Elianna

Others have covered the tipping issue, so I'll leave that to them. Some things that you may want to be aware of driving-wise is that you are allowed to make rights on red-lights (except in downtown areas or where there are posts indicating otherwise), and people will get upset with you if you don't. Also, in LA at least, many streets do not have left turn signals, and common traffic ettiquette is that people pull out to the middle of the street to wait for open space. I have been told that if you get in an accident, you're actually at fault if you do that, so I'm not saying you should do it, just if you're in the left turn lane, and you don't, and people honk at you, that's why. Lastly, I've found that if you are driving normally, and signal, SOMEONE will let you in (not necessarily everyone, but someone) but that only applies in LA, not in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, they drive like they are playing a video game. Restaurants in L.A. that I absolutely miss include Sunnin on Westwood Blvd in West LA, and Nyala on Fairfax in Little Ethiopia. Adam wants me to add in Brent's, which is in the Valley, on Parthenia. Sunnin is Lebanese food, and I recommend getting lots of appetizers to share, especially the humus and sanbousek, and if they have the stuffed zuccini special you should get it. Nyala is Ethiopian, and they have recommendations on their menu, which you can trust (but we've never had any of the fish dishes so can't attest to that). You should definitely expect to share food there, it's served communally. Lastly, Brent's is a Jewish Deli, and I love their pastrami sandwich, but it's A LOT of food. I really enjoyed parking at Santa Monica beach, and walking down the beach to Venice and back. Adam recommends the car museum on Wilshire on the Miracle Mile. I also highly recommend the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena. It is gorgeous there, plus they have interesting editions of historic books (like an Ellesmere Chaucer and a Guttenberg Bible) and lots of information about U.S. and California history if you're interested. There also are art museums on the grounds. And the grounds are just extensive and lovely and relaxing. One of my favorite places in LA. While you're in Pasadena, you could go to my favorite Thai restaurant, Saladang. It's on Fair Oaks. My favorite dish there is their green curry with tofu. I don't really have recommendations for the Bay Area. Lick Observatory is interesting, but I can't really recommend the drive up there to anyone, and I'm not 100% certain it's open in winter. Adam recommends seeing one of the Redwood Forest parks up here and touring Alcatraz. He also says that the Computer Museum and Intel museum are worth the visit. I think that Disneyland is much better than California Adventure, but I'm a Disney fan. Honestly, if you're not into Disney, I'd recommend bypassing all amusement parks (as you can find them anywhere) and concentrate on seeing other sides of CA. Also, Phil gives many options, but no way would I think that you can do even half of that in a few weeks. For example, give yourself at least three days to drive up the coast from LA, because it would not be a fun vacation for you to try to do it in less. Also, some of those are nice if you want to have a relaxing vacation, but not necessarily "things to see in CA", IMO.

I agree that normally Drury asks "do you have a sub-opener?" Adam and I approach it more as asking "Are you interested in game opposite an invite?" We feel that having partner bid 2 of the Major denying interest in game (but still could have an opening hand) has the advantage of making it slightly more dangerous for opponents to come in. Plus our method means that we're slightly more likely to have the natural meaning of 2 of a minor come up. I think (as with all system decisions) it's a choice of what you're more interested in showing, and what you're more willing to give up. I would say that if you don't have a weak 2♦ bid, then you SHOULD play 2♣=Drury, for reasons that Justin noted. But to address what he said, we don't open really bad hands in 3rd/4th chair, and so the few times that responder bids over the auction pass-1H-2D-2H, we either end up in game (and make) or are in a perfectly reasonable 3H contract. (Usually responder only bids on a really unbalanced hand with four card support.)

We tend to keep it simple, and play the same thing as we would in the auction 1M-2M. Also, our 2♦ bid is a bit more wide-range than it seems that you state that it is. It could contain good 9 point hands. Anyway, here are our follow-ups: 2 of the major = not interested in game opposite a regular limit raise (doesn't deny a real opening hand, but usually has at most 13 HCP). Responder can bid over that with very good reason (we don't open balanced 8 counts even in third chair). bids below 3 of the major are help-suit-game tries (but could be advanced cues), 3 of the major is highly invitational, jumps to a new suit right below game are splinter slam tries.

I prefer having 2♦ be Drury, leaving 2♣ as natural, because we have a weak 2♦ bid (and not a weak 2♣) bid which changes the frequencies (slightly) of which minor we'd prefer to bid naturally over 1M as a passed hand. I should point out that we don't bid 2♣ with ANY hand that would bid a weak 2♣, it's more of a 8/9-11 hand. We = Adam + me, or me + other partners.

Thank you for clarifying. No one was asking that question, and it wasn't clear to me what jurisdiction OP was in (I'm bad at remembering everyone's jurisdiction). I asked because in mine, only the support double is alertable, both penalty and TO are not.

I am curious whether double as penalty is alertable in your jurisdiction. If it's not, then I don't think that S has any case, because by passing an unalerted and unasked double, he could be passing a penalty double.

I don't agree with many of your ideas, to put it mildly. But to massage one of your ideas, perhaps a suggestion would be that people can tick off some number of languages they speak (maybe the top 20 by world population, or bridge population?), and when you set up a table, you can make a requirement that only people who've ticked off a certain language are allowed to join? That way I don't inadvertently join a Turkish-only table and make it unpleasant for all involved, and Pirate can have his English-speaking table. I can't imagine requiring that all BBO players speak English, though. What do you propose, kick off people who speak eight languages and say sorry, you need to learn English before we'll allow you to play with those of us who've only bothered to learn one language? And what level of English should we require? Because based on previous posts in this forum, there are many extremely active BBO players who think that they know English, but can't get their thoughts across in written form. Should we ban them too? I think that's rather silly.

Strictly speaking, this is not a reverse. But I agree, I bid 4♣. After 4th suit GF, I will try to further describe my hand, if possible.

When I directed I almost always had a NS sitout. This was usually because I faced the scenario of 17 pairs want to sit NS, and 12 pairs want to sit EW. Having NS sit out at least lets me have one more pair get to be NS.

If the cop were giving warnings to people who were his/her friends, or had donated a lot of money to the police ball, and only giving tickets to people he/she didn't like, then yes, I'd complain.

Even in the National level events, application of the rules is arbitrary. Adam and I have already told the story of a teammate's cellphone going off gave us a full-board penalty, while the cell phone of a different person going off in the same event only earned a 1/3 of a board penalty. Also, when I was in a national room (I can't remember if it was when I was playing or kibitzing, so I can't state which event), I heard a cell phone go off and give a lot of rings, and a nearby director made no effort to find out whose cell phone it was (not that I really blame him, that is not the fun part of the job).

The 3-day LM Pairs has a 0-5000 counterpart running at the same time (like the BRPs). It also has a 0-1500 too, btw.

What was good about learning Hungarian was that it was so different than all the other languages I've attempted to learn, so there wasn't going to be a case of my attempting to use vocab/grammar from a different language in it (like French and Spanish). I started learning Hungarian because I studied abroad there. Now I would say that I can't speak it at all, but I can take a running stab at common phrases, know my numbers, and know how to say that I don't speak Hungarian, and speak a little Hungarian. I could likely read a child's picture book. :) But darned if I could pronounce the difference o or u with an umlaut over it correctly (sorry, don't have an appropriate keyboard).

English 1 Hebrew 3/5 (depends if we're discussing oral language, or require any literacy skills) French 6 Spanish 6 (But I'm working on it) Hungarian 7 Farsi 7 (I added some that I feel are even worse than sub-par, but I do have a passing familiarity with and have attempted to learn in the past.)

Saying "no conventional meaning", is very different than "undiscussed" (or "no partnership agreement"). I would interpret the first as either "it doesn't have a conventional (usually take-out) meaning" but the second as "I want it to mean something, but haven't discussed it with partner, so he's going to guess as much as you are". I think that the first does not seem to cover the situation you describe, and the second is closer, but it sounds like you might expect that partner knows (and so it is up to you to decide what is ethically valid to state). I know that it may seem that we're piling up on you, and I'm sorry if I'm adding to that. I just wanted to point out that sometimes it's valid to say that you and your partner have not discussed something (although then some may say that perhaps you shouldn't be bidding it, but that's an argument for a different thread) but that saying "no conventional meaning" does not get that particular point across.

This somewhat matches with my understanding, too. I can definitely corroborate the statement that U.S. citizens living abroad must file income tax returns, but am not sure about what they have to pay. I do know that it gets VERY complicated if any of their income is coming from the U.S. (like they work for an American company abroad, have income from investments in the U.S. or interest from American savings accounts.) but don't know exactly how it works.

That was interesting. It seems that I haven't played enough recently. My completion rate was "unknown"

Off the top of my head I would change not thinking about partner's bids to not thinking of the auction in general. Or add not thinking enough about the opponents' bids. For example, if you are declaring, and LHO was dealer and passed, and you see that LHO has shown up with an AK, and an A, you know that she does not have a missing Q (unless she misbid).

I just want to point out, that the reason it's blue on the convention card is because you're supposed to announce it. It's not announceable because it's blue. (I just wanted to clarify the cause and effect.) And you should report that conversation to the director, who should clarify the requirements of active ethics for your opponents.

Yes you can. Although there have been cases of people with the name Kate Middleton (who were not THE Kate Middleton) who had their FB accounts shutdown due to suspicion of fake names.

2C - 2D (2C = artificial, 2D = GF) 2NT - 3C (2NT = 22-24, 3C = muppet stayman) 3D - 3S (3D shows at least one four card major, 3S promises 4 hearts) 3NT - 6H (3NT denies 4 hearts) What do you think responder has, and what do you think declarer should do with KTxx AQx Ax AKQx ?

1. I don't know. But I think that you should tell them, because they can at least make sure that opps don't unknowingly use this in future GCC events. At least the organizers/directors could contact headquarters and ask them what to do. 2. See above, because you don't know who you would help (could be the pair representing you, could be the fourth place pair). 3. If you have doubt about a convention's legality, you should call a director. Adam used to look at opp's convention card, and call the director before the round started, but has stopped doing that for several reasons. I call the director when the bid occurs, because that's when I think that the irregularity (if there was one) occurred.

NOT giving the child puberty-delaying drugs is a life-changing decision. It means that one is deciding that the child will become a man physically, and would have to go through a lot more trauma (both physically and mentally) to change that. Giving the the child puberty delaying drugs DELAYS the life-changing decision. Honestly, if this were my child, I do not know how I would feel about SURGERY at age 11. I also would be very upset about all this publicity and invasion of our home life. So I can't say what ultimate decision I would make, but NOT making a decision seems like the best choice. I would bet money (and I'm not a gambler) that the percentage of men who have a gender identity/physical gender mismatch who have lesbian parents would not be more than the percentage of men who have lesbian parents in general. And to be honest, I feel that I've met many more more vehemently anti-female men (both gay and straight) than I've met anti-male women (in fact, I feel that I've met more anti-female women than anti-male women). This may be a generational thing, though. ETA: I do not know if you actually believe this, but it sounds that you are saying that some women are lesbians because they're anti-male. This may be the wrong thread for a discussion about this, so I'll just say that I hope that this is not a commonly held (misogynistic) belief.

Honestly, I don't understand what role you think that their "lesbianism" would play. I don't think that I want to be enlightened, either. The point is that NOT giving the child puberty-delaying drugs IS making a decision that will affect that child's future, and quite adversely, too, it seems. Giving the child drugs to delay puberty delays the critical time to make a decision. Hopefully this will give all people involved a few more years to decide on what the correct decision is.

If spades break 2-2, 6 spades looks pretty nice. I'm really tired, so I may be wrong about that.