MickyB

I was North. The auction presented is incorrect in a number of places (I've not checked if it was wrong on vugraph). It was actually pretty natural other than 1♦ showing hearts and 4♠ keycard for hearts. At some point, my partner bid 6♠ over 6♥, obviously asking me to choose between 6NT and a grand-slam. Without conviction, I accepted, and cuebid the opponent's suit as a choice of strains - or so I thought - it turned out I had remembered RHO as doubling 5♦ but he had actually doubled 5♣. I was a little surprised when partner passed! As Lamford referenced, I was having some temporary health issue, although I hadn't actually asked my NPC if I could sit out - I realised 5 minutes before the set that I shouldn't play, but line-ups had already been submitted and I thought it was too late to change them. Live and learn :rolleyes:

I thought the same as you when this all came to light, but it's been suggested to me that's not the case - there was 14 years between their last appearance in the juniors and their world pairs win that heralded their arrival on the world stage. I suspect they'd never have played a Bermuda Bowl or Europeans without cheating. Their two-level openings and their leads both benefit greatly from an extraneous binary signal. It's possible they adopted the methods having decided to cheat. The most interesting cheating method is that of the Israeli pair. "We open 1C or 1D almost at random because we know what to lead anyway and it gives us an excuse to not lead the suit partner's bid". Mind you, I've no idea why they didn't just open 1C on all balanced hands...

I much prefer standard carding to UDCA. In some situations, standard attitude is clearly better. On the lead of an ace, you can nearly always afford your second highest card from a queen-high holding. There are plenty of situations where you can't afford your second highest card to discourage from jack-high holdings. In the context of the small differences we are talking about, this one is significant. Also, as previously mentioned, there's the "unblock but encourage" position that is particularly relevant when there is a singleton honour in the dummy. Switching situationally is obviously fine in theory but many find it difficult in practice. Sometimes you can only afford low discards In my experience, if you can only afford a low, discouraging discard, partner tries to work out what to switch to from what they know already. This is desirable; by this time you've usually got a lot of information about the hand. A high discard, made relatively rarely, serves as a wake-up call to partner. If you can only afford a low, encouraging discard, partner is far more likely to take it as a strong signal, and switch aggressively to the suit you have encouraged. Confusion over following with an honour As discussed above, even playing UDCA, there are many positions where an honour that is not trying to win a trick is "top of touching". This is just one example of a position where a high card is not discouraging. I think this is very poorly understood, even amongst world-class players. - Partner leads the ace. Dummy has QT98. Playing UDCA, what do you play from J7? What do you play from J73? - Partner leads the ace, which you know is likely to be AKxxx. Dummy has T9xx. What do you play from J2? How can partner distinguish this from Q2? I offer these situations as evidence that the jack should still be played from a doubleton as an even/encouraging card. [Would any UDCAers out there describe this as "standard"?] - I seem to remember that a top English partnership had a misunderstanding about what should be played from QT9 or similar. I think it may have been an Allfrey partnership from the Gold Cup a couple of years back, perhaps someone else can remember the precise position? - If you discard a jack, is that top of touching or discouraging? What if you discard a ten?

Is that more old school than opening 1M? Suit below the doubleton FTW! PS I don't pass

Helgemo couldn't officially be captain as he's not Danish...he could be coach, or he could have NPC powers signed over to him by Jan Nielsen.

And that's despite one of them being technically pretty weak - sound familiar?

They were

Explains a lot, I found them to be unplayable vs no-trumps, you need an attitude signal...

1C = clubs/11-13 bal/17-19 bal, could have four diamonds but not five 1D = negative (not enough for game opposite 17 bal) or diamonds How would you continue after this start? I guess more hands could go into the 1D negative at a push...

For those that rule that oppo should be told 'A', how would you rule if B = C?

I could imagine a scenario where the oppo were also entitled to be told A or B. That would be true if both players play the same bastardised version of Widget with a mutual partner, and one had merely forgotten what applied here. If both players have their own, unusual ideas of what the sequence means, and no reason to know what the other thinks, then by agreeing widget they have agreed 'C', whether they realise it or not.

P.S. I googled 'Widget' and can't find any of the write-ups :(

C

If we figure that partner is more likely to have the AK of our short suit, we should also figure that the opponents are more likely to have length in our short suit, and that if they are missing AK of hearts, they may not have twelve fast tricks outside of hearts.

They are bad.