grrigg

Happy Birthday! I must confess that I expected this post to be about the stock market? B)

I agree that the 2nd takeout double was too much.

To add to what already has been said: American President has far more individual power then any of the elected officials in Western Europe. Somewhat paradoxically, this leads to fascination with personality and disinterest in qualifications of the candidates. The individual views and opinions of the President really do matter very much as he has the power of veto and the power to appoint federal judges.

[hv=d=s&v=n&n=skxhjxxxdqxxxcakx&s=saj10xhkqxxxdxcxxx]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] The bidding goes Pass - Pass - 1D - Pass 1H - Pass - 2H - Pass 2S! - Pass - 3H All Pass 2S was an artificial bid asking partner to bid the cheapest suit in which he would accept a game try. 3H said that partner wouldnt accept any game try. You have the agreement that partner can raise to 2H on 3-card support and shortness, but somehow you dont recall that ever happening. You can count on 4 card hearts sipport.

Do I dare suggest that having 4 different styles of swimming (as well as medley) is as ridiculous as some of the sports that people make fun of? After all, shouldnt only freestyle matter, if you are concerned about swimming somewhere fast. Nope, too busy celebrating the 8 gold medals!

I pass. Its close because we are pretty close to maximum given the bidding so far; 2 very well placed honors and partner cant expect given that we didnt bid 2H originally. However, if partner had 4 hearts and a pretty good hand why didnt he bid 2H himself over 2C? I dont think that would have to show 5-5 (am I wrong?) If partner doesnt have 4 hearts then I just have trouble seeing us get 10 tricks given the minor suit situation and the likely bad major suit breaks.

I think I would just bid 5♣. I am not sure I trust myself to pass, if they stop in 4 :), so might as well make it as hard for them as possible immediately.

Well, lets say that you discount the possibility of a psych, (RHO did have some spades this time, 10 fifth). You are definitely picturing partner with spade shortness (again if no psych). How much, or how little, do you expect partner to balance with once it goes pass to him? On the actual hand partner would bid 3C, his hand was -, Ax, xxxx, Qxxxxxx. What would you bid over 3C?

[hv=d=w&v=n&s=sakqjxxhkxxdkxxck]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] You hold this hand Red v White and the bidding goes pass pass 2S to you. What is your plan?

[hv=d=w&v=e&n=saj10xhk9xxd9xxxxc&s=sxxhqjxdaqjxcaxxx]133|200|Scoring: MP[/hv] The bidding was: West North East South pass pass pass 1D 1H X 1S pass pass 3D pass 3NT 3NT was down 3 for -150 and a bad board. Who is to blame? Which bid(s) do you find bad?

I am back to playing bridge and I had some interesting hands last night at the local club, here is one: LHO opens 2D and the bidding goes: 2D 2NT pass 3H(xfer) pass 4S pass ? 1) How good of a hand does 4S show? 2) Your hand is AKQxx, xxx, x, Jxxx. Is this enough to try for slam over 4S, if yes then how? To be fair to the "no" people; please select whether you pass 4S quickly or slowly.

At the risk of derailing this thread, how does double-dummy analysis work? I am assuming that you dont blindly check all possible plays, but I am having trouble coming up with something better that would work in all cases. Please feel free to post a link if an explanation is too long to be put here.

Actually, I bet that Scalia would argue that its a big plus that we are a nation of laws and we dont have people randomly forcing their morality upon people. Whether those forcing it are activist judges or activist clerics. The job of the courts is to interpret the existing laws, not make new ones. We have a legislative branch, it is their job to pass new laws. However, the Congress has repeatedly balked at passing an anti-torture bill. They are bothered by Bush's platitudes about national security. And frankly I am not sure that the American people feel overwhelmingly on this issue or maybe the Congress wouldnt be so scared.

Good that you can't make yourself do something retarded! Why dont you two get married already? Its inevitable. :) And I bid 1♦ as well.

Look, I am sure I am not the only one who knows that Scalia is a very strong believer in originalism (the Constitution only has its original meaning, which is the one that the founding fathers intended) and textualism (essentially look at the letter of the law and dont worry about intentions or the problems the law was trying to address). While you may think this to be a messed up system of beliefs its at least logical. If you believe in the "living Constitution" that changes with times (there are many things that founding fathers couldnt even fathom happening) then the laws have little inherent meaning; every court reinterprets the same words again and again with dramatically different results (which has happened of course). Since the Consitution is pretty vague on Supreme Court powers and the current strong power of Supreme Court stems more from Marbury v Madison than the actual letter of the Consitution Scalia probably (I cant be 100% sure) believes in somewhat narrow powers of the Supreme Court. All that he is saying that it is not within purview of the Supreme Court to decide on constitutionality of torture of foreign citizens on foreign soil. If you want a law against it, have Congress pass such a law. I do not see this as an illogical position. He does not condone torture, he just says that within the system as he sees it is the job of Congress to pass a law against it. You can disagree, and feel that a little judicial activism is in order on such an important issue. But he believes in following the letter of the law and in his opinion regulation of such things as Guantanamo Bay is outside his power.

Maybe its just me, but I think that 4♠ and pass are both better options than 3♠.

Hmm 13/20, I rated myself pretty low for this and tbh I am somewhat surprised I got more than half right. Live and learn!

[hv=d=w&v=n&s=sj10hakj10dkxcq10xxx]133|100|Scoring: IMP You are playing 15-17 NT.[/hv]

Double for me. If it was perfect this wouldnt be a problem, but what else can I do?

On second thought, the forcing pass issue is kind of irrelevant (unless partner thought immediate 5♥ was strong, but thats not standard). Even if partner is void in diamonds I dont think he can really have a good raise missing the 3 controls that we have. I'll stick with 6♥.

Well I bid 6♥, but I am not particularly happy about it. Do we have any agreements about what pass and pull of the double would be? Partner's pass of 5♦ would clearly be forcing to me.

I voted for 4♣, but my personal preference is 5♦, which is not in the poll. Its a shot in the dark but I really dont see how the alternatives are any better. Its not going to be easy for partner to judge what to do over 4♣ or 4♦.

4♥ -1 is a pretty bad result. Although its not apparent from the original post, 4♠ happens to make on this board.

This goes completely against the spirit of the Constitution lol. If something is desired unanimously, the Constitution is amended. Nothing is set in stone.

Not going to offer an opinion, but just a historical note. The will of the people has throughout history meant the will of males of possibly right ethnic heritage possessing the right amount of money and/or land. There isnt much empirical evidence of "true democracy" and how it works. The founding fathers in particular were quite suspicious of the will of the people, thats why we have electoral college. Of course now most restrictions on voting have been removed except for age. However we delegate 99.9% of the actual decision making to elected officials. In many ways this is very far from the spirit of democracy (whatever it is :lol: ).