Tomi2

Good point, are you aware that USA also had a girl on our last World Junior Team? In fact, we had undoubtedly the best girl junior in the world on our team. ... before i read the rest of your post: I played in the U26 event, and in our competition i cant remember an American Girl, in yours (U28 that is true) And I think she did not play the pairs or individual events, where I could have played against her (and for sure would have enjoyed doing this) now i can go on reading you long post...

you underestimate this a (little) bit. In the World Juniors Championships 2008, additional to the girls mentioned, Italy had Irene Baroni playing in their team and Danisch Anne-Sofie Houlberg became World Champion in that event. Polish girl Joanna Krawczyk won a medal in the pairs event and finished 4th in the individual. So the European teams had approx. average 1 girl per team whily I can't remember having played against any girl from America, Asia Australia or Africa, but I may be wrong. one out of six is better than no girls at all. All of the players mentioned by you or me are recognized and respected as good players. The girls in our Team (Maria Würmseer and Cristina Giampietro) also started in the Girls' event in 2004 and now are collecting their medals in all kind of Women, Mixed AND Open events. They will soon join our Women national team The Girls event gives young girls from 15 to 20 an aim to keep on playing Bridge, I think it is a good event and should be supported by USBF too.

i can not imagine using this for penalties is useful, since I would nearly need 6 dias to jump to 3 level with modern takeout doubles and I am sitting in front of the hearts. Since I would need to have 5 trumps or so to make a 100% penalty double and I often have only 13 cards total, I would rather use it as "bid something intelligent" so a hand that can play 4♦ as well as 3NT as 3♠ as well as 3♥x

Hi, since some weeks I have some bug. When I enter the "partnership bidding" area only the first tables from a#### to s### or t### are shown, but not the tables with hosts beginning with one of the last letters, like now "stevo"s table is not longer displayed, but he is practising with "levin"

I play 3N as strong minor-two-suiter with bids from responder to show controls in outside suits and to decide who plays the final contract, helped me 2 weeks ago in the european universities championships when I held KJ void Aqjxx AKQJxx and got a 4S response showing spade ace, could easily bid 6 clubs and knew pd would even rais with king of dias unfortunately this comes not so often :rolleyes:

all, HK or an ace can coast a trick or cost tempo, but I think with hearts p wld have doubled, so I expect herts to be the best suit in dummy. Underleading the aces can win more then lose IMO so i throw a coin and either lead small dia or club

i ran a short 100 board sim on that, 6nt was making 50 times, so the fields bidding was well timed :rolleyes:

yeah, lucky that I play this bid in polish style. 3s= I stop one suit, if you stop the other try 3nt. think the percentages that partner ALSO has a spade stopper but not a club one are much lower than having the right agreement about showing and asking (that is 50-50)

The "problem" cropped up a couple bids earlier Contrast the following two situations 1. 2♣ is effectively forcing 2. 2♣ is nonforcing. Responder will frequently pass 2♣ (especially if he is white on red) It is much more difficult to design a defense against 2♣ nonforcing. Alex and Josef don't want to do any gambling, they will rarely pass 2!C. This convention is not made for gambling. The history of this system is that Piekarek played with his former partner (my father) 2♣ and 2♦ two suiters with hearts+any and spades+minor and those calls were quiet constructive because they really promised 5-5 (and close to opening strentgh vuln). The reason for putting them into the 2m openers is that they wanted to play weak twos instead of multi If you play such two suiters 5-4 or 4-4 instead of 5-5, they come up more frequently but then again partner has to be aware that there are mabe 4 outside losers etc. I have made a 2♣ opening bid today on void- KJTxx - Jxx -AQT9x and after showing maximum in the auction my dad played me for that hand - this is a normal 1-opener for some our auchtions often go 2cl - 4he or 2di - 4s with hands that need to invite and give information playing more destructive Now Smirnov likes the 2H majors convention and he wants some way to geat some NT range out of 1 Club so they put the spades two suiter in 2S and added multi to have all available: weak two bids, two-suiters and 44 majors Having the wide range in Clubs has not often been a problem in my experience, not knowing what to do after a 2cl prec opener has... the rest of the system is basicly old fashioned polish club as mentioned before, only that they respond on 3 cards to 1 club occasionaly, like xx - kjx - axxx - xxxx is a 1he bid. Some call it "brdge", they have included a step in the 1cl - 1M - 2di relay to find this out. Looking forward to see. how they will be doing in Brazil! edit: they invented the name, because Piekarek is born in Poland (Gdansk area) while Smirnov is Russian (St. Petersburg) , so they did not want to call their system Polish club, but grew up at the Baltic Sea, same as me (I played this system with Smirnov in Juniors competition)- so we decided to give itthis name B)

I made some excelsheet with a scenario, to let it be easier I made a 8-teams KO there are teams ABCDEFGH with A beeing the strongest then B etc. every team has rating points from 100 for team H, to 120 for G etc till 240 for team A if two teams play against each other the chances for one to win are own rating / (own rating + their rating) In the semifinals you calculate this for both potential opps multiplicated by the chance that this team really makes it. its for example for Team A: p(d wins vs e)*240 / 240+ratingD + p(e wins vs d)* 240 / 240+ratingE same for final... Now I first seeded the stronges team 1, then team B 2 etc, so 1-8 2-6 etc are quaterfinals and 1/8 - 4/5 2/7 - 3/6 are semis chances to win the event are: A: 0,235365138 B: 0,196187125 C: 0,161206397 D: 0,130015443 E: 0,102599906 F: 0,078423891 G: 0,05718023 H: 0,039021871 now first I changed the seeding in favor to team A, so they play H in quaterfinals and winner of F and G in semis then they have: 0,253560726... thats relatively 7% more now I change the seeding against team A so they have to play B in quaterfinals and winner of C and D in semis that makes 0,186518715... thats relatively 20% less the best scenario for team H (playing G first...) wd be 0,058217903, thats 49% more than original, worst for them (playing A and then B or C) is 0,037476704 this is like somebody else mentioned before like playing 17 or 27 events to win once I think those are quiet significant numbers, but the key is the "rating" I used. If in real Bridge the teams are closer to each others (more equal) then seeding becomes less important, if teams divergate more, then seeding becomes more important. Other data: If Team A and B become equal, say 230 and one is seeded 1 the other is seeded 2 then its: A:0,222028256 B:0,209307908 if for some reason the 2nd strong team becomes seeded 7th: A:0,231064027 B:0,183228881

and find partner with x - axx - kqxxx - qxxx or so? i signal my count in hearts and trust hat partner has his brain turned on

I wold play sth. like: 3♠ = searching for best game offering 4-3 spades, partner bids 4s with 3 good spades, 4m with the longer and good minor and maybe 3nt with stiff Q or J in hearts to offer partner to play there 3NT finishes he auction 4m shows a good fit and invites cuebids or a 5m signoff 4H shows a great hand with at least one fit 4♠ asks for dummy 4NT asks for better minor 5m sign off too

the problem with this elections is that the "star" commentators only comment in big events with great players and great bridge. They are commentating BermudaBowl Finals with stars they know for many years. But there are also Turkish Club Championships running and Mongolian Junior Trhophies and Zimbabwes Seniors Cup where other commentators do lots of work with unfamilar players, systems and frequent changing level of bridge. I love to watch a vug with LC commentating thats true - but thats only one or two times a year when the bridge is also world class (I think he does most commentating in Cavendish) But I would not like to give him any award for this, while people like HedyG etc. have more deserved it (IMO)

Of course he did. What else was the point of 3♥? He could have bid 6♦ right away. because he neede more information about our hand and he got that with our pass in the round before where we could have doubled and he would not bid 6 dias biddind 7 now for me sounds like 1nt - 3nt - 6nt...

your partner did not invite you to a grand slam, he bid 6 d and hope you make it with passing and not doubling 4 hearts you showed your hand and partner draw his conclusion. Why should you bid your aces and the 5 diamonds THREE times? obvious pass and pray that 6D makes

Ich fand damals und heute auch noch, die 3 imps für uns auch nicht gerechtfertigt, hätte mit -3 leben können, aber so wars natürlich auch nicht schlecht :)

Aus Eigener Erfahrung kann ich sagen, dass es möglicht ist dass die Boards mit 60/60 gewertet werden. In der Liga hat mein Komplimentär drei Boards vor SChluss der Abendrunde einen Schwächeanfall erlitten, nix tragisches, wurde halt nur ärztlich behandelt, die Boards wurden +3/+3 gewertet, der Kampf ging 16-16 aus Gruß Thomas

Question to all non forcing repliers: was your double on 2 hearts just a joke?, youre playing teams and wanted to score at least 300 with that double, but most likely more and now we play for 110 points instead of 600? on what kind of hands do you double 2 hearts in a team game? just need some hands that double 2 hearts with no fear but then want to play partscore

You play polish club without more discussions, so 1♦probably shows 5 cards or 4+ if unbal, 2NT would have been weak with both minors but in this seat not soo weak... Bidding goes with N beeing decl., red/white TEAMS 1♦ - 2♦ - X - 2♥ // pass - pass - X - pass // 3♣ - pass - 3♦* 1♦ norm. 5 cards, 2♦ majors, x undiscussed probably points or intention to punish them 2nd x also undiscussed probably penalty is 3♦ now forcing because pd created a forcing situation with his pass/pull or is this nonforcing bec. pd has minimum and fear to pass 2♥x... with maximum he would bid directly...? thx

1♣ - 1♦ polish style / negative or... 2♦ - 3♣ any GF / 0-3 hcp, one 4/5 card major 3♠ - 3NT spades, not interested in your hearts / no ♠ fit, something outside 4♣ - 4♠ clubs / leave me alone pass hope this would be the auction with my father 1♣ - 1♦ polish style / negative or... 2♦ - 2♠ any GF / double negative, no own suit 3♠ - 3NT spades / no ♠ fit, something outside 4♣ - 4♠ clubs / please leave me alone hope both players would be so disciplined and bid this way

nice post, 100% agree to that, bidding 2nt on good hands with fit steals you lots of usefull biddingspace

in my opinion the dbl is by default take out two extra reasons in this case: obviously partner had no t/o double available with no 4 spades and obviouly the one who passed hat 3 hearts. but playing trials in MP scoring you will see lots of results like this

have one qestion: is there only a black and a white for the TD in this situation? wouldn't it be possible to find out a P and a (1-P) with P=finding winning lead and 1-P = not and calculate some kind of mixed score? P*-100+ (1-p)*600 of course when in doubt how big this P can be, you can decide in favor of the side who had no BIT. For me first of all the BIT aspcet is not so clear, it was no minutes of thinking, so the delay could have been: one of the player is writing and explaination of some bid one of the players drinks some coffee before putting the pass card on the tray one of the players has dropped his pen and picks it up south intentionally did not put the tray directly back (it is his right) one of the players saw a beautiful female kibitzer walking around and did not notice for a moment that it was his turn to pass all those aspects (that can take 5 seconds extra) don't suggest a heart lead, last one even suggests a club lead :) I thnik its unfair, that both questions "was there a BIT?" and "do we allow the lead" can only be answered with 0 or 1 and for the discussion what lead is automatic in that situation I agree with Josh, it's important what your style in opening bids (and your system) is. I like to play system where all bal. hands are opened 1C, even allowing 5 medicore dias and bad 5M holdings. So the fact partner opens 1C is one of the last aspects I think about when I try to find an opening lead. I don't know their style but you have to concider it

ich you then bid the other two suits you will tell your partner, that you hold total 13 cards. I can't say when 2♦ or ♥ is right, I think I bid both of them about 50% of the times, depending on what my hand looks like. If I hold a hand that is an invite vs. a normal 1nt bid I bid 2♦ and raise partners preferance. then I even habe shwon 10 of my cards :lol: I very much like to bid 2♣ even on a doubleton to let 2♦ be 4+ anyway. If i have fear missing a very thin 4H I bid 2H and hope p raises me. If I have a hand where I think opps will ballance or so I bid 2H intending to bid 3D next turn If my dias are good I bid 2D, if my hearts are good i try 2H etc.

1) Helness - Helgemo 2) Levin - Weinstein 3) Rodwell - Hampson 4) Piekarek - Smirnov (hope Alex will not forget my 10€ for the auction pool this time) :) 5) Bakkeren - Bertens