Trumpace

There was no intervening bidding by opps. Also, the opps never got a chance to double hearts or diamonds as we never bid them. (I dont remember exact auction given, but I remember the above details). plaur, .

[hv=v=n&n=sj542h2djt982cak2&s=saq83hak87654d3c3]133|200|Scoring: Rubber Contract 6♠. Lead ♦K followed by ♦A[/hv] What is your plan? Adv/+ please hide your answers.

[hv=n=sakhaqjtdqjt9c943&s=sh98da43cakqjt876]133|200|Scoring: Rubber Contract 7♣. West leads ♠Q.[/hv] Plan your play in this club grand slam on the lead of spade Queen. Adv/+ please hide your answers.

I would suggest you study the suit combinations, concentrating on the why rather than the how. A slow process, but very useful. Systemic agreements usually need to be remembered, even if you understand the why (and sometimes, there is no clear answer to why) With suit combinations, once you carefully study a reasonable number of them you should be able to apply the knowledge to any other combination at the table. Once you are confident with suit combinations as declarer, revisit them, this time from the point of view of defence.

IMPS, N/S vul. [hv=n=s5h2dakq972c98542&s=sj743hak85d53cakt]133|200|Lead ♥ Q[/hv] West leads ♥ Q. What is your plan?

By juniors do you mean intermediate players or players whose age is no more than 25 (but can be advanced) ? Anyway here are a few (mostly basic) ones: 1) AKJTx opp xxx for no losers. 2) AKJTxx opp xx for no losers. 3) AQTxx opp xxxx for no losers. 4) AQTxx opp xxxx for 1 loser. 5) Axxxx opp QJ9 for no losers. Say you lead the Q from hand and it gets covered by K. What next? (Must think about the skill of opps). Some endplay situations: Assume you have eliminated other suits and have entries in trumps. 0) AQT opp xxx for 2 winners 1) AQ9 opp xxx for 2 winners 2) ATxx opp Qxx for 2 winners 2.1) Suit is 4-2 and west has 4 2.2) Suit is 4-2 and east has 4.

One question that bothers me is, how did pelethan actually manage to create an account? If it is a bot (as seems possible from the multiple forum posts), it must be a really clever bot which bypassed the security mechanism we have in place (an image which shows a alphanumeric word which you have to type in), or, there must be some bug in the forum software which pelethan used to get in. Maybe we need a better security mechanism in place (or is that a forum software thing that cannot be changed?) or perhaps need an upgrade to software to fix bugs?

If the bot posts a link, which when clicked exploits some of the bugs in I.E/Firefox, chances are, of the 100s of forums these get posted to, quite a few people will click on those links, especially after initially seeing seemingly harmless posts like this. Clever example of social engineering.

What is the vulnerability? (Question to the experts: Could East have bid 5C (or 4NT) over 4S, showing support for either minor?) Does Apstro show 5-4 or 5-5 ? What about point count? how many does that show? Does it change based on whether it is weak NT or strong NT? The situation till now: West has shown up/promised 2 spades, 5 hearts and very likely at least 4 clubs. He has space for no more than 2 diamonds. Counting points, West had J spade, K heart and perhaps KJ of clubs. Assuming apstro can show either of 5-4 and 5-5 and could be weak (around 8 points), I will finesse East for the DQ by leading the 9. This caters to 5-5 rounded with West and in case west is 5-4, finesse is better odds than drop assuming Apstro can show 8 points (although the fact that East did not bid 5!C/4NT over 4S probably means he has only 3 diamonds) (btw, before trying to guess diamonds, I think we should have ruffed the last heart and played out trumps looking for any information from the discards.)

What is a limit opening? You are perhaps right about such a system giving an advantage, but, at a local club level I think that the bidding system would hardly matter. If people go down in a cold 4H contracts, how do you think they will do when they bid a thin one requiring very careful play. And, I don't even want to talk about the defense. Also, i guess the point of this thread was not bidding systems, but the bridge laws which are enforced, perhaps to the annoyance of people. I do agree with many people, that "this is a relaxed game" is not an excuse for not enforcing laws against silly cheating, like asking about a particular suit bid and having partner lead that suit etc. I also agree with people when this law enforcement goes too far, it can be really annoying. People seem to be so paranoid of UI that they jump on any action which could lead to UI, even if there was no actual UI. Hesitations are ok, if the partner of the hesitator does not make use of that information... Don't jump on me for taking 15 seconds for a bid. Jump on my partner if he makes use of that break in tempo.

We need an UNDO, there is no question about that. And yes, the actual results are not important (I don't know if _I_ said that earlier...) Having an UNDO in fact supports the above statement. I would not want to play a silly game due to a bad bid/play(misclick/whatever) by an opponent which would give _me_ good results. I want to play a good game, which will help me improve my game, and I would not want to capitalize on silly errors like opps clicking the wrong card, or giving the wrong blackwood response. If I find that the opps are cheating, rejecting undos will not help me improve my game anyway and I will just leave that table. (I haven't yet encountered that situation). In competitive bridge, it is different, as you are playing to win.

I don't think this will work. You want people to go to the trouble of clicking at least 2 times each time they want to make a bid or play, so that you can reject an undo, claiming that it cannot be a misclick. We cannot affect the whole BBO membership just to make sure that people don't cheat using the undo button. btw, if people wanted to cheat, they have better options available, which I don't see how we can prevent using software. If you make the multiple click thing optional, you might turn it on, but it won't help you with the undo problem, as you have to convince your opps to turn it on. You will be in the same situation as before. Reject all undos. If you make this so that the table host can turn it on, good luck finding opps.

Sorry if this was asked before. Can we also save the profile of the players in the hand records? This might be useful to some when they browse the traveller... Thanks.

I guess the point was, if you realize there was a defensive/declarer mistake, don't compliment the winners. If you really think that partner/opp played well, go ahead and compliment. (making/breaking the contract should not be considered "playing well") Reminds me of this incident I was playing with a partner (who I know is definitely an expert). I got too optimistic (read stupid) and landed in a 6S contract (doubled) where even making 5S was not clear. I managed to escape with down 1 with some careful play (which I am happy about) . The first words from partner's mouth: "well done". He hadn't spoken a word in the couple of hands before. And another one.. I was playing with an unknown partner, who claimed to be advanced and we were defending. In the middle of the hand it was clear that dummy, which had a couple of top club tricks was inaccesible to declarer and he would go down if we didn't allow him to reach the dummy. It was my partner's turn to play and he played a club (which would allow declarer to reach dummy and make the contract), I was shocked, but was relieved to see pard ask for an undo and opp accept it. Pard thought for a while (or visited the facility maybe :-)), and played the same club again! I burst out with a "lol". When declarer made the contract, partner said, "well done opps". That comment really annoyed me. I could not help it, and blurted out that the club return gave the contract away... Why am I mentioning this? I foget the point I was trying to make! [Ahh yes... I am usually pretty tolerant and silent during the play, but comments like wdo, wdp, when they don't deserve it can be really annoying]

In the Main Bridge Club, I usually always grant an undo during bidding. During the play I grant an undo only if the card I played is not the cause of the undo (which is clear most of the time) or if the undo request was very quick. I don't understand why people are such sticklers to law in social situations (like some tables in MBC). Perhaps I should move to the "relaxed" club :rolleyes:

Talking of side conversations, what do you think of passing beer around, talking about walking a dog etc. Why don't the "police" take action against them? About the f2f tourney issue, the players are there to _compete_ in bridge. They can talk as they please, as long as they are not violating any bridge rules. It is not a social game. Did it occur to you that they might not be proficient in English and might be having a hard time talking in English? In addition to the pressure of competing now they have the additional pressure of "not being rude" to the opponents... They should have bothered to learn all the other languages of all their opps, how rude. Maybe everyone should just be silent lest they offend someone. Speaking a language (in some cases English) which your opps can hardly understand is "rude", isn't it? btw, why does it bother people if ur opps talk in a language you don't understand? During the hand it makes sense, but not after the hand. If they are talking too loudly or affecting the time etc, then it is a different matter. How do you know that the _whole_ community of kibitzers is being offended? What makes the person commenting "english only, your rudeness", think they speak for the _whole kibitzer community_, especially an online one?

Off Topic: I don't agree with your 2NT comment. If the rest of the field is in 3NT, just play to make 2NT and hope they go down. What would anti-percentage even mean here? Back on Topic: Whether it is Matchpoints/ IMPS/ Rubber, I would recommend reading S.J Simon's "Why You Lose at Bridge" first, especially the chapters about ignoring odds and doubling. The book is mainly about rubber, but I believe reading this would immensely help even the MP/IMP players.

I am not sure if someone suggested this before, but colour coding the skill level of people in the table list would be a great help. For instance we can go with the karate belt colouring. Black would be reserved for World Class. Also, off topic question: What is the difference between a Novice and a Beginner?

cnszsun I too think that is the right play. When i looked at the traveller for this hand, there were only 2 tables which took your line. (The first two tricks were similar, except some RHOs played the ♠Q on trick two)

Assume expert opps. You hold [hv=s=sakjhaq876dq65c32]133|100|[/hv] you are non-vul vs opps vul. After 2 passes, you bid 1♥. LHO overcalls 2♦ and pd bids 2♥. You feel optimistic and bid 3♥, which partner passes. LHO leads the ♣A and switches to the ♠2 (apparently singleton). [hv=n=st863hkj5d93cqjt6&s=sakjhaq876dq65c32]133|200|Lead: ♣A followed by switch to ♠2.[/hv] What is your plan?

Welcome and enjoy your stay!

Dont know. How about trying to ruff in hand 2-3 times, planning to throwin the opps on the 10th trick: with ATx trumps opp KJ or KJx left. Cash ♣K and play a diamond... see what happens now.

This discussion about spade leads reminds me of the following rule which intermediates apply blindly: "Lead through dummy's strength". Dummy had bid spades with AKTxx of spades and LHO had QJx. The opening lead was the spade Q (against a NT game). Pretty silly application of the rule.

Assume the 1) and 2) below are trump suits. How do you play the below 2 suit combinations for the loss of no tricks? 1) [hv=n=sxxx&w=s&e=s&s=sakjtx]399|300|[/hv] 2) [hv=n=sxxx&w=s&e=s&s=sakjtx]399|300|[/hv] 3) After answering 1 and 2, now consider the following hand. [hv=n=sxxhxxxdakqxcakqx&s=sakjtxxhxxdxxxcxx]133|200|Scoring: IMP Contract 5♠. Opponents win the first two heart tricks and lead a third heart. East has shown 4-4 in majors. [/hv] South is in Contract of 5♠. East had shown 4-4 in majors sometime during the bidding. Opps win the first two heart tricks and lead a third heart. Plan the play. Advanced+ please hide your answers.

Thanks for the explanation!