Gilithin

A 3♠ advance looks unusual. I suspect in a book this would be an example of the 2NT forcing relay.

The roots are generally regarded as having been laid by Barry Goldwater, although it took a few years before that movement became the dominant faction within the GOP.

Spoken like a true American! The rest of the world actually fixed this a while ago, making World Chicken Day the second Thursday in October and World Egg Day the second Friday in October. You will be asking me next to call a team winning a closed national sports league World Champions...

If you were going to play for 3-3 hearts onside, a safer way would surely be to take the ace immediately and then play to the ♥10, playing for 1♠, 6♥ and 2♣. That looks to me like quite a tempting line despite your vehement opposition to it, since there are still chances even if the hearts don't behave. If I understand the hand, RHO will contribute the ♣8 to trick 1 and will take the third heart with the queen. Paul will have to help on what they lead next but I suspect it is probably the ♦Q.

There are a few possible schemes that this can lead to but I suspect it might be an elaborate start to a simple fake cheque scam. What I suspect would happen is that fake company would overpay, say $1000 instead of $100, in a form that cannot be cashed immediately, traditionally a cheque. They then ask the victim to pay back the overpayment and naturally the cheque will later bounce. Other possibilities involve issues with the money transfer that need to be lifted by paying some fee, or by obtaining the bank details that can then be used in a follow-up scam.

A $6 billion pay-out to rake in over $10 billion in profits seems like a good deal. Destroying millions of lives in the process is just business.

Even Kavanaugh dissented on the core decision to roll back more or less all of the Clean Water Act. The SCOTUS decision overturns over 50 years of precedent for how this was interpreted, even going further than the already extreme position of the Trump administration. The end effect is that there is basically no floor now to environmental impact, meaning that the US goes back to the pre-1972 days of purely local regulations.

In other US news, the Supreme Court appears to be completely out of control now, following up on their obviously political and probably unconstitutional prior decisions by essentially repealing the Clean Water Act of 1972. One might ask how much the polluting companies paid Clarence Thomas and co for that one. In the end it will be the American people that suffer from this.

The strength of your splinters depends on the range the hand opposite has shown. If partner opens one of a major, a classical sort of numerical figure for a splinter would be 12-15 TP or 20+ TP. But if you open light, you will need a little more. And if the auction starts 2♣ - 2♦ -- 2♠, your 4♣ splinter needs a lot less! The same principle applies when Opener splinters (1♥ - 1♠ -- 4♣) or when splintering after 1NT (1NT - 2♥ -- 2♠ - 4♣ (if not playing Baze)) and so on. In any case, as one of the main aims of splinters is being able to find low-hcp slams, you do not want to be requiring too many extras to be able to use them. If you can engineer a way to show more than one splinter range though, that can also be useful; but deal with the primary case first and extend the principle only if you have enough space.

One of the primary characteristics of a taxation system that uses a high nominal rate but uses masses of write offs and exemptions to bring the tax rate down is that it massively favours well off individuals and large corporations, who are usually in a good position to use all of the benefits and end up paying almost zero tax, whereas less wealthy people largely have to pay the higher rate. Simplifying the system has the effect of increasing the tax on those wealthy personages without increasing it on the rest of the population, and also makes the system generally more efficient, easier to maintain and considerably simpler to catch illegal evasion schemes. The one thing simplifying the system does not do is increase the burden of the least well off. Of course you can design a simplified system that does do this: 90% tax bracket on the first 20k of income; 25% on the next 80k; 0% thereafter would qualify. But that is just silliness - I would hope you are above that sort of thing Winston. I find it really hard to believe that you do not understand how tax systems outside of the USA work...

I don't believe my post said anything about fairness and it certainly did not discuss the merits of a completely flat tax structure. We could have that discussion too if you like but it doesn't seem particularly relevant to the matter at hand that caused the subject to be raised.

You talk about leads in your last post, which is a little different from just giving a signal. On signalling, the most common arrangement is to give attitude, count, suit preference in that order. If a signal is irrelevant you can skip it (though some pairs signal more rigidly than others) so, for example, a common agreement is to go direct to suit preference if the opening lead is an ace and dummy turns up with a singleton in that suit. On declarer's lead it is also common to skip attitude, since that often helps declarer more than the defence. So if partner leads the suit and we give 2-3-4 we are showing encouragement with an odd number. If 2-4-3 it is encouragement with an even number; 4-2-3 is discouragement with an odd number; and 4-3-2 is discouragement with an even number. Whereas if declarer is leading the suit, 2-4-3 is even and prefer higher suit; 2-3-4 is even and lower preference; 4-2-3 is odd with lower preference; and 4-3-2 is odd with higher suit preference. But other arrangements are possible - important is just that you and your partner understand the differences and can explain them to your opponents.

Simplify the tax system, specifically removing the vast number of exceptions and exemptions available to businesses and wealthy citizens. Reduce the nominal corporate tax rate a little to compensate. Adjust tax law so that businesses that do the majority of their trading in the US but use cheap offshore tax havens to register their shell companies that book all of the profits also have to pay US corporate tax. Basically every company doing significant business in the USA should be paying taxes. This on its own would make more difference than just about every serious proposal currently being discussed. I seem to recall the numbers on switching from a sales tax to VAT are also highly favourable but baby steps... It will take some time to get the tax system efficient even with political will. Most likely the country will collapse before it actually happens in reality.

SCAMP is the vulnerable part (strong club, 1♦ opening shows spades). SPAM is presumably the Forcing Pass variant being used.

Personally I would have opened 1♠, which here might give South a problem if they are conservative enough not to venture a 1NT overcall with a singleton.

Over a takeout double, the rule with both majors is spades first, so A1 is an obvious 1♠. The vast majority of the world play a minor suit cue as forcing to suit agreement, so A2 might be considered a bare minimum cue->3M. A3 and A4 are both typical cue->4M hands, although some pairs might prefer a 4♣ splinter if they play those light. A5 usually sees 1♥ in the club (combined with some UI) and 1♠ in serious tournaments (planning to rebid 2♥ over partner's 2♦) though it always surprises me to see a few votes for 1NT on such hands in magazine expert forum panels. There is actually a (now rare) response structure available that uses 1♥ as a Herbert Negative, which will suit you if this hand keeps you up at night but is generally not regarded positively by modern bidding theorists. For B1-3, my suggestion is to open all balanced hands outside of NT range with 1♣ (ideally in combination with TWalsh) thus rendering the discussion moot.

The ♠ carding does not seem to make sense. Partner played their 3 cards 8-2-9 instead of the expected 9-2-8 and we played ours 4-5-6-A instead of the more normal 4-6-5-A. It probably doesn't matter but it is a good indicator that we probably can't trust our signals too much. Outside of that, this seems to be a matter of finding a layout where there is a difference between playing ♥6 and ♣A now. If there is no such layout, I am probably not understanding the question. It might potentially be a more interesting position in a 2NT contract...

Here's a some folks might find mildly amusing.

If my partner and I play 12-14 but also 11s that I feel like upgrading, then "11 to 14" would be misinformation. Similarly "12 to 14" might cause a Director call when the defence are upset that I only have 12. Your rigid wording needs to address such issues in a way that announcing "Good 11 to 14" does.

Cancel the Top 10% tax cuts. That is one of the largest recent spending increases and does not significantly benefit the vast majority of the country nor do anything for defending the country.

That has some issues though - is 1♥ - (1♠) - 2♠ -- 2NT - 3NT a sign off or choice of game? Is 1♥ - (1♠) - 2♠ -- 2NT - 3♠ checking on the quality of the stopper for 3NT or a cue looking for 6♥? You do need a real agreement here.

I think this happens most often when a table plays the boards of a round out of order but do not realise it and try to enter the second (or third) board from a set into the result slot for the first.

How are they handling pairs playing transfer openings or some other highly artificial system? Would those pairs not just have a massive advantage?

In that case, you need to have a chat with your partner about being more assertive in competitive auctions. It is not just this hand, this is the pattern that ties together almost all of the hands that you post. Maybe suggest to them that they err on the side of overbidding for the next few months so that they can work out for themselves where the right line is in time. Or you can work from general rules - supporting to the level of fit; not letting opps play at the 2 level with shortage; etc - and then let them find the exceptions over time. Or some combination - pick whatever works for them. Whichever way you go, they need to gather some experience of competing effectively if they are ever to improve.

System is not just openings. The critical part here is whether you play Support Doubles or not. If you do then West obviously cannot X and it is essential for East to re-open; if you do not then West should X on this hand competitively despite being minimum.