Roupoil

SEF is quite imprecise, but recommends a 6-card suit or a very strong 5-card suit, so I doubt A6432 would be ok. My friend thought that only franch bidders would be capable of passing 1S, when I considered pass to be normal. Over the 2S rebid, how stupid is it to play a double as really penalty oriented instead of extra values ?

Seems like we were both partly wrong. Well, suppose you bid 2C. LHO passes, partner bids 2H (normally invitational values and 5 hearts, with a sixth one North would surely have found an opening bid), and RHO takes the push to 2S. What do you do ?

[hv=pc=n&s=st4hakda876ca6432]133|100[/hv] I had an argument on this deal with a french friend about what non-french bridge players would do after a 1♠ bid by RHO. Everybody nonvulnerable, MP, partner passed in first seat. Of course we both know what a french bridge player would do since anybody not strictly following the recommandations of SEF wouls probably end up in jail here...

Indeed, the question might be to choose what to do over 5C. In fact, I can't know for sure what opener would have done after 4H in the auction I gave in my earlier post (at the table, something more brutal occured very quickly). He may be tempted to double (which will of course be respected by his partner), and may try 5C, giving us the last guess. These were the hands : [hv=d=w&v=n&n=stxxxh9xxdaqxcjxx&w=sjxxhaqdjxcaqtxxx&e=saxxxhtxdtxxckxxx&s=skqhkj8xxxdkxxxxc]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] At our table, South bid directly to 4H over 1NT. Insane ? Well, everybody looked at him suspiciously, but passed, and the very suitable dummy and layout meant +620. Other table had also a very quick but not really spectacular auction : 1C P 1S 2H end of auction for a peaceful +170 but -10 IMPS for NS. Who's to blame for not reaching anything higher ?

Ok, so for all the 2!h bidders (whatever the exact meaning, the sequence will be the same ; for the others, I don't know...), you awaken everybody at the table : 1NT - - 2♥ 3♣ 3♥ 4♣ ? Just to check, what do you do now ?

It's been a long time I'm lurking in these forums, maybe it's time I start posting hands (or maybe not, we'll see...) : [hv=d=w&v=n&s=skqhkj8xxxdkxxxxc]133|100|Scoring: IMP (1NT) - -[/hv] So, West opens a strong NT and it gently comes to you, what's your plan (feel free to use and explain your methods). Do you change your bid if I tell you it's a 32-board KO match, and you were down 38 IMPs after the first set of 16 deals (this is the 6th board of the second half and nothing spectacular happened yet, though you might have gained some 5 IMPs back) ?

It really looks like the WBF site tries all the possibilities to give wrong scores. They forgot one segment yesterday, and today they put cumulative scores instead of segment scores... That's just ludicrous.

One more time, it seems like French are not European people for bridge matters. I would assume Smolen without discussion facing any adv+ French player (but of course, French people don't call it Smolen, but "chassé-croisé").

Standard in France is Ace for attitude and King for unblock/count. And I play Standard in this area. No good reason to it, just used to it and I don't remember having problems with it.

I think the 1:50 ratio just shows that there are much more people reading BBF than the regular posters, whixh doesn't strike me as specially bad... Being myself a lurker here for more than two years now, I can try to give reasons why I don't post more : I don't play enough good bridge to posts question in the A/E section, and I am not bad enough to ask in the B/I. More seriously, it just happens that I don't have enough time to post (and frequently that, when I read a thread for the first time, a few dozens of interesting answers have already been given and I don't feel I could add something to the discussion). Reading BBF is already very time-consuming, I think most people couldn't post as much as the frequent posters here even if they wanted to.

I was wrong in my previous post concerning the french Women trials : our world champions are participating, and the trials are just here to select a team to compete against them to represent France in the European Championships.

In France, it seems to change every year also. This year (for the next European Championships), there is a team trial for Open, Women and Senior teams. The Open trial is a quite lenghty one, with 18 teams competing but teams entering at various stages. The four best ones (in my opinion the ones which really have a real chance to win the trial) begin in the round of 8, and the last three rounds are matches of 120 to 180 deals each. For the seniors, there are 8 teams competing, and only 4 for the Women. There has been problems with the Women trials recently, and it seems our best players (the ones that won the Venice Cup in 2005 and finished third last year) won't be competing in this trial once again...

I was pretty sure to have read somewhere that the freely downloadable version was not the same that the one which won the world championships, ut I can't find this info anymore...

It is indeed totally Standard in SEF, though nowadays a lot of advanced/expert players use different Stayman (who said "less old-fashioned" ?). You still have to alert a Stayman which can contain hands with less than 8HCP in a club tournament if you don't want to declare war to your opponents...

Oh, thanks for adding me, I was indeed playing for fun. And to answer Fluffy's post, I already begin to think I might regret my big gamble : putting Brazil in the BB final :rolleyes: .

Another late bet : BB Winner : Italy Runner-up : Brazil 1/2 : USA2 ; Netherlands 1/4 : China ; Germany ; USA1 ; Russia VC Winner : China Runner-up : USA1 1/2 : Germany ; France 1/4 : USA2 ; Sweden ; Italy ; Denmark SB Winner : USA1 Runner-up : Poland 1/2 : Indonesia ; England 1/4 : USA2 ; Canada ; India ; Sweden

In France, where almost nobody ever opens 1NT with a 5-card major, 2NT is still 18-19 (although many beginners/intermediates don't know it and bid 2NT with 15-17). With no proper rebid (5332 in the 15-17 range), we bid a three-card minor.

Not sure french guy (I am one) can help here since as far as I know (I am not a big news reader) the matter has not been heavily discussed here. Apparently, the only "Chirac source" is the interview by Maurice and, even if he has been the director of a rather serious newspaper, I wouldn't trust him too much. The fact that Chirac could admit having had such a conversation with Bush (and that Bush actually said that) doesn't seem too absurd to me. What surprises me is that Chirac asked to a Swiss theologian to get information about Gog and Magog (not such a difficult matter to be informed on), but anyway what do I know about how a president handles this kind of stuff ? It seems the info was first revealed on the Swiss side (and later "confirmed" to Maurice) so the best way to get more precisions maybe lies there.

In France, there are Trials for the European Championships (the only exception in the last ten years being the Women Teams winning the VC and reconducted for the next championships), quite similar to the US ones (although the format seems to change every two years or so, sometimes being a pair event with the two top pairs choosing the third, and other times a teams event). I don't really know about complains concerning these trials, but what is sure is that the selection of the team by one person would result in a big lot of arguing among the experts (well, they are french after all).

I receive BW in France, and get my magazine at a quite random date in the month, but never with a big delay.

Two-suited weak twos aren't very popular yet in France, but from what I have seen, I think most of those who play them play 5M-4m.

In France, the Standard remains to play strong jump shifts, but there has been a big move for a few years towards weak jump shifts. I think that now quite a lot of players play weak jump shifts, but surely the percentage of those who kept thier strong jump shifts is much more than 1%. That's for the big crowd, concerning the experts, I believe very few play strong jump shifts, but I must say I don't know what exactly are their methods for these bids. From what I have seen, I would guess Reverse Flannery is quite poular, but that's all.

Yes, in French ♠ = P, ♥ = C, ♦ = K, ♣ = T

I must admit I find my hand really too good for 3♥, so I would have rebid 3♣ (maybe my partners don't respond as light as yours). 2SA didn't occur to me, but now that you mention it, I really prefer it to 3♥, and maybe even to my initial 3♣.

Interesting answers here, I must confess I thought totally normal to rebid with all 9 points hands and almost all 8 points hands. It wouldn't occur to me that one can pass with your first exemple ochinko (9 points and fit, I bid 3!c). But I see now that you don't have the same conception of the rebid of 3!c as I have. For me, 3!c is just fit and 8-10 points (ok, I can pass some ugly 8 points depanding on scoring). The point I don't understand is when you say we will bid poor games if inviting with 3!c on such hands. For me, an opener in the 12-14 zone will almost always pass 3!c, and will only accept a game in the 15-17 zone. And I don't really think it is so rare opener is 15-17, all (13)54 hands with 15-17 points would bid this way, and I suppose you would invite game facing for example a strong no trump with an 8-point hand with known fit, don't you ?