Lobowolf

I'd just like to point out how surprising it is to see "prerogative" spelled correctly.

I saw it, it was an alltime classic train wreck. It has become pretty evident her answers are 100% planned, and probably not by her. So if asked a difficult question she didn't plan for, she chokes. And if asked to elaborate on one of her planned answers, she simply repeats it. I just love the part how living near Russia and being able to see it and Canada is great foreign policy experience. If that were true than having two sisters would have made me a LOT better with women. And living in the snow would have made me a much better skier. I'd be a good astronaut, too...I can see the moon from my house.

Which one? Both. That was my immediate reaction, too. What a great SNL skit. Senators Obama and McCain..."We believe in bilateral, cross-party agreement for the good of the country, coming together without respect to party affiliation...we've come to agree that no matter which of us wins, Joe Lieberman should be vice president, so we're withdrawing Joe Biden and Sarah Palin both..."

I'd sacrifice with 4NT (though at pairs, I'd feel better if 4Mx= was 810, not 790). What's 5m go for?

Ditto your whole post, but particularly, this part. I just love the thought of some orthopedic surgeon going back in time and sitting on a stump next to an honest-to-goodness mid-19th century slave and saying something like, "Man, we've got it rough, don't we? They took 40% out of my check this week? I tell ya, we're two of a kind." That visual is right up there with the thought of Michael Moore suggesting to a Holocaust survivor that (insert your favorite Republican) is "just like a Nazi."

can agents of the federal gov't come to your home at 2 am, bust your door down and take you away for an indefinite period of time with no charges being filed and no notification of your whereabouts? if they can, the fact that you and i can discuss philosophy online doesn't lessen our enslavement, imo Can agents of the federal government come to the home of another agent of the federal government at 2 am, similarly? If no one is immune from such a possibility, then who is the "master," and if no one is the master, then how are there slaves? If you want to maximize your chances of living with the possibility of being dragged out of your home in the middle of the night, try anarchy.

A slave on vacation is still a slave, certainly. If degree doesn't matter with respect to the fundamental question, then why cite tax rates "as high as 50%"? If you lived in a purely libertarian state, other than the government assessed a 0.1% income tax for infrastructure, would you be a slave?

To the extent that PassedOut is saying what I perceive him to be saying, I agree with him entirely. I think it's a gross misuse of the word "enslavement" to apply it to "all of us," particularly those of us living in the United States and occasionally idle enough to discuss bridge, philosophy, and politics via internet servers. It's right up there with "Nazi" on the ridiculous analogy chart. Whatever's in third is quite distant.

Lest you think that's too much, they'll probably be getting rebates soon!

Yay! You are aware he specified "playing transfer responses", right? Damn. I missed that. I was having such a nice Friday, too.

Yay!

I do not agree with that. Much depends on the hand, as has been stated above. The less you can stand to play in one of the other unbid suits, the more strength you need to double. I have seen some international-class players overcall with 18 HCP on a hand that cannot stand a jump response in one of the unbid majors. Still, it is clear that this particular hand is too strong for a mere overcall. Would you care to give an example hand? I wasn't talking about personal preferences but about what I thought was standard. In Commonsense Bidding Bill Root writes that the maximum strength for an overcall with one suit is 17 points, but he adds a point for every card above four in a suit, so this translates exactly to 16 high card points with a 5 cards suit or even 14 with a 7 cards suit. That's the exact opposite of what you said, because the more cards in a suit you have the less tolerance you'd have for any other suit, yet you need less HCP for a double with a long suit, not more. Many factors go into hand evaluation, and HCP become relatively less important the stronger a player gets (because part of getting stronger is developing the judgment and being more comfortable with hand evaluation criteria other than just counting points). Having said all that, given a random hand where the choice is between overcalling, or doubling then bidding one's own suit, without having done any sort of systematic study, I would guess that in expert practice the average 17 point hand is far more likely to be an overcall than a "double first". I can't even tell whether you agree with me or argue with what I said. In my post that you cite I tried to be as clear as possible by distinguishing points and high card points but it's not clear to me what you mean by points. I also don't know what you call an average 17 point hand. Average hands are balanced and would overcall 1NT with 17 points, not 1 in a suit. And we all know that experts are less bound by points. But you can bid more like an expert if you follow expert advice (expressed through points if needed), not by using the force and ignoring points altogether. I am seriously interested to know if there are experts who practise or advise overcalling at 1 level instead of going through a double first with 5+ cards in a suit and 17 high card points. At least until I become an expert myself I am going to pay a lot of attention what experts think. :) Sorry to have been a little long-winded and obscure there. First, I was just trying to make a disclaimer about HCP in general, and emphasizing that they're not the be-all, end-all of hand evaluation. Second, I was saying that in expert practice...given a suit that the player wants to introduce (not a NT hand, or a 2-suited hand, but one suit to introduce)... for most 17 point hands (by far), it'll be an overcall not a double-and-bid.

Bid Like Zia, Part 3: 1♣, then 1♠ over a red suit response?! 1♣ then 3♣ for me, also. Certainly wouldn't complain if partner opened 1NT.

I do not agree with that. Much depends on the hand, as has been stated above. The less you can stand to play in one of the other unbid suits, the more strength you need to double. I have seen some international-class players overcall with 18 HCP on a hand that cannot stand a jump response in one of the unbid majors. Still, it is clear that this particular hand is too strong for a mere overcall. Would you care to give an example hand? I wasn't talking about personal preferences but about what I thought was standard. In Commonsense Bidding Bill Root writes that the maximum strength for an overcall with one suit is 17 points, but he adds a point for every card above four in a suit, so this translates exactly to 16 high card points with a 5 cards suit or even 14 with a 7 cards suit. That's the exact opposite of what you said, because the more cards in a suit you have the less tolerance you'd have for any other suit, yet you need less HCP for a double with a long suit, not more. Many factors go into hand evaluation, and HCP become relatively less important the stronger a player gets (because part of getting stronger is developing the judgment and being more comfortable with hand evaluation criteria other than just counting points). Having said all that, given a random hand where the choice is between overcalling, or doubling then bidding one's own suit, without having done any sort of systematic study, I would guess that in expert practice the average 17 point hand is far more likely to be an overcall than a "double first".

Be aware that the "misleading" aspect of the double is temporary. When partner doubles, you get the message that partner has support for the suits other than opener's; when partner subsequently bids his own suit, that effectively cancels the original message. This is a slight over simplification, because the complete "message" of the takeout double really incorporates the strong hand; it's just much less common.

1NT; then P.

"Choice of Games"

I think there's such an answer as "sometimes." I believe in private property rights, but I'd trespass on your front your lawn to cure cancer. I wouldn't murder you, though, even if I knew I wouldn't suffer any consequences.

I rarely agree with your posts, but I sure do this time. This problem would be a lot easier to solve without him (or Obama) around congress right now, and he knows it. This is nothing but a political stunt and I find it rather dispicible. This situation demonstrates one of my favorite things about Obama relative to McCain. Is there nothing he won't politicize? I partially agree and partialy disagree. I believe that McCain's motivation is political, but I don't find it particularly distasteful. He's trailing; he's going to swing. I also don't think that Obama is particularly different; he just has the luxury of the lead. His comment "It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once." is every bit as political as McCain's move. It's designed to do nothing more than make him look more fit, and McCain less fit, to be president; and it's disingenuous to the extent that it draws a false analogy -- if McCain's has to drop thing A to focus on thing B, he won't be able to simultaneously handle two important things as President. But McCain's stated purpose, pretextual though I believe it to be, is a poor analog here -- McCain is saying that "thing A" (trying to fix the financial crisis by serving in his capacity as Senator) is more important than "thing B" (trying to get elected). That's not a knock on Obama; I personally think it was a good serve-and-volley. Nice shots by both of them in the middle of a still-contested election at a key time. McCain's trailing...he tries a little flea-flicker...Obama doesn't want to be seen as a follower of McCain's idea, but he doesn't want to come off as being less concerned...what to do? Someone in his camp comes up with a way to present it that serves all of his purposes at once. Well played, sir, but let's be realistic and honest...played, nonetheless. So I don't think it was a negative thing on either side, and I don't think they're that different in this respect. You don't get as close as they both are to the presidency without playing politics, and playing it often and well. But was McCain "putting aside politics"?! Oh, hell no.

I'm with the double and pull to 3♣ crowd, myself, but I think it's not the hand you're seeing differently, but the auction. While you could argue the merits of a jump-shift over partner's response, jump-shifting after his pass, which promises nothing, is another matter entirely. Particularly with no major suit holding longer than a doubleton and no stopper in the opponents' advertised suit. How hard are you willing to crack that whip toward an 11-trick contract by yourself?

In P.K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (loosely adapted into the movie Blade Runner, Deckard is told by the philosophical leader of, well, pretty much everyone on earth, that "sometimes one should do the wrong thing." This part of your post reminds me of that. I'm inclined to think both that this person "shouldn't" live, and that the fact that I think that way doesn't mean that killing him would not be immoral. With respect to the original post, I believe that all of the options are morally wrong if the person in question in unwilling to undergo them, and any of them is morally right if the person in question is willing. Edit: I like Audioslave, too. And Iron Maiden's Powerslave.

Ummm...well, nothing. I apologize if my post suggested that there was something I wasn't understanding. My initial comments were intended ironically, despite the question mark. I didn't actually think that he might be catering to a side 9-card club suit. I just don't associate "bid your own suit again, or penalize them" with "takeout."

ANY guy who goes full-term is strongly committed to the pro-life movement.

No, in case partner has a doubleton spade and a hand suitable for defending. Does your browser truncate every post after the first five words? No offense intended...just struck me funny. "Takeout" has a connotation to me suggesting that the partner of the takeout doubler choose one of a variety of suits. Ahem. As the level increases, the chance partne will pass out a take out double also increases, especially after the bidding reaches 4M. Well, of course it does, but that's not really the point. If the bidding goes 1♥ - (X), the chances of 1♥ being left in are small (but existent); however, the double generally suggests that partner can (should) bid one of three other suits. That's not the same as "let's compete in this one particular suit that you've identified, unless you want to defend."

I heard he gave birth to a Down's Syndrome baby that was really Jeb's before Jeb was married.