TimG

I think McCain will say whatever the public wants. Perhaps these are not unbiased views.

Perhaps they voted Republican for reasons other than these issues; economics and social policies are not the only issues out there.

In my opinion, seeing the other hand will not prove anyone right; it is enough to know that we have established a forcing auction, so we cannot pass 3♣ whether or not it worked out on this particular hand.

A candidate's religion speaks to his or her stance on the issues. I think it is common to think along the lines of "He's a Christian, he'll do the right thing" or "She's an atheist, who knows where she finds her morality." Just like saying "I'm a democrat" gives an indication regarding where you stand on the issues, so do people perceive that "I'm a Christian" is an indication of a politician's stance on many issues and how he will deal with people once he is in office. I don't think this way of thinking is necessarily wrong -- it is hard to separate one's stance on many issues from one's core set of beliefs, including religious beliefs.

DOH! Not insulted. But, embarrassed. Thanks.

sm = (NV, x4H, tm) produces "unknown variable" sm = (nv, x4H, tm) produces "syntax error" Replacing "tm" with 10 produces the same messages. The script runs fine when this line is commented out.

When your intelligence and moral judgment fail, it might be a good thing to worry about what the rest of the world thinks and take your lead from them.

I disagree. It may not be a problem to call yourself a Christian, but I think it is a problem if you don't call yourself a Christian (no matter whether you are looking for support from the left or the right). Candidates end their speeches with "Gold bless you and God bless the United States of America" for a reason. Invoking "God" doesn't make one a Christian, but in the US "God" is a not so subtle codeword for "The Christian God". And, a candidate that does not invoke God would, I think, have a much harder go of it.

Yeah, I can't see doing anything else.

At the dealer site in the Input File section, there is listed a score function that is supposed to be: score(vulnerability, contract, tricks). It mentions that the contract should be in the form "x4H" with the "x" necessary, but there is no mention of the correct syntax for the vulnerability. I have tried "v", "n", "nv", "1" and "0" (along with removing the "x") and get a syntax error every time. Does anyone know the correct syntax? Or, perhaps whether this function is not available in mdealer (as opposed to dealer)? Thanks.

"Stayman asks for a 4-card major" I tell the opponents when I do this. It is not unusual for the opponents to lead your long major because they "know" their partner must have length there. (No, I don't believe it is to the point that it is an implicit agreement, it really has been a while since I've done this and never with either of my most recent partners.)

Brief summary of the work I did some 10 years ago: I used a few million OKBridge deals. I dealt primarily with straightforward NT auctions. 1N-p-p-p held the biggest declarer's advantage (DA) at almost 0.5 tricks. 1N-3N had less DA, but it was not that far behind. Some high level contracts had a near zero DA, but I never found any that had negative DA. The advantage was often entirely the opening leader's disadvantage -- often there was negative DA after the opening lead was made, that is defenders did better relative to double dummy result after the opening lead. On deals where there were some minimum number of both 1N-3N and 1N-2C-2x-3N auctions, there was a statistically significant difference in result relative to double dummy (with declarer doing better in the 1N-3N auction). This even held true for 1N-3N vs 1N-2N-3N. The hands studied were OKbridge hands without any filter for strength of players. So, you may rightly question whether these results reflect what you would expect in an "expert game".

Perhaps he sometimes thinks for himself even if he might get it wrong. (I'm not saying he is wrong.) Discussing things when your opinion differs is often a good way to better understanding.

Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I disagree with your #9.

You don't have to overcome the whole 0.7-0.9 difference, just about half of it -- as we saw with 15 opposite 14, the trick difference was about 1/2 and the matchpoint result was about 50/50. And, that's if you only consider the hands with a 44 fit and not the hands were one investigates and comes up empty.

I used 15 to give it a worst case flavor. (When I started, I was sure that skipping Stayman was going to be a winner even given the worst case.) You are right that if opener's range was 15-17, then the choice between 3N and a 44 major suit fit would be closer. Yes, thanks. Now fixed.

On an unrevealing auction like 1N-3N, declarer's advantage is probably between 1/4 and 1/2 trick. (This is not just a guess, I did work on this about 10 years ago, even had three others working with me to check the work, but I use "probably" so as not to make any unproven claims.) So, I think blasting with a 4333 10 count is right. Of course, if your range is really 14+-17- instead of 15-17, that may be a different story.

Tim: Can you try it with a 4333 and 12 HCP? 14? south 4(432) with 15 HCP north 4333 with 12 HCP 757 deals tricks in spades: 10.09 tricks in no trump: 9.36 difference: 0.73 tricks matchpoint for 3N: 46.2% south 4(432) with 15 HCP north 4333 with 14 HCP 384 deals tricks in spades: 10.74 tricks in no trump: 10.28 difference: 0.46 tricks matchpoint for 3N: 49.1% Decreasing sample size is because the dealer was set to stop generating after 100,000,000 even if 1000 matches were not found. Maybe I'll up the number of generated hands to increase the sample to 1000 deals, but maybe not...

I would not be surprised if the extra information provided to the opponents is more significant than the 45% v 55% advantage of the 44 fit. But, the value of the extra information is difficult to quantify and I would not want to leap to any conclusions...

I believe it used to be that you could not have two gold point events starting the same session. So, you couldn't hold a compact KO and a MP Pairs concurrently. What you seem to be suggesting, and I agree, is that there are just way too many gold point events. At the NABC level they have added Platinum points to distinguish the "real" events from the others. Maybe it would be a good idea to have one event at each regional be the premier event and award a different color point in that event. And then replace the gold point requirement with this new-color point requirement. Trouble is, while ACBL may want to make it a bit harder to attain life master rank, they don't want to go too far -- the chase for life master is a HUGE marketing hook. We should realize that no changes that would significantly decrease the percentage of life masters will ever be made. (Fun as it is to grumble about.)

FYP

Sorry about the bad data/conclusions. This time I have done: south 4(432) with 15 HCP north 4333 with 10 HCP 1000 deals average tricks in spades: 9.305 average tricks in NT: 8.383 difference: 0.922 tricks For each of the 1000 deals, I compared the double dummy result in 3N to the double dummy result in 4S and assigned 1 point for a better score in 3N, 1/2 point for a tie, and 0 points for a better result in 4S. The total was 459. I hope this means that if you play in 3N while the field is playing 4S (and everyone plays double dummy) you will score 45.9% in the long run. As before: One must consider that these are double dummy results and that declarer's real world advantage will be greater when the auction is 1N-3N than when the auction is 1N-2C-2D-3N, 1N-2C-2M-3N, or 1N-2C-2M-4M. So, you must not only consider the relative merits of NT vs 44 when there is a fit, but the cost of investigation both when there is a fit and when there is no fit. Thanks, Adam, for pointing out my error.

I think it just shows that you think you might make 4S opposite a fair share of minimum raises.

You are correct: I did not read the data properly. I'll edit the post in a bit so that the wrong conclusions don't accompany the data for all eternity.

Edit: awm pointed out that my conclusions were faulty, I'm going to rerun the simulations with bigger sample sizes and (I hope) better address the MP angle.