xcurt

Justin beat me to it, but ++ all of this. I was reading this thread and throwing up over the idea of a 3H call from opener -- keeping the shape of the closed hand concealed in a NT auction is a big source of declarer's advantage. I also strongly dislike being forced to bid 2C-2x-2NT to invite in NT when I don't have a major. In fact, I think there's a case for just forcing game with this hand. There are lot's of other situations in bridge where the first thing that goes when you don't have enough room is the invite. So sometimes you reach a poor game. They still have to beat it. And on this hand you have good trumps, reducing the chances they can double you -- especially if you power your way there.

I think you just made the case against you. Either a) Flight A regional players are in general hopeless and go to pieces when faced with previously unseen methods b) It works because opponents didn't bother to make a meta-agreement that covers this situation and aren't sure what is and isn't forcing c) you are picking your spots only against the weakest pairs (alert: disclosure issues, probably also against ACBL regs) d) some reason I missed, please enlighten me I think (a) is not worth considering. I hope you aren't doing ©. That leaves (b) or (d). I think (b) is exactly what the clause about "destructive" methods is intended to address -- prohibiting methods that are, or are generally considered to be, effective only because they exploit opponents lack of a specific counter-agreements. So please tell me it is (d) and give me the reason you think it's effective. You advertise yourself as a theorist, after all. And keep in mind your answer must be consistent with the fact that if you do it on 4333 and 4432 garbage (possibly with 4 in their suit, 4333), these shapes represent a significant fraction of the hands you will be dealt in overcalling position. Also keep in mind you don't really get a preemptive advantage against 1H and 1S openings (you don't reduce their number of sequences below the most likely contracts) so you need to explain the theoretical advantage against could-be-prepared 1-of-a-minor openings. I do concede the destructive methods clause is poorly worded, but that's a common state of affairs with the ACBL charts.

The OP clearly stated this was a regular pair. The purpose of the player memo system is that you don't need to do your own private sleuthing to see if this happening repeatedly.* * Please don't think I'm advocating reporting everything to the friendly local authorities. I have filed a total of one player memo in my life -- for rampant abuse of the alert system by a pro, playing with another pro, in a KO where we crushed them so there was no appeal.

i think this is part of the point of the op. the agreements of the pair in question are whatever they do in practice, regardless of what their notes say. if you play something that ostensibly defines the shspe of one hand tightly, and then make "exceptions" on numerous hands, you create disclosure issues. which is why playermemos are the way to go.

I'll bite. HA. You have too many small diamonds and spades are breaking onside.

It looks like our goal is to hold this to 10 tricks, assuming declarer has a normal minimum accept something like AK, K in the black suits, DJ, HK. If partner's play is a singleton (and it's quite likely that it is), and the layout is something like my example then he needs to cash his ace at T3. While that would be a thoughtful play, I don't want to put him under that kind of pressure. As gnasher points out, ducking will still give us good chances to take 3 tricks. I'll play the 9, since I like to agree not to split more than one deep.

++awm. It would help if you could post the actual hands. The question in my mind is whether 2NT was the best misdescription, or whether they bid 2NT on "punt" hands and land on their feet (ie not in hearts when it's wrong) because they can read their partner's table action.

Doubling 3C with the 4 aces is automatic (after partner showed "values" by hitting 2S).

I am not sure I agree with your assertion about seeds below 40 being significantly better than their counterparts above 40. In the last three big team events I have always played on teams seeded 66 or worse and yet beaten seed #26, #29 and #25 in Nashville, Washington D.C and last week in Reno. Unfortunately all these were 4-way matches and we were seed #62, #64 and #63 going into the second day. Had we had the chance to play these teams in 64-board matches I have little doubt that we could have beaten them and acquired their seeds. That happened only twice, once in Las Vegas when we lost to Fred's team and once in Toronto 2001 when we beat seed #15 (were seeded #114). Sorry, I should have been clearer. The step in the function strength[seed] is about #20. Therefore, if you are in the low forties, you can avoid one of the top-20 teams for another round. About #45 and above are playing one of the teams that, typically, consists of full-time professionals plus a sponsor. Assume equal talent between the first non-full-time-pros team (probably #27 -- and I know those guys and they can certainly play with anyone) and the last pro-client team (#24 DRIJVER). Drijver et al have a significant advantage simply because they play bridge all the time.

The committee itself used the word "squeeze" albeit in reference to a show-up squeeze. I also disagree with the premise of this statement -- the purpose of the adjustment process is not to punish OS, but merely to restore equity. Forcing OS to play bridge below their normal standard is not restoring equity. I was trying to show that most of the tables that failed to make 6 really just failed to count. Not to say that OS is entitled to avoid all provable errors at the committee stage, but I think not making 6 in this event is a significant error. Nonetheless, enough failed to make 6 that I think one could say +460 is "at all probable." Also, NS weren't close to Q'ing, so the effect of the appeal was simply on the carryover for EW. In any event EW didn't make it out of day 2, so in the end this was just an academic exercise.

OK, let me clarify my thinking on the number of tricks. I'll assume a spade lead,probably fourth best. To hold declarer to 3NT+2, the following need to happen. Keep in mind that East is the pro (Meckstroth) and West the client (Perry Johnson). 1. West needs to insert a spade quack. It's quite likely west would be happy partner hit his ace, after all, declarer could easily have a fourth club and the missing HQ and claim if you don't take the ace. 2. West needs to conceal the spade 2 else the spades are counted out. The diamonds and clubs will count out. 3. East needs to keep a spade else the club throw in is riskless. Granted, East is Meckstroth, but pitching down to Qx under the AJT looks very tough. 4. Even if all of these things happen, won't declarer probably figure having gotten this incredible defense, he's looking at a 10-20% board at best, and risk his 11th trick to try to get a 12th. I haven't checked the scores from that section, but I imagine he would be getting at least 2:1 matchpoint odds. Since the HQ is in the short hand a priori he would probably go wrong at this point if he has a count, but the defenders would have to not give up the heart position on the run of the diamonds. Finally, the threshold is "likely" for NOS (EW). I would imagine this puts -460 at less than "likely." For OS (NS), the threshold is "at all probable." I don't know how to interpret "at all probable" as distinct from "probable" (Andy help me, is this the Queen's English?) but if we assume each of the above things are 50-50 to go in favor of NOS (SJ play, conceal S2, East comes down to 1201 in the 4 card ending, declarer takes heart finesse wrongly or not at all or guesses wrong throw-in) that means that the probability of +460 NS is 2^(-4). I wouldn't consider 0.0625 as "at all probable." The case is on page 6 of daily bulletin 5: http://www.acbl.org/nabc/bulletins/2010/01/5/ Edit -- the actual matchpoints for NS (on a 64 top, with the table score adjusted to +460 NS) were +460: 11.5, +490 35.5. I guess this supports a ruling of +460 OS, -490 NOS.

[hv=d=n&v=e&n=skt6hk63dakq5c642&w=saqj72h8752d82c97&e=s9853hq94dj9cjt85&s=s4hajtdt7643cakq3]399|300|Scoring: MP[/hv] NS bid to 6D in a BIT auction. The ruling re the auction has been debated elsewhere on the internet, but I think the committee butchered the awarding of tricks in 3NT. I think it's easy enough to make 12 tricks at this level, even if we grant EW the non-trivial (and risky) defense of a spade to the J at T1, that the adjustment should have been to 3NT+3, not 3NT+2. T1 -- Sx-x-J-K T2-8 cash 5 diamonds and two clubs Now, unless E kept a spade, he gets thrown in with a club to break hearts. So he must be down to x, Qx, --, JT. West must keep three hearts, else declarer can pick up hearts risklessly, so he has to be down to AQ, xxx, --, --. Now you cash the last club honor in dummy which squeezes west out of a spade winner, and now you can cross to the HK and throw him in with a spade. Thoughts? Am I missing an alternative reasonable losing line? Full disclosure -- N is an old partner of mine.

Looking over the rosters I would guess that #30 (team Poland) and #42 (more or less team Argentina) are probably underseeded by 5-10 places. As it happens #30 went out to Fred's team and #42 went out to Justin's team, so maybe they can comment on whether they felt they had a particularly tough draw for that stage of the event.

Wow you must have been channeling Greg Hinze who suggested the identical concept of 'choosing your victim' after every round. I like the concept of the teams in the top half picking their opponents. It would take some time but there can be a captain's breakfast every AM to do this. However to give the #1 seed this right on every round seems inequitable. The NHL had to do something about random teams that finished a few points above average and then rode a hot goalie deep into the playoffs. Not so applicable to bridge. On the other hand, the NHL and NBA have 82 games of data to rank the teams. The ACBL seeding system, while better than the masterpoint system used to bracket KOs and the like, is flawed in that there are always a few very tough draws for the seed -- usually foreign stars who get insufficient SPs, or teams of good young players who haven't had time to accumulate enough SPs to get properly ranked. Doing something like this (1) seed the field using SPs. (2) no 4-ways, just give as many byes as needed (3) allow teams from n-64 (n is the first team playing on day 1) to pick their opponents, those teams are given the seeds from 65 to .... might produce a fairer set-up. Also, the difference between one seed and the next can vary a lot: * about the top 20 teams are international stars, usually with a sponsor * there are hardly any weak teams, few enough that I wouldn't expect any to make it to R64 So: * for R64, in general, there is a significant difference between being in the low forties than the high forties * for R32, there is a significant difference between being about 12 or higher, vs 13 or lower

Yes Roger is right. I shouldn't try to do this sort of thing late at night (for me). erf(x) is a weird function. Thanks for running actual numbers.

If you're thinking that maybe the fatigue factor is less important than the reduction in luck from more boards... I'm saying the reduction in luck isn't that great, independent of fatigue. It sounds like Fred is saying the fatigue difference from 48->64 boards is significant enough that you get a big edge by only having to play 48 any given day.

Sorry Richard I stated it too quickly. Loosely... Regardless of the distribution of IMP swings, when you add many of them you get a normal distribution. Hence the exact expression is p(Z<N^0.5), where Z is some normal incorporating the standard deviation in IMPs/bd and the difference in ability between the teams. Taking the log of both sides and putting all the constants on the left you get, for some constants k1 and k2, p(k1+k2x < log[N]) where x is taken from some uniform distribution. The point I was trying to make is that the chances of an upset in a 52-board match just aren't that much greater than they are in a 64-board match.

Alert mathematically incorrect. p(better team is leading after N boards) is proportional to log(N).

4♥ on the first. Pass on the second. Our alternative is at best making a partscore, and could easily be -500. Seems right to play for down 1/down 1 here. On hands where they wrap it, the loss is limited since we're probably getting killed in our alternative spot. I'm leading a heart. Edit -- btw I would have bid 2♥ not 2♠ because that seems like the quickest way to tell partner I have dog. I have a dog.

A real hand, playing IMPs: xxx AKJx xxx AKx P-P-P-1NT P-2D!-P-2H P-3NT-P-? As it happened partner was 5-5 so bidding 3NT was quite precipitous. But if he has a balanced 9 or 10 count, do you really think you can make 4H?

Do not agree we should just pass because "we've shown our hand." There is a wide range of possible hands we could have here, from pure LAW raises to strong balanced hands that bid 4♥ as a pure play to make. We know a lot more about partner's hand than he does about ours. Furthermore, although in theory this auction should probably not be forcing, it probably is for most partnerships, so passing is basically a transfer to 4♠x. I think we need to make a decision here. I'll assume that partner does not have slow spade tricks. This seems pretty safe, if RHO has an empty suit to go along with his lack of minor suit aces, he's offering up a big minus score with little upside. Making 5♥ then requires one minor suit king is onside (or onside in partner's hand), and partner holding ♥AQ9xxx with the K onside and 3-1 hearts, at a minimum. If partner has this optimal hand we can beat 4S one or maybe two tricks. I think bidding is the long-term winner. We're going to concede some swings when we could be +200 instead of -100, these will probably balance out the pickups from posting +650. But sometimes RHO is going to catch the right minor holding (x, Kxx) and wrap 4♠x, which pushes me to bid.

Isn't this the single most forgotten convention ever? That would be a downside.

Agree with all of this. Partner knows it's matchpoints also and the value of protecting the plus. Even thinking about defending 2♠x is crazy. This is a simple hand evaluation problem and has nothing to do with the form of scoring. Curt's law of partial tricks says they have about 4 more spade tricks on play than on defense to hearts. You can't gain by defending, least of all at these colors, bid out.

It happens. My personal record for atrocious holding over 24 boards is about 7.2 HCP. If you don't like it don't play pairs. Howie Weinstein once told me "you're dealt one in four pair games." That's probably about right.

If this is a new rule for 2010, where is it? http://www.acbl.org/assets/documents/play/...nsofContest.pdf I can't find the 2009-2010 CoC.