Siegmund

I don't have the methods to sensibly explore for miracles, so I go straight to 6NT.

6 losers! A really chunky trump suit! An ace of diamonds, so you are assured that the defence can't start with cash-cash-ruff! You could talk me into a cuebid more easily than you could talk me into signing off at 3.

I would certainly assume they are on in 3rd seat unless we explicitly agreed otherwise. Passing the raise I would think works much the same as passing any other "forcing by an unpassed hand" bid. Subminimum openers with unexciting distribution can bail out, but more often than not make your system bid.

My partner chose the leap to 4S. I confess to berating him after the hand, thinking that was a horrendous underbid. If I had been North I would have called it a limit raise; also available in our system was an artificial 2NT showing 7-10, 4-card support, and an unbalanced hand, which I think is a bit of an underbid but was what my partner said he would have done if he had it to do over again. A much easier hand to bid if West would overcall and make fit-jumps available!

If there are 13 tricks in clubs half the time - seems about right, with the HK a little more likely to be with opener offset against the chance that someone has a spade sequence to lead - then 3NT and 5C should be approximately tied. I find it hard to believe that making 13 tricks in clubs is such a heavy favorite to let it outscore 3NT 7:4.

One more voice chiming in to remind inquiry that the 75+% 6S beats 6D at MP. (By a substantial margin. Something like 6S 9, 6D 7, I would think.)

I am surprised to see 6S being punished so severely in the scoring. 6D is only outscoring it when spades are 5-1 and the CK is onside, it looks like to me (and losing to it every time 6S makes = anytime spades break)... I would expect 6S to be scored ahead of 6D at MPs.

With a solid unknown I'd assume RKC for spades. But I am sorely tempted to say the best answer to "what is it?" is "the wrong bid." Wasting 3 levels of bidding space, oh my.

Seems like you're finding hardly any of your partscore 4-4 major fits, and those are the hands that benefit from playing in a suit - even a 4-3 fit - rather than notrump, while the game strength hands are much more likely to survive being in 3NT instead of a suit. I second the suggestion that Keri is worth a look, as well as a number of non-mainstream but intriguing approaches where 2C asks about hearts and 2D asks about spades - Stayman-split-in-half, or two-under transfers, depending on your viewpoint.

Done (and beaten to a pulp as usual.) Thanks for hosting, Tim.

If 2H promises 4 it's clearly forcing at least to 3H. With 2H promising only 3, it's not clear to me what the best approach is. (That's why I play 2H promises 4, actually - that way I at least know what my system is.)

We're on now, if any hosts are around...

MSchmahl and I would like to bid this round ~8pm EDT Sunday. If that exact time isn't good, I think anything from 730 to 9 or so will work for him.

If you feel you need to bid one more after partner responds to your preempt ... usually means you needed to bid one more the first time around.

I'm sure there's more than one answer depending on where one is and what standards one is using. From the standpoint of writing and selling textbooks, I think of Sally Brock for quality and Julian Pottage for quantity. In the US, Robson and Segal's book attracted very little attention and went out of print very fast, despite the praise it attracted from European experts. (Interesting material in that book, too, but they went out of their way to make it difficult to read. There was a time I'd have discounted Robson as a teacher on that basis alone, but I've run across at least two pros who speak much better than they write, so I really can't say.) If your criterion is your name being known to more Americans than any other British bridge teacher.... well... buying an ad in the bulletin is a very fast trip to first place, since so few of us will have heard of any of them :)

The only item I'll dispute is that I would consider the 1D opening the safest of the three. A sane player would pass all three, though I admit to feeling a pull of temptation on the first two. I'd have to be equal vul to do it.

This vulnerability, 3♠ for me. If you like the JTxx of clubs well enough to count it as more than half a trick, and want to open 4♠, I understand. I'd be quite angry with a partner who opened this 1♠.

Why would I wish I had opened a weak two? If 4C is a splinter you can consider that, but it's a little on the weak side -- and in my system, splinters arent available in this auction (we play fit-jumps once there has been an overcall.) Just 4H is fine for me.

My first reaction is SK, setting up a 3rd trick my way, and hope partner has a trump winner. The club-ruff play requires partner to have ANOTHER trump winner (Kxx or Qxxx in hearts), otherwise declarer will be taking pitches.

I can deal with the browser version if I have to, but much prefer the downloadable one, and would strongly urge BBO to release an updated downloadable one. It is a huge waste of time to wait for that client to download every time I start my computer up again, when I can download it once and be logged in with one click!

I think so too. Especially if you play in less-than-top-notch fields. Among my partnerships, my strongest regular partner and I have a pair rating well below the sum of our power ratings even though we understand each other well; it's easier for us, in a club game, to place above average with a competent beginner as our partners, than to place above 60 with each other. I am less sure that extends to top fields, where having one 'weak link' all of whose mistakes will be punished severely by strong opponents might drag your percentage down farther.

Re DOD, and it only partially accounting for the different strengths of fields... Yup. There are some odd artifacts in the ratings because of all (or almost all, anyway) tournament games, but very few club games, being included. When I first looked myself up in power ratings, I was rated between 30 and 31, based on my performance in sectionals and regionals (which seems about right - averaging high 50s in stratified open pairs games, DOD ranging from about -1 to +2, with partners of similar or slightly lesser ability.) When my club started submiting information on all of our games, I plummeted to between 28 and 29 -- because my local club has a DOD of about -5 in the summer and -6 or 7 in the winter... and averaging "only" in the low 60s. DOD might work correctly for strong to very strong fields. For very weak fields, it seems to be quite a problem. Having more clubs submit their data will help some. But there will still be a disparity between people who only play in tournaments vs only play in clubs vs both.

Thanks for posting the link to the full IBPA article. (I didn't ever see the IBPA newsletter, only electronic versions of most of the article.) As an aside, I wonder why the extra copies of Trick Thirteen were destroyed rather than just remaindered... it's quite a rare book now. It would sell much better today than it did in the early 70s, possibly outsell many of the other 'bridge novels' on the market today. (Yes, I have a rather dog-eared copy in my collection, obtained third-hand from another book dealer who got it at an estate sale.)

Reese's does. (As a result of comments I made to Reese's Talk page on wikipedia.) When it first came out, I expected the confession to be earthshaking news, ordered extra copies of both Reese's and Truscott's book to sell in anticipation of renewed interest, etc. The original news item (I forget if it reached me via rec.games.bridge or BLML) did cause an online stir, and made it into several newspaper items, but then magically got hushed up. I still don't know why. I think Rex-Taylor's original claim involved some sealed papers that couldn't be opened until 40 years after Buenos Aires, not just hearsay, but I never did see copies of the papers scanned and posted. Nor did I see anyone establishing it was a hoax. I found the 2005 explanation quite plausible, myself.

Yes it is. (To be GCC legal, it has to promise a *solid* major, and textbook Kantar 3NT does. A 'Kantaresque' 3NT where it's merely any good 4M preempt isn't.)