JanM

You can correct an insufficient bid if the new bid means the same as the old bid OR if the meaning of the new bid is included in the meaning of the old bid. You can't correct if the fact that you originally made the insufficient bid gives your partner information about the hand that s/he would not have from the new bid.

If you're the "right pair" don't you automatically psyche in this situation and take the average or average-plus? I'm not sure whether this rule is still the same as when I won the Grand National Pairs as a result of it, but at that time both pairs had to choose the "average plus" option, at least if neither pair was at fault in the fact that the wrong pair had already bid the hand against one of them. I remember it because it was the last round of the finals, both we and our opponents thought we were doing well, so we both agreed to average plus. We won the event, they were second. It happened to be a hand that would have been bad for our bidding methods, so I've always given the unknown pair who bid the wrong board some of the credit for what is still my favorite of all wins. :P And it's an interesting question whether the rule that has just been applied to the insufficient bid situation should also apply to this situation. I'm pretty sure that at the moment it does not.

My Stayman example was 2♦ or 3♦ as FORCING Stayman. I believe that 2♦ forcing Stayman over a 1NT opening includes fewer hands than does 3♦ forcing Stayman over a 2NT opening. So the insufficient bid provides additional information. Similarly, if a 2♣ response to 1NT did in fact promise more values than a 3♣ response to 2NT (sorry, for me "garbage" Stayman is standard so I assumed not), then I think the 3♣ response would not be an allowed correction.

This is definitely a confusing area, and despite a lot of effort the law is difficult to read. However, my understanding of what it means (and I think a careful reading will confirm this) is that you can change even a conventional insufficient bid to a different bid as long as the insufficient bid doesn't give your partner any information that isn't included in the sufficient bid. So, to take a simple example - I play weak NT and open 1♣ with all balanced hands in the 15-19 HCP range. Suppose that RHO opens 2♠ and I "overcall" 1♣. On it being pointed out to me that 1♣ is insufficient, and after the law is carefully explained to me, I change my bid to 2NT, which shows a balanced hand of 16-18 or so HCP. My second bid is one that was included in the hands shown by the first bid but is more precise, thus it is allowed - my partner doesn't have any information other than that provided by the 2NT bid. On the other hand, suppose that I play 2-way Stayman over both 1NT and 2NT opening bids (OK, that's not something anyone plays, but it makes the point). Partner opens 2NT and I bid 2♦ forcing to game and asking about Majors. I am not allowed to correct this to 3♦ even though that also is forcing to game and asking about Majors because the original bid showed a better hand than the new bid and so partner knows something about my hand that is not included in the new bid. The point is to be fair - did you ever get caught by the old rule when partner opened 2NT and you mistakenly responded 2♣ Stayman and now had no way to avoid a penalty? Yet allowing you to correct 2♣ to 3♣ wouldn't damage the opponents and would get things back to "normal." Should it matter that the bid isn't just one level higher in the same strain? For example, I play transfer responses to 1♣. A 1♦ response shows 4 or more hearts and says nothing more about the hand. If the opponent overcalls 1♦, my DBL substitutes for the 1♦ bid. The set of hands in DBL is a little smaller than those in 1♦ since I might respond 1♦ on hands that would pass over 1♣-(1♦) but there are no hands with which I would DBL but not bid 1♦ in the uncontested auction. So there is no harm done by allowing me to DBl when the 1♦ overcall is pointed out to me. I hope that makes it clear. And I really do think that is what the law says, admittedly using more words in order to make sure it is complete. I admit my logic days are far behind me, so I can't easily discuss it in terms of sets and intersections and exclusions. But the point is that the new bid is allowed so long as the insufficient bid doesn't provide any information that is not provided by the new bid. So there have to be no hands that are included in the new bid and not in the insufficient one, since those hands would be excluded by the information provided by the insufficient bid. There can be hands that are included in the insufficient bid but not in the new bid, because then the insufficient bid doesn't clarify the new bid.

I liked Peter Weichsel's decision to pass with this hand - too much downside, too little upside to bidding.

Although we try to keep it relatively private, I'm less concerned with "gate crashers" from posts here than from too wide a circulation at the NABC.

As has become traditional (if a tradition can be created in a couple of years), Rose Meltzer and USBF will host a Junior Reception between sessions the first Saturday of the Spring NABC in Detroit. The Junior Committee will meet immediately after the reception. I do not know the room number for Rose's suite, but I will post it here as soon as I do, and hopefully we will also get it out by word of mouth in Detroit. Pizza and soft drinks will be served and all Juniors, former Juniors and Junior supporters are welcome. The Junior Committee will be discussing the Conditions of Contest for the Las Vegas Trials, including advance entries and whether we should use a Round Robin the first day of each Trials if the number of teams is not a power of 2. Anyone who is interested in the format of the Trials is welcome to attend and discuss these matters. Hope to see lots of you there!

I think that most people who play a 14-16 NT play it in the context of a strong club system. They don't want to open 1♣ with a balanced 16, and their other 1-bids are a little lighter than "standard" so they want the 1NT rebid to be limited to a maximum of 13, thus the 14-16 1NT.

Chip refused to give up the bike he'd had since college because it was so old that no-one would steal it. It finally got so old that the repair shop told him it was dangerous and he had to get a new one and a good lock!

I agree the US citizen part sounds funny. I wonder, though, if it may be a way of dealing with the idea of foreign students (who are students at American universities, but not considered residents)? I'm afraid I need to correct my earlier answer to this question. Although to be a USBF member a person need only be a US resident, not necessarily a citizen, and to play in the WBF Junior events representing the US, a person need only be a US resident, the FISU rules do require citizenship. I have no idea why, but of course it's up to FISU what restrictions they want to place on teams. I'm sorry if I misled anyone before.

From a few of the posts after mine, I see that some people would play that if 3♣ is Majors, DBL shows clubs, not a penalty-oriented hand which I had assumed. Obviously, in that case, the explanation of DBL would be different depending on the meaning of 3♣, so my solution above won't work. However: My "expert" :P has now given this some more thought, and concludes that: Once RHO has expressed doubt about the meaning of the bid and left the table, we should provide the "two way" explanation whatever LHO tells us the bid means. Therefore, our providing that explanation shouldn't tell RHO what the bid meant. If we agree with Josh that we are supposed to tell him what the DBL means given the information we have about LHO's bid, then that explanation is UI, because it depends on information we got from one opponent, to which the other opponent is not entitled. Our agreements are AI, but his partner's statement about the meaning of the bid is still UI.

Interestingly, in this particular situation, I think the hands on which partner would make a negative double of 3 natural clubs and the hands on which partner would make a penalty oriented double of 3♣ showing Majors are pretty much the same. So perhaps you could solve the problem caused by the question by saying that the DBL shows values and probably length in both Majors? But of course that wouldn't always be the situation and it really seems wrong that an opponent could find out what his partner's bid meant by asking a question about your bid over it. So it seems as if the information the opponent gets should be UI, although I have no justification for that position (my "expert" says "it's not clear.").

The Swiss (or round robin) qualifying should be viewed as a long match against multiple opponents, I believe. Yes, one would expect more variance over 7 board matches than over 28 board matches. But, the same teams that do well in one 28-board matches are going to do well in four 7-board matches. It might not be quite as good a way to directly compare teams A and B, but it's probably not that far off in a reasonably balanced field. Yes, that's exactly right, and it's particularly true when 50% of the field will advance from the Round Robin. It's when there are relatively short matches and fewer than 50% of the teams advance that Round Robins don't work well. Although I think that a very good reason for using a Round Robin in the Intercollegiate Finals is that it allows all of the teams to play for a full day and also allows each team to play against each other team, it is also one of several ways to select the best team. IMO, people tend to rant against Round Robins because of experiences with Round Robins that select a small percentage of the field. BTW, starting with a Round Robin is clearly a better way to select the second best team than is a KO with random seeding (and I really think that any seeding of the Intercollegiate Finals will be random). As for selecting the team to represent the US in the Patino Cup (the World Championship for teams of players 26 and under) in Beijing, we don't yet know what the format will be. We will be allowed only one team in that event, so we don't need to use a Round Robin to assure that we do a good job of choosing a second team. But if there are an awkward number of teams for a KO, we will probably use a Round Robin at the start of the event to come down to an even number for a KO. As Adam says, one of the biggest problems with Junior Trials is that there isn't enough time. If a significant number of teams enter, two days just isn't long enough. But if the event is longer than 2 days, we won't get a significant number of teams. Finally, Adam left out the third event that will take place in Las Vegas: the selection Trials for the FISU bridge championship. That Trials will take place after the other two, and will select two teams. All of the players must be between 18 and 28 years old and must also have been associated with a FISU recognized college or university during the current academic year. Since we will be selecting two teams from that competition, we will definitely want to run a competition that does a good job of selecting both the first place and second place team, so depending on the number of teams entered, we'll either start with a Round Robin or perhaps run a double elimination KO.

I also play DONT over DBL of a weak NT. We used to play the RDBL as business, but that comes up so much less often than the different hands where you want to run, that we gave it up. When we did play it as business, my recollection is that we played subsequent DBLS as PEN. That makes the example hand awkward, but I think I tend to agree with the other thread posters that 2!s shouldn't promise more than 4, although that might depend on my original options with a good hand with 5 spades.

I remember Peter Pender suggesting the same thing 20 or 30 years ago, in the context of playing in a Regional where someone had become upset (AFAIR) by a complaint about tempo. Since then, at least in ACBLand, we have moved a little toward different fields, even if they all supposedly have the same rules. We now have so many stratified and stratiflighted and bracketed and I don't know what else events that the 'social" players never have to play against the "experts" who want to play by stricter rules. And of course the GCC, badly written and much maligned as it is, is also an attempt to simplify things for the "social" player. As for points, well, we do have a different set of points for the really serious. They're called seeding points or Positioning Points or Platinum Points. You get them for high finishes in "serious" events - seeding points, which are used to seed the Vanderbilt and Spingold, are awarded for placings in those events and the Reisinger. Positioning Points, which are used to award byes in our Trials and also are part of the seeding point formula for the Trials, are also awarded for high V/S/R finishes. Platinum points are awarded for NABC+ events (do not ask me how that's defined, but it's something like NABC events that are unrestricted by masterpoint holding). Although the "serious" points have changed, they've actually been around for a long time. I remember when I won my first NABC title (Women's Pairs, back before there was an Open opposite), it happened to be the last event of the tournament, and in the airport the next day I bumped into Barry Crane, who asked me who had won the Women's, making me grin joyfully when I said we had, and then asked how many qualification points for the World Women's Pairs it had paid, which I knew. When I got home I commented to my husband that it seemed strange Barry had asked about qualification points and not Masterpoints, and Lew said "he knew what mattered to you." And he was right - I had no idea how many Masterpoints I'd won.

I can't resist repeating one of the funniest ethical problem jokes I can remember. Pair game, 2 board rounds. On the first board, EW bid something like 1♠-3♠-6♠ on a ridiculous hand and go down. On the second board, NS bid something like 1♠-3♠ and the 1♠ opener calls the director: "Can I bid a slam on my opponent's wire?" :)

The important thing to do, which wasn't listed in the alternatives, is not to let anyone else at your table know that your hand arrived arranged. Move the cards around as if you had to arrange it. Why? Some time ago (AFAIR it was in the Albuquerque World Championships), there was some discussion of a team that had developed a new way to send information to their teammates (I've forgotten why the boards were being passed from one table to the other instead of pre-duped). If a hand came up where their teammates should do something unusual (stay out of a normal slam, push to a game, that sort of thing), one of the players would carefully sort their hand before returning it to the board. Then when it arrived at the other table, the teammate could observe that the player who held that hand didn't have to sort it and conclude that they should do something unusual. On the theory that there's nothing new under the sun, it can't hurt to take out insurance against this sort of thing by not letting your opponents know your hand arrived arranged. And I suppose if it happened several times, it would be proper to inform the director, although this is the sort of thing that's very hard for the director do do anything about. Am I getting cynical in my old age? Maybe.

I don't have anything to do with designing the format for the Intercollegiate Finals, but I do think that allowing all of the teams to play for at least one day is a very legitimate goal for this event. Of course, one purpose of the event is to choose a champion. But another purpose is to promote bridge, and specifically to promote bridge among college students. I often hear complaints after the first day of the GNT National Finals from people who have been eliminated and don't like the fact that they "came all this way" to be eliminated after only one day of play. I'm sure that if I hung out more in the Flight B & C areas where teams are eliminated after one session, I'd hear more grumbling. And grumbling is something that the organizers definitely want to avoid in the Intercollegiates (not that organizers don't in general want to avoid grumbling, just that in some events the grumbling is more acceptable because other goals are more important). In this particular event, I really do believe that it is appropriate that the #1 goal be for the participants to have a good time, not in the sense of being at a party, but in the sense of seeing the activity of participating in a serious bridge competition as something that they enjoy doing and would like to continue doing. We need to do everything possible to see that all of them come back again when it's on their own dime. This is also an event where the seeding figures to be terrible - most of the players won't have any kind of track record on which to base seeding. That argues against a straight KO. And the short time argues against a double elimination KO (I think). So a combination of Round Robin and KO seems like a good solution to me.

One thing that helps is to play online in the mode that has pictures of cards instead of nice neat letters and numbers (I think that's what you mean by hand diagram?). In fact, when Chip noticed I was playing in the diagram mode, because that's always how I watch Vugraph, he said that he thought it was important for me to use the card picture mode when I was playing, if I wanted it to be useful practice for f2f bridge :P.

Interesting pair of hands. My multi defense expert suggests: 2♦ - P - 2♥ - DBL DBL = either a TO of hearts or any strong hand 2♠ -3♣ - P - 3♠ 3♣ is in the context of Lebensohl so shows some values. 3♠ hadn't previously been discussed :blink: but obviously shows a good hand and since we didn't bid 3NT, it should show a TO of spades, thus have hearts (unless it's a cue bid for clubs). 4♥ - P - 6♥ 4♥ because 3♠ promised hearts and might not have diamonds (obviously it might have had clubs, but if that's the case, the dbler will now show club support). 6♥ because it's unlikely that partner will have enough for 7 and have bid this way (3♠ over 2♠ would have shown short spades with enough to force to game, about 10+ HCP, so partner can't have that much, at least not with the spade stiff we think he has from the opponents' bidding and need for 7 anyway). Of course partner might have enough (x, QTxx, Kxx, Kxxxx probably makes 7 good), but there's really no way to find out. And it's hard to imagine a hand that partner thinks merits 3♣ and has 4 hearts that won't make 6.

1. a 2. a 3. b 4. a 5. a 6. Don't ask because of the chance it may give away information, but if partner has demonstrated that s/he is tired or otherwise might not be accurately sorting his or her hand, I'll start asking. If I do ask ever, I try to ask on all hands of that session, even when I know partner is out. 7. b I tried to find the BW editorial when Edgar strongly criticized Lew Stansby for allowing an opponent to pick up an Ace that had accidentally dropped out of his hand, but I couldn't - it was probably in the 80's - I still think that Lew was right :). 8. a, because it always seems to take longer to convince the opponents I know what the options are :) 9. a, mainly because I'm usually playing to practice and it's a lot better practice for me if the opponents know what they're doing. 10. no, if I did I'd probably have nightmares about it for days. Ditto at the table when someone claims fewer tricks than would be taken by any reasonable line of play.

We play frivolous 3NT (because we don't want to give the opponent a cue bid to double in auctions where both of us are minimum - sometimes the opening lead will determine whether game makes when both hands are minimum, it's rarely going to be vital when one hand has a serious slam try. I think that the times when we get the most value out of frivolous 3NT (and they come up pretty often) are the ones where we make a serious slam try. An opening bid has such a wide range of strength, and so does 2/1, so sometimes it's difficult to know whether to risk the 5 level to investigate slam. It's a lot easier if you can show extra values below game. That way if the 3M bidder has a dead minimum, we can still stop in game (if the cue bidder hadn't already shown extra, s/he might be tempted to bid again even when the 3M bidder didn't cooperate), and when the 3M bidder has a little extra we can explore slam. We've been using 3♠ over 3♥ as a cue bid that doesn't say anything about strength (leaving 3NT as frivolous for the 3♥ bidder), with 3NT frivolous showing a hand that isn't horrible for slam but doesn't have a spade control. I don't know whether that is better or worse than 3♠ as frivolous and 3NT as a serious spade cue bid, but it's an alternative.

Add me to the "the lower the card led the more I want that suit returned" agreement. I'd also add that the fact that it isn't always clear to the opening leader which card to lead or to third hand what it means is the reason that I play attitude leads only with Chip and play 4th best, but top or second from bad suits, with other partners. Attitude works best when you've had lots of discussions with the partner with whom you're playing it.

What would you do if the overcall is 3♦? 3♥ = hearts or stopper. --- 3♠ = I raise hearts. (yes this doesn't let you find a 4-4 spade fit when advancer has longer hearts, but you can still do so over 3♣. 3♦ leaves you less space.) I think I originated that particular gadget (it's one of the few things in our multi defense that Chip didn't invent :)), although we recommend it to others only when using a written defense - when the multi defense has to be memorized it's a little dangerous. It's certainly good on this type of hand, allowing the responder to bid 3♦ and find either a 4-4 heart fit or stoppers in both majors to play 3NT. By the way, for those who have laughed at me when I mention that our multi defense is 11 pages long, it's that long because of things like playing 3♥ here as 2-way. It doesn't come up often, but it is definitely worth having when it does. On this particular hand, I think that if I couldn't bid 3♦ and then be able to get to either a 4-4 heart fit or 3NT when partner had a spade stopper, I'd pass. This is a fairly marginal advance of the 3♣ overcall, and I'm bidding only because I don't think partner would stretch to overcall on a suit missing the KQ, but I know I might be turning a plus into a minus by bidding. If partner has something like xx, AQx, xx, AJxxxx, 3♣ is the limit of the hand. I bid because if partner has x, AQJx, xx, AJxxxx, 4♥ is cold and if partner has Kxx, Ax, Jx, AJxxxx, 3NT is cold, so bidding can turn a small plus into a much larger one, thus is worth the risk. But if I have to make an inaccurate bid (either 3♦ or 3♥ natural) or one where I won't know what partner's next bid means (3♦ without a clear agreement that 3♥ by partner can be either a stopper or 4 hearts), the risk/reward ration changes.

Sorry, yes SPL is my shorthand for splinter. Yes