mmerz

I agree with this plan, but not with the implication. Wouldn't you make the same calls (X followed by 4S on next round) with this same hand but with spades & diamonds reversed? Or would you give up on diamonds and insist on spades? That would be hard to explain to pard, who passes out with the same hand when five diamonds makes. At high levels, you don't always have the luxury of patterning out. I think you have to show Spades & Diamonds as convenient, whether they are 6-5 or 5-6. -- MM

Regarding this, ignoring the "legalities" (about which I have little to contribute), I have two conflicting thoughts. The first is that for informal pick-up (e.g., individual) games where my partner says "I play 2/1 with double-upside down Drury" (or worse yet, asks to play their info and has 12 conventions listed), I like to be accommodating. In such cases, I may need to take a quick glance online to remind myself of the responses to a 2D rebid... This has nothing to do with regular partnerships, though - just to facilitate pickup games. By contrast, following the "I can review online materials" to its absurdist conclusion, one might believe that some quasi-optimal scientific method would be the best approach to bidding. The reason these don't gain more popularity in "real life" is that the alternate branch on the fifth relay is hard to remember (for both partners). Thus, allowing "reading material" clearly has its limits in terms of fairness. Otherwise, we'll just get into complexities that, for me at least, would damage the game. So, as usual for me, I'm a radical moderate. I say, "sure - check the meaning of a few conventions or twists in informal events and pickup partnerships, but otherwise it's a bad policy. -- MM

As you have perhaps surmised, signalling choices are something of a religious topic. And for every positive in one direction, there's probably an equivalent offset in the other. If you are an intermediate(*) player trying to become advanced(*), then one non-technical argument that I like for switching around is that it forces you to focus on your signals more. And one of the things that better players do is choose and read signals better. So if you want to get better at signalling, then switching signalling methods every session will exercise your brain. It might also lead to some interesting and worthwhile post-mortem discussions, if you want more of those. -- M "Why did you signal with the 8!? It was the only one I had!" M (*) for some definition of intermediate and advanced. I think of an advanced player as one who routinely signals and can read them. Your standards/labels may differ, but you get my point.

One relatively painless alternative is to view a hand prior to the last hand [one for which there is a result], check the "other table", and click on one player. Then "join table" for that player and, voila!, you are at the other table. Only works with barometer scoring, but that's pretty common. -- MM