dburn

I'm not sure ♠K is a "genius lead" - after all, if partner has the jack it will not blow a trick. The same cannot be said of a heart, which will blow a trick in at least as many positions as a spade. Not that I would lead a spade - I would lead a heart in any case, because I may have enough entries to recover the blown trick by establishing a long heart. However, I consider it close, and I would not be at all surprised to find that a spade was the winner.

You could always bid 3NT. It may make rather more often at single dummy than it should at double dummy.

Jeremy Flint once remarked that you could always teach a good card player how to bid properly. Then he took a sip of his favourite Ruddles County beer and a puff on his cigar before adding "At least, that's what I thought before I met Irving Rose."

I was also in Pau, and had only one occasion to query a result - a board had been scored as flat when in fact there had been a swing of 15 IMPs. Investigation revealed that the official scorers were checking the inputs from the Bridgemates as they arrived at the scoring computers. Seeing that England had recorded 600 in both rooms when the contract was 3NT, the scorer assumed that the compass position had been entered incorrectly in one room and amended the result accordingly. In fact, both original entries were correct - the contract had been made in one room and gone down six in the other. Whereas it is certainly possible for machines to make mistakes, in the vast majority of cases errors are due to what is known in the technical support business as PEBCAK - either at the card table or in the scoring room.

I think that by "transfer to 4♠", CSGibson may have meant that West is likely to bid 4♠, perhaps causing another problem. Not that it would cause you another problem, of course - you would doubtless bid 6♦. After all, "slam should be in the picture". The fact that your partner could not open the bidding, while your RHO has a strong no trump, presumably means only that you might reluctantly give up on a grand slam. If you bid 2NT to show the minors and then bid 3♥ over 3♣, this does indeed show a strong two-suiter. But it does not necessarily show a strong two-suiter with hearts; rather, it shows a strong minor two-suiter with a heart fragment, perhaps: ♠None ♥A3 ♦KQ1094 ♣AJ10982. After all, this seems worth a raise of 3♣ to four just in case, and I have a chance better to describe the hand with 3♥ than with 4♣. You, no doubt, would have overcalled 1NT with 5NT, pick a slam, but you may not make one facing such as ♠J87653 ♥J42 ♦32 ♣65. As to the actual question, I don't know what Cappelletti is. If it involves doubling for penalty, bidding 2♣ with any one-suiter, bidding 2♦ for majors, bidding 2M with that suit and a minor, and bidding 2NT with minors, then I will bid 4♥ and either concede 800 or double the transferred-to 4♠. If on the other hand I can double, or bid 2♣, to show a major and a minor, I will do that.

Was amused to see this in the final Bulletin from Beijing: Because of technical problems, there is no photo of USA, the bronze medal winners in the Women’s series. Maybe someone should have realised that this time, they couldn't vote for Bush anyway.

I too was under the impression that 3♦ had been doubled by third hand, not by opener after partner had passed it. But in the latter case, it is in my view even more serious to remove 3♦ doubled to 3♥. Again, suppose that your LHO had asked what 3♦ meant, and your partner had said "It shows both majors" before passing. Would it occur to you to remove 3♦ in front of partner? After all, for a hand with eleven cards in the majors, you have a pretty good hand for diamonds if that is where partner, knowing you have the majors, wants to play. It is all very well to say "Partner did not open the bidding, so he can't want to play in diamonds facing this hand, so he must have misremembered or misunderstood 3♦." Again, if you can show incontrovertible evidence that partner would always open the bidding with any hand that wants to play in diamonds facing this, well and good. In that case and that case only, there is no "logical alternative" to 3♥ - you are allowed to infer that partner doesn't know what you're doing if the legal calls and your partnership methods alone admit no other inference. But you may not - nay, must not - be guided in any way by an alert, or non-alert, or question, or reply to a question, or anything else, as to your partner's actual state of mind. You bid 3♦ intending, or hoping at any rate, to show the majors. You must assume that partner knows that it showed the majors, and you must act accordingly when he passes it. Apologies if I appear, in stressing this point, to be criticising your behaviour in terms of ethics. That is not my intention in the least - I am sure that you were acting from the best of motives and without any nefarious intent. Moreover, your own comments indicate that you do have some grasp of the issues; if a director had adjusted the score to 3♦ doubled minus lots, you would have had no complaint. But some of the things that have been said here seem to me to indicate that the legal principle involved is not widely understood, and I am anxious that it should be. That principle I can best state in words I used some time ago: "When you have unauthorised information, you are no longer allowed to be brilliant."

If you can show to the Director's satisfaction that in your methods after (1NT) 2♦ (Dble), pass asks for the longer major, then you can argue that after (2NT) 3♦ (Dble), pass also asks for the longer major. But if you cannot show this (and it would be rather an odd way to play - what does redouble show? and how does advancer actually get to play in diamonds if this is what he wants to do?) then you must indeed play in 3♦ doubled. After all, what would you do if partner alerted 3♦ and said "That shows at least 5-6 in the majors, and I pass?"

They already do. Law 74 says that: As a matter of courtesy, a player should refrain from [...] prolonging play unnecessarily [...] Not that the English would necessarily have been disconcerted. But they might have felt a bit irked, or even erted, at having to play the rest of the set once their opponents had expressed a wish to concede.

Now, this is the kind of thing that seems to me truly idiotic. You can read the full post above, but I have cut it as shown. The German team could do as they wished, provided they did nothing illegal and nothing unsporting (conceding a match is neither illegal nor unsporting). The TD (the WBF Chief TD) saw nothing wrong with what the German team did. The original poster, after several paragraphs, concedes as much. And yet... "the TD is very much at fault here". Why? Maybe he ought to have banned a combination of four-card majors and a weak no trump, but it is entirely possible that Max Bavin didn't see the relevance of this (it takes a true paranoiac such as NickRW to introduce that topic). Still, as I have said, freedom of speech is important. Mind you, so is freedom of listening to speeches.

If you try to concede, you have succeeded in conceding (and if you are a man of breeding, you conceded because you needed feeding; if you concede unheeding when your team-mates would have pleaded with you to proceed unimpeded, a doctor may staunch the bleeding). But the nitwits who continue to condemn the Germans are kicking field goals by moonlight. Maybe, unlike the Germans, they don't know when to give up.

As to the prospect of listening to that, the words of the Dies Irae (an early, but still the finest, manual for tournament directors) spring irrerpressibly to mind: Rex tremendae maiestatis Qui salvandos salvas gratis Salva me fons pietatis.

From the fact that Wladow bid like a lunatic, nothing can be inferred about his temper. He bids like a lunatic anyway. But if he had not bid like an extremely successful lunatic in recent months, it is fair to say that the German Open team would not have won the honours it has gained both in the Mind Sports Games and the European Championships. Well it was said by the bard: Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide. Moreover, even if you do lose your temper and bid like a lunatic, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that in a knockout match. 999 times out of a thousand, you will be single-handedly responsible for losing the match by 200 IMPs instead of 100. But the one time in a thousand when your lunatic efforts pull out the match for your side... well, your team-mates will readily forgive you the other 999. Surtout, pas trop de zele. To talk of libel actions in an affair such as this is... well, the word "lunatic" springs to mind. Du calme, mes enfants. Per contra, to blame a man for going for 1400 in an effort to rescue a hopeless cause is seriously to misjudge the matter. Maybe, on the "most suspicious hand of all", Wladow hoped that his partner would pass out 4♠ doubled and that it would not make. I might have done the same, and after all, it wasn't the worst error committed by the German players (or the English players) in the course of the match - but no one is suggesting that they were trying to throw IMPs deliberately. As I say, the matter seems to have been an entirely amicable one among the players and the officials involved. Why, then, all this talk of shame and disgrace among second- and third-hand spectators such as us? "Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt", said another bard. He was writing long before people could watch other people striving and erring on BBO, but he'd have done what we all should do (Goethe's words adapted for the vegetarians among us): Drob ärgert' sich der andre sehr, Und wollte gar nichts hören mehr, Und sagt': es wüßte ein jedes Kind, Daß im Gesetzbuch anders stünd'. Und ich behaglich unterdessen Hätt' einen Kürbis aufgefressen.

I'm not quite sure I understand this. To draw an analogy with another mind sport: you can resign in the middle of a chess game, can you not? No one would cast doubts on your sportsmanship for so doing, would they? Obviously you should not walk out in the middle of a pairs event or a multiple teams event simply because you are not doing terribly well - you do have a duty not to sabotage the movement (and, some might say, a duty to the field not to generate horribly abnormal results just because you are out of contention). But conceding in a head-to-head match, however or whenever you do it, does not seem to me objectionable. Of course, if your team-mates were plus a hundred IMPs on the half of the match they had played at the other table, they might have a few words to say. But that is a matter for you and for them, not for the rest of the world. From what I can gather from the England players involved, no disrespect was shown by the German players at any stage either to their opponents or to the officials. They simply said, as the great boxer Roberto Duran is memorably alleged to have said, "No more. No more." The WBF Chief Tournament Director saw nothing illegal or even unsporting in the manner of the concession. It really isn't for the likes of us to condemn or to criticise what was in effect a battlefield decision to surrender in utterly hopeless circumstances. I hope that the German players will give as good an account of themselves as they can in their third-place match against Norway, and I join with others here in congratulating them warmly on their achievements both in Beijing and at the European Championships in Pau. I also hope that on BBO, we can listen to and respect the opinions of others without denouncing them for holding those opinions. Whereas, as I have remarked above, I personally don't see anything wrong with conceding any head-to-head match at any stage, others might feel more strongly that there is something wrong with so doing. Freedom of speech is the birthright of each, but words like "shame" and "disgrace" have no place in discussions about what is, after all, only a game. A bridge match that would have ended in a victory for England anyway ended in a victory for England earlier than it might have done. No one died.

Dwururka is certainly a RED system per the WBF Systems Policy - BLUE systems are those based on a strong 1♣ or 1♦ opening. Either the convention card refers to some other classification (perhaps one used in Poland), or Zawislak and Pazur are colour-blind, or they are hoping that the WBF Systems Administrators are colour-blind.

In my long-ago university days, the system of one particularly aggressive partnership was known as the "Miles Too High Club".

1NT is what I would do at all forms of scoring and all vulnerabilities. There may be considerable advantage in having a major-suit lead come round to my hand in notrump, and with half my strength in my short suits, I do not intend to bid this as if it were a two-suiter. Since I would unquestionably open a weak no trump if that is what I were playing, that is what I will rebid.

The following may be of interest: http://tinyurl.com/45rqta This system is currently being played in the WMSG in Beijing. However, given the half-time score in the Italy-Poland quarter-final, this may not be the case for very much longer.

4♠. Aren't you supposed always to do that over 4♥? Put it this way - if partner opened a vulnerable weak 2♠, would you not raise him to four?

Suppose I posted a poll like this: ♠532 ♥643 ♦KQ7 ♣K642 Partner opens 1♥. RHO bids 4♠. What call do you make? How many votes do you think there would be for any action other than pass? If you think there would be any at all, remove the king of clubs from the hand above and then tell me how many votes you think there would be for any action other than pass. Yet in both cases, it is right to bid 5♥ with the original poster's hand (in the former case because it will make, in the latter case because 4♠ will probably make). I would not go so far as to say that if you pass out 4♠ you are "flat out owned", because I am not sure I know what the phrase means. I would, however, go so far as to say that the question is perhaps not as clear as pclayton thinks.

More traditionally (that is, in the days before Hogs started overcalling 1♥ on bad hands with five hearts to the nine) sequences such as 1♣ - Dble - [1HE] were not forcing. In order to create a sequence that was forcing, you redoubled with enough values to want to make either a natural and forcing bid or a penalty double at your next turn. Nowadays, most play that a sequence such as 1♣ - Dble - 1♥ is forcing (in effect, "ignoring the double"). In that context, redouble is generally used to show a balanced hand with the values for about 2NT at least. You need this because a sequence such as 1♠ - Dble - 2NT is nowadays played as a constructive raise in spades, so you have to do something else with a hand worth a natural 2NT. This problem may not arise when the opening bid is 1♣, of course - though even in these interesting times, I have heard that some players do actually prefer to bid clubs when they have them. Whether or not using redouble as a transfer is suitable for beginners or intermediate players is not for me to judge. But you need to answer these kinds of questions: If the auction begins 1♣ - Dble - Rdble - 2♥, is a pass by opener forcing? If so, what does his double show? Does his bid of 3♣ show extra values, or merely a minimum with long clubs? If the auction begins 1♣ - Dble - Rdble, what does fourth hand's pass show? Is he prepared to defend one club redoubled, or does he merely want the doubler to start getting them out of this mess? Does the same apply to an auction that starts 1♠ - Dble - Rdble? And so on, and so forth. You will find, if you continue to contribute to these forums, that people will answer "what's the problem - it obviously means X" to these questions. You will, however, find that the value of X is not constant in such cases. Either that's just people, or that's just bridge. Or both.

Don't mind 3NT, but would apologise if opponents ran diamonds and it turned out that we could make game in a black suit (what should partner bid over 2♥ with ♠QJx ♥AQxx ♦Jxx ♣Qxx, after all?) If partner said "No problem - I'd have expected you to be stronger or more distributional for 3♠", fine. If he said "Maybe 3♠ should be this kind of hand or better", also fine. If he said "I should think you are sorry. Why didn't you bid 3♠?" - well, he'd have to be a pretty fine player for it to be fine for me to continue playing with him.

Not sure how safe it is to bid clubs with a poor suit here - the 1NT bidder may be well placed to deal with that. Would prefer 2♣ for majors and 2♦ as natural (good suit and little else).

Are you saying people shouldn't open 1NT, over which almost all bids are artificial? No - there is a considerable advantage to opening 1NT in the first place, since it provides a much more informative description of your hand than any other opening bid (except possibly 3NT or 7NT). Moreover, the various artificialities that people have devised over 1NT openings have provided measurable advantages over a long period of time. The principal advantage claimed for 2/1 game-forcing, however, is that it provides a ready-made framework in which players can for the most part bid naturally, because they have enough space not to need artificial bids to describe their hands. If you then decide that even within this framework you need to make artificial bids anyway (from opener's rebid onwards) it seems to me that you might as well not bother - just play 1X-2♣ or even 1X-1NT as a relay. Having said that, jdonn's suggestion appears at first sight to have the advantages of simplicity and efficiency possessed by many of the common methods of responding to 1NT. Whether it is as memorable, I am not sure (for example, if 1♠-2♦-2♥ is the "default bid" while 2♠ shows six spades, how does opener show four hearts?) But I am always prepared to be convinced of anything, except that celery is food.

Perhaps people believe (correctly) that if you have to play artificial continuations over 2/1 in order to reach the right contract, you should not bother playing 2/1 in the first place.