655321

The diamond lead seems OK to me. Heart lead is fine too. I looked up the hand, the problem was not the lead, the problem was that at trick 2 South played the ♦T under the Ace for no reason. If he keeps the ten the contract has no play (unless North still plans to lead the ♦J on the third round of the suit.) There were many other opportunities for the defense later too.

http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/37080-too-many-controls/

Truly extraordinary. Still, I didn't quite understand your post. Are you saying something like "Even though North doesn't really have the strength to bid at the 4 level, other factors override that and make the bid acceptable. Only I have the ability to see that, everyone else is only resulting." Or, are you saying something like "North doesn't have the strength to bid at the 4 level, 4♣ was a bad bid. Only I have the ability to see that, everyone else is only resulting."

You can see some threads by searching (outside the forums) for: LOL site:www.bridgebase.comWill there be more results after the Google spiders have been snooping about for a while longer I wonder?

1NT. If you would prefer to have a certain spade stopper, Qx is a very good holding to declare from anyway.

3♥ now. The decision last round looks more interesting. I like showing a 3 card invitation instead, although 2♠ is OK too. I think a raise to just 2♥ would have been wrong.

I am in the 6♦ camp. If 6♦ will only make around 50% of the time passing looks good because making enough overtricks in 3NT will rarely score badly, but I hope that 6♦ will make much more often than that.

North is on drugs. No it isn't

I am bidding for sure, the only question is do we bid the scientific 4NT or the simpler 5♥? I will go with 4NT because if we have a 9 card fit it seems much better to play there rather than in an eight card fit. Just bidding 5♥ should work well whenever partner has four hearts, but could be dangerous otherwise.

Anything except pass seems really bad, this is not at all close.

Don't like 2♠ or 4♠. Agree with mikeh that simple would have been good. Wot?

Haha, fixed, thank you! Now, if I only knew why my kitten picture keeps disappearing...

I find the format of the timestamps hard to read. The 'Today' and 'Yesterday' ones are fine, but when the time is separated from the date by a forward slash the numbers seem to run into each other (2010-Sep-27/11:18). Maybe a space instead of the slash, or some other way to make them more readable. I forget how they used to be displayed.

Pass because (a) we haven't been doubled and 50's are fine with me, and (b) with 3 cards in spades opposite partner's likely 3+ spades, a heart contract would bring spade ruffs into the picture as yet another way for the defenders to take tricks. (Waiting for the inevitable comment that 'this is an easy 2♥ opening for us at the vulnerability, and we routinely do it on worse hands')

1♠

Umm, tricks 1 and 2 were fine, we have 9 trumps and the contract is still 100%. Playing the ♥J instead of the ♥A at trick 3 was a bit odd, but you are actually OK if trumps are 4-0 because spades won't be 8-0 on the bidding, so you can cross to the ♠Q, draw the last trump, and still cross back to a spade to play a diamond up. Comments like 'pretty awful' and 'Given the mess you've made of it so far' might be better saved for when they are applicable.

Agree that 3NT is obvious. Another point against bidding something else is that if partner has a good hand he will place most of our spade cards in other suits, and bid some bad slams.

1) Pass, partner could have passed 4♥ with not much (Kx) in hearts and a lot (AQx) in clubs. 2) 5♦, it could work out badly of course, but I don't think this is at all close.

http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/39522-your-plan-with-this-biggie/

Partner made a takeout double, pass is for penalties, so 3♦. Well since you ask, the old forums allowed large text, colored text, etc too, I am wondering why are so many people are using it now!

My iphone can't seem to cope with the new diagrams, at least it consistently can't load Post 101 in this thread.

When someone was replying to a post, the old software only showed that they were posting in a particular forum without saying which thread, now it shows the thread name.

I selected the multiquote button at the bottom of your post (the button is now highlighted in green), and clicked the 'add reply' button at the bottom of the page, but ... You need to multiquote multiple posts. OK, I thought you had figured out how to do nested replies without doing it by hand (I had to move the quote tags around to get this nested reply).

Who would have thought! http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/1877-new-forum-software/page__view__findpost__p__12454 :)

Yes, but it doesn't seem to help. I have discovered a 'Find My Content' button that brings back a user's post for the last 12 months, perhaps there is an option not to restrict this to 12 months?