david_c

Indeed, we could do with a "reject all and reserve seat" option.

Also the inevitable advertisement: playing 2♣ as "natural or balanced" works well with KI (precisely because you can't bid a natural 1♠ on hands like this) and decent continuations will allow North to find out that opener is 5-4 in hearts and clubs with shortage in diamonds, and has a dead minimum in terms of controls. North then knows enough to sign off even without asking for aces.

I think a direct raise from opener should show some extra values, so I'd start 1♥ : 2♣ , 2♥ : 2NT , 3♣. Now you'd love to have a relay available in this situation (you want some way for opener to show his diamond shortage), but without any system available I suppose I'd raise to 4♣ inviting partner to cue-bid. Opener's hand is pretty bad, but still probably worth co-operating given that he's already shown a minimum. So I suppose you'll only stop short of slam if and when you find out how many aces you've got.

2♠. I can't remember ever opening a weak two on a seven-card suit before, but this looks like it might be the hand.

Yep, I agree with everyone else, this is a pass. On the other hand, I seem to remember bidding 3♣ on this hand and scoring up +150 for two overtricks. Easy game :rolleyes:

There are a few places where I think Gerben's ideas don't quite work, which maybe can be best explained by looking at how other SOs do it: First, from the EBU: I think that the words "does not show any other suit" are an essential part of the regulation (as mycroft's examples demonstrate). [Note: Some people believe that a call can be "natural" even if it promises length in another suit as well as in the suit bid. I prefer the EBU's definition whereby such calls are not natural. But whatever you call them, everyone agrees that these bids should be alertable.] From the ACBL: I really don't think you can do without this either. There are many examples of natural calls which are so unusual that opponents really need to be alerted about them - for example, a penalty double of a 1♠ opening, or a natural non-forcing change of suit response by an unpassed hand. If you want your regulations to be as precise as possible you can try to list all of the situations in which an unusual natural call would need an alert, but it's not clear whether this is workable (even if you did make a list which you thought was complete, would anyone actually read it?) and so the ACBL's approach is very sensible.

I would pass - this hand is not quite good enough for 1NT. I would never ever bid 1♠, it's just not my style.

I'd definitely want to know opps' lead styles on this hand, even if there's a possibility they might falsecard on lead against a slam. Assuming standard leads ... I'd probably win and play a low trump towards the queen. Opps do best to win the king and return a trump, but that still leaves me with lots of chances and they might not get the defence right anyway.

Here in England, this is one of the things where persistent complaints from players led to the rules being changed. The new rule (in the vast majority of competitions, at least) is 8+ HCP.

I wonder what they do on 6-5 hands. The weakness is 1♥/1♠ of course. Personally I think that having "potential canape" on a wide range of strength is not very playable. (blog post)

I've never used either of the colour descriptions. "no-one vulnerable", "favourable", "unfavourable", "both vulnerable".

The hands were [hv=d=e&v=n&n=saq962ht7d54cajt7&w=sj3hq964dj9873c52&e=sk5ha32dtckq98643&s=st874hkj85dakq62c]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] If you reach the five-level you'll have to play it well. Our teammates who had this problem actually bid to 6♠ which had no chance.

Undiscussed, of course. I mean, if you were to insist on having explicit agreements about every bid in the third round of the auction it'd take years of preparation before you and your partner could actually sit down and play a hand! But evidently it shows a hand which is still interested in playing in a spade slam despite the 3NT bid. Deduce what you like from that.

When you say "co-operated", do you think North is obliged to cue-bid in this situation when holding a diamond control, or does it show some additional enthusiasm? (This is a matter of agreement, obviously, but I'd be interested to hear what people thought was normal in this sort of situation.)

[hv=d=e&v=n&s=st874hkj85dakq62c]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] RHO opens a Precision 2♣, and you double for take-out. LHO passes, partner jumps to 4♠ and RHO passes. What do you do now?

[hv=d=w&v=n&n=shk874dakj63cqj74&s=sakqj853ha2d952ck]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] This is an excellent slam, but we stopped short: 1♦ (4+, unbalanced) - 1♠ 2♣ (artificial: shows hearts) - 3♠ (forcing - 2♠ would be invitational) 3NT - 4♣ 4♦ - 4♥ 4♠ - pass The first three bids are automatic in the system, but after that something went wrong. What should have happened differently?

Yep, I agree with Frances. It's interesting to look at "accuracy" from a mathematical point of view, but if I was actually going to play in an event I would prefer it to be scored by straight VPs. (Though, SoS is a good tie-break for teams finishing on equal numbers of VPs. I think it may already be used for that purpose in some cases.)

I can't speak for Adam, but in my opinion it would be quite reasonable to allow Transfer Walsh while not allowing transfer openings. Indeed, here in England we are allowed any meaning for responses, but there are lots of restrictions on opening bids. So at EBU Level 3, Transfer Walsh is allowed but Moscito's transfer openings are not. I don't think this is in any way inconsistent. There are plenty of reasons why opening bids and responses are not comparable situations: - When there have been two bids in an auction, the opponents have much more information than when there has only been one bid. So it is not really fair to compare the opponents' problems after a response to those after an opening bid. - Opener's LHO has already passed, and the opener's side are in a constructive auction, so there is less pressure on opener's RHO to bid. - The opening bid must conform to the regulations. So the opponents are already protected to some extent by the fact that the opening bid cannot be too unusual. - The frequency of the auction 1♣ : pass : 1y is much lower than the frequency of a 1y opening bid. And when the auction does come up, opponents are much less likely to want to bid over the auction 1♣ : pass : 1y than over a 1y opening bid. So, if defending against these responses is a problem, it is not one that matters so often. The same goes for "Stayman" - if Stayman was invented today, it would be allowed, because all responses to 1NT are allowed. Yes, you probably should be able to defend against the strong Pass itself. However, you should not be expected to defend against the nebulous weakness-showing "fert" openings which nearly all Forcing Pass sytems use.

How can a convention become popular if you never allow it? Vicious circle don't you think? :rolleyes: Yes, there is a certain amount of "inertia" in system regulations. I would say that if continuing to allow the Multi would mean it quickly became a popular convention, then the ACBL should allow it. On the other hand, if the Multi would not become a popular convention then the ACBL should not allow it (not in short matches, anyway). This is on the general principle that a convention should be allowed if and only if opponents can be expected to know how to defend against it. (I wrote about this on my blog.) The defence to a convention like Multi is not obvious to someone who has not come across it before, so allowing Multi is only justified if people would come across it often enough that they learn how to defend against it. The ACBL may believe that the Multi will not achieve the level of popularity needed to justify allowing it. I'm not sure whether that's the right decision (I don't know enough about bridge in the ACBL) but if they get this wrong it's still nowhere near as bad as some of the other mistakes they have made. If I was an ACBL member I would be very annoyed, not at the fact that they consider banning Multi, but at the fact that they've spent their time worrying about this when they fail to do anything about the serious ambiguities in the GCC like the one Peter pointed out.

Whether it "should" be the case or not, it is a fact that many events that do not generally allow artificial pre-empts make an exception for Multi because it is a well-known convention. e.g. In the EBU, "The Multi 2♦ has only continued to be allowed at Level 3 because it was a popular agreement long before the present approach to permitted agreements was adopted." [OB 11 G 6]

I dunno, it wouldn't be the worst decision they've ever made. I'd say that in general, pre-empts which don't show a specified suit shouldn't be allowed in events with short rounds. Multi is often an exception (it's not "Brown Sticker") because it has historically been a popular convention, but in the ACBL where it's never been popular there's no particular need for it to be an exception.

I'd probably win the ♣A and run the ♠J immediately. If the ♠J loses to the queen then I'm basically playing for hearts to be 3-3, but there will be some additional chances that I can work out later. If the ♠J holds then I'll run the ♠T next. Again, I haven't worked out all the chances but it looks pretty good. (It's probably guaranteed at this point unless trumps are 1-4).

No, I think he meant what he wrote :) And it seems fine to me, apart from the 2♥ bid maybe :)

Definitely pass. Even though being a passed hand means you have a non-forcing 2♥ bid available, you should still want a better hand than this for the bid. Even if 2♥ was specifically defined as showing a weak hand like this, I would still prefer to pass! I want to stop bidding on this misfit as soon as I can. Incidentally, if you want "new age", for me (playing "Siege" or my variant of Polish Club) the 2♦ rebid would deny four hearts. Problem solved.

As Whereagles says, taking the diamond finesse is clearly wrong, because you need to pick up the trumps for no losers in order to make this contract, and if you can do this then the diamond loser will go away on the ♣Q. So you should only need a two-sided coin :) The normal play in the heart suit is to take the finesse, and really I don't see a good enough reason to consider playing for the drop instead.