Echognome

There's a good chance the auction won't allow us to have a single jump to 2NT when it comes back around to us, but in that case we can always jump to 3NT. What I don't like about a direct 3NT overcall is that partner will never know our hand type. It's much more likely we have a long running suit and stoppers than this balanced moose. At least if we double first, partner has a shot (although I know it's going to be tough to describe this hand).

This one I plan to double and jump bid in NT, but we will obviously have to wait and see what develops.

I'm all for cutting partner some slack when he's under such pressure, but I just have so much that I would take the push. I wouldn't be surprised if we made 7, but not going to try for it with all the bad breaks that are likely.

No call other than pass springs to mind.

Obviously people are answering based on their own styles. I think many of the posters are catering for a manufactured bid, but in different ways. Phil caters for it by making the cheapest rebid and trying to get partner to clarify on the next round, before showing his intentions. To Phil, if partner bids 4♣ that shows a serious club suit and a sets the strain even opposite a manufactured bid. This obviously has the advantage of keeping the bidding lower, but has the downside that responder may have a difficult bid on the next round showing his good (but not serious) club support on the next round. It also make the 3♦ bid less clear. Many others also cater for the possibility, but by having opener's 4♦ bid show that the bid was manufactured. This allows for responder to show genuine club support, but it's not clear (at least to me) what responder does with even better clubs. After opener bids 4♦, how does responder show good clubs with various levels of strength? As Josh said, 4♥ and 4♠ are cues for diamonds. So what are responder's choices with good clubs? 5♣ or 6♣? Yet others don't even cater for the possibility of a manufactured bid (those hands are obviously handled some other way), so for this hand, it becomes an easy 4♣ call.

I think the auction would have gone a lot smoother if your partner had started with 2♣ and I definitely think his hand is worth it given the spade support and source of tricks.

Perhaps that was the better polling hand than the original one. The people I asked all pulled, so I don't think it is resulting. Your polls may vary.

Agree with Josh. Maybe you should have polled the other hand, but partner passing 3NT seems like he's taking a view. From partner's persective, 4♥, 4♠, and 5♣ might all be better contracts. Of course, the only chance he can play in 3NT when it's right is by passing now, but it seems a narrow target.

And what if the player was in the Main Bridge Club on BBO, where there are no directors? It's not easy adapting all of the laws to the online game. I think people will have their personal views and the original poster should note from the reactions that many people will view that you should not accept such a claim. All that being said, I will often auto-accept any claim if I'm not paying attention and the claimant is a credible person.

The auction would help a bit. I think it makes a difference as to how likely the lead was a singleton.

By the way, I am definitely against the cell-phone ban. Seems much ado for little gain. You are much better off having directors monitoring the playing area and the hallways, than you are implementing some silly ban. I think there hasn't been more uproar over the ban, because they were an annoyance with people forgetting to turn them off. Better to create stiff (IMP, MP) fines for the annoyance and remind people to turn them off before the start of play. I thought the cameras on the playing site were a good deterrent, but it's impossible to measure how effective they were.

This reminds me a lot of Gary Becker's famous paper on crime and punishment. Rather than giving the link to the paper, I am attaching the wiki entry for Becker, who is a Nobel prize winning economist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Becker I believe further empirical studies have been done to show that the behavior of criminals is more affected by the probability of being caught than by the punishment if caught. My personal view is similar. That is to say, that if we want to reduce cheating, the most effective strategies are costly and involve increasing surveillance.

With a big hand and 5-5 in the majors, why not bid 2NT?

I like the sentiment, but I play this call as a form of Leaping Michaels with many partners. I would bid 3♦ here.

Happy Birthday Ed. I appreciate your contributions both to this forum and to bridgetalk.

Seems very similar to an auction I had in Las Vegas, where I was 6=5=2=0 and the 4♣ call was doubled and I redoubled to show my first round control. Partner didn't enjoy playing in the 4-0. After that discussion, he was convinced when the next 10 expert players we asked all said it was an artificial raise in hearts. There was some debate as to whether it showed a control or was agnostic to one. (I believe the latter.) As for this hand, I really don't like my diamond void, so I'm going to bid 4♥ and see if partner can make another move.

With a regular partner I prefer transfers from cue to raise (NF Const if a 2/1 below the cue). With a pickup partner, I prefer NF Const.

I bid 3♣. Partner Bids - Then I bid... 3♦ - 3♥ (then I bid 4♦ if partner bids 3♠ and pass 3NT) 3♥ - 3♠ (then pass 3NT) 3♠ - 3NT 4♣ - 4♥

The biggest thing you learn now from seeing that hand is that West should not have played the queen of diamonds at trick two. If he had played AK of diamonds and stiched to a heart your life would be much harder. Unless West was missing the ♦K after all and had Kx in spades. But obviously we will never play him for that and just say "you got me."

This hand came up playing with Phil against Han and Arend. I thought it was an interesting hand at the time, but it wasn't until later that I saw that the hand had more depth to it. [hv=d=w&v=b&n=saq9653h43dk42c92&s=s2hat5daqjt87cat6]133|200|Scoring: IMP (P) - 2♠ - (3♣) - 3♦; (P) - 4♦ - (P) - 5♦; All Pass[/hv] You reach the inferior game of 5♦ rather than the laydown 3NT (feel free to gripe quietly to yourself how poor the bidding was). You get the lead of the ♣3 to the 2 and East's Jack. Over to you for now...

May you have a great day and many more to come.

Happy Birthday Han! Hope you have a great one.

I agree that a 90 percent tax enacted retroactively is wrong. It is clearly a punitive levy. It is not, however, unprecedented to have such high rates. From wiki on U.S. Income Taxes: "During World War I, the top rate rose to 77%; after the war, the top rate was scaled down to a low of 25%. During the Great Depression and World War II, the top income tax rate rose again. In the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, the top rate was 75%. The top rate reached 94% during the war and remained at 91% until 1964." My understanding is that these top rates were enacted to counter war profiteers from making money from the blood of fellow citizens, although my understanding is, admittedly, simplistic.

I have discussed the 4=3=(15) hand only with Phil. We agreed that when you have a minimum opening, you raise partner's hearts. If you have about a K extra than minimum, you bid 1♠, intending to bid hearts at your next turn. I believe this is useful in clarifying these hands. As Andy, we play the cheapest bid as the ask and have 2NT show 4♠'s.

Anything that is used as an estimate is really nothing more than an educated guess. The mathmaticians can assure that the calculations are correct given the assumptions, but the assumptions here would be very subjective. You have to assume the process by which imps are generated and then you could use a VP scale and calculate the odds. Of course imps are not generated randomly, so when you model them as a random process you will lose some accuracy. Anyway, probably just as easy to use logic or look at the occurences in our collective experience and say it is quite rare.