peachy

I would be interested to know by whom you were "told" . The ACBL regulation itself seems clear enough, when it defines 3+ minor natural; that makes 2+ minor *not natural*. If there is some ACBL originated interpretation somewhere that says the non-forcing catchall 2+ club should be treated the same as 3+ club, then perhaps you can give a link or copy.

Behind screens, how could the doubler know which player took the time? East is screenmate with North. South and West are screenmates and they both had decisions to make. South = what to bid, West = whether to sacrifice. Moreover, tempo in highly competitive auction at the six-level is normally slower. Even with my suspicious tendencies, I cannot attribute any designs to any tempo. East was suffering from "buyer's remorse".

I don't know what others think, but to me, a NT call is natural and *not artificial" if it is balanced. A hand with a singleton is not balanced. Whether it is an *offer to play* is a red herring. Any non-forcing opening bid becomes an *offer to play* when the bidder's partner passes it. Also note the statement in parenthesis, shown in the definition: (not being information taken for granted by players generally) As far as I know, players generally take it for granted that a NT opening bid is a balanced hand.

Conratulations, Fred and the Diamond team! A banner year !

If the players cannot explain how they have been damaged, IMO the TD is responsible for figuring it out. Is there any supporting guideline for this existing, or a law, to support this opinion?

I am not giving you official BBO advice. But my solution for temporarily at least - so that you can log on to BBO - would be to create a new account, like *kurby1* and assign yourself a new password for that name. Later, if you remember your old password, you can resume signing on with your old name again.

Unfortunate that an oral response was given. There are notepads at both sides of the screen to write questions and answers. Question could be a silent gesture toward the bid but answer should be written. Speaking during the auction makes the benefits of the screen disappear. There was MI, there was damage. Adjustment looks normal to me.

I don't like the four color decks. Prefer red and black. The decks in Philly were 4-color, plus the design of the single suit symbol on the aces was confusing. It was easy to "see" that a black ace with swirly figures in the center is a "club when in fact it was a spade with two spade suit symbols embracing eath other.

Whether the defenses published by ACBL are adequate or not, is a subject for discussion, in another thread. I see no real purpose for your posting this table occurrence except to somehow cast an unfavorable light on Meckstroth-Rodwell. Also, FYI, ACBL covers more than just USA (Bermuda, Mexico, USA, Canada) . This thread is about WBF events and as far as I understand, was intended to inform people about what the WBF CoC say because the regulations may not have been known in general. And the poll shows that the majority actually did not know about them.

The only flaw of Dbl for penalty is that I have too many clubs, but nothing else makes even moderate sense. The vote options are geared toward exploring game, I would just forget about that.

I play it the Robson/Segal way: "Delayed dbls are take out of the 2nd suit (penalty of the 1st) unless LHO passed and pard took positive action in his turn." This falls into the 'unless' part, so it's pure take out. I am suspecting a misunderstanding somewhere about what Robson-Segal are actually saying. I don't have the text.

I don't think a stutterer would start for example the word "heart" with the letter S or "club" with something that starts with a D. So while handicaps and impairments should be given some latitude, such forgiveness should not be automatic.

Without discussion/agreement, my logic says it shows a hand that is willing to defend 1SX or 2HX and possibly other strains doubled as well. Given that partner had initially passed, this second dbl also shows a good opening hand that was unsuitable for a takeout double, NT, or an overcall directly over 1H. The second double does not promise any particular number of hearts or of spades (has to have a couple of spades though), but an opening hand with hearts is a definite possibility.

Who owns/hosts this site?

Responder has at most two hearts maybe fewer, exactly four spades, and five or more diamonds. Opener has three or fewer spades, 5 hearts and 3 diamonds OR 6+ hearts and 3-4 diamonds. 4S is cuebid. If opener has a soft hand with six or more hearts and only three diamonds, opener could have bid 4H as a suggestion to play. But 4S cannot be a suggestion to play. Worst case scenario, responder can just have a spade fragment instead of a suit, with concentrated values in spades and diamonds, no heart support, no club stopper, and no six-card diamonds, something like KQx-xx-AQJxx-xxx where no other bid makes sense unless systemically required to bid NT even with one suit wide open [i would not like it].

You were so right, Frances. A typical example, a variation of the theme so to speak - French guy with a lovely smile and attentive manner, announced ''we play just very simple standard, nothing fancy". I said "okay, may I have a look anyway" . The System Summary area had about ten words, the rest of the card completely empty. And the summary was, get this: 5c majors, strong twos, 2D Multi

Yes, I know opener does not have any UI - unless from body language, which was not mentioned in the original post. And that responder does have it. What I was speculating was reasons why opener did not bid on to slam over 5C; the auction must have been peculiar to him/her and I explained what his/her presumed thought process might have been.

It might be off the mark. This was a new partnership, but nevertheless, what happened, does not add up. Since there seems to be no damage, other than the hypothetical windfall that the NOS might get from a UI ruling, I'm still willing to let this one go, and as TD wait for the next case from this pair. I hope my decision is not illegal, I think not, but maybe I am wrong.

Whatever the adjustment, if any, NS must not get any part of 5D = or +1 because the auction is evidence that they would not have bid it. North passed the opening bid of 1D. I don't know what to make of the balancing 3D call with no shape, losers in every suit, his only honor card in unfavorable position in front of the "club bidder", and a partner who did pass 3C.

If a new partnership had discussed minor suit auctions to this level of detail, they must have skipped discussion of splinters and proceeded directly into the more subtle situations. I am sometimes a little sceptical in the sense that when something does not make sense (to me), the likelihood has increased significantly that it may not be true. Here, a new partnership actually having the described agreement but not having a splinter agreement is in that genre. Did they have system notes? I am going work out the LA's when there is UI from the non-alert. Under their stated agreements, opener can see that responder has made a slam try with trumps that lack the K, Q, and J, so there must be a lot of values in the other suits, but it is strange that there was no cuebid of spades or diamonds [italian style, as was confirmed somewhere in this thread] and no 4NT bid; instead West bid the ambiguous 5C slam try when he had room to cue something on the four-level. Given all this, I am inclined to let the table result stand.

A ) Who is Brad Bart? B ) What happened to the generally accepted principle (AFAIK) that opener who reverses, promises a third bid? Which means that 2S bidder is assigning none of the qualifiers "forcing", "non-forcing", "sign'off", to the 2S bid. C ) Perhaps this is a terminology problem. See point B )

5S should not be anywhere near the top score. Also the difference between 4S and 4H is not that great. If hearts don't split nicely, there will be trouble in both contracts, not just hearts.

6C is not as good as it first looks and even if the panel thinks it should be top score, it should not get more than 1 more than 4S. We had a weak NT auction 1N-2H-2S-3C-4S. I think it is debatable, at least, whether 4S was the right call.

3NT should score more than 10, IMO. Still MPs.

This is MP scoring so 6S or 6D should not get the same score as 6NT. Not that it much matters as 7NT is cold, but 7S should not get such a high score either. The trick in this hand is to count 13 tricks and not to get to 7S which needs SK to be found.