Quantumcat

I am deaf in my left ear and hearing only part of things is a normal occurrence. I got sick of asking people to repeat themselves long ago, now I just rely on context to figure out how the isolated bits I hear all fit together. I imagine that guy does that as well. Also something similar happened to me a little while ago. We play 1♦ shows exactly four spades and a 1♥ response is a relay, 10+ points. When the lady on my right asked what 1♥ was, I said, "10+ points, any shape, says nothing about hearts" but she heard something like "shows 10+ points, any shape with lots of hearts" so she declined to bid her AQJT5 heart suit and got upset at the end when it turned out they had a nine-card fit. I was as apologetic as I could possibly be, and lucky she didn't complain to the director. Still not sure what the best explanation is, if I say "10+ points, any shape" carefully avoiding using the word "hearts" they sometimes assume any shape that includes four hearts. I also play weak takeouts over 1NT, but I usually say "to play" when asked, rather than mention transfers, since I can imagine that scenario happening :-)

That's quite funny - in Australia we have a slang word "furphy", which means a rumour or lie as well. In WWI water carts for soldiers were used from the company "J Furphy and Son" which I think is where the word came from. Sounds like a case of convergent evolution, except for words instead of animals.

Because then he doesn't have a takeout double. Did you mean 5314?

Except when opener has limited his hand.

It makes more sense for 2s in fourth seat to be invitational to game with a good suit, but lots of people have never discussed how they play 2s in fourth seat and invitational to game would never have occurred to them, so the programmers of GIB probably left this convention out so as not to confuse those people.

You can hover your mouse over/click GIBs bids, and it will give you an explanation. You should also be able to hover your mouse over your own bids to see what they mean before bidding them.

Also, (not sure if this is part of Antrax's issues) sometimes on iPhone when people post LIN files you can only see North, South and West's cards, and no auction (cut off on right). Also I can't find a way to see either "my content" or recently added posts. Thanks.

Wouldn't you be less likely to want to play in 3NT when partner has an eight-card major than when he has an eight-card minor?

I think 4♥ will work (stopping the opponents finding a spade fit and bidding 4♠) more often than it will fail (missing a slam). If you are concerned, you can always play Namyats (bid 4♣ with a heart pre-empt that only needs a couple of particular cards for slam, and bid 4♥ with less). You still get to pre-empt a bit, and partner isn't left completely out of the loop. I don't think the given hand is anywhere near a 2♣ opener by the way.

The problem is that it would not be able to translate mispelled words, which there are a lot of, or people leaving off accents on letters changing the meaning of the word (knowing the context will make it obvious to a human) or any bridge slang/abbreviations (imagine google translate trying to decipher "whatd u have in hts pard?" or, "are u guys playing udca?"). And other languages might simply have different words for the same convention, which wouldn't show up in translation either. The resulting translation would probably be incomprehensible most of the time. I can also imagine a respected commentator not wanting the feature because if the risk of what he says getting garbled and people speaking a different language to him, thinking that's what he actually said.

Would it be possible to have a "Back" button at partnership bidding tables, as well as Redeal? Currently if I accidentally redeal when we were still interested in a deal, I have to go through lots and lots of menus (only 3 or so but all the clicking gets tedious) to export the deal to the table, then I have to do the same thing again to get to the next board - if I press redeal at this point, it will skip the next deal (Example: We are bidding board 20. I click Redeal, now on board 21. Go through the menus to export board 20 back to the table. When finished, if I click redeal we end up on board 22, have to export board 21 to the table if I want to play it, then export board 22 as well before Redeal works as desired). A "Back" button would mean 1 easy click instead of around 10 (if I make no mistakes) or 40+ (if I make multiple mistakes). Thanks!

Enjoyable reading. Post more stories :)

Shouldn't really count as a psyche, as it is unlikely to upset the opponents (who may not even be aware you play strong jump shifts), only your partner. Will upset you also when you want to bid 1♣ 1♠ 1NT 3♠ forcing, but you can't because that's probably defined as invitational now ... and as a psyche hoping lefty sticks their nose in, it's no good, since you have no desire to defend, and you'd rather opps didn't get in the way of a constructive auction anyway. A rough definition of a psyche, is when you deliberately make the wrong bid hoping the opponents will get into more trouble than partner. If the opponents can't conceivably have any worries then it's not really a psyche, just a misbid.

true! I'm sure someone said once that if you are tossing up between two calls, the one that gives the opponents more guesses is the one to go with

Presumably supporting partner has a higher priority than bidding his own suit.

Before the first board is the time to look at the opponents cc, and discuss defences. If you don't, announcements won't help you if the opponents do something unusual and you and your partner aren't on the same wavelength. Since you are going to look anyway, announcements are superfluous, the least you will look at is the couple of lines containing opening bid lengths, nt ranges and transfers, and two level openings. Here, in congresses and tournaments, you are required to have two copies of your cc and provide them to your opponent at the start of the match before play begins. Maybe you're not required to do that elsewhere so announcing becomes essential, as asking each time would get tedious. I guess that makes sense.

If one of the partners has forgotten their agreements, you will get UI, when you wouldn't with normal alerting, because the opponent would just glance at the system card and neither partner would be any the wiser that one has forgotten an agreement. What makes announcing better than the opponents being expected to glance at the CC? I can only see negatives. I promise not to make any more posts in this thread since I won't achieve anything so please say whatever you want to in defence of announcements :-)

I remember reading that, and thinking, that means weak twos, and any other pre-emptive bid, should be banned...

The two main advantages to the 10-12 NT: 1. NV, you win the board hands-down at matchpoints if you are allowed to play there (easy to see why - 6 tricks = -50 if we play 1NT, -90 if they play it. 5 tricks is -100 if we play it, -120 if they play it. And if we make the 1NT, turn the previous scores around and make them positive) 2. Pre-empting the opponents, who have no idea whose hand it is, while pard knows all (best coupled with major 2-bids to play, as you seem to have) 3. Continuation of number 2, the opps are always desperate to get into the auction when you open a 10-12 and they seem to end up in the wrong spot more often than not Number 1 only applies at matchpoints NV, but number 2 applies in any situation. However, at IMPs, there is the extra risk of going for a number on a nothing board (on rare occasions you may find yourselves forced into the auction when you didn't want to be with two mediocre balanced hands). So if you only do it non-vul, you retain full advantage with none of the risk. IMHO you are totally missing out not playing this at matchpoints - it is quite effective! BTW I have a decent system over 10-12 NT (probably has similarities with the one you already have) and a very effective escape mechanism when doubled, PM me if you want to know them :-)

Isn't that was the CC is for? Here in Aus the top quarter of the first page of the standard CC contains suit opening minimum lengths and HCP, and 1NT range and meanings for 2C/2D/2H/2S/2NT responses. What does the US standard CC have on it? http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/594/systemg.jpg

It's announcements that give me nightmares! In my own opinion, announcements are not bridge (not dissing any countries that do this, they can do whatever they want, only expressing an opinion). You're not supposed to tell each other what you interpret each other's bids as - doesn't a Law say somewhere that the only information conveyed between partners may be with the cards played and the bids made? Aside from the UI problems, if you make an announcement at an unauthorised time you would be guilty of severe table talk and would get into big trouble!

Why did South double? Maybe if he had four small hearts as well, he would have a reason, even if everyone still thought he should bid 3♣. I can't see any reason at all for the double. 3♣ is forcing and unlimited, he can't think he has to double first to show a good hand, surely?

Opponents are expected to ask, if they want to know - same as bids of the opponent's suit, 2C openings, and 2C response to 1NT.

10-12 1NT is perfect for matchpoints. At matchpoints, when NV whoever gets to 1NT first wins the board! (I am assuming it's only 10-12 when in 1st/2nd seat not vul)

I raise - but pard knows I need no values to do this. Pard usually gets his defence right if I always raise with 3.