AL78

Rubber bridge would be best for working people, where you can cut in and out when you like. There are very few rubber bridge evenings in my area, the dominant bridge variety is duplicate with a bit of teams.

I often enjoy the EBU 12 board sessions starting at 7:30 pm, finishing at 9 pm. Gives me a chance after the session to do some food shopping at my local supermarket, and have enough time to wind down before going to bed. It is certainly preferable to playing on the Friday club session with its 3 or four table movement and (if you are unlucky) a four or five board sitout (last Friday they only had two tables and abandoned the session).

They at least take +500 which is better than +150 for letting them play it undoubled. West can't do anything about East's silence, but they can take the initiative themself. The double may also inspire East to bid 4♠, especially if North runs to 4♥.

Can't West double when it came back round to them? From their perspective, where are NS's tricks coming from.

The very rigid structure which often conflicts with work and meal times. You have to start at a specific time which is very close to a natural evening meal time and you have to stay there for the full session, and by the time the evening is over and I have got home, it can well past 11 pm if it has been an evening where the slowest players have all decided to turn up, not much time to wind down and relax before going to bed. When I used to play badminton socially, I could turn up and leave whenever was convenient between the hours of 8pm and 10 pm. If the session starts at 7pm which it does for some of my club games, it is almost impossible (I have to be lucky) to play on those evenings because I cannot get to the club in time straight from work, and I am only half an hour away by car. On the evenings that start at 7:30pm, if I want to play, I have to take an evening meal with me and eat at work before going straight to the club upon leaving (or else wait until I get home at 11 pm or later, do you fancy eating a meal minutes before going to bed?), and I have to hope my manager doesn't want a 30 minute discussion five minutes before I am about to leave. When you also add the potential issue of childcare (which I don't have), that can make things even more problematic for evening games. Retired people don't have full time jobs and don't do full time childcare in general, they can start cooking an evening meal at 5:30pm if they need to whilst I am still in the office.

The bias towards older people is extremely unlikely every to go away. Duplicate bridge is optimised for retired people, so it should be no surprise when most players you see in clubs are retired people.

I'm not referring to slow play during the hand in question, I'm referring to slow play in the preceeding hands which has put us behind time. It is annoying when your play gets terminated half way through and the board score is estimated.

If you are playing Lebensohl, 3♣ shows game going strength with no obvious rebid. Tends to be a waiting bid denying three card support for opener's first suit and no clear action. In fact, it is usually natural. http://www.omahabridge.org/Library/mh_REVERSES.pdf Based on this, 4♣ looks a reasonable continuation.

Yes you are all right, don't bother with ruffing a diamond, I only need four tricks in each major, so just play on spades and draw trumps. My brain going into pattern recognition mode and automatically acting on the shortage in dummy. As mikeh says, I need to hold back at trick one and think things through more thoroughly. I do have a tendency to play too fast sometimes, doesn't help that there are several slow players at my club.

That is a good point, I am in my 40's so haven't received a first vaccine yet. Even with widespread vaccination, I feel my club will be slow to open and when it does, it will take time for attendance to rise to near normal, on the basis I think fear has now been hardwired into the population, and it is not clear for how long the vaccination will be effective so we might end up with seasonal peaks like flu.

No plans as yet, the UK is one of the world's worst affected countries by population so there is a general feeling of caution about opening things up too quickly.

IMPs [hv=pc=n&s=s65h753dkj93cq965&w=saj732ha96dt7ckt2&n=sk984hk2d654cj873&e=sqthqjt84daq82ca4&d=w&v=e&b=16&a=1sp2hp3hp4hppp&p=h3hah2h4d7d4dqdkh5h6hkh8d6dad3dtd2d9h9d5c2c8cac6hqh7s2s4sqs6s3sks8sts5sjsas9d8c5ckc3c4c9ctc7htcqhjdjs7]399|300[/hv] One of those hands where at first glance it looks straightforward but turns out to be anything but. Trump lead was annoying, I was planning to ruff at least one diamond in dummy. After some consideration I decided to win and immediately go for the diamond ruff via the finesse. If the finesse works I should be able to ruff both losing diamonds. The finesse failed and a trump came back to North's king. Fortunately they didn't have a third trump so after getting back in I was able to ruff one diamond loser. After coming to hand with a club and drawing trumps I ran the spade queen. If that works I'm home, of course the third king is offside as well. I was resigned to going off until it became apparent North had been stripped of diamonds and had to lead a black suit for me to take the rest of the tricks. If there was a better way for me to play that hand let me know.

Yes it is when you are bidding the suit naturally to suggest it as a possible strain to play in. It makes a big difference when the opponents want to get into the auction. The competitive part of the system over 1S natural is going to be different to over 1S could be three.

From the perspective of the opponents it is a psyche, and on this board had the same effect as a successful psyche, whatever you want to call it.

Nice hand to have at IMPs, a double game swing potentially.

Why did you make a decision that the final contract was going to end up in a doomed NT level? I don't think it is a good idea to warp your hand so early in the auction when you know little of what partner has. I'm a believer in bidding according to what you have in your hand with few exceptions. As for the director call, I assume the verdict was hard luck, you got stuffed by a psyche.

Pass. Let the opponents play the misfit hands.

My knowledge of statistical methods is not complete, and I am not familiar with Fisher's exact test. A quick look on Wikipedia and I see where the tea reference comes from.

I believe there is a statistical test, Kolmogorov Smirnov I think, which can be used to test whether two samples come from the same distribution. It is one of those p-value tests where if the p-value is very small, the null hypothesis they are from the same distribution is rejected. If some property of the sets could be quantified numerically, it could be used (e.g. mean HCP North).

As far as I'm concerned there are three types of bridge sessions: 1. Below average HCP, struggele to contribute anything, poor score at the end. Feels like a waste of an evening. 2. Below average HCP, pick up hands where I can at least play an active role even if I have to defend three quarters of the evening. Final score anything from poor to reasonable, a fair or enjoyable evening. 3. I declare on at least a quarter of the hands and/or the hands are biased our way, final score is fair to decent. An enjoyable evening.

I have no agreements with my partners, but I would assume 3m is to play, and pass is no preference, you choose. I have no idea what redouble should mean.

In case anyone is interested, here is the hand. We got 70.5% despite partner thinking there was a winning spade out and so not cashing her spade at the end. https://tinyurl.com/yemtdeae

If West does put East on lead with the ♣K for another spade ruff, partner can ruff with the ace, cross to dummy with the ♥K and cash the spades (since West is now out of hearts). Whether she would do that is another matter, strongest defence is to force her to make a decision she might get wrong.

Here is the full deal with the play: https://tinyurl.com/ygroncug Partner started off with LBengtsson's suggestion and ended up with nine tricks for a decent score, 78%. I was pleased we found the seven card fit with the nice break.

I'm not falling for the result on one hand influencing me excessively thing, I wasn't playing but when I saw this hand, I wondered what I would have lead and struggled to see I would have done any better. I've had this happen before, when RHO has pre-empted high (four or five level) and I have a couple of aces and no safe lead, I've lead the wrong ace and it gets ruffed and sets up a ton of discards from dummy's now established suit.