BillHiggin

I do not consider myself mush of a signalling authority, so probably will not venture a real opinion. Still, it does seem that perhaps the auction or at least the contract might be relevant.

I like the simple approach. I prefer Landy in direct seat since the most important things to do are to handle hands with both majors or a single suited major effectively. I would expect other defenses to do even better, but Landy is good enough for me (I have some memory issues to deal with, but those are mostly short term memory problems). I do think DONT is effective in the balancing seat. There, I just want to not let them have their comfortable 1N contract, and DONT allows me to compete with less risk.

I won't claim that pass was correct, but it should not have been such a disaster. After N passes, the obvious choice for lead should be ♦A and another. If the lead of a ♠honor is just too attractive, then at least shift to diamonds at trick 2 when you see the obvious club ruff situation.

Allow me to try to understand why there is a problem here. You play DONT over their 1N. Playing DONT a 2D call shows diamonds and a major. You have diamonds and a major. You seem to claim to be an "insane 2-Diamond Bidder". Is the fact that 2D is not insane on this hand the problem? Bid 2D, maybe next hand will actually have a problem to solve, not so on this one. Note: at the heart of DONT is the concept that you will not be trying to reach game after they open 1 strong NT, so there is no sense letting that concern you now. If there is a game, then so be it.

http://tinyurl.com/lenqf8t after RHB opened 3C, I checked to see if 4C would show my nice 5-6 majors hand. The explanation was "Two suited 4- losers". Great, just what I wanted! Now CHB replied 4D which seems correct. So I corrected to 4H, failing to note that the explanation now reverted to a single suit (5+H, 4- losers - at least my hand did fit that). Of course, the bot had also completely forgotten that little thingy about 2 suited and left me there with a 6-1-4-2 hand. Sigh.

Note that this scheme is "brown sticker", so it is restricted in many non ACBL events. In fact, if you qualify for a WBF world championship, you may not use this in the preliminary round robin rounds (but you can use it in the knockout rounds - though you will forfeit all seating rights) There is an individual who actually teaches this and another brown sticker convention (3D showing a prempt in any suit) to intermediate level players. He names both with the "multi" prefix and then pretends that that makes things all ok (the multi 2D/2H convention is explicitly exempted from brown sticker status). Of course, these students get fantastic results mot of the time when these come up (can you say "bunny killer" - these students are not playing against experienced opposition in general)

And bidding to 6S is so appropriate unless W decides to call 1N holding 2 jacks opposite a passed hand and warn them of the spade loser! East's action was aggressive but understandable. West - not so understandable.

Based strictly on personal experience, I think GIB has little or no logic for evaluating fit with partner other than simulation situations (and I do not think these are such). So, I would assume that this is simply a case of bidding rules that vary slightly for the 1C and 1D opening.

Something seems wrong with the calculations. Singletons in hands with a 6 card suit do not seem as rare as these numbers suggest. The point range specification makes it more difficult to compute, but the relative numbers ought to be proportional over all hands with a 6 card suit. There is only one shape (6322) which has a 6card suit and no singleton or void. There are a total of 35,830,574,208 possible 6332 hands. Hands with a 6 card suit and a singleton or void and no more than 4 cards in a side suit include 6331 (21,896,462,016 hands), 6421 (29,858,811,840 hands) and 6430 (8,421,716,160 hands). So, restricting the longes side suit to 4 or less still makes the hands with shortness more common than the hands with no shortness. All hands with longer side suits include a singleton or void so the ration of 2.2 : 0.77 is definitely wrong!

Based on personal experience, not on any math (and my personal experience is flawed by age/health related issues that impact short term memory): I think a good player has a positive expectation long term. So the optimum bet (if it were not just pretend money) would be $10. Actual analysis would seem to be quite difficult. How do you account for the odds of your robot partner doing crazy robot things (offset by the robot opps also doing crazy robot things).

I do not care for the 2♦ call, but would not get too violent about that (clearly double is also flawed, but preferable). At the next opportunity, the failure to double 3♥ for takeout was unforgivable! North is merely an innocent victim of Souths masterminding. EDIT: Actually, pass might be more appropriate than double at South's 2nd turn, and then N might still introduce the spade suit. 4C should not have been an option. But North may know that South belongs to the "it is my turn so I will bid" school and that might inhibit his tendancy to balance.

The preemptive raise to 4 on 5+ card support plus some shortness and a weak hand very much predates Bergan or the Law of Total Tricks (standard in old style Goren methods). The 5332 shape offers little as far as playing strength. I would pass partner's 3♠ game try (I am about an Ace shy of what he is hoping for). An even more extreme situation exists with actual LOTT situations. 4333 shape is not worth a super-accept of a transfer or a "Bergan" raise even if partner's suit is your 4 banger.

I would certainly make some raise - the real question is how high (IMHO). It also defends on methods. If we play 3♠ as weak, then I would raise at least to that level. If I hold a singleton or void, I would raise to 4♠. If I hold some 5332, then 2♠ if 3♠ is not weak. If some 5422, and my side 3HCP are in the side suit, I bid 4!S otherwise 2/3 (Kxxx being much better than QJxx) Vulnerability would not influence me. (I have experienced some memory loss from oxygen starvation - my opinions might be suspect)

No, it was played on another site. There was nothing at stake, so no real accusations were made other than the suggestion that I seek help for mental conditions (and all in fun). Actually, I have wondered what would happen in one of the "psych free" torneys, but the majority of the participants in this forum are probably not inclined to that sort of restriction anyway.

I do not have a record of the full hand! It seems that most replies here are very close to my own thinking. One extra fact that is of some relevance - my partner was clearly the weakest player at the table, and I thought it quite likely that either a BIT or double by him might provide declarer with the insight to make the hand (followed by thinking "well, if you are going to read that much into his double, deal with mine instead :) ). Since I do not have the hand record, I cannot say whether there was a legitimate or even long shot chance at making. Declarer did take hook, line and sinker. Declarer even refused a winning finesse, electing to try to end play me (with that fine hand, I was able to avoid being thrown in :) ). The final result of down 3 certainly suggests that something other than the best line of play was employed. Declarer did immediately express the opinion that option A was appropriate!

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Speaking only to the odds question: The odds of diamonds splitting 4-3 have now dropped to 51.65% (West is now more likely to hold diamond length) The odds of the finesse have also dropped. East is less likely to hold any specific black card - the odds have dropped to 38.1% for the spade Queen to be onside. The diamond split is still significantly more likely than the finesse. (edit) Note that these figures ignore the card discarded by West. They only reflect the knowledge that West's 13 cards came from a set of 14 black cards and 7 diamonds.

IMHO, the idea that LOTT applies here is not appropriate. In general, 4333 shape is a good reason to downgrade the total trump count. I am not just making this up, see chapter 9 of Larry Cohen's To Bid or Not to Bid. More commonly, I see players making Bergan raises or super accepts of transfers with 4 card support but 4333 shape and finding that the Law does not work well in this case. Here the fact that the trump support is one of the 3 card suits still suffers from the inflexibility of that sterile shape.

It has happened multiple times, mostly when we are about to play a match (so he is not in a tourney). I certainly have not marked him as an enemy (and I do receive private messages from him). I do not believe that he has marked me as an enemy, and I think that in that situation a message from me to him would simply vanish (without the notification about being sent to mail). If there were some action I could take to clear this matter, I would certainly do so. Of course, he might elect to forgo the invisible thing when we have match scheduled. I fail to see why that would be such a problem, but it is his choice and I can do little about it other than to point out the problem.

That is exactly what I do! I then get a message that mail has been sent to the recipient. I have communicated with this individual via e-mail about this and he claims that he is able to chat with others in this manner. I do not know why it is different for me. (I am using the web client with IE - which is working fine except for this)

I have found that an invisible player may send private messages to me, but that I may not respond to them (well, not in real time - the response is mailed to him). Unfortunately, there does seem to be an individual who does both. This comes up in connection with a pairs ladder of the IAC. When we have a challenge pending, he will logon as invisible and then send me private messages about the match. My responses get sent to his mailbox (and I am informed of that). Then after several such exchanges, he seems to assume that I am ignoring him and starts suggesting that my manners need some work (they do, but not in this context). It does make sense to me that I should not be able to send direct messages to an invisible party (else I could always endeavor to detect someone who chooses not to be detected). However, this should work both ways - If I cannot reply to him, then his messages to me should be restricted. Please note that I do not object to his messages (i.e. making him an enemy is entirely inappropriate). I just believe that the software should not be making me appear to be the inconsiderate party here.

There is an alternate approach to "puppet over 1N" that does not require either of these sacrifices (giving up Smolen will end up costing a comparable amount to the gains from puppet). This alternative has the nice characteristic that it has been used and found usefull by true world class players ( see http://justinlall.com/2011/09/07/puppet-stayman-after-a-1n-opener/ ). This involves using two versions of stayman - a 2C response to 1N is normal non-forcing or garbage stayman and a 3C response is "puppet stayman after 1N. Use the 2C version with all less than game-forcing hands that would normally use stayman and with game-forcing hands that contain both majors (4-4 or 5-4) with all the normal stayman continuations. Use the 3C version with GF hands with no more than one 4 card major. The responses to 3C are similar to normal stayman - 3M to show a 5 card major and 3D to deny (but 3D says nothing about openers' 4 card majors). Over openers' 3D rebid, responder may show a 4 card major by the normal Smolen trick of bidding the other one (and responder will not have both majors). I believe this to be rather simple, and it does not sacrifice Smolen or the minor suit transfers. It does give up the 3C rewponse to 1N which is often "weak, both minors" in 4-way transfers, but that is no real loss (and there is even a simple way to still deal with the weak 5-5 minor hands).

Thanks to somebody I think. No replies, but the chat to club option is working again.

Playing in the "BBO IAC", I can not broadcast to the club now. I use the browser client in IE. The club chat option used to be there. One other player also mentioned that chat to club was not available to him.

I have just replaced my Windows XP laptop (old and crippled - like its owner) with shiny new Windows 7 desktop. The older computer had problems with both the Windows client version of BBO (it would freeze after a random amount of online time) and the web version (shockwave flash crashes). Now, the web version appears to be working properly when launched from IE but crashes quite quickly under Google Chrome. I much prefer Chrome over IE but for now I must use IE for bridge - bummer. (No browser or version of BBO client has managed to make me into an expert - but fixing that can wait for a while :rolleyes: )