wank

if you're only opening those 14s which you consider to be as good as random 15s it's just bridge and you don't need to say anything.

interestingly, despite people saying the main benefit of flannery is the effect on your 1H opening sequences, i saw a stat, a pavlicek thing i think, saying that the flannery 2D opener was averaging +2 imps in itself, the same as a weak 2D. i'm guessing a weak 2D is more frequent though, albeit not hugely, assuming one plays a more disciplined style. edit: found the study. i remembered the stats wrong. it's +1 imp per board, but that's slightly better than a weak 2D. weak 2D does significantly better at MP though fwiw. also fwiw in his sample events a weak 2 made 616 appearances versus 328 for flannery (this is pretty meaningless without knowing how many pairs play each convention but i suspect more play a weak 2D so they're roughly equally common). flannery v not link: http://www.rpbridge.net/9x25.htm weak 2D v not link: http://www.rpbridge.net/9x27.htm

I hate multi. I normally play 2d weak. I'm quite attracted to flannery because i never saw anyone playing it in europe and i like being different. I realise it's much more common in america. I like the idea of bidding 2d 4M all the time too and leaving opps to defend blind. Unfortunately i don't know enough of the nuances to have tried it. Should one open open 2d with 46? How well does it interact with KI and so on?

i wouldn't categorise it as 'running'. lho bid his 4 card suit and all we did was show more hearts than them. he's almost never going to pass there.

you're wrong. if i think there's a reasonable chance i can make 3 diamonds, it in no way follows that i think we can make 3NT even opposite a maximum.

i'd rather bid 5d on this hand because it's a good contract even if they cash 2 clubs, but in general i prefer quicker auctions to 3n.

Partner has kx 109xxx kqjxx x. double will presumably get you, one way or the other, to 4h making. 3nt was bid at the table which was a swift -1. If you pass partner will double. It was suggested that this hand should float the double with such good spades. I think that's a rather poor idea. 6 of a red suit could be on if p has spade values which he often will for the delayed double, even with the 33 red shape and the penalty would only have been 100 from 3cx.

responsive. something like 3424.

that would show spades and diamonds. 4s doesn't need 5 - it just needs to have no other reasonable contracts to offer, e.g. 4234 12 count with clubs too bad for 3nt.

just bid 6c. partner won't bid 7 without aq q k. you'll miss 7 opposite something like aqxxx xx kxx xxx but it's the best you can do. 5c followed by 5nt over 5d isn't gsf or exclusion or anything useful. fourdad 4s doesn't guaranteed 5 spades. if partner's 4333 or 44 in spades and clubs unsuitable for no-trumps he'll bid 4s and play a potential 4-3 fit, knowing he's getting forced in the short hand. as for 16+ for a double, evidently you're using some bizarre evaluation method. as cyberyeti says it just causes confusion if you talk about points when you're using the fourdad shape symmetric scale. if you think your hand is worth as much as say a 16 point strong no-trump on average you're mistaken.

Yes you sometimes have to reverse on 4441. A hand too strong to rebid 2nt but not strong enough to open 2c with a small singleton. Or 18-19 4441 if you're playing some kind of mexican 2c or 2d and you're not playing reverse flannery (so 1d-1s-2c risks playing a 4-3 club fit instead of a 44 heart fit with 28 high).

double post

noone does that outside england.

when you're talking about a particular convention on here it's worth giving the link to wherever you learned it or writing out what all the bids mean. as you should have gathered from what i and helene wrote, rubensohl doesn't mean a great deal in itself.

this hand is good enough to force to 4h - it's worth considerably more than 10 hcp - but no doubt some genuine invites do exist. you can double for take-out and correct whatever partner bids to 3H. that should show an invitation. you run the risk that partner passes the double. that's not much of a risk on this hand but if you had a more shapely hand with short spades you might not find that option not to be very sensible and then you would have to choose between settling for 3+4 yourself.

double post

assuming no transfers, there was still a debate. most people prefer 1 diamond, but the arguments are these:- 1 club: saves space so you can support diamonds to 2 immediately if partner bids 1D. obviously if you open 1D you can raise 2C immediately too, but you're saving almost a whole level. you also don't get pre-empted out of your fit by 4th hand (if it goes 1D-1NT you don't know what partner's got in the minors) 1 diamond: gives you an easy club rebid if partner makes a negative double. the 1 club openers downplay the importance of this by saying you can rebid no-trumps to show your shape and let partner cuebid their suit to check you really have a stop (though this would give you a further problem) personally i open 1 club.

if you do that, you can't show shape. on the actual hand kh is a trick and on a heart lead kd is toilet paper. a splinter clears that up. 4c would not. as far as i'm concerned 4c shows a 4225 shape. something like axxx ax ax akxxx.

eh? if the OP was playing some kind of artificial rebid structure where he could bid 2NT or some such, i expect we'd have been told.

there are various versions of rubensohl. 1) you can play 3D as invitational plus and opener complete the transfer to show a rejection of the invite or bids something descriptive otherwise (often 3S if a dubious spade holding but no heart fit). this loses the option to compete on weak hands. 2) you can play 3D as weak or strong and opener must complete and then responder does something descriptive if strong (often 3NT with a spade stop or 3S with a balanced hand and no spade stop). this loses the invite on a lot of hands, though you could play a take-out double followed by hearts as natural invitational. personally, i don't really care about invites. i'd much rather be able to compete on weak distributional hands. in either version, east never needs to bid 4H without a 6 card suit or a strong 5 cards. he can leave it upto opener after describing his hand. some terrible versions of lebensohl and, i expect, rubensohl, define X as a balanced invite. if whatever you're reading says that, deposit it swiftly in the bin.

north doesn't have his 6s bid or even a 2nd try. he's minimum for his 4d call. yes he's got 19 points but he's got a terrible shape, no tricks and his 4 points as the AD would be more useful elsewhere. 4h by south is obvious. for those doubting that, he should be catering to something more like [hv=pc=n&n=sak32ha4d6cakj432]133|100[/hv]

yes bid. the whole point of transfers here is that you can happily bid on this kind of crap.

2s p 3c to you, unfavourable vul, imps 2s is spades and a minor weak 5/4+ 3c is pass/correct Your hand:- Aqtx Aqx Axx 10xx

there are good artificial methods, but, no, i was meaning that your particular artificial method is actually worse than natural. 2NT rebids are nothing like 1NT rebids and it's a mistake to think the same methods should apply. if you have 5 hearts as responder you can check for 3 card support by rebidding hearts (3H) and seeing if partner raises them. if you have 4 spades you can bid those (3S) and see if partner raises. if you have both 5 hearts and 4 spades, you can bid hearts (3h) and see if opener raises them or bids spades (3S). this frees up the 3 club bid. after all, when one hand has 18-19 slam is not infrequent so you don't want to lose a natural club bid. An example of a simple but useful artificial method: woolf sign off. 3c = clubs or a 3 level sign off in any suit (puppet to 3d), 3x = nat gf. So 2nt - 3c - 3d - 4d (slam try for clubs, can define it as a cue or shortage to your taste)

well for a start, winnings are not taxed in many jurisdictions. gambling winnings are not taxable in the the UK for example (i don't know about australia, but as in the uk, australians are much more liberal about such matters than the US so i suspect winnings are not taxed there either). of course the government is extracting its cut from the lottery company though so the pot is reduced one way or another, but if it's not coming out of your winnings it's effectively the people who played in previous non-rollover weeks who are paying your tax for you and i expect the cut is much lower than in US anyway. anyway here is a link to an article about it. it says they won at least 4 jackpots over 2 years. they were collecting the retailer's cut from ticket sales which obviously improves the maths. http://www.afr.com/business/no-humbling-a-great-gambler-20120608-j2lq3 the website is australian financial review. i'm not au fait with australian media, but i suspect its standards of journalism are above the likes of buzzfeed.