MickyB

Definitely takeout doubles, followed by artificial bids of the opponents suit and the 4th suit. Can't think of anything close to those two - I guess various fit-showing bids come up next, including Drury if playing strong NT and 4 card majors (which I much prefer in 3rd+4th).

Unless you enjoy it, no. It will help your understanding of your system and that of others if you do so, but there are better ways of using your time.

It didn't occur to me at the time that 4D could be anything other than both majors. That may have been related to playing at 6am! Fairly sure that 6H isn't the right follow-up. 4C Stayman or a shape/strength enquiry, 4D Flint (usually a sign-off in a major), 4M NF slam-try sounds pretty good to me.

Not sure I understand this logic. Logic? I don't think there was any ;) Strange, I'd always thought that was so obviously true that I never really bothered thinking about it :P And yes, I agree that clubs is too likely to be the correct strain to justify 4NT.

Ok, I bid 4NT which I agree was wrong - my thinking at the time was that pard would prefer clubs with equal length (as over an Unusual 2NT) but when I could have any 2 suits, he would presumably prefer diamonds with a 2533, hoping I could correct to hearts. Maybe a 0364 would be more appropriate for 4N in this situation. The auction continued P-5♣-5♠ back to me, and now partner doesn't know your suits, but is likely to have some club support. Are you taking another bid? If you consider 4NT to be off the planet you may wish to ignore this ;)

In CONV, Options... you are able to turn on and off explanations Of bids you might make Of bids you have made Of bids your partner has made Of bids your opponents have made Of bids made when you are kibitzing I agree that there needs to be a way to know whether the opponents can see their own explanations, and a way to prevent them to do so if the table/tournament host desires.

Agree with everything Josh said, except that I hadn't come across inverting a direct 3♥ and 2N then 3♥ before. That's pretty sweet. Do you invert it in other 2N/4N scrambling auctions, Josh?

4♥ now.

Ah - I assumed that was because of the perception that if you didn't play against a pair, you weren't competing against them. IMO 3 board rounds is much better if the movement is well balanced, because it means more bridge and less moving.

The agreement is reasonable, but I prefer takeout throughout - the takeout double is more useful for a hand that hasn't yet passed, IMO. Pass looks obvious now.

I would expect 2NT here to be scrambling, and I would probably bid that to cater to partner doubling on 2452 and the like - I don't think I'm worth pulling 3♣ to 3♥ to show a mild game-try. Bidding 3♣ over the double is perfectly reasonable.

Sorry - they were playing SAYC, so 4♠ should be preemptive.

Why does that mean that my suggestion wouldn't work? I'm not saying it does, just that I can't see where you are coming from :D If the movement is balanced, everyone plays every board, and 33 boards (3 board rounds) is about right for a 4 hour set, then the movement looks pretty good to me.

[hv=d=w&v=e&s=shtxxdqjt9caqjtxx]133|100|Scoring: IMP 1♠-P-4♠ to you.[/hv]

I think it should work to just have two eleven table Mitchells. For the 2nd session, just swap the EW lines over. Only downside is that it would probably require some fiddley arrow-switching - I'll think about it more tomorrow.

It isn't necessary to try to have everyone play against similar quality of opponents. Say you have a 10 table Mitchell with no arrow-switch. The NS pairs don't really compete against the EW pairs at all, but against the other NS pairs. If you add in one round of arrow-switch, the NS pairs are still competing against each other more than they are the EW pairs - the competition ratio is 7 against each pair sitting their direction, 0 against the pair that they arrow switch against, and 4 against all the other pairs sitting in the other direction. I've only just got interested in movements, so I'm not yet much good at putting this into practice. If I come up with anything worthwhile, I'll post again. Have a look at John Manning's work on Chris Ryall's site if you are interested in the mathematics of movements.

Richard - unfortunately, it is normal to have only two pairs sit at any one table.

Quite often I want to keep playing in MBC with friends who are entering the same tourney, or I just want to play until the tourney starts and my opponents and partner know this. Perhaps there could be an option for the other players at the table - "XXX is registered for a tournament starting in Y minutes - allow him to sit?" or "- do you still wish to sit?" depending on who is hosting the table. This would stop encouraging people to leave tournament sign-ups to the last minute, which would make things slightly easier for the tournament director as well.

I'll pass and pass, and lead a heart.

Depends what your objectives are, Mike. Leading low here could easily cost the tempo to get to your spade tricks which would be disastrous at MPs, so I'd lead a top spade. At IMPs our aim is basically to get 5 tricks, so I'd probably try a low spade hoping for 3 spade tricks, the AH and another trick somewhere.

1st hand is close but probably my choice (although from what you said before, your 14-16 NT is actually a bit stronger than that? in which case I'd invite) 2nd hand, a pass looks clearcut 3rd hand I'd definitely punt game 4th hand I'd open but don't mind not doing so

But he doesn't play 3♠ as "a minimum with 4 card support" :) Not sure if 3NT should be natural on that sequence, but if it should, I'm never passing it on opener's hand.

I'd bid 2♣, transfer to ♦ :P I'm not at all confident about bidding 5♦ - partner's shape isn't terribly well defined. I guess I have to now, though. I agree with the initial pass.

This is just confusing :) A 15-17 NT should be described as 14.50-17.50 if you upgrade and downgrade with equal frequency - it's just a conversion from discrete to continuous. I'm never quite sure what people mean when they say their NT range is something like "11.5-14". In Siege, I'd say the range for the balanced minimum is about 11.00-13.50. I think there has some confusion over the median and the midpoint of the range in this thread. [Edited]

I've been playing Turbo with Blofeld recently, and we've done pretty well with it - however it feels like there should be problems with it. Say you set trumps with 4♦ Partner bids 4♠, showing a spade control, denying a heart control You now need to be able to - sign off without a heart control show a heart control with odd/even keycards and a club control/no club control. There isn't enough room to do all of these things. What's the best way around this?