Siegmund

We had quite a lot of 2 1/2 table games when I was living in Alaska. (One of our two evening games a week, all winter long.) Unless a known very slow pair was present, we usually played 30 boards rather than 25. We deliberately kept it as a 5-round game so that total playing time would be less than if we did a twice-around. We almost always finished 30 boards in less time than it took to play 28 on the nights we had 4 tables. A room adjacent to the playing area had a cribbage board, jigsaw puzzles, and a well-stocked library, which the sitout pair frequently used if they didn't care to watch another table. Yes, the club lost money on a 2 1/2 table game. We considered it our obligation to take the loss, rather than force our ten best customers to lose a gallon of gas and an evening of bridge. (Unless we knew far enough in advance that we could phone people and tell them not to come.) In my spare time, I did investigate the balance of the 2 1/2 table game, and we tried to arrange it so the two strongest pairs in the room did not have mutually beneficial pair numbers. The balance would have been better if we had made pair 6 the phantom, too, but that would have caused an outcry. We experimented with IMP scoring but some of the newer people were confused by it and a couple of players (including me) objected to having the game not scored in the way it was advertised, and returned to BAM within a year. The afternoon game played only 20 boards, and they used the alternate no-relay 3-table howell.

By your own admission you "planned to eventually get to 'look at the card' ", that is, you knew you had an agreement but had forgotten it, and instead of promptly directing your opponent to the place where he could find an explanation of the agreement, you launched into a song-and-dance about "explaining that we were a new partnership, etc." Your opponent didn't ask if you were a new partnership, he asked what the agreement was. I am not suggesting you were planning to do an "I'm taking it as." I am finding you guilty of deliberately postponing answering a question by trying to give an irrelevant speech. If your opponent was damaged by failing to receive the information written on your partner's convention card, I would have no reservations about giving an adjustment in your opps' favor, despite the fact he interrupted the irrelevant speech as soon you gave him the (incorrect) impression that you weren't going to cough up an answer to the question he asked.

I agree it can come across as rude... but for you to do anything other than explain your agreement is on shaky ground, and I've seen so may people go the "I'm taking it as..." route that I am on your opponent's side, almost but not quite to the point of ruling he is allowed to clamp his hand over your mouth if you don't stop the instant he interrupts you.

If the system sez that the way you show a 9-trick hand is 2C-then-4M, that's what I do. (Lacking an agreement about 2C-then-4M, I would be endplayed into 1M.) I am actually happier about 2C on this hand than on, say, AKQxxxxx AJx x x, since I actually probably have enough defense that I won't be upset about being in a forcing pass if the opponents bid a bunch of the other major. Doesn't mean I am happy about it. But it's a much stronger hand than partner will expect for 1M-then-4M.

I am fine with just 2S over 1D, but I seem to have stronger standards for 4th seat openings and jumps than most do. After 1NT I like my hand somewhat less, and am willing to not jump. I have 7 tricks in my own hand if the HA is behind me, and really don't want pard to bounce me to game with, say, the SA and nothing else.

Absolutely.

Should be fit. Wouldnt be confident that it WAS fit with an unknown partner.

I've used a modified Ogust reorganized along the lines of Ken's suggestion. We defined "good vs bad suit" as 2 vs 1 of the top 3, and "good vs bad hand" as outside stopper or no outside stopper. 3C = 1 of the top 3, outside stopper. 3D by responder asks where: 3H=H, 3S=D,3NT=C. 3D = 2 of the top 3, outside stopper. Not room for a full ask, but room to use 3H as an "is it here?" type of call - or whatever type of reask you find most useful. 3H = 2 of the top 3, no outside stopper 3S = 1 of the top 3, no outside stopper 3NT = AKQ Over 2H, the 3H and 3S bids are reversed of course. Somewhat unfortunately, the whole stopper-ask business really would be more useful over 2D, and then 2N is just too high. But I've never tried using 2H artificial over 2D. Maybe I should.

I would call it a subpart of Offline Bridge, not Forum Events. Offline Bridge is a sufficiently low-traffic forum that perhaps the solution is to change the description of the forum to encourage more of this type of discussion.

I havent tried the Edwards CCE under Windows 7 -- but when I first got Windows 7, I had so much trouble with old programs not working that I installed a virtual machine running XP, so it'd be handy any time I ran into glitches. As for the bridgewinners card - last I checked, I lacked the ability to put new textboxes in new places on the card / in place of preprinted text (something Lee's was better at than any of the competition.) Until it does, it really doesn't work for me.

At risk of being dense... what do you want a ruling on? East has UI that West may not have a real bid, but everyone made legal calls and the excess cards were removed before the play. (No, West has no recourse if he misbids because he has done something foolish.) [Edit to add: OP has more info in it now than it did this morning - but my immediate reaction is still score stands]

I generally play what I would have led in 2nd. In sufficiently old books (before 0 or 2 higher leads were common), "always high" was recommended. I can see a case for an agreement distinguishing HH from HHH. Amazed to see people playing low in 2nd without an agreement. I would have called that an error by a novice/intermediate who didn't know 2nd hand was different from 3rd.

As gwnn said. 2M can be 4 or 5. Using the jump to 3M as weak with six is an interesting idea but without agreement I would expect it to be invitational.

Put me down for preemptive. In spades, itd be somewhat less clear without the double... but after a double, can't see it as anything other than "they pushed me to 3, but I wont let them say what suit they like."

I imagine to get coloured symbols you have to record a macro. For uncoloured symbols, probably the easiest way is to add four new entries to the AutoCorrect dictionary. At one time, the only other way was editing a text file that listed the assignments of keys to characters but it may have gotten easier recently (they have finally added support for Alt+key shortcuts after years of complaints.) I am sorry to say this is one of the few things I found much harder to do in OpenOffice than in MS Office. As a result I switched to doing almost all my bridge writing in LaTeX rather than a word processor.

It's far from the worst understrength reverse I've seen at the table - mostly because it has 3 spades - but even as a proponent of reversing with a lot of 6-loser hands others wouldn't, I rank the reverse worse than 2S or 2D here.

I would hope for 50 in 4, 30 in 5, and 15 in 3, myself, but I'm often disappointed.

The main lesson I have taken from this thread is that, in the two partnerships where we have agreed Rubensohl, partner and I are almost certainly not playing it the same way. Knowing you are playing the same version as your partner is a big plus to Leb in a casual or new partnership :)

Of the ones I have played: CRASH (or modified to be GCC legal: X=color, 2C=shape, 2D=majors, 2NT=minors) BROOSS from Kleinman's book (X=one suit with clubs or two suits without clubs, 2C=C+M, 2D natural) DONT Sahara (X=H+another, 2C=S+another...what I played before discovering crash) Capp Transfer overcalls (uuuugh) I would like to try, but havent, some of the modern methods where X=maj-min. Preferably with 2M natural. I am not quite as enamored of 2C=majors as some people here are; it's nice but at least in GCC world it's realllly expensive to devote 2C to only one shape.

I've always thought that the whole single-raise-constructive thing was a bit bassackwards. The superweak hands are the ones where 1NT is bad; when you actually have 21 points 1NT is going to make. If you are going to play semiforcing NT, why not do "single raise un-constructive," let the immediate 2S bid be 5-8 or something, and move the best single raises into 1NT?

Every so often a hand comes along where those of us who start with 1H on the East cards actually get a payoff (West is able to set trump limit himself immediately with 2H).

The writers of the yellow card pamphlet, and about three other people in the world, use 2S over 1C-1D-1H as FSF. I've yet to meet any of them at the table. It is true that 1S is more likely to include a spade suit than most other FSF bids. Opener will be correspondingly more willing to bid 2S rather than notrump with 4-4-1-4 hands.

I am experimenting with a similar system at the moment -- though with a twist: 1C = weak with 4 spades, or any strong hand; 1D = 4 hearts; 1M natural, 1N 11-14 no 4CM. I wouldn't go so far as to say "fatally flawed" but the 1N opening is surprisingly hard to handle. It may just be that that is the price for fixing a hard-to-handle 1D in another system.

Assuming a strong notrump, having some way to show HHxxxx in a minor so that partner can bid a 22-point 3NT when he has the fitting honor and stop at 3m when he doesn't is a very valuable bid -. It's the only one of the notrump invitations that actually accomplishes something besides "go with 16 pass with 15". I'd gladly drop 1N-2N inv or 1N-2c-2M-3M inv from my system but I want a way to show this hand. That way doesn't have to be a natural 3m bid, of course. You can use 2-under transfers, or you can use either 2S or 2N artificially with both of these invites, along with some other hand types, included.

Yes West has to show a preference immediately (I may well have bid 2H rather than 1.) In my book, XX establishes a forcing pass for N-S for the rest of the auction, a fact which South put to good use but seemed to escape North.