GreenMan

I may be way off the wall, but ... maybe playing the J allows for the small but nonzero chance that LHO would go up ace if she had it. No LHO would play the Q voluntarily, so when she plays small, there's a very slight advantage to playing the J.

This. South would have to take a view to bid 3NT with that 14 opposite a passed hand (after 3♦). It's not insane, but I'd only do it if I was sure we needed a swing.

Kleinman and Straguzzi suggest: 3♣: 7-8 or 11-12. 3♦ by opener asks which. 3♦: 9-10. You'll have to add the 3-card LR to the 1NT response, but that's no biggie.

Then I run the ♣9, pitching a heart. ;) Seriously, I'd win the first heart and lead a spade to my hand to play a diamond up. So that's probably the only way to go down ...

I will check with my partner Dakota Byl to see if he is free.

FIFY.

I suppose if W thinks that literally all his cards are high, it's barely conceivable that he'd ruff the club from South, cash his other trump discarding the ♣K, then play a diamond. Defenders get 4 tricks. But even with the given claim statement I'd be hard-pressed to consider that "careless or inferior but not irrational". So I don't see how the defense gets more than 2 tricks.

Start by playing low to the King. It wins. Come back to your hand, lead another small one, LHO plays small, and ... you have to guess whether to play the Q or the 10. That's why South should duck with Ax; if he wins the A right away then you'll finesse the 10 on the second round and run the suit. If he gives you a guess, then half the time you'll get it wrong by random chance. Alan Truscott wrote once that when you're facing this guess, assess the relative strength of your opponents. If one of them is a stronger player than the other, assume that one has the Ace; a less skilled player will have probably played it by now. (By now you've figured out that if you're the defender you want to duck your Ace the first time because it's almost always the right play. Courage.)

Start by cuebidding the opponent's suit, e.g., (1♥) Dbl (P) 2♥. This tells partner that you have a good hand, 10 or more points, and says nothing about your distribution. Now your partner will start describing her hand, and you'll go from there. With an opening hand opposite a takeout double, unless you have a serious misfit you should end up in game, and the cuebid helps partner know that your side is strong, so she won't drop you prematurely in a low-level contract.

It also tells us that on hands where some other world class pair chose to bid 4M, the 4M contract did worse.

Also, you never have to PLAY 4♣. This is an underrated benefit. :P

Finally some love for Stargate! SG-1 was consistently better than most.

Form of scoring matters. More likely to prefer 3NT at matchpoints with a flat hand and 5-3 fit. But I treat each case individually. FWIW I generally follow Grant Baze's advice that if you're in the 28-29 HCP range (both hands) then 3NT is almost always better unless your major-suit fit is huge, like 6-3 or better.

Eddie Kantar wrote in one of his books about a hand Jim Linhart played, wherein he and pard bid to 7♦; RHO doubled and slapped the ♦A onto the table. But Linhart bid 7NT, which kept RHO off lead and made the ♦A a penalty card, and when a non-diamond was led (void or because of UI, can't remember which), Linhart managed to scramble enough tricks in the other three suits that RHO had to discard the ace. (In Kantar's telling, Big Jim had to physically wrest it from the recalcitrant defender's hand.) Not entirely on-topic but a good story.

A friend told me he once encountered a pair playing "bonus Flannery" -- 2♦ alerted as 4♠, 5+♥. On the hand where it came up, opener was 4-8 (!) in the majors.

I see that Stansby plays it with Bramley. Not sure about Martel-Zia.

Er, just the opposite: No trick is in progress, so a claim can't be made legally.

Anything Stansby-Martel and Levin-Weinstein play has to have something going for it. IMHO whether to play 2♦ as Flannery, Multi, natural, Mexican or something else is largely a matter of style and personal preference, since they all have advantages.

LHO might lead a hippogriff. Seriously though, if you claim all 13 before the opening lead, probably no one will call you on the rule violation, but it's LHO's turn to play, not yours. Let her do her duty.

You must have wandered in from some other thread.

I believe you are describing an encrypted signal: The meaning of your signal depends on information about your hand that you and your partner have but declarer does not. Most SOs including the ACBL do not allow them.

They do acknowledge as much. I don't really know what's common these days.

Whatever you do, do it quickly. If you huddle and pass, partner will be constrained.

It's hard to evaluate all these possibilities, which is why this game is so much fun. :) ETA: The criteria you listed are generally for judging whether you'll survive sitting for the double, without taking your side's game prospects into account. Kleinman and Straguzzi wrote that, in general, shooting for penalties is a five-way parlay. All the following must be true: --Opener must be able to balance (if you're considering an initial trap-pass; not a factor here) --The balance must be a double (ditto) --They can't run to a safer spot --You can beat their contract --You can get more on defense than by making your own contract They recommend the agreement that opener won't balance unless he has extras. If you have that agreement, then your pretty good 10-count is worth game, so on defense you know you'd need more tricks than if you were just trying to beat the score for, say, 3♣=. This agreement helps responder evaluate those 10-11 counts in this situation, and it helps opener, because if responder makes some minimum bid (e.g., 3♣ with your hand if you held an ace or so less), then he can better judge to pass, because with your actual hand you'd show your strength somehow.

Don't forget to account for the vulnerability. At unfavorable, you need to set 2♦ four tricks to beat the game your way. That means taking 9 tricks in the opponents' strain of choice. That's a lousy bet. Even at equal you need 8 tricks, and at favorable you need 7. So maybe one approach is to ask yourself, on the hand in question, "Would I sit for a double of a 5-trick contract instead of an 8-trick one?"