Rossoneri

The last 2 books I bought were Principle of Restricted Talent and Human Bridge Errors. That was 2 months ago. Haven't had the time and money since to buy new books. Also haven't had much time to read these forums/play as much as I should be. As a result my bridge has been deteriorating as my teammates can attest to...

I fail to see what does South have to double. I think that is the crucial mistake by either side in this hand.

Wouldn't hurt to take a look at MickyB and David_C's Polish Club variant as well.

Too tired to argue this out completely and coherently, but FWIW, my views on this: 1) It would be a good idea to have better guidelines on how to post in each of the forums. 2) Better cleaning up/moving of threads. But I agree that this will be a thankless job which few would want to take up. 3) A restricted A/E forum could work with moderation and a panel of experts given unrestricted posting rights. 4) Agree with echognome that we shouldn't restrict it to one post per day since interesting hands come in bunches due to tournaments/weekly games/etc.

Hell yeah! Our teammates played in the 1-1 fit as opposed to a 5-4 in a recent national event on this auction and played like stars to only go down three. Luckily on our table they (over?)bid to a spade slam off two, so a lack of discussion only cost 2 IMPs. Dude, I went 5 off if you are talking about National Swiss. And yes, partner tried to deduce that it wasn't a splinter cos he had a singleton as well :P

♠Q

The best selection for f2f tournament is of course a f2f trials. Players need to get used to playing with screens and bidding boxes etc. If coaching sessions could be done online, that would allow the players to get to know each other etc, and selecting pairs would not be such a big problem to team unity as they would already have known each other beforehand. Whether to hold it as teams/pairs is a question depending on how many pairs you get. In Singapore we currently have it as pairs selection for U-26 and U-21 but that's partially down to the limited pool of players we have, and the fact that everyone knows each other already.

At the end of the day, isn't this a problem of ACBL being inconsistent?

pass, wtp?

Tricky question. I faced a similar situation last weekend. The risk of passing, I would think, would be that the auction could get too high by the time it comes back to you, but this hand is strong enough to stomach most possibilites. I would say pass and bid 3♠, but I readily admit that I would be really, really tempted to bid 3♠ now and get scolded later by partner/teammates.

I vote for a trump as well.

I remember a particular time more than 1 year ago when I was in camp doing duty one day and I thought of something along these lines. My assumptions were: 1) You either make the overtrick, or go down 2) Assume this decision happens every board 3) This is an 8-board match Given the fact that it was nearly 2 years since I had stopped doing maths at that point in time, I attempted to calculate this using a binomial model. My conclusion then was that the payoff of an imp wasn't worth it. The paper on which I did my workings that day has since been lost, but after slightly more than one term of restarting school again, I am now still pretty sure my simplistic model calculations were correct.

Unless your entire team is exactly on the same page for this, and can calculate probabilities down exactly at the table, I would say the losses are far more than what you calculate at the table. What if your calculated probability turns out to be wrong? Also, as a few people have said already, the psychological effect on partner and teammates is just immense...

3♠

My bad of course, for jumping to 6NT, my defence to that is that it's my very first board playing with this particular partner opposite me! When dummy came down, I was very disappointed not to be in diamonds instead of NT, and we actually lost 12 imps on the board as 7D was bid and made at the other table. Not that I knew this when I was declaring though!

I should add this: RHO wins the first trick with the Q and returns the 2 of ♠. Hint:

[hv=d=s&v=n&n=s54hat6dat95cak96&s=sak763hk87dkqj8cq]133|200|Scoring: IMP Bidding goes 1♠-2♣-2♦-2♥-6NT[/hv] West leads the J♠. South at the other table is an experienced junior international. Do you have any extra considerations now? Hint:

Maybe I should just add a hint:

I've only played 15-17 and 12-14, quite like 12-14 for it's aggressiveness, but hope to try 14-16 or 14-17 someday!

And this has turned out very useful indeed!

9. Pass 10. Don't understand the 1NT opening. But if you force me to bid, I'll take 3♥

What Frances said is correct.

Tempted to try this, but one should never install beta software on a computer that one needs badly everyday, and this is my situation with my laptop now.

I can't quite make out if this is serious or sarcastic. jdeegan: Not a good idea to mention certain characters...you might get a scolding/warning for being bad to him lol :)

Hilarious.