BillHiggin

I would not support here (assuming that I do not have a support double as an option) because: 1) In a free bid situation, bidding tends to suggest that I do not have a minimum balanced hand, but I actually have a sub-minimum balanced hand (the heart Jack went from nearly worthless to no value at all on this bidding). 2) I do not wish to encourage a diamond lead against a heart contract unless partner's holding needs no help (the 10 spot will not please him if he leads a diamond from a broken sequence). Note that a slightly different holding such as ♠ A 10 4 2, ♥ 2, ♦ K 10 3, ♣ K J 5 3 2 would address both issues and mow I would favor the raise with 3.

Blue is the color least likely to cause problems to color blind people. The light green clubs and the orange diamonds used in this forum are absolutely horrid choices (for me) as they can just disappear in small font sizes. When I first started playing bridge online, I found a site that indicated vulnerability with light green or light red coloring - I had to use colored cellophane to distinguish them (until I figured out how to customize the colors).

What I have seen (certainly not what I advocate) is: 1M-2m, rebid 2N on <15 or 18+ (and show the big hand with another move later) or 3N on 15-1

The situation came from a post on Bridge Winners and did not specify a jurisdiction. I was unsure how much difference jurisdiction would actually make so I made the weasel statement. Apparently the post on BW was made by someone who had been polled by a director. This seemed strange to me since by my theory, such polling would serve little purpose once the agreement was determined and would be misleading if the agreement was not determined (i.e. the answers to the poll would tend to reflect the agreements of the polled individual). To further muddy the waters, the OP from BW stated that the director came to him because "he wasn't getting the answers he expected" (WTF seems appropriate here).

The best advice I can give is to refer you to someone else's advice. Andrew Gumperez did some articles on Bridge Winners discussing this issue. See: http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/building-a-better-21-structure-the-troublesome-2m-rebid/ http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/building-a-better-21-structure-the-schuler-shift/ Perhaps you might find something useful in his thoughtful presentation.

In general, if delayed support is one of the possible meanings for a bid of partners suit, then that is what it is! Most do not allow a splinter in partner's suit! In particular - the set of players who have tried more than once to make an exclusion bid in their partner's bid suit at the game level is either empty or very close to it. This is one of those things that "kids should not try at home".

I find that your failure to include the suit symbols in the hand diagrams is particularly cruel. Those of us with color blindness need the shape information to make up for the colors that we cannot distinguish (thanks for including those symbols on the played cards).

Please make sure that any implementation like this is only an option. Color should usually be limited to a decorative role since a significant (1 in 12 men) number of men have color blindness of some sort. For me, at least this color scheme does work - but the four color scheme used in posts here is a real problem. But, there are four significant versions of color blindness, so it is difficult to find a scheme that does not cause problems to at least some men (color blindness is sex specific and the ladies are generally spared).

If you have the agreement to bid on with 4, then pass is NOT a logical alternative.

The situation: (inspired by a BW disussion) One player makes a 4N RKCB ask. The response shows 1 or 4 key cards. Asker after a significant (acknowledged) BIT bids 5 of the agreed suit. The responder holding 4 key cards raises to 6. "DIRECTOR" It is my belief that it is not uncommon for players (perhaps only less than expert players) to believe that they are always supposed to bid on when holding the higher number of key cards. It would seem to me that the director ought to make an effort to determine whether the (alleged) offending pair does have that agreement and if so, to rule that the table result stands, but otherwise to role back the contract to 5 (perhaps a polling of peers is appropriate after making the determination). I also believe that I am no expert on such matters! What sayeth the real world directors? (Does it depend on location?)

Much of this discussion has focused on trying to get to the better fir. IMHO, I think of garbage stayman as a way to look for a great fit with a safety valve that assures a playable fit when partner does not have a four card major. Therefore, I do not really care if responder has longer hearts, longer spades or even 4-4 majors (I am not recommending the tactic with 4-4 majors, just not insisting it is always wrong). We might not end up in our best (of poor choices) fit, but at least opener will not be doing such unfortunate things as returning to no-trump or trying for game and we will have (slightly) more trumps than the opponents. The gains come when we find our 4-4 or 4-5 fit at the two level.

In my college days (a loooong time ago), we sometimes would play bridge late at night with a fair supply of beverages that we were too young to legally purchase! Things like this actually happened in those games! What you cannot do is hope that "double" will somehow be for penalties this time or that a cue bid will actually be "to play". You must pass and then next round (which might not happen) things are different (now the fact that you did not act before is most easily explaoned as a trap pass and so you are actually expected to have length in their suit (and trap passing is an important skill in alcohol drenched games). In practice, it is just not going to happen in a mostly serious game (the psyche is most likely to hit partners length and then phone numbers happen to the jokesters).

Some will use a variant of transfer advances in this auction. Then 2♦ (transfer to hearts) would be the mixed raise while 2♥ is weaker. Of course the conditions in the OP suggest that this is not an option! Note that "transfer advances" does not exclusively refer to bids by "advancer". What is wrong IMHO is any strategy that expects "law protection" at the three level.

You think the 2♦ bid is ugly. Guess what the bot thinks of the 1♦ bid?

When you have that lovely 4333 shape, the total trick count needs to be reduced. One of the most common mistakes I see intermediate/advanced players make is to make "law" bids with this shape (including super accepts of transfers as well)!

As I read the OP, there is one line that works if LHO has 2 small clubs and another that works if he has 2 small spades, and by inference 3-0 or 0-3 holdings mean failure - so clearly we proceed on the assumption that there is some way to succeed.

I looked at this in terms of combinations (and included the 3-0 possibilities which have some significance - at least in terms of percentages). The total possibilities are proportional to [combinations of 11 things taken 3 at a time] = 165 Zero spades and 3 clubs will happen 20/165 times One spade and 2 clubs will happen 75/165 times - 50/165 do not include the club K and 25/165 do Two spades and 1 club will happen 60/165 times - 10/165 will have a singleton K of clubs which presumably will not be considered for a lead. Three spades and no clubs will happen 10/165 times. 36% for spade doubleton and 30% for club doubleton Playing for the doubleton club is best if we think that a singleton club lead would happen less than 20% of the time - otherwise it is better to play for the doubleton spade.

Start at http://www.ecatsbridge.com/documents/docdefault.asp?page=WBC2013 Then click on the BermudaBowl folder. For each team, there is a folder containing their convention cards.

I cannot rationalize the double. Other than to suspect that no rules applied and so the bot ran a sim and double worked on its sample. Of course, there was no real correct choice - all roads lead to failure (well, x followed by pass actually works). Perhaps South will remind himself that upgrading notrump hands based on 4333 shape is not usually a positive EV strategy.

Yes, I do have a strong opinion on this! (did you also want to know what it is?)

I am aware of the fact that there are multiple versions of un v un, but that is one I have not previously encountered. Pretending that anyone cares what my preference over opps bid showing 2 known suits is: I like cue of cheapest of their suits for invite or better of cheapest other, cue of dearest of their suits for invite or better of dearest of other suits, direct bids of other suits is competitive. At least that is easy to remember (and for me, remembering what the trump suit is can be a major accomplishment)

There have been several versions of the events leading to the Israeli women's team withdrawal. Not a single one of which would properly be called extortion. Certainly, the current situation with regard to Migry is no where close to extortion. But, in the interests of proper internet flame wars, we should never allow mere facts to interfere with out rhetoric!

Mostly speculation, with a small amount of knowledge of how GIB bids: 1) "logic" is not an appropriate word to apply to GIB bidding. 2) GIB mainly chooses bids based on tables of rules and priorities. These seem (to me) to be based on a static appraisal of strength and shape (GIB does not seem to revalue honors that most of us would revalue based on being in our long suits or not) 3) When the rules and priorities do not provide an answer, GIB generates hands based on what partner has shown and analyzes what the final contract should be based on those samples. Note that this is not going to be accurate here since GIB thinks you have 5+ spades, 11+HCP and 12-17 total points. GIB will think you have something like Kxxxx AQJx void Jxxx (for example) and that does not make a good grand slam (some of the other samples may make good grands - less heart wastage and better clubs - but GIB is unlikely to consider 7-5-0-1 as a possibility) I will let others comment on how humans would bid this.

retracted

There exists a group of experts (well, not an organized group) that have settled into the role of coach. They devote a lot of effort to study of the methods used by top international pairs that may not be well documented. When they find one of these methods that seems quite effective, they may choose to publish something about them - often presented as "Look what xxxx are doing now". When such a method meets with wide spread adoption, it is not uncommon for them to be named after the person that first published something about them rather than the actual innovators. Note that, in general, the coach who did the publishing was not in any way trying to take credit for the ideas of others. Benito Garozzo is an example of soneone who has been very innovative, but has not been very active in publishing his innovations. Nagy and Kokish are examples of the sort of coaches mentioned above. I think we would find that many conventions named after Nagy or Kokish are actually Garozzo innovations, and the naming has happened because of who publicized the method rather than the actual innovator. Please allow me to emphasize that neither Nagy nor Kokish have done anything underhanded. I am sure that either would be quick to credit the actual innovator (who might not have been Benito - we don't really know).