't it?

But conversely, if you pre-empt 4♥ with this in 1st or 2nd seat, opponents have no way to differentiate between your hand here and a hand like KQJTxxxx in ♥, possibly with a side honor that might help take a trick. As Reese said, "A pre-empt which is always weak is a blunt sword". Maybe opponents are LOTT advocates who often leave in a double of (4♥) X (P) and your strong pre-empt allows you to make a doubled game. The wider the range of your pre-empt, the harder it is for opps to know what to do - let you play there, make you play there doubled, bid a game, bid a slam. That's not to say that opening 4♥ will always work out well. Of course it won't. But I really felt someone ought to make a case for a 4♥ opening.

That's funny, because I was thinking almost the reverse. The upside of making a double is much lower when partner is a passed hand as we are unlikely to have a game. Also, partner doesn't know I am this light. So what happens when, say, LHO raise to 3♦ and partner says to himself "Partner may be strong, I have a fit, and partner won't play me for too much because I am a passed hand" and so you end up at the 3 level on a 4-4 fit and 20 points between the two hands? I would unhesitatingly make a take out double with this hand in 2nd seat. I would probably also do it in 3rd or 4th seat, but it would strike me as a riskier proposition.

If I understand what you are saying, partner has shown ♠Q, ♥A, and at least ♦Kxxxx. Unless ♦ are 4-0 and we can't pick them up, 7NT is laydown.

West has valued his hand as follows: If partner has ♥ support I want to have a crack at game (4♥); but if he doesn't, I only want to be in game (3NT) if he is maximum. This is not an unreasonable view to take. If the hands fit well, 4♥ may well make opposite a minimum opener, but if they are misfitting, partner will need more than 15 to make game good.

Given LHO has a doubleton then there is a 75% chance it is Tx and a 25% chance it is QT (as there is one Q and 3x's).

Partner is equally likely to have ♠ support as ♣ support, but it is more likely that 4♠ is a better contract than 5♣ (as it needs a trick fewer to score effectively the same whether it is bid to make or as a sacrifice), and (at least if you play 5cd majors) partner is more likely to be able diagnose the extent of ♠ fit than the ♣ fit.

The easiest way is something like: 1♦ 4♠ (Who was it who said 7-4 hands should bid game?!) 6♠

We're not really all that *****. We're just not as good as Australia. As a comparison, lok at the way Federer beat Roddick in the semi-final the other day. There is no way that Roddick is a ***** tennis player, he just can't compete with Federer (and few if any can). It is clear that at the moment they are a psychologically defeated team (since the second innings in Adelaide probably) and they can't wait for the tour to be over. But next season they should be competing on at least equal terms with the other non-Australian test teams.

The meaning of 2♠ depends on the meaning of all your other bids - 2♠ is a catch-all bid for any strong hand not covered by another bid. So ask yourself what 2♥, 2NT, 3♣, 3♦, 3♥, 3♠, 3NT etc would show, and anything else which doesn't Pass is a 2♠ bid.

If you are planning to rebid 1NT isn't it better to open 1♣ rather than 1♦ (just in case partner has a weakish hand with ♣ support)?

It makes sense to play 2♠ here as a fit bid as well, doesn't it? Rather like in the unopposed auction P 1♥ 2♠ If I can't open a weak two, It is unlikley I have a hand without a ♥ fit which wants to mention ♠ rather than, say making a -ve double.

Soemtimes what seems silly when looked at from one side looks sensible when looked at from the other side. Perhaps for certain contracts we should award one positive score to one side and a different negative score to the other!

Are you asking how the score is calculated or the reason that the score table is designed so that one is higher than the other? In the score table, a doubled over trick is worth 100 or 200 (depending on vulnerability) whereas a doubled contracted trick is only worth double the normal score for that trick (so 60 for a major, 40 for a minor etc). So the tenth trick in 3S+1 is worth mopre than the tenth trick in 4S=. As for the reasoning, instead of asking why 3 Spades doubled with an overtrick scores more than 4 spades making, you should look at it from the point of view of the side which actually doubled. It is clear, is it not, that the pair who doubled 3S when 4 was on made a worse error of judgement than the pair who doubled 4S when it makes "on the nose". It seems reasonable that the doublers of 3S deserve a worse score than the doublers of 4S.