joshs

3D. This is a punt. It shows something in diamonds (but may just be 3 small), but that you are not sure that 3N is the right spot. If partner bids 3N you actually like your hand a lot, since the D K is now working, and partner is 4126 shape. Opposite a minimum hand like AKxx x Qx Kxxxxx you can make 6C. So over 3N you should bid 4C next, and push a lot in the direction of slam. If partner bids 3H, your values are a bit less certain. I would bid 4C over that as well, but not try as hard (4C and then 5C over 4S but a more agressive bid over 4H).

Has anyone here read Francis Fukuyama's Book "The end of History and the Last Man."? Written in the late 80's he argued that the liberal democratic state was the ultimate end (think Hegel) of the evolution of society. This was due to scientific advancement and other hystorical forces. Further, he noted some of the negative effects of this fact in the loss of indivuduals having the creative freedom to truely reshape the world (if I remember the argument correctly). E.G. No more Nietzschean supermen. A facenating book. While I personally think he discounts the importance of economics in how a society is organized (and most importantly how power is distriubuted in society) it is still a very important book, by the leading neo-conservative thinker of his age. I need to re-read this, I have not touched it since it came out 15 years ago.

The bigger isues are: I am not sure I will take any long flights if I can't bring a bottle of water along. I tend to get very dehydrated and sick. Part of my wedding present to a friend is a great bottle of wineI just bought which I was bringing to their wedding next week. So I now have a choice between not bringing it, or putting it in stored luggage and risk it breaks. I will have to bring a second piece of luggage since I am unwilling to have it break and ruin my suit.... I think this no liquid thing is going way too far....

Yeah my team was forced to drop one of its members (my most regular partner, elnorte) since a. all the other teams are in foreign countries b. we can only schedule matches against those teams on the weekend (do to things like jobs and timezones conflicting) c. elnorte can only play weekdays...

In general, when you have a choice between xing and bidding the stayman bid you should x whenever you a. would be happy to hear partner pass (e.g. you have 2 or 3 cards in their suit) and b. you can handle the auction if partner doesn't bid a major (so for instance 4333 hands with a stopper might choose to x on the off chance that partner can pass, and 4324 hands are always happy to x since whatever partner does is correct) and you should x whenever you legitamately have support for all the suits, and can tolerate partner passing. The problem hands in your example would be something like 4432 (no stopper) which can't x since you have has no good bid over partner's 3C call or (42)34 (no stopper) which can't handle partner bidding the wrong major over your x, if further compitition occurs. Those hands would bid stayman (3C when the opps overcalled 2D) and then might have to bid 3N without a stopper. Also a hand like 2425 shape with weak clubs might well bid stayman rather than show the clubs.

There is no discussion of what 2N meant? I would have interpreted this auction as: 2D=Minimum with 6 D P of 2H=Penalty pass (its not universal whether x is penalty here or just cards/takeout) 2N=7-4 in the minors 3N=I wanted to defend 2H, but I guess I will have to try 3N instead Do you have reason to beleive that 2N was "I was in between a 2D and 3D bid and I have a stopper"?

Grue and Kraynyk open very light and jump to the 3 level very light. I saw them open 1D on a 4=4=4=1 11 count and then jump to 3H over a 1H response. I suspect that the single raise shows a hand thats really very bad. Having said that, to pass with 3 aces seems to be a big position....

What about Universities? And I don't mean just well-known universities like Harvard and Yale, etc. I mean the universities and colleges that aren't known ouutside of their specialty or area. From highly rated ones like (Harvey Mudd College), to ones that get made fun of as party schools (like San Diego State), they all do a good job of catching these teenagers up to the level they should be in the first year, and giving them a good, very well-rounded post-high school education the next three (or more) years. I stress well-rounded, because I believe that this is another way that most american colleges differ from European ones (that I've heard of from other people, at least): Students are expected to take many classes outside of their major. This gets people out of a "blinders" mindset: they're expected to learn subjects that they may not be as interested in learning (that's why they're not majoring in them), and I think that this helps executives, etc. in training to look at problems in different ways. Or at least listen to different people who think in different ways. You may say that this applies only to college graduates, and point out that not everyone in the US is a college graduate. True. But at least 80% of the people in my high school graduating class (a public school in Los Angeles) went on to four year college (so they probably completed at least one year) and the ones I knew of the rest at least spoke about going to community college. I'm not actually saying that education is the reason that America is successful in business, I'm just saying that it's not necessarily a reason for it NOT to be successful. If you asked me what a reason could be, I'd say that the amount of time people are expected to work is a big factor. It is pretty common for people to have 60 hour work weeks. I would be surprised if this were as common in many western european countries. I think this is a very important point. I remember about 10 years ago, MIT did a study to try to understand why MIT students had higher test scores than Harvard Students (both SATs and GREs, etc) but typically when reaching a business setting, the MIT students ended up working for the Harvard students. Some of the factors were out of MITs control (Old Boy network), others they could do something about. Chiefly: the diversity of classes that people take, the diversity of interests of the students, and the personality of the students (these are not independant, the students who wanted to over specialize on math and science, often had personalities that were less gregarious and did much worse in business settings) A lot of what makes Americans good at business is self fulliling. We as a society, value hard work and the status assocaited from getting to the top at business (or being rich in general), and that in turn makes role models out of the people who are successful at it, and influences all of our behavior. I remember when i was traveling in New Zealand some years ago. I ran into 500 brtis, 300 germans, 200 Israelies, and about 10 Americans. Americans believe that can't take time off and they must owrk all the time to get ahead. The value of time. Time to yourself. Time to spend with family and friends and so on, has a much lower importance on americans these days. I think this is bad, but its interesting to note it socialogically....

Its ok for an opening bid of 1N, especially if you use a weaker NT range, since the accuracy loss you get from the 4 point range is compensated for a decrease in the opps accuracy. A 4 point range on the NT rebid isn't very good. I often have such a range in a number of systems in order to gain me a free bid else where (like an ART 2N opening bid), but you really do have a net loss from that large range.

Example Of Science Fiction: "A 15 bid relay auction to 7N, which promptly goes down 3."

9. [hv=n=st7xhkxxdajxxcxxx&w=s9865hxxxd875catx&e=sqxhaqdkqt9xxckqx&s=sakjxhjt9xxdcj7xx]399|300|[/hv] The Play went SA, small, 7 small. Then mistake 1: I switched to a heart (declerer has few enties to dummy to take both the heart and the trump hooks). Had I continued with SK and a low spade to partner's ten, declarer is legitamately held to 9 tricks. Declarer won the heart and played a high trump, I pitched a heart, and partner ducked. Then declarer lead a low club, and I fell asleep again and played low (I needed to play the J) but declarer didn't play me for the mistake and didn't put in the ten.... 10. [hv=n=st7xhkxxdajxxcxxx&w=s9865hxxxd875catx&e=sqxhaqdkqt9xxckqx&s=sakjxhjt9xxdcj7xx]399|300|[/hv] At my table, where we didn't x 5D, the play went Heart, Heart ruffed. Spade to the J and Ace low trump back won with the 9. Spade K, ruffed, Trump back, down 2. The winning line is after Heart, Heart ruffed, C to the ace, club ruff. spade to the J and ace. later you use the DQ as an entry to ruff out the clubs and the spade K as a late entry to use the clubs. (Alternatively, you play D to the Q first, to ruff out the clubs and later use the spades as an entry. 11. [hv=n=st7xhkxxdajxxcxxx&w=s9865hxxxd875catx&e=sqxhaqdkqt9xxckqx&s=sakjxhjt9xxdcj7xx]399|300|[/hv] I won the heart lead, and deciding there was more likely to be spade length on my left (since no club lead) played a spade to the Q, SA (Bingo!), and then ST making 3. 12. [hv=n=st7xhkxxdajxxcxxx&w=s9865hxxxd875catx&e=sqxhaqdkqt9xxckqx&s=sakjxhjt9xxdcj7xx]399|300|[/hv] If you lazily return another spade, declarer will ruff, Cash the DA, Cash 2 rounds of trumps ending in dummy, ruff out the diamond, and return to dummy with the CA. The defense can get there high trump whenever they want it for making 5. To hold them to 4, my partner found the return a club after wining the Diamond. This falls into the category of "what is declarer up to".

5. At Imps I think its clear to lead a low spade. Its the best chance of setting the hand. But at mps, you see that the opps have 6C, and likely 4 at least red tricks, so if they win the first spade trick they might well be in position to squeeze you in the majors for a 12'th trick. Anyway, today something different happened. The opps had QT opposite J9 in spades, and after the low spade lead had an easy 12 tricks after the DQ came down. 6. I bid 3C and LHO had a distributional 10 count with 6 hearts and a club void. So LHO bid 3H and they played 4H making 6 on their 23 points. I am still curious what would have happened had I xed. Did they have the machinary to invite game over that? 7. Your decision here didn't matter. My partner passed (I agree). Had he invited I would have declined with my 4333 12 count. The hand was friendly, for making 3. 8. We got a very good board here when I opened 1D on something like Q8xx Qx KQTxx Kx and we were allowed to play 1S down 2 (-100). You have to love being NV at mps. I still have no idea why Michael rosenberg didn't balance with 1N on his 4=3=3=3 15 count (or was it 14?). 2D or 2H were better contracts, but its hard to get to them. In either case the opps can make 8 tricks in spades or NT as the cards lied.

Its a race where David has 30 seconds to make a funny joke after you come to the table?

Having read Spinoza, I am certain that after creating the world out of a single monad, God had nothing left to do and went into hybernation.

If there was no Go, I would not collect $200, and I would probably end up bankrupt after paying my utility bills, and staying in my friend's hotels, and taking a ride on reading railroad..

I have experimented with lots of schemes here in conjunction with 2D multi: a. 2M=5M, 4+m b. 2H=Weak with both majors, 2S=Weak with both Minors c. 2H=Weak with both majors, 2S=Intermediate d. 2H=Flannary, 2S=Intermediate e. (My Strong Preference) 2M=Intermediate (9-12 ish) While e doesn't appear to fill a hole (e.g. it doesn't enable you to bid any new hand types) you gain in the following ways: 1. Hands of average strength are very common and you are very well placed. The opps might have to make a dangerous 3 level overcall or get shut out. The auction also tempos well, I have won many imps on the auction 2H-(2S)-3H(on a doubleton)-(3S) Its hard not to raise to 3S with 3 card support. 2. You gain a lot of bidding accuracy on your major 1 suiters, e.g. multi 2D=5-8ish 2M=9-12ish 1M then 2M=13-15 1M then 3M=16-18 These tighter ranges make bidding these hands easier. Also often the auction can go 1M-1N(Forcing)-2M-4M when responder merely has a good fitting balanced 10-11 count So what you give up in not being able to open certain hands, you gain in getting great results on a frequent hand type. Having played the M+m pre-empts for years, I still like them (with some suit quality restrictions) at least when white, but they are very high variance bids. I have never played the less frequent 5M+5m version, which is somewhat safer, but only somewhat. I am kind of curious about playing 2M as 4 in M, and 6 in a minor with reasonable strength, say 8-11. I don't think it will happen much, but it seems like an interesting idea at least when white. Since 4-3 fits will not play well on this hand type, I think its too dangerous red.

I performed an independant poll on this hand, but only got 2 responses so far. Personally I am a passer, and If i was going to bid it would be 1N not 2H. This hand is going to play terribly in hearts with the spades over you and RHO probably able to overruff dummy (if he has trump support at all). Meanwhile, 1S may not be a thing of beauty for them. If we have game, its because partner has 2 or 3 spades and not the right hand for a takeout x or a minor suit overcall. In which case, NT is our likely game. The main gain of balancing is when the opps can make exactly 1S, and nothing else, and we can make what we bid (and manage to stop there). The comments I recieved were: Marc Umeno "Y I balance" (He didn't say with what). Marc still thinks pass is a 4 letter word. Alex Kolesnik was close to my opinion: " I do not balance. 5 reasons: 1) if partner is short in spades, he doesn't have much, since he didn't bid or double 2) if partner isn't short in spades, we will go plus, and are very unlikely to have a game 3) if partner isn't short in spades, they may have a big diamond fit, which they may find if I balance 4) if I bid 2h, partner may take me seriously and put me in game, which is unlikely to make because of the bad spade position (both my king and length are poorly positioned 5) I am very unlikely to lose a lot of imps by passing, but I am much more likely to lose a lot of imps by bidding "

Anyone else interested in these?

Any other replies?

Anyone else want to try these?

This was a hysterical auction from chicago: 1N(14-16)-2N(Modified Puppet stayman)-3D(Any 4333)-3H(do you have 4 hearts?)- 3S(No, I have 4 Spades)-P!!! I started cracking up when partner passed me in 3S. As I it was I made 3 with my 4333 14 count (but even 3 was marginal). This all happened because we didn't have a good way of inviting game with 4-4 in the majors (Blame Ron Klinger's first version of Keri for that) so partner stretched to force game and then heard I was 4333 and hated that so took a position....

Dyslexics of the world, Untie!

Best: Hill Street Blues The Archies Mission Impossible Close: Gilligan's Island The Banana Splits Show Soap

Ritalin is a wierd drug. Prior to puberty it acts as a downer and is used on overly hyperactive kids. After puberty it has the reverse effect and acts as a stimulent....

Hands 1 and 2 were gifts: On hand 1 I bid 5C (questionable) and the opps forgot to x. I bought a below average dummy: Qxx Qx AJTxxx AQ And went down 3, but since they forgot to x, it was a good board. Hand 2 was another gift. Stevie forgot to cover the spade J and it really mattered: [hv=n=sajtxhat8xdaxcqxx&w=sxxxxh9xdkqtxxckx&e=skxxxh76dxcat98xx&s=sqhkqjxxdjxxxxcjx]399|300|[/hv] If he covered, I would have to wast a high trump to get back to dummy to get rid of a club and then I couldn't ruff 3 diamonds high. As it was I made 5. 3. If you led a heart partner would get the defense right. If you xed partner will probably get the defense right. If you didn't x and led a spade, partner thought he was endplayed at trick 2 and compressed our tricks. The full hand was something like: [hv=n=sajtxhat8xdaxcqxx&w=sxxxxh9xdkqtxxckx&e=skxxxh76dxcat98xx&s=sqhkqjxxdjxxxxcjx]399|300|[/hv] 4. I passed and they made 4.