Gilithin

Since the Roman empire (and probably even much earlier) educated elites have used and manipulated "uneducated masses". There is nothing inherently different about the way the Brexit movement was spread. I cannot speak to your mindset or day when you wrote the post. But I do not read every WC thread immediately and simply responded after reading this one - no dredging required.

It's on page 65, building on factors covered earlier in the book. Have you even bothered to read the reference I previously posted?

Click on the link and read through (at least) pages 62-71. Then come back with additional questions as needed.

Partnership Bidding at Bridge specifically goes into the differences in preempting style by position and would be my first reference for this, and indeed most other theoretical competitive bidding questions. Generally, you need to agree a preempting style with your partner, with second seat preempts typically being considerably purer than those for 1st and 3rd seats. The suggested book uses a 1-10 scale for this in order to make agreements easier to comprehend.

Maybe that is the minimum requirement under the local regulations. Nonetheless I am not sure you get the moral high ground when the opps stumble somewhat when confronted with something highly unusual at the table in a club level game without a proper pre-warning. if you begin each round with "Our 2 level openings are particularly unusual and you might want to spend a couple of minutes discussing your defence before we start" or the like, you will probably get more sympathy. "Non-standard 2 bids" sounds more like Goldilocks 2s than Assumed Fit and complete germ warfare.

So you make up your own rules/regulations and just assume they are valid even when providing rulings for other jurisdictions? Just perfect for this forum. Well done.

Did you pre-alert? It seems somewhat naive that we did not have at least some basic discussion after this.

With this attitude to alerting, I can guarantee that you would get kicked from our BBO table within 10 hands. If alerting your agreements properly is too much work, perhaps bridge is the wrong game for you. Your opponents are entitled to the information so when you withhold it you are committing the bridge equivalent of a yellow card offence. Doing it deliberately is simply cheating. Are you a cheat axman?

Case 1: Just because someone makes an IB of 1♣ does not mean that they intended this as an opening. It can happen that they intended to bid 2♣ Michaels and had a brain fart (or indeed a slip of the hand, or a misclick). Assuming that they actually do hold clubs, if they play in the French style - 2♦ as Michaels and 2♣ natural - the hand might qualify for a 2♣ overcall, which would probably be more or less a strict subset of a 1♣ opening. Similarly for a pair playing a natural, intermediate 3♣ overcall. Obviously in these cases it is potentially nebulous whether the replacement is being made under 27B1a or 27B1b. Case 2: In Acol country the hand is an easy 2♠ response, showing a good raise. In many parts of the 5cM world, a cue does not guarantee a fit so there 2♠ is also ok. As a general rule, when you have a choice between misleading partner about major length or minor length, it is better to mislead about a minor unless you have a way of controlling the auction in the event of partner raising your faked major. If you are concerned about the side-effects of negative doubles, I would suggest exploring them in a different forum though. Case 3: X shows a hand of a completely different character to 1NT and therefore does not seem to fall into any of the categories of 23A. Weejonnie's solution works but can still occasionally lead to issues if the resulting AI allows the pair to stop in a making contract that would not have been available to them otherwise (27D).

There are many, several of whom have actively posted misinformation about the EU at various times. The vast majority of populist stories regarding EU bureaucratic excess are actually either taken out of context or completely false when you look into them a little deeper than the typical tabloid headline. Sadly these stories are so widely spread that the majority of people think they are true. That is particularly true for the low-skilled, low educated sector that made up such a large portion of the Yes vote after having been manipulated with various lies and other underhanded schemes. I remain deeply ashamed and embarrassed about my countrymen for having ripped up one of the most favourable international trade agreements in the world and replaced it with xenophobic chaos.

It looks like there was a system misunderstanding regarding splinters. These AIs get more human every year...

Does this mean that natural 4m openings need to be alerted by any pair that uses a Gambling 3NT?

The hand looks quite a lot like an Acol 2, so a Benji 2♣ opener but not a traditional 2♣. If you do want to include these hands into a traditional 2♣, you might consider checking out Chris Ryall's ParadoX response structure, which includes a way of dealing with them relatively effortlessly.

One of the arguments I can make in favour of a 3NT opening, assuming it shows either a good or solid 4m preempt (I have played both, as well as some completely different things), is that it is possible to rebid 4NT over a 4♠ overcall, which I would assume offers a choice of red suits at the 5 level without overemphasising the hearts. Whether this consideration outweighs allowing them to make that 4♠ bid at all is perhaps dubious but I am not sure it is irrelevant.

How will the 6-0 do against a 4-6 if partner has scraped up a response on their minimum 4063? There are pros and cons to both approaches and cherry-picking a particular hand to suggest your preferred style is the only one is just disingenuous.

Word on the street is that it is actually related to the Abby Grossberg lawsuit.

In American systems, 5M(332) is typically treated as a balanced hand and so opened 1NT when in range. In these systems it is also quite common, but not universal, for weak 6-4 hands to rebid the major and for a bidding sequence of M-M-m to show a different range from M-m-M. In central European systems (SEF and Forum D) 5M(332) hands are treated a a separate hand type from normal balanced hands, which means that there are sequences devoted specifically to these, at the cost of often being a level higher than for American systems. In these systems, it is also standard to rebid the 4 card suit for 6-4 hands. Finally, in Acol rebidding the 4 card minor also promises 5+ cards in the original major, so you get to show 5 cards with the rebid instead of just 1-2 (depending on how 5M(332)s are treated). For this system, it is generally clear to rebid the 4 card suit.

As I mentioned, there are various solutions. One as you suggest is to have a pure captaincy system. A simpler one is to borrow from modern approach-forcing and simply say that a bid is only not forcing if the hand making it has limited itself in some way. As opposed to the original approach-forcing where a bid is by default non-forcing. Coming from an Acol background, it occurs to me you might find that method comforting, even though theory has determined it to be inefficient. Finally, a popular solution on these forums is to use the first round of bidding to determine the range of the hands and take it from there. If you look at the systems from Adam and Zelandakh, they both essentially start by defining a range as partscore-inv; inv-game; or game-slam and then refine the rest of the auction to optimise for that range. No doubt there are a few other solutions too. Sadly I cannot tell you which is best though; ideally a true AI-generated bidding system would answer that question for us!

I think your basic axiom is simply untrue. The Fibonacci distribution of hands in relay systems is only valid because these auctions are game-forcing and thus we know that the available space runs to 3NT. In a more general bidding situation we have to have the ability to stop in a part-score when that seems advantageous. So you first have to deal with those hands, and only once you have gotten down to the pure game-forcing sequences can you switch to the suggested hand division. In addition, while less important under the assumption of no interference, there are certain principles that make bidding systems more resilient, such as homogeneity. I also strongly disagree with your first addendum, that we should make bids designed to allow partner to pass as often as possible. It should be noted that mechanisms like transfers, relays and puppets, that have massively increased in their usage since the days when bidding systems actually did have more non-forcing calls, are explicitly non-passable. Many of these allow us to pass the response but that is quite a different thing from allowing partner to pass directly. In general, too many non-forcing calls make a bidding system less efficient. So I would suggest you relax this stipulation - we need to be able to pass when we reach a sensible contract and do not want to go to a higher level (PS-game-slam). There are different ways to achieve that and you should probably allow your (presumed) iterative process to decide for itself the best one.

You really can't think of a single argument for, say, a 3NT opening, whatever meaning that holds, even if you end up picking 5♦ as first choice? Personally I can think of at least two...

There are also the 2♣ puppet + transfer methods, which are arguably even better if you put as much effort into them as for 2WC.

Interestingly enough, a number of Master Bridge series books proclaimed the advantages of making Acol 2/1 responses auto-forcing back in the late 80s and 90s. It was not controversial for such systems to be regarded as Acol at that time. To the OP: yes you can convert Acol to 2/1 GF but you have to make some specific conventional changes (such as IJS responses) and the resulting system is somewhat less harmonious than the alternatives.

An interesting ides for Responder here would have been a 3♠ rebid. If you are going to make a slam try, this is far better than Checkback; and if not then you have to ask if you are likely to achieve anything useful by not just rebidding 4♥.

The traditional rule for Checkback is that your indirect bids are one level stronger than the same bid made directly. A direct 3♥ would be invitational so going via 2♣ is GF+. Now for the fine details - there is some discussion above about spades. The simple truth is that if partner held that hand and GF+ strength, they would normally start that with a 2♠ reverse, so there is a strong implication that this is a one-suited hand with slam interest and not simply choice of game with 4 spades. Obviously other structures are possible but this is the default without any further discussion.

The notes call this bid Gerber but the truth is that the auction would not be any different playing more traditional methods, where a jump after a 2♣ opening sets the trump suit and asks for aces/keycards. The traditional method does give the advantage of Responder knowing that clubs are the trump suit but as they are just answering a specific question, that is not particularly important. So my question is simple - what has Gerber gained over the traditional approach?