david_c

Same here.

Yeah, that's what our family plays too (♥-♣-♦-♠-NT), except that the number of cards decreases from 10 to 1. We call it "contract whist".

Or maybe he never saw it? From your description it did not seem like the TD was at the table when you wrote that. And there really isn't any excuse for making comments like that. The fact that it happened to be true is irrelevant. It would be unacceptable to say it even after you'd seen the opponent's hand.

I used to play this thing, with 2♦ = (mini-)multi 2♠ = 5 spades and a 4+ minor Actually I'd be rather surprised if this wasn't the "normal" approach. It's what Rigal's book on Precision suggests. I don't like methods where 2♠ doesn't show spades.

I've played something like this both in a 2/1-like system and in my current Polish Club system. (Link) Requiring "6+ diamonds or a singleton" is rather unusual. More common is to allow 5♦422 hands as well - and IMO this is a superior idea. I would hate to have to open these hands 1♣. Assuming that 1♦ : 1M , 1NT is natural I would like to open 1♦ on most 5♦332 hands as well. Particularly when the doubleton is weak (intending to raise if partner responds in one of our 3-card suits). In fact I don't think this is close - you would much rather be opening 1♦ on these hands compared to a "short" club. Having said that, in my partnerships we don't open 1♦ on 5♦332. This is for two reasons: 1. We play opener's 1NT rebid as artificial. Basically we are sacrificing opening 1♦ on 5♦332 hands in order to get better continuations for the unbalanced hands. This is particularly important for us because we open 1♦ on 4♦5♣ hands as well. 2. I'm playing Polish Club where the 1♣ opening is more descriptive than a "short" 1♣ opening, so I have more up-side to opening 1♣. If you're playing more standard methods then neither of these would apply so I would much prefer to open 1♦ on 5♦332.

Yeah, the diamond was led through partner. Sure it would make things easier if he went up with the king (and this would be the only defence if he did not hold the ♣9) but that seems to be an even harder defence to find at the table.

Well, here is the full hand: [hv=d=e&v=n&n=skthkq652dk95ca92&w=sqj9765h9dq63cj84&e=sa82ha7djt8ck7653&s=s43hjt843da742cqt]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] It seems the only way to take the contract off legitimately at this point is to win the ♦A and lead the ♣T. Anything else and declarer will make it if she plays correctly. (I tried the ♣Q which made it easy.) This hand was from a teams-of-8 match. My teammate Michael Byrne was faced with the same situation and found the ♣T play. In fact our team had three good scores on this board (I think they were +300, +140, +50) and we still lost IMPs. :)

I've seen this hand before! I was given it in a U25 training session (and got it wrong). Hidden:

No, you're South.

[hv=d=e&v=n&w=sqj9765h9dq63cj84&s=s43hjt843da742cqt]266|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] W N E S - - 1NT P 2♥ Dbl 2♠ 4♥ 4♠ Dbl AP. 1NT was 12-14, 2♥ was a transfer and 2♠ promised three. The play goes (standard carding): S: ♥J - ♥9 - ♥2 - ♥A E: ♥7 - ♥8 - ♠5 - ♥6 W: ♠Q - ♠K -♠A -♠3 E: ♠2 - ♠4 -♠J - ♠T W: ♦3 - ♦5 - ♦J - How do you defend?

Overrated. :)

I've nearly said it a few times, but so far I've always been able to catch myself just in time :P

I think you've messed up the calculations. This 19.86% is not "of the hands where at least one of the lines fails", it's 19.86% of all hands. Since both lines succeed about three quarters of the time, you need to multiply your 19.86% by four. [Edit: actually that only applies to the first two parts of the calculation, so it's less than 4 x 19.86%.]

And I can't understand why you think it's only a "small" extra chance. Maybe I misunderstand your line, but you said it picks up ♣J with LHO or ♣K with RHO; that's about 75% just in the club suit. Whereas the percentage play for two tricks in clubs is over 90%. That seems like a huge extra chance to me, much more than you can get back from the red suits.

I'm really surprised. I don't disagree with the percentages. But ♣A and duck a club is still above 85% a priori, and in nearly all of the losing cases LHO would have led a club, not a spade, from his holding. Personally I would lead a club if I had to choose between ♠JTxx and ♣KJxx. But even if you don't agree with that, LHO could still have ♠Jxxx or ♠Txxx, and now he would surely prefer a club lead if he had ♣KJxx. Even if LHO does have ♣KJxx he might misdefend by going in with the jack.

I don't understand why you played off both top hearts first. Aren't you now in danger of going off when LHO has, say, ♣KJx? Sure your line sets up two club tricks in that case, but won't the opponents take two clubs, two spades and a heart first?

Well you can't test for 3-3 diamonds, if that's what you mean, because that might set up a diamond trick for the opps to go with their four black-suit tricks. But I guess you can play off just the ace and queen.

I think it's better to duck the second round of clubs completely, like sambolino said. This picks up Jx with RHO and only loses to KJxx with LHO -- and surely with that holding LHO might have led a club, rather than leading from a bad 4-card spade suit. So ace of clubs, duck a club. This seems so good on the lead that the chances in the red suits can be ignored completely.

It gets my vote too. Perhaps there have been matches which have had even better quality tennis, and perhaps there have been matches with an even more dramatic ending (I saw the 2001 Wimbledon final and I'll never forget that). But for a combination of things -- a match involving two of the best players ever; Federer coming back from two sets down and saving match points in the fourth; a 9-7 finish that could have gone either way; the way the result ended Federer's five-year run at Wimbledon and challenged his position as the best player in the world; and, most of all for me, the way they were both playing some incredible tennis at the most important stages of the match -- this was really pretty special.

I don't agree. You can't have rules which allow people not to show up whenever they don't want to play. 0 VPs is a good starting point, and deals with the cases where it was not the team's fault (e.g. illness), but in more serious cases it may not be sufficient punishment. Like in the examples in this thread where a team could forfeit the match in order to help out another team. I would expect a team that does this to be not only disqualified but its members banned from playing in the next championships as well. So I don't think that writing fixed penalties into the conditions of contest is the way to go. The tournament organisers have to write their rules so that they have the option of disqualification; but in order that they can deal with these politically-sensitive situations they have to give themselves some flexibility.

Average plus/minus is whatever the tournament organiser wants it to be (see Law 86A - new laws, remember). Besides, tournament organisers have essentially unlimited powers to come up with their own methods of scoring, and so if they want unplayed matches to be VPed differently to the sum of 20 unplayed boards, that's up to them. I actually don't think there's any implication that "average plus" for a match is related to "average plus" for a board. They are analogous ideas but entirely independent. Put me down for 0 VPs for the offending side, and some complicated formula (not less than 18) for the non-offending side. I think if a team has told the organisers in advance of the event that they have a problem, then no further action needs to be taken. You can't accept their entry, knowing of the problem, and then chuck them out. But a team can't just choose not to turn up - now they do have to be disqualified I think.

Depends on the food really. Bread gets thrown out as soon as any mould appears. Whereas with fruit I just throw out the mouldy ones.

Just saw this which I thought was amusing:

It may not technically be a "designation", but I believe an inadvertently played card can be corrected. This happens with some frequency with bidding boxes -- a player intends to bid 2S, but pulls out 2H instead, when he sees 2H on the table he may immediately (without pause for thought) correct the mechanical error. I believe the same would apply to an inadvertently played card as long as the correction was made without pause for thought. No, the rules for bidding are different to the rules for the play. You can change an inadvertent call but not an inadvertent play.

It's very common here in England. County leagues and the less serious KO competitions are nearly always 24-board matches, split into two sets of 12, with a compulsory change of opponents at half time.