smerriman

As far as I can see BWS doesn't use short suit game tries.

I just read a transcript of the speech and don't see anything about preventing R from falling. Just preventing R from rising. Did you mean something else?

I would have said the advantages of going slow were fairly obvious also - eg what if responder has heart support and was planning to make a delayed raise of 3♥ then start a cuebidding sequence? If the right spot is no-trumps, you can always show your strength later; if not, you get the extra room to find it. A poll was done on the 3NT bid at BW a couple of years ago - far and away the most popular option (45%) was a 15-17 that wasn't suitable for 1N, with 28% voting for 18-19 options, 12% saying never bid it, and 8% some form of minimum. Many of the voters / commenters who voted for it showing 18-19 said they'd still go the 2NT - 4NT route for suitable 18-19 hands.

The 1♥ bid looks much more dubious than 2♥.. .. but if they were cheating I don't know why they didn't at least attempt to bid the cold 4♥. It's not like bidding this way benefitted them in the slightest.

See: http://www.bridgebase.com/points/awards.php

According to K&R, South has a 23 point hand and North a 7 point hand. Have no issues with South showing it as 23; systematic 2NT is awful, but given that, North is definitely no more than an invite.

Have the host check the 'Permission required to play' box. Not only will that prevent other users from jumping in, but it will remove any time limits (and if someone gets disconnected for other reasons like a poor connection, it will even reserve the seat for them to jump straight back in [sometimes, depends on type of disconnection I think]).

Click on your name at the top right of the forum, choose My Settings from the dropdown, then Change Email Address.

On desktop (or through mobile if you go into messages, though not as visible), I see the 'News' section immediately after logging in, and the bottom two items which are forum posts often catch my eye. So that does promote the forum.

If you're playing Soloway (much better than the old fashioned strong jump shifts), then this can be used to show a minimum with solid trumps, like hrothgar's hand, allowing the non-jump rebid to be stronger (see http://kwbridge.com/js.htm).

GIB only plays one system and it can't be customised. GIB opponents will assume you are playing their system as well.

Cards are dealt randomly; you are imagining it. Over your last 206 hands, you and your partner have averaged 20.2 points per hand, and your opponents 19.8.

4 challenges of 16 boards each, same format. If an unlikely tie at the end, an additional 8 boards. (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3).

Oops, sorry, yes. Good luck to the semifinalists - as usual let's aim for about a week per match.

An event publicised as supporting charity that does not tell you how much of your money goes to that charity.. to be honest this feel more like a scam than price gouging.

Thus the age-old debate of whether sports leagues should have playoffs or not :) Perhaps the higher seeds should receive some sort of IMP head-start as a type of 'home advantage'.

https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=ARDCHALLENGE:e0bfed48.8c2c.11ea.b96d.0cc47a39aeb4-1588393496&u=smerriman smerriman 27 - 64 billyfung2

If that were the case wouldn't 3NT be much more popular than double in my poll? Given in that case there clearly is a better call if you know partner won't be leaving 2S in for penalties. Or did people have another reason for doubling? Incidentally I did pass on that hand thinking double was more like what you suggested (but partner wasn't on the same wavelength and passed it out), but the poll and advice I got from someone else both changed my perspective. Now I'm not so sure.

Interesting. When I posted an almost identical hand on BridgeWinners a while back for what I should do in opener's position with 4 good spades, the vast majority was to double, presumably for penalties. But maybe you mean that it's penalty oriented that can be pulled with unusual hands like GIB's, which is what I meant by penalty.

4♠ for me - there are some hands where this will be too high, but there are also plenty of others where you'll have 10 tricks and regret not being there. And if partner really does have a minimum opener, the opps are sure to balance over 2♠, so the choice is really whether you want to play 3 or 4. However if my partner chose 2♠ instead, I would be fine with that.

The description of double shows that it is for penalty (which is pretty standard I believe).

Not sure what you're saying - bluenikki is stating that neither player should bid past 4♠. I'm saying this is clearly wrong (whatever the right approach is). But yes, I shouldn't have made the example so balanced.

Nope. But investigating slam still comfortably beats your strategy of never asking without the queen.

You're not reading what I wrote or not understanding probability. It's not 15% of the time you investigate slam, it's 15% of the worst case. A quick sim - suppose South just blasts Blackwood over 4D (not necessarily best, but comparing to stopping in 4S) and goes to slam unless missing two keys or one and the queen. 41% of the time you stop in 5. 14% of these you go down, 86% you make. 59% of the time you bid slam. 80% of these you make slam, 20% you don't. Despite the fact that 14% of time you're going down when in 5M, in MPs you're scoring 60% by bidding on, so stopping in 4 is clearly wrong. And at IMPs the amount you gain from the making slams far outweigh any losses.

But it's not 33% of the time. It's 33% multiplied by the chance that partner doesn't have an extra trump AND doesn't have the jack or queen of trumps AND doesn't have the missing ace.. which is very small. Whereas if he has some of those, you'll be missing out on a decent chance of slam. Next time you aren't missing the ace, and you've missed a 67% slam - you don't consider that a catastrophe? [edit]In fact given those spot cards I randomly added, there's only a 15% chance of two trump losers.