luis

RKCB in clubs, what else?

Whe our suit is hearts and they bid 5s I use 5NT as exclusion RKCB for hearts. Maybe this gadget is useful for you sometime.

well, if this is not insane, then i think no bid is insane. Sometimes you bid as if you were an idiot intentionally, don't tell me you never did that on purpose. I'd love to know the tempo and expression in LHO's face as he bid 4s and 5s. I need to determine if he is setting a trap or just insane as flytoox says.

I bid 6d after this proably wrong line of reasoning: a) my pd bid 5d by himself so he has legitimate diamond support, he bid 5d to make. :unsure: my lho is not insane, he bid 3s, 4s and 5s so he must have a solid 8 card suit, probably 9. c) if my lho is not insane why is pd doubling 5s? I think because he has no help in hearts, probably a singleotn or a void. d) I can't discard the idea of them actually making 5sx e) Without a trump lead 6d may have a chance, LHO maybe void in diamonds so he will be forced to lead a spade or something else

Of course, I posted the real-life problem. You are free to change it for a class or a problem for your friends :-)

Congratulations to the players who found the cJ return, and a second club when in with a trump. Playing a second spade is fine as long as you do switch to the cJ when in with a trump and play a second trump when in again with your 2nd trump trick. Pd hedl Qxxx of clubs and QJxx of hearts. At the table I held the Qxxx of clubs and QJxx of hears, pd played a spade at trick two, when declarer played dA and a diamond I discarded the c5 playing o/e signals. Again no luck, pd persisted with spades and I was squeezed for -510. Grrrrr....

I wouldn't have opened 3d because I have a strong rule about not having a four card major. I don't care if the suit is JTxxx but I do care about a 4 card major because when pd makes a trap pass he must be sure you are not missing a major suit game. Having said that I'd have opened 3d with T9x, xxx, Qxxxxx,x at those colors and with my pd we use to alert ONLY our NV vrs VUL preempts and say that "it may be really weaker compared to normal preempts" Luis

This is a recurrent question from intermediates and even advanced players, I'd recommend the following treatment that is -I think- faily common: Use Texas or South African Transfers to transfer at the 4-level after 1NT (or 2NT). Texas is: 4d->transfer to 4h, 4h->transfer to 4s South African is: 4c->transfer to 4h, 4d->transfer to 4s Then : 1N-4N is quantitative. 2-level transfer followed by 4NT is quantitative 4-level transfer followed by 4NT is RKCB 2-level transfer followed by game is mild slam try. Variations are common among different partnerships. With 17hcp your pd has a forcing to slam hand, not quantitative at all, so depending on his actual holding he has several different game forcing paths to explore for the best level and denomination. a) Stayman :( 2 level transfer followed by new suit (game forcing) c) 4-level transfer followed by 4NT d) Others depending on your agreements. Luis

There's no such thing as a "best system". In order to choose a system you have to analize the stregnths and weaknesses of each system, the requirements of each system and what you and your pd like to play, can remember and feel confortable with. It depends on you and your pd, what you like, what's your style, etc. This is like choosing a pen to write. Each pen has its reputation probably coming from a) techonolgy/science behind or the public opinion about it. The challenge is that you have to test and test and choose the pen that you like the most. With my mother I've always played Moscito with great success. It's a wonderful system but you must practice because when you forget a bid you are terminated. I'd say Moscito has the best "technology" behind. With my father I played Colonial Acol and won some tournaments with a system everybody defined as "that ancient piece of #####". With pd#1 I played a very very bad system that he invented and had great results because he loved the system and knew every single bid. Since I have good memory we knew exactly what we were doing even when our methods were not state of the art. With pd#2 I started playing precision and after some frustrations switched to 2/1 and now we switched to what we call "Unregulated Sayc", and now we are having the best results. We went from science to natural! Finally with pd#3 I started with Sayc and then 2/1 and the results were so horrible that we switched to a strong club artificial system, results improved a lot and we are now happy. This time we went from natural to science. And with pd#4 2/1 and some simple conventions have always worked excellent for us. So I play and played in the last 2 years: Moscito, An artificial strong club system Sayc, Colonial Acol, 2/1 A system invented by my pd And in each case that system was the best option for my patrneship and other systems failed.

Both 3d or dbl seem to be good options. I wonder what can go wrong after 3d ?

You cannot be serious Luis. Those with '+++' no change at all. If Roland have problems with many private messages I understand as he has become central not only in the event in focus but also for info about schedule. And Roland is one of those persons with good knowledge of systems and he is providing that kind of info very often to explain strange sequences. I think some more informative text than just '+++' on ID's of those who will be willing to accept messages will be appropriate. Fx a text like 'Comments welcome'. Not wanting to make a big issue from this I think is better to allow all messages and if a commentator doesn't want them make him put "---" in his profile or something. I think this is logical if only 1 or 2 commentators complained about messages. I suspect this number is 1. Back in the days I used to comment I was really overjoyed by the many interesting comments and suggestions that were coming from the specs. And I was happy to answer questions about the bidding and signals to beginners or Ints as they arrived.

[hv=d=e&v=e&n=sxxxht983d5ckt632&w=skqxxxh62dkj62cj4]266|200|Scoring: MP[/hv] RHO opens 1d, you overcall 1s, it follows: 1d - 1s- pass - 2d(*) 3d - pass - pass - 3s 4d - dbl - pass - pass pass (*) Good hand with support You lead the sK pd plays low (UDCA), what's your defensive plan ?

I bet the only person who complains about messages is [edited by uday] ,maybe another one. Why not just ignore the private messages if someone doesn't want them? [ui],[ui], and many others are always open to questions and comments. It's a pity because many times a spec has a good question or something interesting to comment. Now it's like listening to a radio broadcast.

Disagree, Relay schemes are the heart of the system and they appear in a lot of hands,mainly in important hands. And you have to know how to respond to the other openings as well, how to break out of relays, how to invite, etc. You can play a "semi-Moscito" system in half a day, you can't pretend to play Moscito in one day.

Advantages? It's worst than Moscito that's for sure. But you can play it in half a day and it's very fun to play and simple.

Hi all, I'd like to intoruce a System that was once available on the web but I lost track of it now, it is called "The Shadow". Is a strong diamond system with light openings, canapes and kamikaze 1NT. Basic approach and openings: 1c: Catch all. Includes balanced hands 13-17. One suited hands 12+. Three suiters and two suiters 5-5. 1d: 18+ (strong). Answers: 1h=0-6 1s=7+ less than 2 ctrls 1n=2 ctrls, 2c=3, etc... 1h: 8-12 hearts only or 12+ canape 1s: 8-12 spades only or 12+ canape 1n: 10-12 kamikaze. (2c=Stayman, 2d=GAme forcing Stayman,2h/2s=nat, etc) when vul 1NT is changed to 15-17 (same continuations!) 2c: 8-12 clubs only or 12+ canape 2d: 12+ Diamonds one-suited or canape with clubs. 2h: hearts and another 12+ 2s: spades and another 12+ 2n: 8-11 both minors Anyone wants to try this online with natural continuations to see what happens? :-) If this is fun (I think it is) we may develop some openings, add some conventions and create the "Forums Shadow" System.

As a System buff I'd like to say that I agree with Fred. I think that in order to make bridge a sport where we can develop and test our most strange systems we must first make bridge available to more people. Bridge on TV and sponsors are needed, and restrictions on what you can play can be a good way to start, I think that the current state of the art in bridge makes the game very hard to learn for a lot of people and that some simplifications can be good to make the game easy to reach. I think that my fellow System buffs friends are playing the right war in the wrong time. First we need to help bridge become popular, then we may start to ask to relax the system regulations.

In a serious event I adopt the following policy: If it is obvious to the opponents that I have the rest, I will claim, to avoid an inadvertent slip in the play by me. If it is obvious to me but not to the opponents that I have the rest, I will play them out. Forcing the opponents to think about the defence when I do not have to think about the play contributes to wearing them down more than me, which may pay dividends in a later hand, and give partner (dummy) a slightly longer rest. I believe that this is considered unethical. Eric Where is this published, please? Anyone else agree with Erick? What are the underlying principles that bring the ethics of this practice into doubt? I agree it is unethical. But you have to be careful, sometimes an opponent doesn't claim just because he doesn't know he has all the tricks.

Some ideas, probably very bad ideas.... *) Add a checkbox to the player profile/setup where you can indicate if you are looking for someone/somewhere to play or not. You can then mark those players in the list of players and you will know who you can ask for a team match or to open a table. Sometimes I want to watch vugraph and get 9000 messages to play, sometimes I want to play and nobody asks me... *) When a player puts the mouse over a player display aditional information such as you played: XXX boards with him. Avergae: -1.5 imps per board. You played: XXX tournaments with him: Average position: XX *) This is debatable: Organizing team matches is not natural, a player decides to create a match, spams the lobby with a zillion messages, after 30 mins, he gets the 8 players, 2 are now offline, he gets two more, when the match opens 2 of them can't play etc etc.... I think a good way to handle this is to have a "Team Matches Being Organized" section where a player can open a "team match" indicating requiered level of play, #of boards, when to start and a description. Then you will see for each "open" match the 8 slots divided in teams and teams in pairs. Match: Crazy Dudes vrs Rest of the Wordl (8 boards, Experts, Authorization Req) Team A: _______ with ________ ___________ with __________ Team B: _______ with ________ ___________ with __________ This will improve the system to organize a match: The organizer opens a new match, indicates #boards, when to start, level of play and description. (And if a player has to be authorized to join) He can now send the lobby 1 msg about the new match. Not a million. Players register indicating the team where they want to play and/or pd, so if you already have a pd you can register to play with him in some team without having to tell the organizer (I want to play with XXX). This prevents you from playing in a team with enemies as partners or with people you don't want to play etc... When a player asks to register the organizer will have to accept him (optionally not as in a regular table opened to anyone) (Foo wants to register in your Team Match XXX ) When the 8 players are ready the match starts. Details can be changed but I think this will improve a lot the organization of team matches. Luis

My bets: $ 30.000 Petrunin-Gromov $ 25.000 Fallenius-Welland On the side I played a tournament with a pool like the Cavendish some months ago (obviously in a 1-Zillion reduced scale). My partnership got the highest bid from a wealthy guy who put a lot of money to buy us. Since we had no money we couldn't even bet for ourselves :-) With one round to go we were having an excellent session, enough to win, so we decided to "blackmail" the guy who bought us :-)))) It was a lot of fun, the poor dude had to accept 40% of what he was just about to win while my pd flashed redouble cards in front of him and I was trying to "remember" the continuations after 1N-2c :-) Of course it was just a joke, the tournament ended and we let everybody win what they deserved. But the lesson was: Never bet for crazy unstable young players. No matter how good they might be (or seem to be).

I really don't understand what you guys understand for "optimal contract". I think the optimal contract is the one that gives you the best IMP average based on IMPs to be won and percentage of times the hand will make. 6c in my modest opinion is a horrible horrible contract. If the spade hook doesn't win you are automatically down 1 at trick 1, even if the spade hook wins you have problems. And I really doubt this horrible slam is being played at the other tables. I'm not sure if 5c from South or 5d from North is the optimal contract. Mathematically 5c seems to be best but bridge-wise I think I will make 5d more times than 5c. Because 5d is a very solid contract unless they lead exactly a heart and switch to spades at trick 2. Luis

1c - 1h 2c - 2s 2n - 3c 3n 4c (singleton?) 4h(s) 4s (last train) 6c pass

Pass the doubleton in hearts is really discouraging. Yeah I have a 7-4 hand so what?

balance 0% I double in my first turn. Overcalling 2h in the first turn is a bad idea and balancing now will probably lead to some sort of disaster.

1eye: I play the following simple rules with my pds when playing a relay system: The relay chain is broken if it consumes 2 steps. If it only wastes 1 step we follow with relays 1 step up. Example: 1c - 1h 1s Now a 1NT or 2c overcall waste 0 spaces, 1NT actually adds 1 space since you can pass or double 1NT. Over 2c pass=1NT and double = 2c. 2d wastes 1 space so we follow 1 step up (pass=1nt, dbl=2c, 2h=2d etc) 2h breaks the chain When the chain is broken relayee bids naturally and relayer still relays.