wank

north's 4s was wrong. he can't have a worse hand. many people i know would even pass that as dealer. so sign off in 3s and then south will bid 4. perhaps north didn't realise 3d is a game try first and foremost. as for south, he's worth a slam try. but it's time to cue, not keycard - north can have his bidding and slam is still crap, e.g. no club control.

why do you care about the legality of calling it a 2c opener? bidding 2c on this would be ridiculous. just start bidding your suits.

i play doubles in a similar style - it makes it easier for you to smack them for penalties without one hand having a trump stack. as the double's takeout of hearts it implies some spades, so responder can smack it on 3. you just wait for them to complete the transfer if you have a takeout double of spades.

***** me. i thought i was a conservative pre-emptor

Passing is pathetic. If the op is good enough to ask, he's good enough to get a sensible answer. 3c is middle of the road imo

exactly, the point was that you're not deceiving anyone and you're not doing it to communicate with partner, though as in many situations, partner may get unauthorised information, but that's his problem. you're showing the ace and you have the ace, so imo it's warping language to say declarer is deceived. so which law does this contravene? the line about being careful when variations in tempo may work to your advantage is a general warning, surely, rather than a specific law allowing redress when such happens without it being otherwise illegal. you may or not think this is revolting, but that's not the point is it? the issue is whether there's actually a law against it, or if it's one of these things that just contravenes certain [most?] players' personal codes of ethics.

Aqx under kjtxxxxx and rho marked with the other 2 cards. Rho leads towards dummy. Is it legal to hesitate to let him know you have the ace?

i don't know how much extra 3nt shows in your methods - some people play 2nt as forcing for example, with 2 hearts weak/lebensohl, in which case 3nt would show enough extra for west just to bid slam. if it doesn't show that much then west just invites with 4nt and east accepts. this is from west's point of view. oviously this is ignoring east's absurd 3nt call with a huge hand and 4 card support for partner's first suit. he should bid 4c, not 3nt.

noone's doubling because their hand is too good for 1d. they're doubling because they hsve 3 suits, including 2 majors which they might never be able to show otherwise.

double, as others said, easy

4s is a slam try - 4h set trumps

i hope you have 2 passports - it's a little tricky getting to an ACBL nationals with any exotic passport stamps

it's easy to use this kind of soft logic to justify using UI (i'm guessing 3nt was alerted as some sort of raise), but it's all a fallacy. there are plenty of other reasons why partner might choose not to open a pre-empt with a long spade suit - a heart suit on the side, or a plan to be sneaky later in the auction, for example.

asking for a stop or if responder bids 3nt and opener bids on, an advanced cuebid.

down 2. no reason declarer can't 'unblock' the a of d on the supposed club winner. it's hardly far-fetched - after ace of spades, spade to dummy, declarer thinks she can file her own hand in the toilet

north was asleep - even if your requirements for a 2c overcall come from the 1930s you have got a 2nd chance over 2s. you know partner has spades and is going to pass.

i wouldn't be remotely tempted to bid 6c. they lead a diamond tapping your hand and then you can't establish and run the spades due to not having the ace of hearts. the best hope would be partner being 7222 and then you might be able to cross ruff and come down to a heart finesse, but that requires partner not to promote a trump loser with all this ruffing. just double and take the money. where do you think they're going for tricks? yes they may have a miracle distribution, but fat more likely, your aces and kings will do the business.

My guess: playing precision you're getting to game without revealing your hand. I don't know how much relay stuff you play but this may be benefical to your slam bidding. This must result in big gains on game hands. Precision handicaps your part score bidding though - less space to diagnose the right contract. Losses in part score are more numerous but gains from game are larger.

you were lucky it didn't pull your double of 7c

much much much prefer the ace to low. partner has pre-empted - the odds of finding a suitable honour combo are slim (especially given delcarer has the stronger hand so less scope for KJ misguessing and even if partner does have a doubleton and gets a ruff, we need 1 more trick which is most likely the diamond ace, in which case we had an entry to give the ruff anyway), whereas the odds of finding a singleton are pretty good.

passing is absurd. you deserve to go 3 down in 1♥ with 3nt cold

of course the double is entirely reasonable with no alerts and much less likely to succeed with correct info. 100% refund for east.

hand 1 is nowhere near an opening bid in mainstream methods.

3c and run away if doubled. if partner is sitting there with void akqxx qx akjtxx or some such (RHO passed so partner can easily have a mountain, especially given the vulnerability), he's unlikely to be very understanding when he's left to chalk up -300 in 2♠. you have diamonds and spades well stopped. it shouldn't be so hard to imagine making 3nt.

i love how north's pass, which i agree with, is the only bid to merit a ! in the annotation.