xcurt

Uhh, switch the red sixes and nothing changes.

It's matchpoints, so we have to consider the overtricks as well as the chances for a beat on various layouts. Sounds to me like RHO has secondary clubs or a good one suiter. Probably unlikely the bad guys have all 8 missing hearts to bid this way. On the other hand cashing the HA is a huge position. Therefore... Don't we want to try to get partner on lead? If so the SK is the wrong spot (and will confuse partner as to the direction of the defnse). I lead Sx.

West didn't have his lead-directing action. Also, I don't see why 3S would be alertable unless NS had a specific agreement like nonserious 3N.

At double dummy, this question was answered by Ginsberg along the way to building GIB, see: http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.0669. The most interesting thing about the relevant part of this paper is that along the way it makes the point that if you're going to try to induce misdefence, there's a huge edge to putting the problem to the defenders early. At single dummy, well, we don't have a good single dummy solver yet...

Missing HQJTxx declarer knows he isn't going to pick up hearts so the avoidance play can't cost (a heart trick). Also Partner echoed hearts Partner pitched club, if he is 4234 with CKJ95 he would not do this I'll play declarer for something like Qxxxx, x, KQxx, AKx and play a low spade. Edit. I guess declarer could have AQxxx, x, Qxxx, AKx or so but partner can certainly afford to encourage diamonds with Txxx, QJ, Kxx, J9xx. He can see we are playing matchpoints too and has to account for KQxxx x Qxxx AKx if he has that hand.

Instead of signaling "2 or 4" vs "exactly 3," you can signal "exactly 2" vs "3 or 4." I think this catches more cases, and gives 3rd hand more scope for falsecarding when needed to get partner to defend correctly.

Unfortunately the cited authors didn't originate this idea. It goes back to de Groot, the Dutch international player from the 30s.

Furthermore, although 7 is laying IMP odds, it seems impossible for anyone to stop in game here so the required edge for grand is less than usual. I would not object to teammates bringing back an unlucky -1 after adopting one of the plans that doewnt work (as in tell you unambiguously 6 vs 7) and taking the high road.

North is definitely wrong in his/her belief that hearts is a better strain than spades here. * Jxxx is not a good holding * there are slow diamond tricks in the north hand, so the ability to get an extra trump trick in the 4-4 is not so relevant here Edit -- I'm referring to North's perspective during the auction. Of course, spades is better after you see dummy as well.

Same contract is necessary but not sufficient, since the players may have different information about the unseen cards -- the expectation of a final contract has path dependence.

Looks like this is still 500. HA,CK,CA,C overruffed and you use the SK entry to make another small trump and DK. I would pass by the way.

1. P. Their other strain is diamonds so why help responder know about the double fit. Also we have reasonable defense, not great offense, and we can alwys bid later. 2. 6C. Really dislike 6H btw. 3. I would have passed 2D. If I had even one more hcp I would double. Double is really aiming at 3NT imo since partner is bidding when short in diamonds anyway. Partner is slammish 56xx (nonslammish would just jump to game in spades and any one suiter that can slam now is worth 1C regardless of highcard). I think as a practical matter I'll bid 6H here - avoids a director call after 5C, slow 5H - I don't think we can make 7 unless partner is 5701 but NV opponents aren't bidding that much

Finesse on the first round. It looks slightly better to run the 7 than to play the 5 to the 9 but havent thought t hat part through.

I want to win T1 in my hand. I would play a low trump out of my hand and later finesse RHO for whatever of the QT are still missing.

100% to north. The S hand might or might not be a 1NT for this pair but I can't pass judgement on that. it's not insane and as it happened N had the optimal information when 5C came around. other auctions could be 1s-2c-4s-5c; p-p-? Essentially the same position 1n-2c*-2s-x*; 4s-5c and now north the hand with zero defense has to act in front of the strong nt.

Speaking of the ACBL and membership, I just got the most recent attempt at a bridge magazine, which has the worldwide bridge contest winners by district. So in districts where a winner is not an ACBL member, they printed something like: District Zero -- Joe Member -- non-member 71% I think not printing the name is really tasteless and mean-spirited. It's probably also not something that will encourage those people (who are probably reasonable bridge players) to re-up their memberships.

A "consolation" BAM is a good idea, but I bet more than a few teams would opt out on the first day of the Swiss and Reisinger and not risk qualifying. Hmmm, "risk" playing in the Reisinger semifinals or play in the limited BAM...... Note: I've "risked" this twice and never got "unlucky" by qualifying....

I saw a report that Pitch's team lost by ~ 140 IMPs. I'm not sure how many boards are played during this round, but it looks like this team was averaging at least -2 IMPs per board. Out of curiosity, how many of the top 20 experts drop a mid stage match by this type of margin? I accept that the "Top 20 experts in the Spingold" are experts regarding bidding, card play, and defense. However, their level of play might be significantly too high to evaluate this sort of incident. The losers were blown out in the 4th quarter. I don't recall the gap after 48 boards offhand, but it was posted earlier. The deficit was of a size that was certainly within the realm of reason to continue.

you could have protected yourself here. not that it excuses anything if your N did foul the board deliberately also the director should attempt to reconstruct the board

This is a perfect example why your line of reasoning is so flawed... ... I sure would call -- nay, scream -- for the director if this happened to me. I'd be about 99% sure that my expert opponent got his wires confused, and so would almost everyone else. lol? According to Cascade's figures, partner rates to have 4+ diamonds 48.4% of the time. rhm's "I'm not even sure whether it is an underdog" is pretty close. I'd say the answer to "lol?" is "no". This also means LHO is likely to have 4+ diamonds 48.4% of the time (at least to a reasonable approximation, since LHO wasn't passed and CHO was, if I recall).

You really need to change your methods so that double is convertible or whatever you want to call it. Your combined assets are just not well enough defined to play double simply to increase the scoring value of the contract.

Danny, Go is made very difficult for computers because the transposition tables are brutally complex. As the game progresses, parts of the board become disconnected, but computers aren't good at recognizing that interpolations are often immaterial. If you read Ginsberg's papers on GIB and bridge, he was working out how to handle this problem in bridge. His approach is to do alpha-beta pruning over sets of positions related by having the same minimax value, instead of over individual positions. You could try the same approach for Go, but I think the computational cost simply grows too quickly. Go games run over 100 plies, GM encounters in chess typically run 60-90 plies, bridge hands are only 52 plies and on most turns there are only a few allowed moves. You can see the effect of small changes to the allowed moves per turn on the cost to analyze a hand by running hands with multiple voids through GIB. They take a very long time, relatively speaking. I think you're placing too much weight on the imperfect information aspect of bridge. Computers do very well at predictive modeling in many other situations where there are latent variables that can only be modeled statistically. Curt

Some people are showing a strong 2 and others are showing an invitational jump rebid after a 1-over-1. I'm with the group that thinks the west hand is a gameforce after 1H-1S, I guess I would rebid 3NT. After that we should reach 6NT.

add in that in most situations IMPs have diminishing marginal utility, so we aren't really laying 14:1 odds (of winning the match, or in VPs whichever) by playing high spades.

I would pass. Not sure which of JLalls hands partner has but * agree that doubling 2D is extras without primary club support, not penalty * in that context, we have a minimum * our hand is getting worse on the auction, since the DK is a favorite to face shortness, and one of the black suits isn't splitting