Sadie3

I play 2/1 and do not see the problem you have with this hand. This hand is a 1D 2D (inverted raise to me.) The term, support with support comes to mind. Almost always I would bid 2NT with even a half stopper in the majors (3 to a Jack.) The only time my pards open 1D with less than 4 is with a 4432 hand and they will correct my bid to 2NT which I pass with this hand. In order to bid 1D 2C with 11 hcp, I specifically require a 6 card club suit which corrects the hand playing value to full strength. If pard corrects my 2C bid to 2NT I confidently raise him to 3NT with my nice 6 card source of tricks.

Thank you all for the input. I have added this information to my bridge arsenal and will be better prepared next time. For those that cite Bergen as the source of the 1M-3NT response showing exactly 3-4-3-3 with 13-15... I searched online and found that there were a couple sites that supported the Bergen 3NT bid and that there was at least one site that had a lesson number 36.2 of Bergen raises that stated to bid 2 of a minor then support with 3 cards to game. My conclusion is that this bid is not for the casual partnership but that it has its usage with a committed and long term competitive partnership.

I recently attended a Sectional playing with a new partner. We had discussed our bidding styles online and came to agreements on most standard situations but had never played as partners before. I have researched Hardy, Lawrence and Dee Berry 2/1 books to find their recommended treatment of a 3 card game force raise of a major suit with a balanced hand. We had also agreed to open fairly light with distributional hands even in 1st and 2nd seats. With this hand... X AQXXX AX XXXXX I gamely open 1H in first seat. My partner holding KXX KXX KXX KJXX BIDS 3NT and.... I pass for down 1. In the rehash, my partner tells me that I must correct to 4H on this hand because I am guaranteed that he has 3 H support per Hardy which he was quoting as his source. I did not have my Hardy reference book with me so I had to wait 'til I returned home to see if Hardy, indeed, did support that bid. Nope, he does not mention it anywhere...but I continued on to check my Lawrence source and also my Dee Berry 2/1 in a Nutshell teaching guide. Finally, in Dee Berry's materials I found that this treatment (with prior agreement) is used by some players...no name mentioned as an authority on it, though. My local clubs treat the 3 card game force raise in a couple ways with the most common being to use 2C as a catch all game force bid and then proceed with cue bidding or shut out bids. If I interpreted Lawrence correctly he suggests using 1NT forcing and then bidding the appropriate number of Hearts on the 2nd bid. Actually, my Lawrence book kind of ignores the 3 card raise altogether. My argument that the 3NT bid is just wrong...is that it tries to mastermind the auction, it takes up way too much bidding room, and does not allow exploration of possibilities of more than game contracts. Since we had not discussed this auction in our pregame talks, I believed my partner had less than 3 Hearts and was afraid to try to correct to 4 H with my hand. I actually expected him to have a long running diamond suit and a stopper in spades with his bid. What is your treatment?

I like practical.

booker1 was a partner of mine in ACBL tournies at BBO. I did not know him well, but I do know he was the best partner one could have when playing defense. He made a roadmap of the hand that even I could see. I loved playing with him. May he be playing 7NT doubled and redoubled, vulnerable, making based on a 2 way finesse for the queen that only he could find. Thank you Larry for the games you played with me. Sadie (ACBL_21)

I prefer being called Sharon...but I answer any calls by any name...and approach the tables with a smile. ...but then, who am I? Just a small friendly rural club director.

1S (3D!) P 3H 3D is alerted as a transfer to Hearts with opening point count. Is this a GCC legal bid?

Local clubs can pretty much do what they want with maybe the exception of barring a player if it is an open club without going thru some legal manipulations. I once had a player so disliked by the other players that everyone in the club requested a sitout and avg - score just to not have to play against this player. (Imagine...one could have a 60% game without playing a card!) The ACBL is not really helpful in assisting with this type of problem, but I found that just telling the player that (s)he was bad for business and that I would prefer (s)he take their business elsewhere was the best way to deal with it. The player continued to attend my games for about another month but eventually left. ...and I suspect (s)he was thinking of sueing me if I said anything further. For the most part, I believe it is not in the local club's best interests to make many restrictive rules regarding their games. Club games are the place to experiment with the exotic conventions before going to a tournament. I can understand restrictive rules if a club is frequented by a specific group and they wish to play only certain things. In my opinion that club should become invitational only and posts its membership rules and policies.

The player has the right to call a TD whenever there is an irregularity and should do so. I don't think a player has the right to tell another player to do anything.

The 3D bidder was the 200 pt master point holder. The defenders that failed to alert were a 20+ year established partnership according to the first statement he made to the TD when she arrived at the table and knew the TD well enough to talk to her on a first name basis which was very intimidating to the declarer who had no clue what was happening. He said something to the effect, "you know we have played this style for over 20 years, xxxx-name. At this point, the TD waved the doubler away from the table to continue the conversation. The declarer thought he had done something incorrect until the end of the hand because the TD did not explain anything to him. The bracket was 2600 to 4500 master point range. Since it was a knockout event, I have no hand records to give exact hand, but the penalty doubler had 5 diamonds behind the declarer and 2-3 hearts with limit raise point range. As an aside, the match was won by the declarer's team, so no appeal or further action was required. If the match had been won by the failure to alert pair, do you think there was sufficient damage caused here to warrant an appeal?

At the NABC in Reno, in a knockout event.... the bidding went... 1H (2D) X P 2H! (3D) X P P There was a slight break in tempo before the 2H bid, but not enough to cause the diamond bidder to call a TD. This was a player with approx. 200 master points and very little tournament experience. Before the opening lead, the doubler called for a director saying, there has been misinformation. The TD talked to the doubler away from the table, came back, stated there has been unauthorized information now given to the doublers partner and then directed the table to play the hand while she watched. The dummy asked if the declarer was entitled to know what the defenders now knew and was told no, play the hand. At the end of the hand, the contract was set 2 tricks in the 3D contract. The TD stated that she saw nothing untoward in the play of the hand, however, the first double made by the doubler was a penalty double and there had been a failure to alert. The TD had all the players lay out their hands, and stated that the doublers would make 4 maybe 5 hearts, therefore the score of -300 was better than the score of -620 and the result stands. The TD also took the board away and made a hand diagram of the hand and possibley conferred with other TD's. When she returned the board, she again stated that the result stands for the reasons she stated initially. 1. Should there be some penalty applied for the defender calling attn to the irregularity before his opening lead? 2. Should the bids have been rolled back so that the 3D bidder could take back his 3D bid? 3. If the 3D bid was rolled back, could the doubler then bid the game bid of 4 hearts, or is any restriction placed on his bids at this point? 4. Was the TD correct in refusing to explain the nature of the director call before the play of the hand? The other table played in 4H making 5.

So I guess there just aren't any substitute calls here except 2nt in sayc? Which I don't think is an equal call, because it implies more than 6-9 and a stopper in the bid suit which 1NT does not. Does anyone else think that this law needs a whole lot of clarification? The old style was at least enforceable. This one is much too vague for me to enforce. I just hope the LHO accepts the insufficient bid and solves my problems for me.

Twice in the last week at the local clubs, I have encountered this bidding sequence. 1S (2D) 1NT....director One case was a SAYC player. The other was a 2/1 player. In both cases, the 1NT bidder did not see the 2D bid. Does that matter? Is there any legal call in SAYC that could be made that would not bar the partner from bidding? Is there any legal call in 2/1 (since 1NT is conventional, right?) that could be made that would not bar the partner from bidding?

If a board is played at a table where one player uses the Windows client, the results need to fit the limits of the Windows client. Anything but a complete change would unnecessary complicated, and could lead to system faults. That is a good point, Hotshot. You must be a systems person to think about that. Quick fix for that is to have the option available only at tables where the players are all web client players. Or maybe it is easier than that. The option could be available only on the web client results screen. Fred et al make those kinds of decisions. But I regress. Is this really a viable wish list item? Does anyone other than Martin want it?

I've never seen a Regional or National event that did not cut the tables down to a maximum of 18 tables per section, so I do not think that the complaint is a valid complaint. Granted, overall results use all the entries, but a 65% game in one section could be a 58% result in another section depending on how tough the section pairs actually were. As for a fix... I understand that there are restraints due to original system design, but does that mean that the web version ( aka, the new version) could not design an alternate scoring system option perhaps at a small cost to the users that wish to look at their results differently from the rest of us? It has implemented new convention cards and many other new features, (at no additional cost I might add) and I think that this could be a new option for those that think they would prefer to look at the results in a different light. I think maybe a poll would show just how wanted this wish list item really is. Since BBO does not have a system rating attached to individual players ( which I totally like), I do not see why this poster is making such a big deal out of it. Playing in the open rooms is a place to work on your game for serious players and a place to kick back and socialize for others, and checking to see what other pairs made compared to what you made is quite enough for me in that venue. I have no problem eliminating the 7NT x and xx hands from my comparisons. I do not care that they skewed the results because I care more about the pairs that made one more trick than I did and how they bid it. I also encourage many of my face to face player friends to try online bridge and I have no interest in having them look at some complicated rating system and get discouraged before they even have a chance to get used to the software.