PoorMe

As I indicated surely EXPERT reasons have been given.Not that I buy them..The old luck sawhorse continues to get beaten.Surely claim being an EXPERT but do not prove expertise is a great way to go,

I think that we have agreed that the STAR system uses some kind of yardstick to determine who is assigned a star or not. Other than the STAR system skill level has generally been self assigned.The guidelines suggested by Fred seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Tournaments are now a part of BBO. A cursory look at the results of the tournaments indiacte to me that several EXPERTS skillfully avoid them.I am sure they have expert reasons to do so.However, those who ventured to play seem to me to do badly on a consistent basis.There may be reasons for that too. Since competition seems to be the universally accepted way to determine level of skill and expertise, I am suggesting that the BBO tournaments be used as the yardstick to assign skill level.

I may add to what lifemonster wrote...Those weak pre empts, which cannot win the auction only serve to give the ultimate declaring side a clear roadmap as to suit distributions and bad breaks and such.So in fact the pre empting side gains nothing but stands to lose more.I continue to be amazed at seeing that unsolicited information provided by the weak side in terms of winning the auction is not exploited to the max.If you are going to pre empt plan to win the auction !!!!

Since I seem to miss something, I would be more than pleased to be straightemed out on the matter.If 2 partners are able to fill out an identical convention card and they both stick to it without deviating, tell me if they are not playing the same identical system or method.As such I fail to see how the matter of saying they would be playing 2 different systems arise at all. As an example. Let's say a partnership clearly states and alerts and explains that they play one convention as a defence against strong NT and another defence against weak NT and further complicate it if you wish to say they play a certain thing in th direct seat and another in the passout seat. Are they playing more than one system? I say NO. they are both playing one and the same system. In like manner, ( NOT that I agree that I like the method, and if I were a director, I would ask my sponsoring org to outlaw it.), what they claim to be playing once it is clearly stated is another item in their system or method. In other words, I am saying that a system or method does have several facets or items in it, To me what they are playing is just another item in their method or system. I am sorry, but I still cant see that as playing more than one system .

The question posed based on the information provided was :""Äm I wrong or misguided?""...As to whether anybody was wrong or not...I will not dare interfere with that. However as to misguided, I will attempt to address that.I think what the defender should be asking himself is """Where can the setting trick or tricks come from?"" rather than dissipate energy about whether the lead is from this or that or the other or Rusinow or not.After all, from the original post we learnt that the hand was nearly halfway played...so that by time nearly half the pack of cards had already been played making it so much simpler to work out the remaining cards.In fact, and I stand corrected, it is my understanding that Rusinow leads cease to apply after the opening lead.