TylerE

Frankly, YES, I do think announcements are bad. I'd also generally like to see the alert procedure harmonized such that common actions are not alertable to the greatest extend possible, to minimize UI transmitted. For instance, I would support a change such that 1N-p-2♥ is unalertable (or annouced) if it shows spades, but alerted (and not announced) if anything else, including natural.

BBO doesn't have a default system. Most who claim to play SAYC on BBO don't. (Try quizing them on what 1m-p-2N means, or 1♣-p-2♠ or 1NT-p-2♠).

Yes, to essentially no results. A big part of why I mostly don't play locally anymore.

Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. I'll continue to score up consistently good-to-great results against it.

Frankly, I would give up on SAYC, and fine someone local to play 2/1 (or really anything else). Or even a non-terrible Std. American system would be fine. The SAYC "agreements" are terminally brain-damaged, and by playing them you are only learning poor habits that you would be better off not acquiring.

You might not see it, but I'm telling you that in the weakish club games and lower level tournaments around here I see it, in the flesh, non-hypothetically, way too often for comfort.

I would say no, and most of the time it does lead to a good score, it's an "obvious" spot that would have easily been found by less ambiguous methods, and don't routinely go for area codes.

Suction. Doubly (in more ways than one...) if "psycho-" or some other adjective is tacked onto the front end. It's the only convention I can think of offhand that leads to +800 or more for us at least 10% of the time.

The problem, from what I have observed, is when the "announcement" is made in a non-announcement situation and it wakes dear pard up. 1NT (2♦) 2♥ ("Transfer!" and cue deer in headlights look)

What is the level of players in involved. For a Beg/Int I'd bet money this is a fistful of clubs and spade shortness. Actually, that should probably be true anyway. Can you really make a 100% non-forcing pass and then have a slam try over an invitational raise by a passed hand?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_scoring#IMP_scoring

GIB, from my experience, treats ALL doubles as takeout and NEVER passes.

At MP I'm just going to Hammon's Law it. Pass 3NT

This was by far the most interesting to me....prevailing/traditional wisdom would seem to be the opposite.... open light in the majors but solid in the minors. I guess the big win is finding the 4-4 with like 11 vs 6?

Art, that's all true, but I think you're missing the idea of downgrading a bit since trumps are KJT not AQJT.

4♠ looks fine. Shows about this hand. 3♠ should be more high-cardy.

N 100%. Bidding 3N without a stopper is unthinkable. If S has a stopper he can just bid 3N instead of doubling. What else could double be probing for? I also think that 3♣ is a mild overbid, as a minimum ♣ hand can just pass over 1♠, but that wasn't fatal and it's barely an overbid.

Fred, how do you square that with running 'Best hand' tournaments, which are clearly in violation of laws 6A and 6B, clarified in 6E4, which require a "wholly random" shuffling of the cards? If your argument is that it's what makes the players happy, fine, but at some point (and I would argue that whereever that point is, robot best hand is on the other side of it), it becomes some sort of bridge-like game, but not Duplicate Bridge.

Inquiry, the "problem" I have with that line is doesn't the auction go the same with AQxxx of ♣, which makes the slam quite a bit worse? Or stiff ♠ and ♦ xx?

Is anyone should bid RKC on this hand it is South. BIdding RKC with a suit apparently uncontrolled is not usually a winning move. This is totally aside from N completely overbidding his hand. Playing standard, 4♣ is not mandatory, and thus having shown mild extras, N has an auto 4♥ over 4♦, since there is no spade control to show. At that point S should probably hit the brakes on the hand. Without a lot of extra trump the crossruff is unlikely to be a winner, and it's pretty obvious that you don't have 12 tricks on strength.

I'm not sure I'd put quite as much stock in RP's numbers on this subject, for a couple of reasons. The big one is that they don't actually take into account what the bids mean, and in some cases these 1NT openings may have very non-standard meansings and/or negative inferences. Also, since he's looking exclusively at very high level events, that may overstate the difference at the club and local tournament level, and also doesn't take into account declarer and defender skill. There also might be selection bias going on - like his Flannery results for instance strongly favor Flannery - but don't look at the universe of 1M hands where the flannery pair can't open flannery.

It's almost as if it's intended to be a masterpoint lottery. The ACBL would never sanction something like that, obviously.

Since when is Qxxx not help? I mean, it's not ideal, but it's it's not 3 small or some really bad holding like that.

I think it's just as dumb in the live events. Considering that you can lose out on a section top to another pair that played a completely different set of opponents. I would much rather, for ACBL Pair events, see just an overall ranking (since boards are matchpointed accross the field anyway), or if you're going to have sections have 4 table sections so it's an all-play all.

I might be up to play some. On most evening EST.