Trinidad

Bah, humbug. As an above average player in most events (non national level), I think I bid and play better than most. Why should I not try to win boards both in the bidding as well as the play? I am going to back my bidding judgment on close decisions. I fully agree with Stephen. The adage "Bid with the field, play better" is only valid if your strength lies in the play. Bid to the same contract, take a trick more, leads to a top. But if your strength lies in the auction, it is utter nonsense. Then you need to beat them in the auction. Rik

It seemed to be an established fact. At first, the TD didn't understand that there was UI. When I pointed out to him that the 2♣ response came in a second and, therefore, could not have been alerted by the gentleman in question, he was able to check the timeline. After he did that, it seemed pretty clear to him that there was UI that 2♣ had not been alerted. Generally speaking, I don't think you need to be a genius to figure out what is going on when playing on this platform. If I look at my typical hand which is something like ♠Kxxx ♥Qxxx ♦Jxx ♣Jx, my LHO passes and my partner takes more than 3 seconds, I know that he is going to open 1♣, because it takes him some time to: select the bid click on the explanation box type in "2+, not forcing" click on the "OK + Alert" button I am pretty sure that I have a better than 90 % success rate. If he would bid 1♣ in a second, I would send the opponents a message that 1 is "2+♣, non forcing". It hasn't happened yet, since my partner does not forget alerts very often. Rik

I don't get the problem. Biden takes a center of politics point of view, rather than, what in the USA is considered to be, a radical left-wing position. Wouldn't that make him more electable? Rik

Well he would correct heart bids to the known diamond fit, unfortunately he will cue 4♥ and partner will probably pass it. I would expect the auction to continue 3♠-4♣-4♥ and S would be brave to continue knowing he's off the ♦A and with other potential losers. You're absolute correct. Before I started typing, I intended to write that the AS should be weighted, including doubled diamond slams. If South cues 4♣, North will see that as a slam try for clubs and cue the ace of hearts, which South will pass... If South bids 4♥, however, this will lead to doubled diamond slams. Rik

Originally, only the 3♠ bid was alerted. I don't have much of a problem with the North player. He forgot the system, and because of that, he misinformed us. That is technically an infraction, but, IMO, of the same order as a revoke or an insufficient bid: an infraction that you do not commit intentionally or even knowingly. I find the 2♥ call by South wimpy. I would have bid 2♥ with my hearts and clubs reversed (though that might have been a 1♣ opening in their system, I don't know). My choice would have been 3♥, with 4♣ as my first alternative. (I usually don't jump to game if slam is still an option and I can splinter, but that is my style.) But sometimes being a wimp is winning bridge and I can easily be wrong about my ideas. But I have no words for the 3NT call and even less for his "I am showing a stop. I have a stop. What's the problem?" . (If you can't say anything nice, it's best to say nothing.) I think it would have been merely hilarious if South would have said: "But we don't play that @#$@$# convention anymore, because he keeps forgetting it. And now he forgets that too!". I gladly would have given away a Vul game just to hear that. The TD ruled 4♥-3 for 300 to EW, no PP. That was 12 IMPs for EW. (3NT made 7 times, of which 6 with an overtrick. There was 2x 5♦ -2 and then the 4♥-3 at our table.) I thanked him for his ruling. I would have given a weighted score based on doubled diamond slam contracts, since North will correct any heart bid by South to the known diamond fit. That would have given us a couple of more IMPs. I would have given a PP too. Rik

I will let the cat out of the bag. This was an internet game (not BBO) where two fairly strong face to face bridge clubs "merged". This is the full deal and auction:[hv=pc=n&s=sqj94hkj74dkqt2c2&w=sakt76h9853d54c98&n=s852hadj987cakq43&e=s3hqt62da63cjt765&d=s&v=n&b=15&a=1d1s2c(no%20alert%2C%20came%20in%20a%20second)p2hp3sp3nppp]399|300[/hv] I was the west player on opening lead. The 2♣ bid was not alerted. I needed to find my partner's entry to let him play spades through. The opponents had bid every suit. I reasoned that if the 2♣ bid was forcing, dummy would be stronger, but his suit might be weaker than if 2♣ were a negative free bid. So, I asked North before the opening lead. The conversation went: "Is 2♣ forcing?" -"Yes" ♣9 led, dummy comes down "Thank you" -"Sorry, we play Switch: it shows 5+ hearts. I should have bid 2♥." I remembered that we had played this pair one or two months before and the North player had then also forgotten this convention. I was now convinced that declarer had few hearts (otherwise they would have been in a heart game), so I played them at every opportunity I got. It turned out that declarer had four card heart support. I wondered why he never considered hearts and found the answer: The 2♣ bid had taken about a second to appear. There would have been no time to alert and explain the 2♣ bid. (The mechanism on this site is that you first type your explanation, then alert. You cannot alert without explaining the bid. So, South knew that North had not alerted his 2♣ bid. When the TD was called, South defended himself by saying that 3♠ asked for a stopper and that he showed it: "What's the problem?". What would you have ruled as a TD? Rik

[hv=pc=n&s=sqj94hkj74dkqt2c2&d=s&v=n&b=15&a=1d(3%2B)1s2c(5%2B%20hearts)p2hp3sp]133|200[/hv] IMPs (Butler). You are playing Switch: Partner's 2♣ bid shows 5+ hearts and about 8+, so that he can show the negative free bid and the forcing bid. 2♥ would have shown clubs. You took the conservative view on the previous round and bid only 2♥. What is partner doing, what do you do now and why? Rik

[hv=pc=n&s=sqj94hkj74dkqt2c2&d=s&v=n&b=15&a=1d(3%2B)1s2c(5%2B%20hearts)p]133|200[/hv] IMPs (Butler). You are playing Switch: Partner's 2♣ bid shows 5+ hearts and about 8+, so that you can show the negative free bid and the forcing bid. 2♥ would have shown clubs. How high do you want to raise hearts and why? Rik

FWIW, this is what the Dutch news media showed. (E.g NRC) Rik

Great idea! But I have a better one. Let's move the election forward instead, e.g. next week. Now we have the epidemic under control. You never know what will happen on November 3rd or later. :) Rik

You're reading too much into this. The explanation is simply that the word "jurisdiction" has too many syllables. Rik

Answer from the Netherlands: No, not at the time the spread was peaking (like it is in the USA right now). At that time people were worried about health and the consequences of the corona measures for the economy. Now, we have everything under control: Widespread testing for infections, testing of waste water as an early warning for an outbreak. Very few positive cases. We are waiting for the second wave. Health and economy are moving towards the background and personal freedom is on the agenda. This was no issue at all during the peak. So, people are going out for visits again. No touching, but that is the least of troubles. We will see how things develop. But no, there is not a single politician who would be against testing for political reasons. Rik

There is an article today in the Dutch newspaper NRC. It deals with the problems along the US-Canadian border where families have been separated for months now, e.g. around Seattle-Vancouver and Detroit-Winsor. According to the article, it is easier to cross the border legally through an airport than by road. People who could walk over to see their relatives are actually planning on flying. Link to article (in Dutch) Rik (The readers of NRC are typically well-educated, urban professionals. It is the newspaper for "the elite" as in: "the group of people who, according to populist parties, have lost touch with the reality of the common man." ;) )

FYI, today --- for the first time in almost three years --- the betting odds of Trump being reelected as President crossed 2:1 (i.e. less than 1 in 3 33.3% chance of winning). While that is good news for those who were betting against Trump in February, it shows how much can change in four and a halve months. There are still about four and a halve months left until the day that really counts. Rik

This is the novice and beginner forum. I am a promotor of simple systems for novices and beginners. One of the reasons is that novices and beginners will not go over their system with their partner. So, keep it simple. Having said that, I will try to unveil a little bit of what people who are truly addicted to the game will do: It may surprise you, since you seem to find it hard to believe that people would go over their system monthly, but there are players who rehearse a part of their system every day. Some pairs describe their entire system on a convention card and they have problems remembering that. Other pairs describe it in system books of over hundred pages and never have a forget at the table (because they rehearse frequently). And then there are players who play with different partners. This means that they need to know several systems! In practice, for a more experienced bridge player, it is very easy to remember that 1NT-4♠ is asking for aces for several reasons: It is the first round of the auction The bid will fit logically with the rest of the system, since it is the lowest unused bid There is no interference from the opponents. Even if the 1NT-4♠ auction rarely comes up, it is not difficult to remember, because it is a piece that fits into a cleverly and logically constructed puzzle. In general, for a seasoned bridge player, these constructs are either easy to remember or they are easy to reconstruct at the table. The problematic agreements arise later in the auction or when the opponents are bidding, e.g. 1♣-(2♣)-2♥. Now, there will be an agreement that depends on the meaning of 2♣ e.g. natural, Michaels, or top and bottom. In this case, the 2♥ bid fits in any of three (or even more) puzzles! The problem is not so much to know what the bid means, but to properly interpret what puzzle we are making. In this example, it is not uncommon among experts to play: After a natural 2♣, all new suits are natural and forcing for 1 round (puzzle), so 2♥ (piece) would show something like 5+ hearts and 10+ points. After a Michaels 2♣ (promising ♥+♠), new suits are non-forcing and a bid in one of the opponent's suits show our suits in a forcing way (puzzle). So now 2♥ (piece) would be a bid in the opponent's lower suit and show a strong hand with diamonds. After a top and bottom 2♣ (promising ♦+♠), new suits are non-forcing and a bid in one of the opponent's suits show our suits in a forcing way (puzzle). Now, 2♥ (piece) is natural, but this time, it is non-forcing, so something like 6 hearts and 5-10 points. The hard part is to be on the same wavelength with your partner about what puzzle you are working on in each case. A large part of these over hundred pages of system notes is used to define exactly that. Rik

If we don't keep score, we all win at bridge! Rik

My region has been hit early and hard in this pandemic. At the end of March, the hospitals were overflowing and patients have been transported to hospitals in the rest of the country, as well as neighboring Germany. However, at the moment everything is calm. In the past 30 days, 6 people from the region have been hospitalized with Covid-19 on a population of about 660 thousand. That means that we can almost count them on one hand. For the past month, the hospitalization rate has been 0.03 per 100 000 inhabitants per day. We are thinking of starting the bridge clubs again. There will be strict measures, but about 60 people would meet to play the game again. Of course, all these people are locals. Many players in the club are related to each other and there are quite a few husband-wife pairs. This means that these people are not "60 individuals": If some of these people would get infected at the bridge club, there is a fair chance that they would have been infected during the next week from heaving coffee together, meeting at a restaurant or from running into each other at the supermarket. Their distance to each other is already relatively small. So, if the bridge night would lead to an outbreak, there is a decent chance that this outbreak would have happened anyway. So, the baord of my club is seriously considering taking this relatively small step. I don't know where South Carolina and Georgia stand in this pandemic. But a regional attracts large amounts of people (far more than 60) that are otherwise socially distanced. They come from all over the place to stay in hotels to meet people during a week for 8+ hours a day. Now, Bill from Auburn in Alabama can infect George from Chattanooga, TN, Mary from Dublin, GA and Carol-Ann from Aiken, SC while playing in the Atlanta regional. In addition, he will infect Kate from Atlanta who was standing too close to Bill while waiting for the bus when she went to work, and John from Tallahassee, an engineer who was doing maintenance at Coca-Cola and was sitting at the next table during breakfast. These are all people that Bill would have never met this year, if it weren't for the Atlanta regional. If one person at the regional is contageous then that will lead to outbreaks spread over 5 or 6 states, that otherwise would have never happened. I would not want to be the organizer of this event and I would not want to be Bill, George, Mary or Carol-Ann who spread a disease because they wanted to play a card game. Neither would I want to be Kate or John, who were innocent victims and only went out to contribute to the economy. And I cannot understand why the organizers think that it is a great idea to take this giant leap, unless they think that Covid-19 is some kind of hoax. Rik

No one ever argued that it "gives minimum hands more bidding room than non-min hands". Well, I was replying to: I may have misunderstood, but I read Vampyr's post as: 3♣ is the most space conserving bid It is awful to reserve all that space that the 3♣ bid gives for the minimum hands That statement does indeed not claim that the minimum hands get "more bidding room than non-min hands", but it does claim that it gets too much room. I thought it might be good to put that in some perspective. I agree with your reasons why putting the minimum hands in 3♣ is good: to limit the hand, without leaking any other information. Rik

It depends on how the auction continues. If you use one bid (3♣) for all the minimum hands, you have 4♥, 4♦, 4♣, 3NT, 3♠, 3♥ and 3♦ to describe the non-minimum hands. That is 1 bid versus 7. After 3♣, responder has 7 bids left to describe his hand, except that the GF 2NT response is not really meant to describe the hand. It pretty much functions as an asking bid, while setting the trump suit. So, if the auction continues with an asking relay of 3♦, opener now has 4♥, 4♦, 4♣, 3NT, 3♠ and 3♥ available. That is only 6 bids for the minimum hands, where he had 7 for the non-minimum hands. If responder is relaying, after 3♣ opener will be able to show 13 hand types without going past 4♥ with the 6 bids that he has available. With a relaying responder, opener is able to show 21 hand types with the other 7 bids, without getting past 4♥. So, while it may be true that 3♣ leaves more room than 3♦ or 3♥, in a relay structure it actually leaves precisely as much room as 3♦ and 3♥ leave together (or as 3♥ and all higher bids leave together). That means that the bids of 3♠ and higher can be used to describe even more hand types. Using 3♣ to show a minimum is simple. I do not think that it is the optimal way to construct a scheme. However, the idea that it gives the minimum hands more bidding room than the other hands with extra values is simply not true. Rik

I think this is exactly where the problem lies. The continuous fear that "someone might show up at my house with evil intent". And the silly idea that you need to be ready for that continuously. We are not cavemen, we are not continuous victims of mammoths or sabre tooth tigers. We are not continuously getting raped and murdered by enemy tribes or nomadic gangs. And, yes, rape, murder, looting, burglary, it all does happen. But, it is rare. What a waste of a life to be continuously worried about that. Go out and look around (okay, maybe not now because of Corona) and look at the people you see. How many of them will be axe murderers or rapists? If the crowd you are looking at is large and dense enough, there is a chance that one of those people is a pickpocket. The whole rest of them are normal people who are busy persuing happiness. Hurting you is not even the last thing on their mind. It is simply not on their mind. So, to be concrete. How ready does Chad need to be? How likely is it that Richard will show up at Chas' door step with an axe? Rik

A pair from a bridge club in Sweden where I played 20 years ago played a system like that. In the '90s they won the Swedish mixed pairs playing it (Krister Persson-Inga Västeby). If I remember correctly, their 1♦ opening was forcing since apart from the natural 11-21 diamond hands, it had a few odd very strong hand types in it. Rik

New update: My bridge club is indeed planning to open in September. They have measured the location and concluded that they have room for 17 tables when keeping people at a distance of 2 m. This is about half of the amount that they will normally have. They decided to rent the place for two evenings per week instead of one. Rik

Is it really a good idea to use 3♣ to ask for a singleton? There is room for three answers if you want to be able to stop in 3♠. And you need 4: there are 3 possible singletons and the possibility that there is no singleton. I would rather switch the two bids: 2NT asks for shortness and 3♣♦♥ shows it whereas 3♠ denies it. 3♣ is Ogust: 3♦ MIN, poor suit 3♥ MIN, good suit 3♠ MAX, poor suit 3NT MAX, good suit You will only be committed to game opposite a maximum and a good suit. Rik

Raises with silent opponents are different from raises when the opponents are bidding. When the opponents are quiet, we do not want to raise partner higher than we can afford. This means that we always allow for partner to be minimum for his bid. If partner opens 1♥, we will keep in mind that he may have only 12 points. If we have 6 points and support, we can afford a raise to 2♥. If partner has an absolute minimum hand, he should still have a reasonable chance of making 2♥. This works very nicely: With 6-9, we bid to 2♥. Opener can continue to 3♥ (inviting game) if he can make that opposite my minimum of 6 points. And he will bid game if he can make that opposite my 6 points. If I have 10-11 points, I can bid to 3♥: My 10, together with partner's minimum of 12 points will make sure that we can make at the 3 level. All this changes when the opponents come in and certainly when they start to preempt. You have less bidding room available and you will have to "bend" things a little. Instead of acting towards the minimum that partner has or what partner promised, you start to act based on what you reasonably can expect from partner. For his 1♥ opening, South has promised 12 points. But, of course, he can have more. It is reasonable to expect about 14-15 points of him: If he really has only 12, that would be unlucky. This means that instead of requiring 11 points for a bid at the 3 level, you require only 8. Of course, the opener needs to be aware that you are bidding based on the assumption that he has a little bit more than a minimum. So, North should bid 3♥ and South should know that this doesn't promise a limit raise but, as some people call it, a bid of 2.5 hearts. You will understand from this that if North would have had a decent limit raise, he should simply bid game. Rik

My state is. At some places it's about 50 ft below sea level! Rik