Trinidad

He probably thinks: "If Thatcher could do it, I can do it too.". Rik

That is true. But if you have the agreement: 4♣ Always (regardless of whether they have opened/shown ♣ or ♦) other minor + a major 4♦ Always (regardless of whether they have opened/shown ♣ or ♦) both majors then you can use 4♦ over 4♣ to ask for the major. Obviously, it can then get ugly if you (or partner) forgets... Rik

I think he means Eustacian bidding. ;) Rik

I agree with Paulg. There is no alternative to a diamond lead, no law has been broken. But I think the TD could advice East that the timing of his question was pretty clumsy. He could also advice West that "doing (with the UI) what you were always going to do (without the UI)" is not what the laws require of you: When there are LAs, you need to do the opposite of what the UI suggests. Rik

Ireland isn't on top of that list. But it is the first country where the population voted by referendum to legalize same sex marriage. A Dutch newspaper has a world map on its website (scroll to the middle of the article). For those who can't read Dutch: Green: Same sex marriage is legal (now or will be soon) Blue: Same sex marriage is illegal, but same sex partnerships can be recognized Orange: Gay marriage is legal in parts of the country (USA, UK) Red: Gay marriage or partnership is forbidden (The map is from before the Irish election.) A time line of legalization of same sex marriage can be found on Wikipedia. Rik

When I came to the USA to start my PhD work, somebody picked me up. He helped me arrange a University appartment and the net day, he drove me to the International Center of the university. At the Internatinal Center they gave me "the package". It was an envelope filled with forms. It was one and a half inch thick. I wasn't allowed to do anything else before all forms were filled out. The last sheet of paper was a to do list. At the time, I hated the International Center. I thought they were the biggest bureaucrats I had ever seen and they made me go through a couple of miserable hours of filling out forms. Later, I realized that "the package" contained everything that I needed to fill out to be properly registered with all US authorities, the university, and I don't know what. The international Center sorted out all the paperwork and made sure it got at the right place. The "to do list" was a relatively short list of things I still had to do that the International Center could not arrange for me. I would have never been able to compile all the paperwork myself. I am still grateful to the International Center for doing that for me and I still feel shame for all my short-sighted moaning and complaining when I was filling out the forms. I wish they would have had an international center in the other countries that I moved to! Rik

But there is a big difference (in bridge terminology) between "slam interest" and "game force only". Usually there are three types of game forces (other than "I want to sign off in game, period."): Game force only: Enough for game... but partner may have undisclosed extra values, so "you never know" Slam interest: About a king better than "Game force only"... it starts a co-operative slam investigation Slam force: About two kings better than "Game force only"... 12 tricks will be there, unless the opponents can take two first. Forces to slam unless we lack the controls. It is a common agreement to splinter (in response to an opening bid) only with "game force only" hands or with "slam force" hands that can take control of the auction. People who have that agreement, don't splinter with hands with "slam interest". Instead they use Jacoby 2NT if they want to sell the hand as "balanced". Alternatively, they bid a natural suit, emphasizing the suit as a potential source of tricks, and show support on the next round (possibly by splintering). Rik

Or it is a way to say exactly that ... and at the same time emphasize that this is to the advantage of the psycher. There are perhaps more elegant ways to express this. But for a non-native speaker like pran, I would not qualify this as "very clumsy". Rik

That is a separate (but related) problem: the costs and values of immigration are not shared equally. the formation of immigrant neighborhoods is not good for integration. Frankly, the receiving country can do a lot to prevent this problem. In most cases, once the immigrant is in the new country, he has little option other than to live with his fellow countrymen. This is because the Western society doesn't welcome the stranger into the country. If the Western society would say: "Welcome! What can we do to help you? Let me show you how our country works. Have you met the Joneses yet? Do you like cricket? or hockey? We also play football! You might like to watch that! Have you ever heard of Man United/Ajax Amsterdam/Bayern München? If you need any help, please let me know!" then a (say) Pakistani immigrant has the genuine option to follow that and integrate. As it is, he is landing on Heathrow/Amsterdam/Frankfurt airport and the only thing he has is a phone number. It is not to some government agency or foundation welcoming him to the UK/Netherlands/Germany. No, it belongs to uncle Tauseef. Uncle Tauseef will help him. First, the immigrant will live with uncle Tauseef. A few months later he will live around the corner from uncle Tauseef. A couple of years later, there are hundred Pakistanis living in uncle Tauseef's neighborhood, except that uncle Tauseef himself will have moved up. After all, uncle Tauseef is the only person around who has integrated in the western society. Good integration can only happen if the immigrant is helped to find his way into our complex society. It cannot be left to the uncle Tauseefs. Rik

I really hate the 1♥ overcall. If I would have bid 2♥, I would have told my hand at once. Now, for some reason I didn't want to bid at the two level at my previous turn. So now that I know that my partner doesn't have much of a fit for me (no raise, no double) I should bid at the three level?!? Rik

Indeed. 2♣ would have been cold! Rik

I'll give my opinion: It is a bit of all. I think each of us has an obligation to the society we live in. I think it is silly to limit this "society" at any imaginary line that someone drew on a map ages ago. I think that immigrants have value for a society. That value is, among others, economic and cultural. Immigration also comes at a cost (or burden) for society. Again, these costs are economic and cultural. The cost and value of immigration should be shared. This is not the case now. In addition both sides, immigrants and the local population, have duties. For the immigrants: Work on your integration into the new society. Learn the language, learn the culture, get a job, participate in what the locals do in their spare time, get a hobby. This does not mean that you loose your original identity. It means that you gain a second one! You can be a devout Muslim from Pakistan and play bridge on Wednesday evening. Immigrants who choose voluntarily to come to my country need to realize these duties up front. They will get to play in a bridge club (or play soccer) where people drink beer (with alcohol!) despite the fact that this is forbidden according to the Quran. They will not be forced to drink any beer themselves, but they cannot forbid others from drinking it, no matter how bad it is to drink beer. If they can't live with that, they shouldn't come. For refugees, the situation is different. They did not make a deliberate choice to come. They just ran. They are traumatized and need all the help we can give them and we should teach them how to live in their new place with this strange culture... and then we can ask them to live up to their new duties. For the locals: Welcome and accept the strangers. Help them out when they can't find their way in a very confusing society. Forgive them their cultural errors and realize how your behavior shocks the locals when you are on vacation in Marakech or Phuket. It is not a miracle that the immigrants will make mistakes. Give them a little breathing space. Accept their original identity and don't ask them to denounce it. This just means that we need to help each other out. An example of how not to do this: A few years ago, the Dutch government, strongly influenced by an anti-immigration party, demanded of foreigners that they learn Dutch. I consider that an excellent requirement. Many foreigners thought the same since they already went to "Dutch for foreigners" classes. However, at the very same time that the government required foreigners to learn Dutch, they withdrew their support for these courses. This meant that those good willing foreigners that were actively working on their integration could not afford to go there anymore. I think that is criminal. It is not working towards a solution. It is an example of knowingly and willingly increasing a social problem for future political gain. Rik

You are correct about that and I misunderstood. All that is left is that we have a difference of opinion on whether this is a good or a bad practice. I guess we can live with that. Rik

Phil: 300/400 Ace: 650/680 Next board, please! How many boards were you playing? And the stakes were? Rik

Fortunately, partner balanced after your obvious pass, right? ;) Rik

Sorry Diana, I shold have added a smiley to my post... Rik

Given that it is better for a partnership to play one bad system than two different good systems, I am sure that Phil G will start to teach his students some mainstream stuff soon (no matter how bad this mainstream stuff is). Edit: ;) Rik

Doesn't the fact that you "lost" this particular case show that in universities these "benefit of doubt cases" do occur? You may not like them or you may be against them, but I find it a little strange that you first maintain that these things absolutely don't happen and then you yourself present an example where it did happen! Rik

So, health tourism may indeed be a problem. But running on an anti-emigration platform (with an 'e') doesn't get you many votes. ;) Rik

It happens all the time. I don't know what you are lecturing, but I am a chemical engineer. Throughout my life, as a high school student, a university student, as a grad student and when working at the university, I have seen situations where due to unforeseen circumstances tests could not be completed. If you would have to fail each university student who couldn't complete a lab, then only very few, very lucky ones (as in: "not necessarily good, just lucky") would graduate with an engineering degree. Take a typical engineering lab. It is full of equipment kindly donated by industry (read: "old junk that might still be used for teaching purposes"). The lab course is given once a year or once every two years. (These labs are expensive to run.) The students are divided into groups. Each group will run each piece of equipment in a rotation, similar to a bridge movement... or so is the plan. Because on day three, invariably one of these things will break. That happens with old equipment. This means that only two groups could run the equipment according to plan. The other 13 groups can't. Do you mean that now only those first two groups get to pass the lab course because only they have been working the complete planned program? And the others have to wait two years when the lab runs the next time? In the next term, these same students go through the analytical chemistry lab. On day four, there is a short-circuit in the IR spectrometer. 12 out of the 15 groups cannot do their IR testing. "Sorry guys, see you next year"? That would not be the engineering approach. The standard solution is that the students who can't use the equipment copy the data from one of the groups that could use it. And the teacher will make sure that the data is good. Then every group produces their own report on all the pieces of equipment, including the one that they never saw. That means that those students will never turn any valves or pull any levers on the broken piece of equipment. They do not need to think which gauge to read at what particular point in time. And they do not need to make any decisions on what to do (which valve to turn or what lever to pull) with those readings. They will get good data for free. In addition, when grading the report the lecturer will typically keep in mind that the students haven't seen the equipment when it was running. Mistakes in the report that are caused by this, will be corrected (so that the students will learn that it doesn't work like that) but also forgiven. I would call that "getting the benefit of the doubt". Rik P.S. Engineers don't get actual specific industrial equipment training at a university. Operators who run equipment will have learned that on the job (i.e. in industry). They will be trained (and certified) for that specific piece of equipment by someone who knows that specific piece of equipment. University engineers typically do not operate or handle industrial equipment. They do not turn valves or pull levers in a plant. It would be one of the faster ways to blow up the place. ;)

My reasoning: RHO seems to have jump raised with three card support. He must have a singleton. This singleton is going to be in a red suit. If the singleton would be in diamonds, I would expect that LHO could have read that when we finessed in diamonds. He c/should have beaten the contract by giving RHO a diamond ruff (with suit preference for spades), getting a spade back and giving a second diamond ruff. So, probably RHO's singleton is in hearts. I will finesse the 1♠ bidder for the ♥Q. The complete hand might be: [hv=pc=n&s=s2hkjt865dak2caq6&w=sak964hq72dq5c942&n=sqt53ha93djt964c7&e=sj87h4d873ckjt853]399|300[/hv] Rik

There is a big difference between real directing problems and constructed problems. The most difficult part of a real world problem is to get the facts. We have to deal with players who tell the story from their perspective and we need to investigate what has been going on, e.g.: what and how was a bid made? was there a break in tempo? what w/c/should the player have been thinking of? is there an agreement and what is it actually? A large part of practical problems is about how the TD should (could) carry out his investigation to establish the facts with reasonable certainty. This is the detective part of a TD's job. Once the facts are established, the rulings are supposed to be simple: do what the law book says. (And in the vast majority of cases this works.) Lamford's contructs are a different animal: The facts are clear, all the investigating has been done. The ruling is supposed to be simple... but it isn't because the laws are/seem ambiguous or contradictory. This is food for the legal theoreticians. It is important to recognize that both the investigation and the ruling are part of a (real) TD's job. On the other hand, it is futile to put any effort into investigating the facts for a hypothetical case, since there is nothing to investigate. So, it seems only fair to make it 100% clear when a case is constructed and to present all the relevant facts unambiguously in the OP, so that investigation is not needed. Rik

I agree with that, but on the other hand, imagine that there wouldn't be a district system and these percentages of the votes would have yielded these percentages of seats. What kind of a coalition would you envision that would be backed by 50% of the seats? Somebody needs to govern the country. The district system favors the bigger parties. That makes it easier to form a government. The "one man, one vote" system leads to long negotiations to form a government. But once that government is in place, it will be more balanced/moderate. Rik

Though I really think this shouldn't be about juggling numbers, this is an example that could come straight out of "How to lie with Statistics". The UK has a population density of 262/km2. And, yes, some of those km2 are uninhabitable since they are mountains. The uninhabitable area is also certainly larger than that of the Netherlands (since the UK is larger than the Netherlands). And when you put these facts together, you are nicely suggesting that the UK would be at least as overcrowded as the Netherlands. Darrell Huff would be proud of you. Suggesting something, with numbers that seem to back it up, without actually saying it! However, the suggestion would be entirely different if you would have added that: the population density of the Netherlands is 407/km2 this figure (and that for the UK) is based on land and water water alone makes up almost 20% of the area of the Netherlands (UK: a little over 1%) this makes the land based population density of the Netherlands almost twice as high as that of the UK (499/km2 vs 266/km2) a large fraction of the Netherlands is uninhabitable since it is either in the winter bed of rivers (i.e. dry in summer, flooded in winter) or so swampy that it is impossible or extremely costly to build anything*. a large part of the Netherlands used to be lake or sea and would return to be lake or sea within weeks if the Dutch didn't work hard to stop that from happening (i.e. this area is uninhabitable, but the Dutch make it inhabitable, day in day out). But as I said, this discussion shouldn't be about for whom it is the bigger burden to receive refugees. It should be about taking responsibility and giving other people the same right to seek security and happiness as we have. Rik * Small buildings (like single family houses and lower apartment buildings) can be (and are) constructed by building them on poles going through the swamp layer into the Pleiocene sand layer (mind you: sand, not rock). This layer is at a depth of 50 m (160 ft), meaning that the buildings (and roads, etc.) are standing on 50 m long poles. This would certainly fit Vampyr's definition of uninhabitable.

True, but what reason should there be to invoke Law 12C2 when the condition for it is not fulfilled: "When owing to an irregularity no result can be obtained"? (Note that this condition comes after listing all the possibilities of assigning an AS in law 12C1, obviously meaning that if all the other ways to assign an AS won't work then -and only then- you apply Law 12C2.) In this case there are 2 possible outcomes: 2♠-1 and 2♠c. You simply apply Law 12C1c or, if necessary, 12C1d and you have your AS. There is no need to use the "If all else fails" method of law 12C2. Rik