Trinidad

So someone can read "robbed" where it says "jobbed". You need to take 4 steps (or 2.5") on an American keyboard to get from the "r" to the "j". But it was assumed that "jobbed" was a typo and that "robbed" was intended. And I still find that entirely reasonable. Might it be that the opponent typed "No s" while he actually meant to type "No a" (as in "no agreement")? This difference is only one step (~3/4") on the US keyboard. I think only people with 200 key strokes per minute should be allowed to play on BBO. Psyches should be allowed, but misclicks and typoes should be banned! :) Rik

In that position, I wouldn't do any guessing. I already have a 3 in 4 chance for a top by just passing! (Yes, I know, assuming that all four possibilities are equally likely, which they aren't.) By doubling, you give the opponents a chance to compensate for maniac underbidding (by redoubling) or to correct the random nonsense to a better contract. You could convert an 85% score into a 0 or an average. If the contract is completely legitimate you will convert a 40% board into a 0% board. On top of that, there is the additional possibility that they are supposed to be in 3NT, when they have 10 tricks or they should have doubled 4♥. In either of these cases, part of the field will be there and you will turn a good board into a zero. And what can your double win? Only if the opps were guilty of maniac overbidding, you will convert an 85% board to a 100% board. Congratulations. Rik

This means that there was misinformation. You (i.e. not the opponents) should call the TD and tell him that you have an agreement and that your agreement is that 2♥ is natural. Your agreement was not "I don't know". It is likely that the TD would give an AS based on the assumption that the opponents wouldn't have bid 3♥ if they had known your agreement about 2♥. (Since you're a defender you should call the TD after the hand is over.) The proper call is pass. After all, you have described your hand and you know nothing about partner's hand. You "expect" partner to double, since he (supposedly) knows what you have. You have the Unauthorized Information (UI) that partner doesn't know what you have. Therefore, with the UI, you don't expect partner to double. Doubling "so that he won't forget to do it" is using UI. Rik

Is 2524 similar enough? :o Rik

I have the vague idea that many get the auction wrong. The last double was made by East and taken out by West. I think it would help if auctions would be posted in the standard format West-North-East-South, putting West's bids on the left of East's bids. I don't have any problem with West taking out East's double of 2♣. I think it is an obvious action. It could only be right to pass if East is 4-4 in the minors. In that case, according to the explanations by NS, North must be exactly 3442 (otherwise he wouldn't have passed). Thus, South would be 3325 (assuming that NS don't bid 1NT on (24)25 hands) and East would be 3244. That puts so many constraints on the hands that it just isn't very likely that East is 44 in the minors. I agree with the TD that it doesn't make much sense to assume that East's double is pure penalty. It makes sense to play it as an invitation to penalize, in view of West's earlier double. When west has the worst possible club holding that he could have for his bidding, it is obvious to me to decline the invitation and bid 2♦. As an aside, I don't understand the explanation of 2♣. Why does 2♣ promise 5 or 6 clubs? What would South bid with e.g. a 4324 distribution? Rik

This was not a list of meanings that make sense. This was a list of what is commonly played among experts. The point of that list is that there is no expert standard about a cue by an unpassed hand in the pass out seat. (And if there is an expert standard, it is most likely NOT Michaels. In my list there were two options that outranked Michaels.) This question is about equivalent to the question: "In expert standard, is a bid of the fourth suit forcing to game or forcing for one round?" The answer is: "There is no expert standard. Some play GF, some play forcing for 1 round and for some it depends on the situation." Many players have never thought that the bidding by an unpassed hand in the pass out seat is an entire chapter of bidding in itself and that the standards for a direct bid do not apply there. For those people a jump overcall in the passout seat is still preemptive and a 1NT overcall still shows 15-17. 2NT is still unusual for the minors and a cue is still Michaels. But the way I interpret Mike's question is what the standard is among players who do realize that bidding by an unpassed hand in the passout seat is entirely different from the bidding in direct seat. I read the question as: "Fred meets Norberto Bocchi on the beach and they decide to crash the local bridge club. They don't discuss any system (other than something like "2/1GF, 1/3/5 and udca, expert standard") and this bidding situation comes up. What would they expect partner to have?" My answer is that they don't know what partner would have (other than a decent hand), but they would at least cater to the possibility of: 1) A huge (offensive) takeout 2) An unspecified twosuiter 3) 5♥ + 5m This would probably also reflect the ranking of the possibilities (i.e. the huge offensive takeout is the most likely). A second point that one could make is that Fred and Bocchi would try to avoid making this bid, since they realize that there is no concensus about the meaning of the bid. Finally, I myself prefer to play it as Michaels, but as you pointed out, that was not the question. Rik

I don't know what it means, but I do know that the two previous answers are oversimplifying this problem. The fact that the 2♠ bid is made by an unpassed hand in the passout seat makes this different from "Just Michaels". It have seen this played as: o A huge takeout o An unspecified twosuiter (I play this with one 2/1 partner) o 5♥ + 5m (this I play with another partner) And I can come up with more meanings that make sense. Rik

Varför har ni såna konstiga vokaler där i Danmark? B) Rik (som f ö jobbar i Münster)

I know I am really nitpicking (sorry), but you should also be allowed to jump if it describes your hand precisely, and helps define the rest of the system (and doesn't get you to high). For instance normal preempts or WJS. Oh, and splinter for sure. Apology accepted. B) And, of course, I agree with you. However, I wouldn't describe preempts and WJS as misfit hands. In those cases, you more or less have a fit, whatever partner holds. Actually, I would describe preempts and WJS as hands where you are pretty sure what the denomination is going to be. I think Leaping Michaels is a better example of a descriptive jump on a potential misfit. And to that I would say that every rule has its exceptions. Rik

I couldn't believe it took this long to find this comment being made. Me too. "I made a take out double" is not allowed. The vowel concentration is too high (58 %). B) Rik

Things went wrong when the West first convinced Hamas to participate in the elections and then labeled them a terrorist organization after they had won them. Rik

Splinter. If you are waiting for a big 5-5 hand (in the context that you already opened the bidding) opposite a GF 2/1, you can wait for a long time. For a splinter you just need 4 card support and a control rich minimum hand for your opening bid. The frequency for that is much higher. It also follows the general rule that misfit hands should go slow. If you do have a big 55, you would be very interested to know what responder's rebid would be after: 1♠-2m; 2♥. After all, responder could have been planning to bid 2/3/4♠ or he may bid 3/4♥ now. This is information that you want to have and that you won't get if you start jumping to 3♥. Furthermore, responder may not be interested in your holdings in the majors. When you rebid 3♥, you basically tell him: "Pick one of my suits!". Responder may have a one suiter in a minor where you have doubleton support (and thus a singleton in the other minor). You can easily be cold for 6♦ and go down in 4♠ when you are forced to ruff a club at trick 2 and then lose trump control. Thus, jump with hands where you know what the denomination is going to be. Don't jump with misfits. Rik

The US has reserved the right to not extradite any US citizens to The Hague. That is how in the world the CIA is not dragged in front of The Hague. This means that US war criminals need to be captured by third party troops, outside the USA, after they have been indicted. What do you think the odds for that are? Rik

1. I would pass, even at IMPs. If partner has a diamond hand with slam interest, he should have opened the bidding. The same is true if partner holds a weak two in hearts (and he meant 4♦ as a transfer). 2. I would think that partner needed some time to figure out whether 4♦ would be a transfer or natural. After a little while, he found out that with hearts he would bid 4♥, since that cannot be a transfer to spades (since that is their suit). Then it took him some time to convince himself that you would be able to figure out what he had just figured out himself. But there can be other reasons for the break in tempo. I would not state that the UI demonstrably suggested that partner was thinking whether 4♦ was natural or a transfer. 3. No, but I admit that it makes me feel a little more at ease with passing 4♦. But since I think that the UI didnot 'demonstrably suggest' anything, I don't see a problem. Rik

Of course, the situation changes gradually. I think that it is perfectly normal (and recommended) to ask about an opening bid. In the case of an alerted skip bid, you will give your partner UI ("I'm not interested in bidding.") if you don't check what the bid means. For openeing bids, you shouldn't be worried about opponents giving each other UI, except for the very lowest level. However, it is also obvious that you shouldn't ask about every single bid in a slow, slam going auction. In general, we can see (at least) two scales: Length of the auction: Start --------------------------------------- End of long auction Competitiveness: (Potentially) competitive----------------------------------Your side passes throughout When on the left hand side of these scales: Ask. When on the right hand side of these scales: Don't ask. Don't ask me where the dividing line goes. :rolleyes: Rik

I think this last sentence in particular is very poor advice. Fortunately, however, it is only advice, and can safely be ignored. :( You may think our OB regulations are bad advice; however that is how it is in Blighty. That may be so, but Law 80 B2f states: If the OB would actually dictate this, I would think that it is clearly in conflict with Law 73B1. Since they are only giving it as an advice, it is merely 'bad advice' and should be ignored. Rik

I think that is a good idea. However, I think it is an even better idea to give the opponents the right to get the information from the convention card. Rik

It can never be incorrect procedure to ask about an alerted bid (provided that you ask properly). After all, the alert means: "This bid has an odd meaning, feel free to ask about it". Actually, "the worst thing you can do" (your words) is to only ask about an alert when you are interested in its meaning. Then you give partner UI that you are interested in the meaning when you ask AND that you are not interested when you don't ask. The suggested procedure is to ask often about an alerted bid (with AND without interest in bidding). By following that procedure you prevent giving partner UI by asking and passing. After all, partner cannot deduce whether you were interested in bidding, since you could have asked with a Yarborough as well as with a hand that would have acted over an other meaning. And CSGibson is entirely correct that in this there is UI that partner wasn't interested in bidding, regardless of the meaning of 2♦. (Assuming that partner didn't know the meaning of 2♦ in some other way, e.g. by looking at the convention card). To make the case a little clearer, let's assume that the STOP procedure was in use. That means that you are supposed to act as if you have a bidding problem. How can you have a bidding problem if you are not even interested in what 2♦ means? Therefore, the player has to ask about the meaning of 2♦ (or look at the convention card) unless it is pretty clear that he already knows what 2♦ means (e.g. because they quickly discussed their defense against Flannery at the start of the round). Not asking about the alerted bid is the advanced equivalent of pulling a pass card and holding it above the table while counting to 10. Rik

I used to play a lot of face to face bridge with my wife. Of course I am biased, but I think that she is a very handy player. She can push opponents around and make IMPs appear out of nowhere. Despite the fact that she was playing with me, we were quite succesful as a pair. Then the children were born. Since one of us needs to take care of the kids, we didn't have the possibility to play together. But then we thought of BBO! We could play together while the kids were sleeping! Obviously, we wanted to be open about playing from the same room. We decided to choose two matching logins to make it obvious that we belong together. I remember that the first couple that we came up with was 'Simon' and 'Garfunkel' but 'Simon' was already taken. I think the next couple was 'Sonny' and 'Cher' or something like that but that didn't work either. Neither did 'Bill' and 'Hillary'. But 'Trinidad' and 'Tobago' weren't taken yet, so we never needed to try 'Minneapolis' and 'St. Paul'. We put in our profiles that we were playing from the same room and the reason for it. The effect was that people came to our table, played two tricks and left. Every now and then they would play a full hand and the 'C word' would come out. Playing bridge together on BBO was simply impossible. So, in that respect, BBO couldn't give us what we had hoped for. That is not a complaint, since BBO did give us a lot of other things. Though my wife rarely plays bridge anymore, we really enjoy watching VuGraph from time to time. And we used to practice our bidding system. The good part: About once a year, typically when the grandparents are visiting from abroad, I get to play with her at my local bridge club (where I normally play with another partner). There is always a pair who doesn't know her and thinks that it is so nice of me to introduce my wife to bridge. They will tell her how lovely it is to meet her. She will reply that she thinks it is lovely to be there... and then she proceeds to kick ass. :rolleyes: Rik

i don't know either, but it seems to me that paying for health care as a tax increases the cost on everyone... paying a tax creates a middle man (or 10), eh? No. In this case, paying tax takes out the middle man (hundreds of them). Or more accurately: It takes out hundreds of inefficient middle men and puts 10 efficient ones in their place. It just says that the government (or something similar) should do something that the government can do better than private enterprise. Look at a US hospital. How many people are doing nothing but sending bills and keeping track of what doctor/technician did what to whom and what health insurance to bill for that? Does this insurance even cover these costs or does the patient need to be billed? Will the patient be able to pay? Or even worse: How much time does a highly qualified doctor spend on paperwork? At what hourly rate? Are these doctors handy at taking care of paperwork? These are all "middle men". If you take care of health care through taxes, you will, of course, need some central people to manage that. This means that you put 10 "middle men" in. But the hospitals can go back to taking care of people and the bulk of the administrative costs for hospitals are saved. And that takes hundreds of middle men out of the system. That makes health care through taxes (or another central health care system) so much cheaper. Why do you think the health care cost in the USA are the highest in the world? Just an aside: Like many Europeans, we travel around during Summer. Normally that is not a problem. Our health care system pays everywhere in the world. The only catch is that they pay, at most, the amount that the treatment would have cost in our home country. No problem within Europe. All medical costs are roughly the same. If there are relatively small differences, the health care system covers that too. Turns and roundabouts. No problem in Australia, Africa or Asia, either. But this Summer we will travel to the US. This means that we have to get an extra health insurance for traveling to the US, since the medical costs are so much higher there that the health care system can't cover these costs. And what makes these costs so much higher? The fact that each individual hospital needs so many "middle men" to run the health care system. Rik

I have never seen anyone, not checking the score on purpose. Sometimes, North accidentally presses 'Yes' once too often. And in some of those cases, EW are not bothered by that. But otherwise: North scores, East checks. Rik

Hi guys, I have to admit that I find this one funny too. But I will help you out: "!" means "Double" (or X) in many bridge languages, though English isn't one of them. I get the impression that deep is Italian and just doesn't know the English word for "!" (just like I don't know the Italian word for "!"). Seen in this light, I would hope that partner would "!" (;)) again, but that hope is not very realistic. Therefore, I would just bid 3NT. Rik

I play it as 3-6 with my 2/1 GF partner and as 0-7 with my strong club partner. If I wouldn't have had another bid for the mixed raise, I would happily play 1M-3M as mixed with my 2/1 GF partner. Rik

I would go for 7♣. Partner is a passed hand, he cannot have a decent 7 card club suit. This means that we can assume he has 5, maybe 6 nice clubs. To me, it seems entirely reasonable to expect ♣AKxxx (since we have QT ourselves). With ♣KJxxx, partner shouldn't take away so much bidding space with a 3♣ bid. If partner has ♣AKxxx, I expect to make 7♣ by setting up the spade suit and discarding partner's hearts. I know that there are layouts where 7♣ may not make, but you gave me only one bid. Rik

I have an extremely hard time believing that TD could have thought that. Well, that piece of information we can be reasonably sure of. Fred was one of the players polled. He was also asked what LAs were made more attractive by the UI (or some similar question). Since there was some confusion early in this thread (everybody who had watched the VuGraph assumed that we were talking about a BIT after 3NT, while Fred's comments suggested that he thought that the BIT came after 1♥) Josh asked Fred specifically. Here is Josh' question and Fred's answer: I was told the hesitation was over 1H. So, if we believe Fred (and I really don't see any reason not to believe him), the TD told Fred that the hesitation was after 1♥. From there, it is a very small assumption that the TD indeed thought the hesitation was over 1♥. Much bigger assumptions have been made on BBF. :blink: Hence my conclusion (with the usual disclaimers) that the TD was confused about this whole case and made a couple of mistakes. I am certainly not aiming at a crucifixion of the TD. To err is human and the last time I looked TDs were still human. But to me (with the usual ifs and disclaimers) it seems clear that the TD erred. Rik