GreenMan

Brady is a member of a union that has a collective bargaining agreement with the NFL. His case went to arbitration as the agreement calls for, then he went to court to claim that the process was not neutral. The Olympics and other sport organizations also specify that the Court of Arbitration for Sport is the sole body that has jurisdiction to hear disputes. Its decisions can be appealed to the Swiss supreme court. Narrowing the choice of jurisdiction seems like a sensible step, otherwise actions could be filed pretty much anywhere.

Also with Meckstroth, he seems to have a quality that even other top pros don't have, or don't have as much: He sees ways to wring impossible results out of the cards. It's not all that unusual to see a declarer on vugraph make a seemingly hopeless game, but Meckstroth seems to do it more often, even allowing for the fact that Meckwell bid so many 22-point games. I remember watching him play 10xx opposite AQxx for three tricks by leading the 10 from dummy and RHO with Jxx didn't cover. That would never have occurred to me in a million years. This ties into the later observation about creating problems for the opps; that's a big part of it. But he seems to find more ways to create problems. Maybe the other tier 1 pros do it as often and I just don't notice as much.

Yes, and since I've been working for a legal-news provider I've found that this can lead to lawsuits by investors. Best to avoid any mention of future changes until they are certain.

I wouldn't discount the value of smaller decisions. I played in a JEC v. BBF match some time back where nearly every swing in their direction was in single digits, and there were a lot of them. We got a couple of good scores our way but not nearly enough to be competitive. In looking at the results later I noticed the winning team was simply more active and made better competitive decisions, especially in partscore deals; game swings and phone-number penalties were not a factor. It's rare for a long match to be decided entirely by small-ball results, but I'd be careful not to put too much emphasis on the big scores. +5, +6, -11 keeps you in contention.

I would just like to point out that I'm only in the listings at all because I subbed in on the last two boards and scored 20% in that round. All credit goes to the previous holder(s) of that seat.

They still have to catch them, and prove that what they did was against the law. My impression from the outside is that the people who prosecute financial crimes (federal regulators and the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, basically) would love love love to throw more people in the clink for that sort of thing, but the laws are tricky and their resources are thin.

No opinion on the specific hand or player, but I'll note that I consider myself "Advanced" by BBO's guidelines but have "Intermediate" in my profile because when I play online I'm often tired or distracted, so when I play below my (self-estimated) potential it doesn't come as a shock to my partner. Perhaps this player simply takes the more optimistic view in that regard.

As Bbradley said, working out what constitutes a fair game seems like exactly what a sponsoring organization should be about. They already have standards such as minimum number of boards played, do they not? Why should we believe that the regulations as of two weeks ago were perfect and any further adjustment is a slippery slope to anarchism? It's a quite romantic notion that not showing up or having a word with the people in charge will make a difference. I think most of us realize from experience that it's generally not the case.

Also, seems to me the arrow switch is more likely to happen properly early on than late when people are tired and may not pay attention to unusual instructions and some tables have fallen behind.

In everyday speech "prolly" is faithful to a very common pronunciation.

This is incorrect. Even when people use "unique" to mean something other than literally sui generis, it connotes a greater degree of difference or individuality than "unusual." The meaning of "unique" may be drifting away from its literal sense, but even so, no one uses them interchangeably. As an easy example, plenty of people would say the weather where I live has been unusually mild. No one would call the recent weather unique, even loosely.

:D I'll take it! :)

I've been listening to the Grateful Dead's reunion shows. 3rd of 5 tonight. The first set may have been the best I've ever heard.

From my Twitter profile.

That assumes that passing 3NT with OP's hand is a logical alternative. Assuming even further that a 3NT rebid after Jacoby is natural, I wouldn't consider passing a LA with a small side doubleton and 4-card support. Hearts is likely to play at least one trick better than notrump. If 3NT is not by agreement a suggestion to play, then now the UI is that 3NT is not a forward-going bid, and it actually suggests passing rather than bidding (though again with OP's actual hand pass is not an LA IMO).

The fact that one hard problem was eventually solved does not mean that another problem is easy to solve. The illustration holds up fine.

I think this illustrates the situation reasonably well: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png

Defending a NT contract, we need two more tricks to beat it. I have ♠QTx ♥A ♦-- ♣Qxx, and I'm sure declarer on my right has AKJ A in the blacks, but I'm not sure which way. As I'm thrown in with the ♥A, partner has the first chance by either of us to make a discard: the ♣2. Obviously there's no future there, so I play a spade. Declarer claims with ♠AKJ ♣A and high diamonds. Partner had the ♣KJxx. Partner asked why I never led a club. I said, "You discouraged in clubs." Partner said, "No I didn't, dummy's hearts were set up and we were out of diamonds, so the only suits left were spades and clubs, so I played a small club to ask for the lower-ranking suit."

If GIB reasonably assumed South had 22+ HCP for the 2♣ opener then that sums to 37, which is enough for a grand.

Concealed partnership understanding.

It looks to me as if this increases the penalty (by adding an additional offense) if you're trying to do some particular good work.

It depends on the nature of the federal ownership. In many cases local authorities are the ones engaging in law enforcement and the feds are essentially landowners in the state. There are complexities, of course, but in practice the state authorities may decide to enforce state laws till they're told to stop.

Two headlines from the British press: THE NEVERENDING TORY KEEP CAM and CARRY ON

A lot of us don't let worry about adding anything significant stop us. :rolleyes:

Once he's claimed, with an incomplete statement (no line of play), all doubtful points, including whether he will actually get in, are resolved in favor of the other side. What's more interesting is that saying "I'll take these" does seem to constitute a claim, whereas just dropping the aces on the table does not -- and thus the two situations are resolved differently, one under claim procedures, the other under penalty card procedures.