joshs

BTW, here is the josh adjunct to kap INV: 1H-1S-1N(C or balanced)-2C(weak scramble)-2D(3532)-Now responder can place the contract. This handles: responder having: 4144 or 3145 Pass 2D 3235 or 4225 Bid 2H 3136 and very weak bid 3C (ok I would rather be in 2C but whatever) 4135 bid 2S And Anti-Bart: 1H-1S-1N: 2D forces 2H, weak preference or a variety of good hands 2H direct 8-10, 2 card support BTW, Sam and Adam's method also sounds very interesting...

I have lots of thoughts. I tend to like Kap Inv (especially in a 2/1 context) since it solves the flannary hand problem and makes the 4 vs 5 spades issues almost non-existant and thus you don't have to worry about playing 2S on xxxx opposite Qxx. There are 2 style of continuations: Original: 1N = Flannary 2 level 3+ cards X-fers: 1N=Clubs 2C=D 2D=6+H 2H=Flannary Both styles have advantages and disadvantages (Method 1 works best for the flannary shape, since its a cheap rebid, method 2 works best for the othershapes) I usually play x-fers with 1N being clubs OR balanced, so 2c actually shows 4d and the suspect hand rebids 1N which responder can pass when he fears a misfit. The awkward hand playing kap INV is 4153 shape or similar. Playing x-fer rebids you can pass a 1N rebid. In the other style you have a problem. I do agree that rebidding 1N only on 2533 makes the bid a bit rare. The are certain advantages to showing a blanaced hand as soon as possible in an (potentially strong) auction, but here it may be too rare to make it worth it.

1. Pass. Yes I think they are going down, but I also think they have the majority of the high cards, and I don't expect to get rich here. I think 1/4 times they will make this contract. 2. You need to describe your convention a little bit better. Where I come from 2C then 2S, 3S direct and 2C then 3S are all invites of different strengths. This sequence (2C then 2S) is a 2.5 spade bid. I don't claim that this is necessarily the best treatment, but it is a somewhat common one, but there are other treatments also (for instance 3S direct might be slammish with a good suit). If this is a mild game try I will just pattern out with 3C and think I am being hyper-agressive. 3. Double. Partner can pull with a stiff and an offensive hand. 4. Pass, not even close. 5. 3N. Live a little. I have been down before. 6. I guess I will x again, but honestly I think pass is the winning bid.... If I new both opps were honest citizens I would probably pass.

Right now the world is watching while there is a genocide of the people of southern sudan (Darfur). Abouut 400,000 dead civilians over the last couple of years. Everyone should insist that their governments steps in to help these people...

There is, in fact, more to this story. About 6 months prior to Toronto nationals, after the new rules came out about getting defenses approved, I submitted an extensive write-up on TOSR with suggested defenses since Dan and I were planning on playing together in toronto. 2 months went bye and I heard nothing and I bugged the head director who was at the time in charge of the process. Eventually I got written back that my defenses were approved and they were put on the acbl website. At the Philly nationals, two australian friends of mine came and played similar methods (x-fer openers) in the open pairs. Half way through a session, chip martel, single handedly ruled that this was not legal, made them play natural opening bids the 2'nd half of the session, where that had many accidents (not everything carried over well) and essentially gave the people who played them early bad scores relative to the people who played them late. Chip decided that some methods should not be played in pairs movements. He had no authority at the time to make that call, but did it anyway. He then had my defense to TOSR yanked from the acbl website, and then they started the new policy (the next year) of approving methods based on the number of boards you would play against a given pair.

I don't understand this. Do you all object to sales commisions? Many people work not at a flat rate but based on the revenue they generate. Some have no base salary. Others have a minimal base salary but then have there income supplemented by commissions. Even in industries where there is a large base salary, people's income is often supplimented by performance based bonuses. right now about 25% of my income is from my end of the year bonus. The salary structure in the service industry is basically commission based except its not a flat commission - the clients determine if you deserve 15% or 20% or on rare occasion more than that. The client can even leave nothing if the service is truely horrible. The idea of commission is that your income depends on how hard you want to work and how well you do your job. Maybe thats not a socialist ideal, but its certainly not obsurd. Waters/watresses in good resturants actually make quite a good living and the job requires quite a deal of professionalism. Yes, people deserve a living wage. But this is more of a problem with McDonalds and Walmart than working as a waiter in a decent resturant.

Thats exactly the point - waisting bids (both 2h and 2s in that case) while simple isn't elegant. Basically one suited major overcalls can be removed from interference scheme On my own I came with this dont modification of dont By passed hand: (1N) - ... X - one suited c or d or both majors with better S or 55 s+c ... 2c,2d - Dont ... 2h - both M, better H ...2s - S+D Does it makes sense? Yeah that looks fine, assuming you don't pass 6 card majors much in 1/2 seat, and whern you do you usually have 4 of the other major.

It's not totally unreasonable and I know why you did it, but I have gotten really bad results from doing this. This isn't one of those times where people say that something (like for example weak notrumps) gives them bad results when really they don't have a clue and are just biased, I truly can remember several terrible scores that were directly attributable to weak two bids on seven card suits. Besides you have to admit, isn't 2♠ the kind of bid you want your opponents to make on this hand? Do I? I really don't like passing with long suits, and my pre-empts tend to be very conservative red, so partner knows I have a decent hand. It does depend on partnership style... Note, of course, that both of my regular partnerships play intermediate 2's (9-12 or 10-13 with 6/7 cards) so this hand certainly qualifies there and wouldn't be a problem hand, but I wasn't assuming this treatment, but I was asssuming that partner knew my pre-empting style. I had seen disasters with P, 1S,2S and 3S with this hand type. We seem to have a different view of what were the bigger or more frequent disasters.

I am a 2S bidder. 3S would be my second choice but I don't like the suit quality.

Scene of a Perfect Crime- Concrete Blonde

I wouldn't mind if our national labs also increased greatly their research level in these areas. Basic research is often prohibitively expensive if done by individual companies (who may or may not be able to maintain their patents). Having shared the cost of basic research, and provided proper economic incentive to companies the government can then get out of the way...

I used to think that the five forces were gravity, electric, weak, strong, and magic.

BTW, I highly recomend Michael Porter's book, the competative advantage of nations. He studied the japanese electronic industry (as well as many other countries/industries). He had a very interesting observation. While regulation initially drove some companies under, those that survived did so by innovating and ultimately became dominant worldwide becuase there products were better. In a similar manner, while there will be some short term negative effects of forcing companies to innovate when it comes to more energy effeciency and reducing emmitions. those that survive will be better positioned for global leadership in their respective industries.

There are lots of ways of thinking about geometry and defining geometries. In Synthetic Geometry (e.g. euclid) you start with some almost set theoretic definitions, make some axioms and reach conclusions. So for instance: A line is a set of pairs of points in your space such that: if (a ,b ) is on the line and ( b , c ) is on the line so is ( a , c ) Thus a line can be thought of as an equivalance relationship between pairs of points. (It determines which pairs of points are "the same-e.g. determines the same line") The euclidian axiom is that 2 points uniquely determine a line. Note there is no reference to any notion of "distance" or "straigtness" here. A metric space is a set with a distance measure. The distance measure must satisfy the triangle inequality - D( A , B )+ D( B , C ) >= D( A , C ) Given a distance measure you get a definition for a line. Its the path that minimizes distance. You can also define a manifold. A manifold is definined as a space that is"locally" euclidean (more formally you have a set of local coordinates {a map] that look euclidean and smooth transition functions that tell you how to convert one map to an nearbye overlapping map) - That is if you were a tiny ant on the manifold you could not tell that you were not on euclidian space. A manifold can be given a metric or other structures. When we define a torus, we can: a. use a metric inherited from embedding the torus in n-space (that is literally the euclidean distance. In this metric I don't think the torus is flat. b. use a metric inherited from the R^n/Z^n mapping. Take two points on the torus. Find the coordinates on R^n that they came from. Then measure the distance. Here the torus is flat. [Note: points come from many places on Z^n, so find the points that are closest to each other] I am now hungy. Mmm, donut.

I know the hand, but I still think 5H is correct at imps. There is too much risk of a double game swing here.....

Suprisingly enough, the experts in the field disagree with you. No scientist thinks that corrrelation is causation. Thats why lots of work has gone into doing modeling work. Molina at MIT won a nobel prize for his modeling work. There are tons of scientists in this field at NASA, at NOA, at universities, at the sante fe institute. While there is not complete agreement yet (climatology is complicated like neurology or astronomy becuase you can't really do physics experiments) on all the details of the model there is agreements about a great many things, including Additional co2 production would have a variety of bad effects, hence even small reductions could do great things. Yes all of us wish the models were exact, so we know that we can tolerate 2.5 trillion metric tons more co2 but not 3 trillion, but the exact thresholds are not understood that well, in part because of the complex interaction (with feedback) between living organisms and the air we breathe, and in part because the whole damn system is very non-linear. The scientists are not out to ruin the world economy. Maybe there is some radicals who mistate science for other purposes (I am sure thats true on any issue, and from all sides) but really, why are you making a claim that a whole field of science are political hacks, without providing evidence that their models are wrong? Now thats political hackery as far as I am concerned.

1. Over the last 100 years or so there has been a steady increase in the average global temperature coupled with glacures receeding and the polar ice caps melting some. These facts are well documented. 2. There is overwhelming statistical evidence that the rate of temperature change is highly correlated with the magntitude of human co2 production. The statistical evidence doesn't assert causation, just a strong hint that the phenomenons may be related. Also note that because of the complexity of the non-linear system that governs the climate, the temperature change might not be proportional to the total co2 level, but instead might be just be related to the change in co2 from our current level (a pertubation from some sort of equilibrium) or even might depend on the locations where co2 is produced (great concentrations in certain places). Note here: Its very important to develop models that explain the relationship between your phenomenon (here global temperature change) and the potential cause when its hard to properly do statistical analysis controlling for all possible causes. If you lived in the northern hemisphere you might have decided that the weather was warmer in the summer than in the winter since the earth was closer to the sun. In fact its because of the angle of of orientation of the earth relative to the sun.... 3. Climate models and weather models are not the same thing. It is often much easier to understand and model macro behavior than micro behavior. That is why thermodynamics came long before quantum physics. 4. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists while not agreeing on every detail of the dynamics between co2 production and global warming agrees that there is a strong relationship between them, and have built climate models that appear to model recent history in addition to longer term trends (estimates as to temperature and other factors comes from geological and biological evidence). 5. Assesing if global warming is bad, of course is a judgement thing, but its clearly bad for most of the existing human population centers, and its probably a bad thing having the earth's climate change much faster than it normally does, so the natural system may or may not be able to adjust.

The x was a bit speculative (QJ of hearts and JT9x of clubs is more typical) what what can I say when the opps bid to 3N when they should have only bid to 1N and you magically found the x...

If the opps were silent the normal auction is: 1S-P-1N-P 2S-P-3 or 4S (I think 4 is the correct bid) After the x responder might have decided that opener was short in hearts and down graded to a 3S bid...

I have toyed with such a scheme, but I was puzzled by the following question: what do you bid with a 2-4-3-4 hand (e.g. only 2 card support) that has all of the following ? - no stopper (does not want to bid NT from the wrong side). This is fundamental to me, I do not want to bid any number of NT without a stopper. - invitational + values opposite the standard for your 1-level overcalls (say advancer has 12 hcp), so that you want a 1RF bid without promising fit and without promising a 5 card suit ? The answer to these questions revolves on the use of the meaning of 1NT and 2C. There are many players who believe that 1NT should be natural (e.g. the price of giving up the natural 1NT avance would be too high). If this applies, then it seems to me that we are left with 2C as the only 1RF bid without support without a stopper ? Is it how you play ? And, even more important, how would you bid the same hand-type (balanced or 4441, good hand, no stopper, no support) if the opening bid had been 1 club ? You want to know what I would bid with Ax xxxx KQxx Axxx after (1H)-1S-P-? I would make a 3 card limit raise (2H) With A xxxx KQxx Axxx I would manufacture a 1N bid. I think with hands this good you need to make a noise, but underbid by a few points since you have no strain...

The rarity of a 5 card suit and the relative high point count both correlate highly with another fact: After the 1D overcall, both opps kept passing...

Good point. I am burning my Reese on Squeeze book.

:) OK, if you fancy it, you can plan the play on a small spade lead. West turns up with all three trumps. But no, I thought the bidding was more interesting. Does South have better option than 5♦? Is North really good enough to raise? And should South consider bidding a grand slam? I was South, and I was fully expecting to claim thirteen tricks as soon as dummy went down. I'm glad I didn't bid one more though! SA pitching a heart. Trump to Q getting the bad news. Trump to dummy. spade ruff high (just for the general count). Pull trumps. ruff last spade. Run all the trumps squeezing LHO in H and Clubs without the count. You will have to read the end position to know how many clubs and hearts LHO kept if LHO didn't start with the heart Q.

Great auction, great slam.

That's ok, as long as your 6 points were KQJxx of hearts :) Lets just say my points were all in support of diamonds, and I still was lacking 6...