PeterGill

In my example, "her marked spade void" was meant to refer to my partner, from the opening leader's point of view, having a marked spade void for her jump to 7C. It sure is easy to be misunderstood in this thread, as I was. Bizarre bids do happen. Here's another example. 3H on your right, pass from you, 7H on your left, Dbl, P P Redbl, All Pass. Your lead from KJxx, xxx, K9, Kxxx? ....... At the table, a trump was led, so 7HXX made. Dummy had xxx, x, AQJxxxx, xx and declarer had xxx, AQ10xxxx, x, Jx. 7H and the Redbl were retribution bids by a top player who was furious with his partner at the time. Dummy did apologize to the opponents. I think declarer made some comment about not making the overtrick. The 6D bid on AQxx would not occur to me as a possibility. Nor would 7H and XX. But such things do happen, without sinister overtones. I think this thread is fascinating, as it has taught readers like me several morals: - that the Laws of Bridge are fine as they are, and the suggested law changes discussed early in this thread are not needed - basing our conclusions about a person on just one hand, or assuming that the success of a bizarre bid implies prior knowledge, is dangerous - that we must be understanding not only of our partner's tendency to make crazy bids but also of our opponent's tendency to make even crazier bids - that in the bridge world and on BBO Forums, evidence provided by a less well- known person (Bud Hinckley) can be just as influential as the evidence provided by well-known leading bridge players/writers whom almost all of us admire very much. [getting off-topic now] - don't be 100% certain that what bridge legends write is 100% accurate. For example, early in this thread some material from the book The Lone Wolff about the 6D bidder was referenced by several people who later cast doubt on the accuracy of that material in the book, which I once had read and believed. [next bit = relevant only to readers of bridgeblogging dot com] I then read the next 11 pages of The Lone Wolff, coming across on page 262: "Peter [Pender left] an additional $50,000 to the Vugraph development program, and (unbeknownst to him) it was decided to rename it the Pendergraph in gratitude", which is the opposite of what his wife wrote a few weeks ago on her blog at bridgeblogging.com. Who is right - husband or wife? I don't know. His wife wrote that she has sought a copy of Pender's will, to find out the truth - good on her. Just as we don't know for sure about the 6D bid in this thread, though "innocent until proven guilty" has been the direction this thread eventually took.

Either the 6D bidder is highly imaginative, or else he did something wrong. As a newbie to this thread who has just completed a marathon read, I think the initial reactions are understandable and human, but the obvious conclusion 24 pages later is that the 6D bidder is highly imaginative and has a brain type that is not afraid to depart (considerably) from the mainstream. Einstein had his hecklers too. About 5 years ago, a highly imaginative client of mine (who liked to make bids that shock) held 10, AKQJ, void, AKQ109542. 1S on her right, Dbl by her, 1NT by her LHO, Pass by me ... I passed a lot in this partnership :) .... Pass by her RHO, 7C, down one. She reasoned correctly that we needed a top, and with her marked spade void on this bidding, there was no way that her LHO would lead a spade. She got that right, but forgot there was nowhere for the spade loser to go in 7C. I had 9xxxx, 9xxx, 10xx, x. Hearts were 3-2. I have to admit that it didn't occur to boring me at the time to correct to 7H. I'm not that imaginative. Our partnership has won three National Championships, including two Open Pairs titles. Being a dutiful pro, I said nothing at the table (of course), but after the game I pointed out that she might have done better to try 7H, as that contract provides more opportunity for the spade loser to vanish, when I'm marked on the bidding to have few high cards. Returning to the Spingold, it is the visible Axx holding in hearts that makes 6D non-loony to those who think very differently from the mainstream. I personally regard the 6D call in a similar category to displaying a placard "We did not vote for Bush" at a dinner and expecting no repercussions. Unusual actions attract discussion. That does not necessarily make the unusual action bad. although many will criticize unusual actions. 6D might also make opposite AKxx, xxxxxx, Kx, x or the like, when 6C fails on a club lead with clubs 4-2 and diamonds 4-3. My clients have made stranger bids than the 6D bid. Not this week, but there was one a few months ago. Someone asked: "Can anyone cite one instance (prior to last Monday) in which any bridge commentator even discussed the possibility of a leap to slam on a 4 card suit in direct seat over a 3 level preempt?" No, but perhaps after my post mortem above, my then partner may have tried this stunt with another partner? I certainly fit the description of "bridge commentator", being a frequent BBO Vugraph Commentator.

David wrote: "I had better bid 2NT. I don't like it, but I'm not paid to like it." I don't get paid when I play with my mum. :) I would never ever open 1D playing with my mum - with my mum, my bids must be what she wants, not what I want. Am I not my mother's son? Though Pass is obviously the right call under the circumstances, I would probably bid either 2S or 3H with regret, me being too wimpish to Pass 2H.

Also, I think the top 3 teams (who did not come in the top 3 in Sao Paulo) qualify for the 2011 Yeh Cup in Wuchi (or Wuxi) in April 2001. More details of this event were in the Daily Bulletins at the recent Pacific Asia Championships.

... although the photos of players in Ostend's Daily Bulletins show many players (including one member of England's Open Team) not wearing their ID tags and thus not meeting the Dress Code.

People give count in the card play. I had just read about giving count on opening lead (1/3/5/7th leads). We decided to give count in the bidding. 1C showed a Hand Pattern of three odd-length suits (4333, 2335, 2731 shapes etc). All other opening bids showed one "odd-length suit" (3442, 5422, 7222, 7420 etc) with one level opening bids showing 4 or 6 or 8 cards in the bid suit, and 2 (or 4) level opening bids showing 5 or 7 cards in the bid suit. Responder relayed with good hands to find opener's shape, and just bid naturally (non forcing) with bad hands. In practice, it was a very bad bidding system. We played it just once.

I wonder if the teams were following the Dress Code http://www.eurobridge.org/administration/c...ress/index.html. The Dress Code is also on page 21 of the regs referred to below. C2.2 (and C23. in particular) of the regs http://www.eurobridge.org/competitions/10O...gulations10.pdf clearly says that Netherlands and Russia should have been fined 5 VP each for finishing 20 to 25 minutes late, but they were fined only 3 VPs each. People in this thread seem to be writing as if the regs were exactly followed in that case. L2 and N on page 21 of these regs also are of interest, regarding wearing of name tags. Regulation Q makes the outrage expressed by some in this thread totally unjustified IMO.The EBL can do what it likes, can't it?

USA has had two teams in each of the Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cup and will continue to do so, provided that USA's WBF membership remains above 140,000. Back in the 1990s that membership was over 200,000, when I looked it up. Right now, it is 142,592 ref http://worldbridge.org/zones/zonelist.asp?qzone=2. When I looked it up a year or two ago, the membership figure was above 150,000. Various ACBL and WBF documents confirm this figure of 140,000, e.g. ref http://web2.acbl.org/documentlibrary/about...ard_minutes.htm At the current rate of membership decline, there's some chance that USA will have only one team in the 2011 and/or 2013's BB and VC. My question is: How is this figure of 142,592 calculated? Is it USA citizens/residents who belong to the ACBL? Or can the USBF somehow count its membership? Or something else?

Under normal circumstances I would bid 2H. If I was playing in a partnership in which my partner's declarer play was even weaker than mine, I might bid 1S.

As Fiskew pointed out, the (2009 US Trials) Meckwell ACBL CC at http://usbf.org/docs/2009usbc/acblcards/Me...rothRodwell.jpg clearly says MIXED. Not weak. I wonder if the "accusation" in the other Meckwell thread was similarly inaccurate.

Jack Zhao (2006 World Pairs winner) and Pepsi (1998 winner) both say that luck is a big factor. The long term absence of Meckstroth - Rodwell from the World Pairs also makes the event easier for other pairs to win. Meckwell last played the World Pairs in 1986, winning. In 1982 they came 6th. In 2006, 2002 and 1998 Meckstroth played with Perry Johnson, coming 20th, 19th and 8th in huge fields. In 1990 and 1994, I'm fairly confident that Meckstroth didn't play in the event.

The Hog asked me if I personally would have called the Director. Nowadays, well no, I wouldn't have, mainly because I like winning and I find that most of my partners get distracted from concentrating their mind fully on winning each hand if we have unnecessary Director calls which can distract them (and me) from concentrating on the game. Would I have called the Director many years ago, when I used to win less often? I'm afraid that the answer is almost certainly yes, I would have. People change. Therefore, should you, when you are playing against me, call the Director unnecessarily to try to distract me from concentrating on winning? Well no, that doesn't work, because I have toughened myself up mentally at the bridge table so that if there is such a distraction I tell myself to focus more than ever on concentrating on each hand in order to maximise my chance of beating you. I don't think any of these considerations apply to Meckwell, but it is the best I can do to answer The Hog's surprisingly complex question.

I think Meckstroth might be on the Systems Committee in USA. Perhaps he thought that he would dishonour that position if he failed to call the Director? My point is that it is an assumption that he or his partner called the Director for personal reasons. The motivation for the Director call is unknown.

I think Meckwell behaved just fine, the Singapore team's preparation was fine, and that when any team with overseas players enters the Vanderbilt, the ACBL could and perhaps should provide a brief summary of various requirements including such things as no mobile phones allowed in the playing area, which calls to announce and how, provision of the Multi Defence and some of the other little-known (for overseas players) curiosities of American bridge. I think it's hard for everyone at the US Nationals to know all the rules. Here's an example..... Gromov - Dubinin in the Reisinger in San Franciso a couple of years ago opened 1C, 2C from my partner (Michaels, 5/5 majors, not alerted by me), Pass, 2H by me, Pass, Pass, 2S by them, all pass. At the end of the hand, they called the Director and gently pointed out that a non-natural cue of a Polish -style 1C (it might have been 1D- 2D, I cannot remember) was alertable in ACBL Regs. The TD agreed, and asked my why I didn't alert it. "The ACBL Convention Card tells me not to - the relevant cue bid is in black, not red or blue on the CC," I replied. The TD examined my CC and saw that I was correct. He asked where I had found this (unusual?) CC. "From that pile of CC's there, as you walk into this room", I replied. The TD said he would get back to us, picking up a blank CC from the pile ad he walked away. When the TD returned, he explained that he had checked the regs, and indeed the bid had been changed from alertable to non-alertable, but nobody seemed to know. To support this hypothesis that nobody knew, he asked seven TDs if the bid was alertable, and all seven wrongly replied that it was alertable. Having let the score stand, the TD suggested to me that since we might be the only people in the whole room who knew the rules that it was non-alertable, for the rest of the event, I might as well alert the bid if it happened again. So much for following the rules. Masses of Austrlians went to our closest US Nationals in Hawaii a year before the above incident. In Hawaii, I recall that I photocopied about 20 copies of the Defence to Multi to provide to the many Aussies who unwittingly planned to play Multi without knowing that they had to provide the written defence. It is not uncommon for overseas visitors who are new to American Natioanls not to know about the need for the written defence.

I think Phil's team should inherit the 25th seeding when they beat the 25th seed in the first 32 board match, and that Phil's whine is valid. It's not as if the original seedings are all that accurate. The original seedings out of 88 teams included "Bulgaria" (Trendafilov - Karainov who made the last 4 of the Bermuda Bowl last year I think, with Val and Vlad and Dennis Dawson - Walter Johnson ranked only 38. Four of Argentina's best players, 9th in the 2009 Bermuda Bowl in which Woolsey et al were never in contention, and playing without a sponsor for the first time in ages, ranked only 42nd. Teramoto, Yokoi etc from Japan ranked 68. Venkatesh's Indians ranked only 57. My point is that several teams are ranked lower than they should be, often due to lack of Seeding Points from not playing in America enough. It's not as if Americans dominate the Vanderbilt nowadays. The last all-American team to win the Vanderbilt was Nickell in 2003. The last non-Nickell all-American win in the Vanderbilt was in 1998. I think current results are more accurate and important than seeding points. The administrators might negatively affect the seedings of their own teams if they change how they assess seeding, or if they use results from the four-way matches instead of seeding to detemine seeding in R64.

Bobby Richman just passed 10,000 Australian masterpoints - the first person ever to do so- so the Australian Bridge Federation introduced a new category Platinum Grand Master of 10,000+ just for Bobby. There's a true story about Bobby growing up in America. Bobby's mother nagged Bobby to have a few games with the son of a friend of hers. Bobby ignored his mother, as any good son would, and didn't find out until later that Mrs Meckstroth's son Jeff would have been worth having a game with.

This year Australia has Pairs Trials for our Open and Women's Teams. The fields are at http://www.abf.com.au/events/playoffs/ with the top 3 pairs becoming the team. The last time we did well was 2007 when we had Teams Trials and came 5th in the Bermuda Bowl.

The Kaplan Rubens Evaluator at http://www.jeffgoldsmith.org/cgi-bin/knr.cgi says AJ862 AT4 AJT KT = 18.10 or DK (Danny Kleinman) = 19 If you're bored, it can be fun to play with the K and R Evaluator. For example, if you make the spades AJ1086, it become 18.85 (or DK 20-).

Thanks Justin for time well-spent on your long post. In the 1990s a former youth bridge organizer in Australia wrote an article quite similar to what Adam wrote here. Being gullible I thought he had a valid point, until Justin's post (and worldwide trends) convinced me that it's normal males to outnumber females at youth bridge - it's not something to worry about. The top placegetters in America's new 2009 Youth NABC (Under 19, about 36 tables) were almost all (over 90%) male, being names like Adam Kaplan and Kevin Rosenberg, so the trend is likely to continue unless Deb and Michael Rosenberg have any daughters. :) Young American females to keep an eye out for in the future might be Asya Ladyzhensky, Amanda Pham and Madeline Power, but there's not many. Why would America consistently have slightly less females (less than 10%) among their top youth ranks than many other countries (more like 20%)? It could be that other countries have had National Youth Bridge programs (events) for longer than USA, e.g. Australia has its 42nd annual Youth Week in January, Europe had its 22nd Youth Championships (including their 6th Girls Championships) in Romania this year, but America had only its 2nd Youth NABC in 2009. Still, even in the other countries males still far outnumber females, although I think there was a female pair in Israel's silver medal winning team at the 2009 European U21 Championships. Peter Gill Australia

Modern Bridge Conventions by Root and Pavlicek (1981) on pages 110 to 131 is one of the few books that definitively goes through a complete, not-too-complex set of rules so that you know which doubles are take-out and which are penalty. Especially on pages 117 to 125. Both authors are excellent bridge writers, right up there with Reese, Lall and Lawrence as the best bridge writers ever, in my opinion. The only problem with the book is that it is 28 years old so it is no longer modern, due to major changes in competitive bidding in recent years. I'm just guessing - perhaps Richard Pavlicek's website might have more up-to-date information?

At the time of writing, there's only one player on BBO from Guatemala, assuming his specified country is real. You could ask him - userid ambu_amb. If your BBO set-up is like mine, then to find players on BBO from a country like Guatemala, choose Options, then More Options, Select Countries, Invert selection, highlight the country Guatemala, then press OK. Then go back to Options, then Select Members To Display, then tick all options, especially tick Show neutrals. Then you will see in your friends list on BBO only the people from Guatemala.

Yeah... I saw a lot of vugraphs and two players which basically never make simple mistake in play (not bidding) are Balicki and Duboin. I saw a few of Meckstroth and Rodwell but taht's probably because there so many hands of them in the archives :) If my recall is OK, the folllowing two stories are true enough ...... Story 1 - What Never? No Error? Well, Hardly Ever. In the 2008 Australian Nationals, I was fortunate to have the privilege of playing in the same team as Cesary Balicki. After a match that I sat out, Cesary showed me the hand records and said: "Peter, I think you're the sort of person who will like this hand. I'm defending 3D, the play goes like this, and you'e on play. Would you switch to a trump?" "Ye-e-es, I would," I replied nervously, as one would when replying to one of the world's greatest card players. "Of course you would, and you beat the contract, because it's the obvious play. But I thought that declarer was trying to con me into switching to trumps, so I tried the unlikely club play. This is a disastrous mistake, as you can see, for the play went like this. Again you are on play after you have just done the bad club play. What do you play now?" "I switch a trump - I think it's not too late," I replied in trepidation. This simple and obvious play must surely be wrong, I thought. "Of course you do, and you beat the contract. Somehow my mind still refused to play trumps, so I tried a spade. This is an even worse disaster than my earlier club play, and once again you end up back on lead. What now?" "It looks hopeless now. I accept that at least it's only a little 3D partscore that I have let make," I said. "No, no, no, that is the wrong attitude. Bridge is for hard workers. I was so proud that I had not been affected by my two earlier mistakes. I worked out that declarer thought I was defending like this for a reason. So there was one remote chance ... I played HQ now from Qxxx. If declarer mistakenly thought my earlier plays made sense, when they didn't of course ...." "What good does HQ do?" "I hadn't stopped thinking. Declarer now stopped to think. Why is such a good card player playing the club, then the spade and now HQ, he asked himself. It makes no sense. The club and spade plays must be a trap for me. Balicki is too good to defend like this. So instead of making his contract like a normal person would now, my HQ play leads declarer to do something stupid and he goes down one. Flat board, other table switched to diamonds. I was so pleased that I found the only way to give declarer a remote, rather ridiculous losing option (which he took) and that I didn't let my two mistakes affect my focus. It was more satisfying than a complex squeeze." The conversation wasn't exactly like that, but the gist of the story is about right. Story #2 - When Italian Eyes are Smiling Alfredo Versace played the 2006 World Mixed Pairs in Verona with a woman so unknown that her name is still missing on the Results page of the WBF website for that event. Using Bridgemates, with 4 boards to go in each session every pair was given a scorecard with their score for the first 22 of the 26 boards. At the end of the 5th session, I was waiting outside with some friends. Alfredo Versace raced up to speak to one of them. "Look at my scorecard for Session 5, don't you think bridge a wonderful game?" Alfredo said happily, smiling. "What do you mean?" said my friend. "How can you call 39% wonderful, Alfredo?" "In the first 4 sessions we scored 64%, 62%, 59% and 63% to lead the field by a margin of 3% - and I hadn't even been playing well. My unknown partner had been playing like a dream, and luck was with us. What would happen when I hit top form? So this 5th session, I play my very best, luck abandons us completely and we end up with 39%, although we have four quite good scores to come. Isn't this game magnificent, that you can lead the World Championship then play better but score worse so that you drop out of contention?" "I still can't believe that you're smiling. In your shoes, I wouldn't be," my friend said. Alfredo has won many World Championships and my highly talented friend has won none. Is it possible that humility and humanity are good bridge traits?

or "can a quarteback land the football on a dime every time?" ref

When Michael Jordan was a youngster - the best time to learn, did he invest as much time and effort into other sports as he did to basketball?

I think the requirements vary from one person to another. The best players tend to be good at most of, but not all of, concentration, partnership handling, temperament and having an open mind for learning (not a closed mindset). Maggieb, we have another rocket scientist in Sydney who has never managed to figure out how to play the game well, but Curtis Cheek is a great player who was a rocket scientist before becoming a pro bridge player. No clues there. Perhaps there are a few guidelines. Although people in their fifties and sixties are often world class, those who first played bridge in their twenties or earlier tend to end up the best.