fromageGB

I see hedge funds are more important than democratic decisions. Parliament voted 544 to 53 to refer the EU membership decision to the people. Voters were given a booklet saying "this is your decision, the government will implement what you decide". Voters decided to leave. Now bigwigs are apparently saying that the vote meant nothing, that we voted the wrong way, and that it doesn't count. Well, I was perhaps naive, but for a while I believed in democracy.

It should not be quantitative if opener has a 2-point range. If your 2NT does not, you should change the ladder/methods. ALL natural bids/rebids of 2NT should be no more than a 2-point range. EDIT - you can have a 3 point range for a 3NT rebid, and then quantitative comes into play.

Completely disagree. You have started with opener already describing his strength and shape, so it is responder with the unknown hand that must launch.

Honestly, I just can't see a problem here with pretty standard methods, as Kaitlyn says. 2♣ (23+ balanced or [almost] GF) - 2♦ (positive) 2NT (23/24 balanced, may include a 5 card suit) - 3♣ (puppet/etc 5 card major ask) 3♠ (5 cards) - and now responder can see a brilliant spade fit, 34/35 points, and obviously slam is possible. Knowing opener's hand, responder is obviously the one in charge, and with his major holdings, all he needs to know is AKs. No need for cue bids or anything. You are safe for the 6 level. ... - 4NT (ace ask) 6♣ (4 aces and this is the only K or the cheaper of two) - 6♦ (do you have this one as well? No harm in asking) 7♠ (yes) - Pass (might need to ruff a club if opener does not have a side Q)

Not quite true. Responder on this OP hand might have a weak hand 5 card heart suit, and there is an additional possibility that you should really be playing in a 2♥ contract. Absolutely no problem using twalsh, of course, but natural strong NT falls down here if you rebid 1♠, while the weak NT allows responder to transfer. I agree with 661 that sticking your head in the sand solves most problems.

This seems like a good idea to me. Over an ace response, a simple king ask asks for specific kings, and a queen ask denied followed by the king asking bid is a specific queen ask - to be treated exactly the same way as kings. I can't see a problem yet. Responder "showing the Q" with long trumps and no queens simply denies you the opportunity to ask for specific queens in that general way. You can still make a specific suit ask (of whatever style you play) if you wish. If you adopted this, then in the case where asker has the trump Q, he has two ways of investigating a specific side suit. He can use this delayed generic queen ask to discover a Q, but an immediate bid of the side suit can ask for something else, such as perhaps a KQ, or a specific length.

Caitlynne, I think this is non-standard, but of course your agreements can be anything, which is one of the beauties of twalsh. For me, 1♠ guarantees either a 6 card club suit or a 4315 shape. I prefer to complete the heart transfer with your 4333 12-14, and now responder can bid 1♠ with four (or my preference - a spade/NT inversion). In this field - each to his own!

Transfer Walsh is essentially red suit transfers to a 1♣ open. As you can get a reply to this at the 1-level, you can do it with a 4 card major, as compared to the transfer over a 1NT open which gets a 2-level reply and therefore needs 5 cards. Those two responses are all that you can rely on if someone says they play twalsh : everything else is up to discussion. I think most common is that opener rebids 2M or higher (depending on strength) with 4 cards in responder's major, M; rebids 1M with 12-14 and 2 or 3 card support (if playing a strong NT); and with 2 or 3 card support and a balanced hand too strong to open 1NT opener rebids 1NT. This is a powerful feature, keeping the level low, which greatly increases both safety and the room for exploration. Opener can of course bid other things such as 2♣ to show a long suit non-balanced open (for me this is 6 card, and denies 3 card support). If responder bids "1 red" to show the higher suit, what does 1♠ mean? You can use this to mean "diamonds", the reply annihilated by the transfers, but it is better to use it as a relay for opener to describe his hand, typically 1NT with a balanced 12-14. Responder can now for example pass, raise, bid 2 of a minor to play, 3 of a minor game force, and even 2M (having already denied a major) as game invitation with 5+ of the corresponding minor. (This allows a declined invitation to play in 2NT or 3m, depending on fit.) Many things you can do. So if 1♠ can be bid with weak balanced hands, what does a 1NT reply mean? And if 1♠ can be bid with minors, what does a 2♣ or 2♦ response mean? All this is fertile ground to put to your advantage to handle things the way you see as most beneficial, but I stress all this is non-standard, and depends on partnership discussion. You can keep it simple, or you can get a lot of benefit. There is also plenty of new room available for responder rebids when the 1M gets back to him. Some people use standard conventions that are designed for normal bidding, such as XYZ, but you can do better with all that space. Again, all depending on partnership discussion and agreement.

Yes, I think that does make sense if you want to play natural responses, but as nullve whispered, twalsh solves all problems and is the way to go if you have a partner who is not a hidebound stick-in-the-mud, and is prepared to put in some discussion time. It's both the most useful and the most fun bridge treatment ever.

Thank you barmar, I should have thought of that!

Thanks, Helene, that was useful - if this works... Yes, I now (or did) have BBO! http://imgur.com/a/MldLR It did not work by clicking the "insert image" icon and pasting the link, getting this message : You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board. but perhaps it will accept the raw link.

Looking at it dispassionately (I don't play either method) you need to have an agreement about this. If you bid 1♠ and partner assumes you have long clubs, he will bid 2♣ with a fairly weak 3433 shape, and now you are stuck. Conversely, if you bid 1NT and he is a weak 4432 shape you are again stuck in the wrong contract. If he is invitational or better, then it it really makes no difference. Without agreement, what is best? One way of deciding is to consider the relative downsides of going wrong. At IMP scoring, playing 1NT when 2♠ is better is not going to matter much. Playing in 2♣ or getting too high in correcting it can be painful. So I'd rebid 1NT. At MP scoring, there is a good chance partner will correct 1♠ to 1NT rather than bid clubs, and this is much better because I certainly do not want to miss a possible spade fit. So at matchpoints I'd choose 1♠.

Update for the MATE desktop environment Of course in linux you can install many alternative programs to do just about any job, but the default ones in MATE are not the ones in Unity that I am familiar with. You may or may not have the same "software centre" for (un)installations - it's an option provided - but you do not have the same "dash" search facility. If you can't find chrome after installing it, you can apparently see it listed in the "application menu" - which sounds similar to the gnome menus I like. Your file manager is probably not nautilus, but caja, which is a fork of it. As a buy-the-by, if you are going to spend time in linux, I recommend the Krusader file manager ...

Another quick comment : when you install programs in ubuntu it will ask you for the admin password during that process. This may be your login password, or your wife's, but if not, you'll need to get it from the person who set the computer up!

Quick correction to the above : download the new version of chrome in chrome, before you delete the browser. Then you will not need to use the alternative browsers.

I have BBO working now, but I can't show you as I cannot upload an image from my pc, it seems to just take a website url. The steps I took are detailed below, but the first time I tried the BBO site I received a "loading..." message that seemed to hang, so I went to the plugin settings and ticked the box that says "always allowed to run", and then when I tried the BBO site it worked immediately. You might like to try this first to see if just this one simple thing fixes the problem : Enter to the chrome browser seachbar/url bar : chrome://plugins/ and then tick the box in the flash plugin section. A sensible quick way to test flash is to go to the site: https://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/ This says "when you see an animation below then your installation was successful" but I see no animation. However, click on "test your adobe flash player installation" and it goes to a new page and an animation does indeed appear for a couple of seconds, and it also shows the flash version. If that does not do it, I would remove your existing chrome browser and install it again. Chrome comes with flash preloaded, and you will not need or use the file you already have. To remove your browser, first install an alternative browser, such as chromium or firefox, if you don't have one, because having no internet access is not a good idea if things temporarily go wrong! The next step is to save your bookmarks in case deleting the chrome browser deletes your bookmarks. I don't think it should do, but I like to be safe. See : https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/96816?hl=en-GB and save the resulting html file in a directory somewhere. Now get your wife to login in and save her bookmarks. The next step is to delete the chrome software. I believe your version of ubuntu has a different install manager (I'm on 14.04 and it is "ubuntu software centre") but it must be similar. In your program "software" you should be able to select the google chrome browser and uninstall it. (If you can't see how, I can give the the terminal commands to type, but I guess you would prefer to use a gui method.) Once it has gone, then install a clean new browser. The best way to do this is to go to: https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/desktop/ and download the version it recommends, to save the file anywhere in your filing system. It will probably be the same as I did, which is the file : google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb Find this file in your file manager program, possibly "nautilus" or simply "files", and double-click it. As it is a .deb file type, it will now install. (Again I could give you the commands to enter.) Once installed, you can find it in your "dash", the generic ubuntu search facility. It is probably in your launch bar, an icon of 3 dots round a circle, but you can usually open it by just hitting the "super" key, known everywhere else as the "windows" key. Just enter "chrome" and the chrome icon will appear. Click it to start chrome. Or drag the icon to your desktop if you want a copy permanently there. If the bbo site does not load properly, you need to tick the box I described at the top of this post. Let us know how it goes.

OK, the latest version of Ubuntu should not be causing problems, so shelve that as a possible problem. It is probably a browser problem, as the flash player integrates itself into the browser. You say "gmail" but I thought that was purely for email usage, not web usage as in this forum for example. But if you are on the chrome browser it will (should be) easy. I thought the chrome browser came complete with flash player built in, so I shall install it and try. If it does work, you need to uninstall your existing chrome and install again, but we'll cross that bridge later. Watch this space ...

Maybe I can help. I do not use Windows, but have used Ubuntu for years. I don't like flash for security reasons, and don't currently have it, but you do not need to use the complicated methods that you suggest. What version of Ubuntu are you using, and what browser are you using? Edit : To find Ubuntu version, eg "14.04 LTS", click on the cogwheel on the top right corner of the screen, then from that menu "system settings", then click the icon for "details" near the bottom. If you are not sure of the browser and it does not appear in the title bar when using it, when you start it you should see its name eg "chromium", or "firefox", or "chrome", or it should appear as a popup name when you hover over the icon.

You and I are reading different things. I have not seen a report of May espousing throwing out foreign doctors and hostility to all kinds of foreign workers. What I have see in that we might now start accepting for training those qualified UK medical students who have in the past applied but been rejected in favour of saving money by bringing in more doctors from abroad, and I have seen that a possible option would be to introduce work permits to allow import of workers, rather than letting any immigrant in who wishes just to be unemployed and perhaps look for work. Are these bad ideas?

If the price of Marmite increases because of the usual corporate greed when there is a currency change (think decimalisation) or supply change (think domestic fuel/petrol prices) then once we have a free trade deal with Australia, which we are forbidden to do as part of the EU, we can switch to Vegemite. Seriously, though, this devaluation is government policy and not purely related to a possible Brexit that is at least 2.5 years away if it happens. We need to get used to rising inflation.

It's the fault of your compatriots, apparently! Interesting extract from the Independent : Tesco is running out of several leading household brands following a row over prices with its major supplier Unilever. The food, toiletries and household goods firm have refused to supply the supermarket giant after it refused to raise prices by 10 per cent on their products. Unilever, which is based in the Netherlands, claimed that due to the dramatic fall in the value of the pound compared to the euro and the dollar they had to put up prices. Unilever, which controls brands such as Marmite, Dove, Comfort, Flora, Pot Noodle and Ben & Jerrys, has reportedly approached several retailers asking them to raise prices in response. One anonymous source told the Guardian: “Unilever is using Brexit as an excuse to raise prices, even on products that are made in the UK”.

We haven't seen any impact yet from the decision, of course. What we have seen is the pound plummeting from the obvious government policy of reducing the value of the pound to lessen the burden of debt. Or if it is not government policy, Carney should be sacked. Once upon a time we put the interest rates up when inflation was about to hit : now it seems the opposite. What we are hearing is a lot of noise, with a number of international trading partners looking forward to reduced tariffs when we leave the EU, with JCB quitting the CBI over their petulant anti-Brexit stance, with many people threatening doom and gloom without actually dismantling their factories or whatever, but what we are feeling and actually seeing is nothing yet. As expected. Give it a couple of years and come back to this thread.

Given the agreements, and the lack of agreement on continuations, then I'd say 4NT is passable as you have no agreement. But I can't see why anyone would want to play minorwood, 4m as an ace ask, while 4m+1 gives you all the room in the world. Then as Zel says, 4m depending on context can be a signoff or slam try, and if a slam try you can stop in 4NT, while 4m+1 is more serious, and 5m+1 is an obvious king ask that you cannot mistake.

Better than going to the IBM manual (when the help desk says "RTFM, stupid") and finding it says "This page intentionally left blank".

Nobody could write Johnson's scripts other than himself. We don't have any videos of him in the post-meeting pub session, but you can bet the Turks would have enjoyed his goat limerick too.