Gilithin

You have an Acol 2 in clubs so you make the systemic bid for that. In Benjaminised Acol, SEF or Forum D that would be 2♣; in Reverse Benji 2♦; and in Standard American or Precision 1♣. When you play 3 weak 2 bids, you make these hands more difficult. That's a trade off. If the concept makes you uncomfortable, change the system.

This is sadly a typical false equivalence and one fears for Americans when even an informed, intelligent person does not see it. Roe was decided 7-2 with roughly 3-4 conservative votes supporting it (depending on how you count these things, which were less defined back then). The following case, Casey, was particularly notable for occurring under a court with 8 Republican nominees that skewed very heavily conservative. Despite this, it reaffirmed the general decision from Roe, albeit with a more precise (and frankly logical) framework, namely viability rather than trimesters. The new ruling on the other hand, Dobbs, is a strict partisan vote with conservatives supporting and liberals dissenting. But that is hardly surprising, given that most of the conservatives were specifically appointed for their ability to re-interpret laws to create more or less any opinion they want. When the leading court of a land has so little credibility as to their legal fundamentals, your justice system has issues. This is unfortunately where the USA stands right now.

If you were holding that hand, maybe RKCB was not the optimal choice in the first place?

I would hope that we can all agree that the proper start to this auction is 1♦ - 1♠ -- 2♣. After that, I suspect system comes into it. In traditional Acol, I am sure many would choose 2♥ at this point, which does not show anything more than an invite. Many others would regard Axx as sufficient for an immediate 2NT. Over 2♥, Opener is likely to bid 2♠ and now Responder bids 2NT. In most other major systems, 2♥ is game forcing so Responder has to choose between 2NT and 3♦. I am with Mike in preferring 2NT, not least because in these systems it does not promise a heart stop and 2♣ has not shown a 5th diamond. Either way, Opener's third call will be 3♠ to pattern out. What happens after that is going to vary by judgement and system. In the Acol 2♥ sequence, Responder has specifically denied a good heart stopper, so bidding 3NT now more or less shows a hand like this one. It is not often that Acol gets to be more scientific than a 5cM system but this is a good auction for that method. In the Acol 2NT sequence, Responder has already overstated their hearts so not bidding 3NT over 3♠ is clear - 4♦ seems to be the most logical choice. In the systems where 2NT is nebulous about hearts (due to 4th suit forcing being GF) it is trickier. Here also I would expect 4♦ to be a popular choice but no doubt there will be many preferring 3NT with the 4333 shape despite the ♥Axx. With a club level partner, I would be perfectly happy with any logical continuation that reached this point.

1. You would lead the queen from any 3 card suit headed by the QJ. QJx is not generally that great of a lead against 3NT so you would likely have some reason from the auction for leading this suit. In addition, AQJ would lead the queen but this is even less appealing. 2. Typically you only lead the Q from a 4+ card suit when holding the J and a 3rd near-touching card, so AQJx, QJTx and QJ9x. You might additionally choose to lead the queen from QJxx if you had some special reason to think an honour was the right card. Finally, Journalist features a special case of leading the queen from a suit headed by KQT9. This is why the instructions for partner when signalling to a queen are "unblock the jack or give attitude".

You can divide the range into 3 by using 2 different invites, typically 3♥ and 2♠ followed by 3♥. Traditionally a simple response to a TOD is 0-7 and a jump is about 8-11 but ranges are not fixed so 0-8 is not at all unusual, particularly in this sequence where bidding space for constructive hands tends to be condensed. There are some conventional solutions too but all of them have their downsides so unless you play at a high level, it is probably not worth investing effort here rather than on more critical aspects of the game.

I am sorry it was not obvious to you that the first line of thepossum's post was just a set-up to the De Santis joke that followed. Maybe you can use this as a learning experience and look for more depth in language in your future interactions.

Not to question your obvious expertise on the subject...but last I checked, EST was 5 hours behind London. When did they move the continents?

You preferred it when the press sec just spouted lies that were being passed off as talking points?

While this might be a 1♥ opening for you, I would suggest that there are probably more pairs in the world that open it 2♥ than 1. I can think of systems where other openings would be systemic as well. Characterising a pass as "not having a pair" is imho highly insulting and inappropriate.

Just to be clear for everyone, the online games where Niemann cheated are the chess equivalent of private games that he played when he was 16, not related to the governing body at all. There is a list around showing that well over 50 other active GMs have also cheated in such online play, many much more recent than Hans. Hans' FIDE-rated games have all been analysed and currently there is no evidence that he cheated in any of those at all, including the game that the player (Magnus Carlsen) that kicked this all off lost. There is also no evidence of his cheating in any game at all, even the private ones, in the last 2 years. In short, what the current evidence suggests is that Magnus looks like a really sore loser. Moreover, chess has some rather strict rules about dropping out of tournaments and refusing to play a specific opponent, in part as a reaction to Iranian and Lebanese players who refuse to compete against Israelis. So Carlsen's actions turn out to be a serious breach of the chess code of ethics. It will be interesting to see where this leads but unless more evidence comes forward, which seems unlikely, the person that FIDE ought to be sanctioning is Magnus. The trouble is that he is the biggest name in the game and FIDE might well decide to take the same approach to him as the UCI took with Lance back in the day - took big to be punished. Anyway, the TL:DR version of the story in bridge terms is that Meckwell and the Nickell team accuse Lall's upstart juniors team (for those that remember that) at the US Trials of cheating without any evidence and people from inside and outside the bridge world pile into Justin and co because Meckwell could not possibly be wrong, leading to Justin, Josh and the others to be refused invites to most of the prestigious bridge events and become the butt end of thousands of internet jokes and general bullying. If anyone wants to add to that bullying here, I would hope that Barry would be quick to nip that in the bud and remove the offensive posts.

Something like this might be worth considering perhaps. The question to ask is whether it is more important to you to have a call to show 4M5m or to be able to show a minor at the 2 level. I am not sure if there is really a "correct" answer to this although most of the better players in that thread thought the ability to show a single suit at any level to be of the highest importance.

But this just highlights the point. If 2♣ is 0-8 any then Pass must have a different meaning from this. This needs to be explained if a CC is to be valid, even if the explanation is that no hand may be passed. Is it? I still have no idea...

Playing 3/5 usually goes hand-in-hand with playing BUM leads for xxx. If you find BUM leads difficult and prefer to work with MUD, it is probably better to stick with 2/4 leads. Finally, you can play 3/5 with attitude leads, meaning you lead low from a doubleton. In this case, it is perfectly acceptable to lead the highest from xxx, which immediately solves the issue (at the cost of creating a different one).

That is an appalling convention card!. Even after staring at it for several minutes, I still do not know what their initial Pass means. This should be in really big letters on the front of the CC in any Forcing Pass system!

This is why I suggest lower intermediates to go with normal Landy. By the time you progress to Multi-Landy, you should be in a position to learn a convention to more than just a single round of bidding and also to understand how such methods work in competition. Even simple Lands has its follow-up issues - if you follow the original convention then the forcing relay after 2♣ is 3♣. I find this ridiculously inefficient and prefer to start all forcing auctions with a simple 2♦, with (1NT) - 2♣ - 2♦ -- 2M - 2NT as a second relay. But that is obviously not going to fly with a beginner. Fortunately, with Landy you can generally get by without a forcing relay sequence. After a Multi-Landy 2M though, you need to know whether your method of playing in 3 of Overcaller's minor is 2NT or 3♣. It is not necessarily even about being weak (or not) either. Most of the time it is just about having solid agreements that both partners can remember. Beginners and low intermediates have more important things to be using their memory cells on and should therefore pass on such methods.

The problem with a fit jump is that some pairs play forcing passes after a FJ when vulnerable. If you have this agreement then it would not be a good call. If your fit jump only promises enough offensive strength for the call, then it is fine. If you do not have a fit jump available then the normal way of responding in the English-speaking world is Double. If you play in a part of the world where NFBs are standard then you probably respond 2♥, with the strong expectation that this will not end the auction.

It does not really matter what we think the robot has, nor even that we failed to open. We promised a maximum pass with 4 spades and 4 diamonds and our hand has not changed since then. We simply have nothing more to add to the conversation so if passing here is wrong, it is either going to be on CHO or the dealer.

A good starting point for understanding and choosing a 1NT defence can be found at David Stevenson's web site. If you want something more exotic than these, a few additional options have been posted on BBF over the years. For the most part though, beginner's should probably start with Landy and branch out from there as they gain some experience. For solid intermediates and above, Multi-Landy is a fairly decent defence that is not too complicated and also played at the top level of the game.

It is starting to look like the EBU rushed this thing out in an afternoon. Did anyone with a passing knowledge of the English language even glance at the wording of this regulation before making it public? With all of the experience the EBU has in making regulations that are clear, this version of the Blue Book is downright embarrassing.

Suppose there is an important matter that is put to the vote of 100 people and the vote comes out "right" by a vote of 52-48. Suppose the supporters of the wrong side use a bunch of phony arguments to say that the vote should not be done this way but instead the 100 need to be split into 10 groups of 10. Each group of 10 has 1 vote in the final tally. They now separate out the 52 into 2 groups of 10 and 8 groups of 4 and complete the groups of 10 with the 48. When the vote is now tallied the result is "wrong" by a score of 2 to 8. Now let us suppose that there is a panel of 9 seniors who decide that this is a perfectly acceptable approach, where 6 of them were previously assigned to the panel by the "wrong" side. This is the United States.

4♦ would not make my Top 2 selection over a Double. If East is choosing Double here (as opposed to 3NT) then they are treating their hand as strong and flexible and should continue with 4♠ over 4♦. Having dodged the bullet of a 4♣ advance, East can feel pretty good about the resulting auction.

Either minor qualifies as a maximum of two possible 5+ card one-suiters, so this would be legal providing your idea of a 3 level preempt is not a 4 card suit. The main intent here seems to be to ban the popular 2NT = any 2 of ♣, ♦ or ♥, as well as the Mini-2NT opening type popularised by Gerben. It would not even have occurred to me that a natural, balanced 2NT opening might be banned if this thread had not alerted me to it.

I think you should check this before you panic too much - I would have expected the EBU to use a different sentence construction if this had been the intent of the regulation. Now for getting around it if the EBU say they really do mean 2 specific suits. There are some more radical solutions that you might consider here. For example, since you can play a 1NT opening as anything you want, you could choose to play this as a 4 card weak 2 in any suit. To compensate you would either have to cover all of the balanced hands in nebulous 1m openings. You can add a Mexican 2♦ too if you like. If you still find the 1m openings overloaded, a Precision-style natural 2♣ opening would be available, moving your big hands to 2♦ instead of using the Mexican. A side effect of all of this is that you get the 2M openings back to use as regular Weak 2s.

For a normal (close to minimum game force) the hand would obviously be much too strong but splinters are usually played as split-range. I view the given hand as strong enough for the upper range, meaning that you do not respect a sign off but make a further slam try. If you play your upper range to be stronger than this, that would naturally not be an option.