hotShot

The side with the majority of points (EW) needs a plus score to have a good result, so I pass.

I don't agree with nigel_k, 4♦ was a resonable bid. You are strong enough for game and close to slam if partner has no wasted values in ♦. West would bid no different if he had the ♠Q instead of the ♦J. Because of your 4♦ bid, West now knows that his ♦J is a wasted value, and his NT opening showing 15-17 is no longer a maximum without that J. I think West should bid 4♠ and end the auction as East is a passed hand, but West could bid 4♥ to show the ace and East than would have to bid 4♠ and the auction would be over.

West opened 1NT and super-accepted so over 4♦ he has no extras left to justify not bidding 4♠. 4NT by West is an overbid.

2♠

Are you sure? Would not 5♠ promise 2 keycards with or without the trump Q depending on agreement? And 2 keycards should be enough to bid the ♥ slam or are you thinking about a ♠ contract?

If someone hacked you mail account to send a 1 million spam mails, you would be happy to pay 10.000 $/€ for that? Not to mention the legal fees that may come up.... OK, I know that you are capable to use a save password, but do you think you are a typical email user? I bet that there are lots of people here in the forum, using their wife's, children's or pet's name or birthday as a password. Some of them will even have a facebook page with photos annotated with their wife's, children's or pet's name and of cause they will put their status to "celebrating birthday" on the right day. Do you know this service to tell robbers where to go ?

Most spam is sent from computers that are hijacked without the knowledge of the owner. Make the people understand that firewalls, virus- and malware scanners are essential and that anyone needs to have a current version of a good one running on his computer. Teach them how to set their mail program in a way that messages don't load content into the email (spammers put invisible, 1 pixel sized pictures in mails that are loaded via the net, to veryfy that someone looked at the mail). Educate them, not to click on links in emails of an unknown origin. Make then use encryption tools for real mails so that you can be suspicious if a known sender sends you an unencrypted mail. Tell then never to buy any products advertised in spam mail. If you are really annoyed by spam, get your self a small hosting package with a lot of email addresses, whenever you need to enter an email address, create one of the type "companyName@myDomain.com". This way you can verify what companies sold your email address to spammers or were not clever enough to protect their data.

Let us assume that South can not see his earlier bids and that he did not hear his partners explanation. He has to act thinking his partner understood that he is 5-5 in the red suits. What kind of hand would North 1♠ and 4♠ (with a jump!) bids show? A weak or intermediate hand with a 7+ card ♠ suit? (Without that ♠ seems to be the wrong contract)? A slam try in ♥ e.g. ♥ support with ♠ and ♣ controls? ... If it's the slam try , 4NT seems automatic and if 5♦ would not show enough controls (2 of 5 missing and trump Q) South should be allowed to end the auction.

I think that North should not pass over 2♦, but bidding is risky and he made up for this by bidding 3♦ and 3♠ later. South has both majors and enough strength to dbl 1♦ and should bid 4♠ over 3♠, I think that both decisions are much worse than what North did.

If you mark a mail as span, future spam from this source will still be delivered to you, and than automatically removed/deleted from your inbox. If you ISP offers a spam filter service they will filter the mail on the way from your ISP to you. The original sender / the faked mail account put into the sender field won't get a bounce message.

If a player would be stupid enough to announce that he did not alert intentionally, the TD would recognize that this player might have known that this would damage the opponents and that would allow him to adjust the score. Otherwise he is left with the impression, that North - forgot the agreements - forgot to alert - bid a contract that cannot be made - got into a position that would almost always end with a very bad score It seems highly irrational to hope that opps misdefend and by that save North day.

I think that GIB uses a time constrain. So the less cards are left, the bigger the sample size.

Back in 1985 Borland published the Turbo Pascal Gameworks Toolbox, that included a source code for a simple bridge game. Of cause it was intended to get interested programmers some point to start from. Bidding and play was terrible, but I IIRC it was sort of rule based, don't know if one would call that AI at that time. According to this page http://openlibrary.org/books/OL2753290M/Turbo_GameWorks there are about 10 pages in the manual, perhaps someone has a copy in his archive.

When did EW ask for an explanation? North did not alert 2♣, by that he "disclosed it" as a normal raise. That North obviously acted thinking they are playing inverted minor is irrelevant. The CC and partner suggest that this is not the agreement, so there is no MI or UI involved. I find it hard to detect some sort of clever strategic advantage to bid 3NT on 18 combined HCP, so I think it's plausible that North just made a serious error here. EW misdefended because North did not have the promised strength, but there is no basis for a score correction. A TD could record this as a psyche, he could tell North that inv. minors has to be alerted if it is the agreement. But this does not lead to a corrected score.

GIB is a below average bidder and yes GIB ignores carding, but GIBs cardplay both as defender and declarer usually does not give away tricks. The error rate is close to world class players. If you average that to a single grade, than GIB is significantly better than the average BBO player. But the GIB does not "think" like a human, so GIBs errors often look "stupid" by human standards. You probably know that GIB generates random deals based on the informations about the hands and searches for the best double dummy play in those deals. Obviously the generated deals will get closer to the actually played deal the more information is available to GIB. GIB bases its decision on different deals and the selected play could be "stupid" for this deal.

I suggest you read this too.

If West thought that 2NT is natural and strong, than 3♣ would usually be some kind of Stayman and not some the preference for one of Easts minors. Once North gets the correct information that East is at least 5-5 in the minors, he knows that EW do not necessarily have a fit, and that East has at most 3 cards in the majors, and at least one of them is split 4-1 or 5-0. I think it's AI for North that South dbl was made under pressure. Given that: opps might have no fit, the double does not necessarily promise both majors and a fit is not guaranteed and at least one major splits badly. I see no reason to judge North pass was SEWoG, not that it matters as it is obviously related to the MI. Actually I think that " 2NT shows a weak hand with (at least) 5-5 in minors" should not include an 11 HCP monster with a void. South is under a lot of pressure and given that an average 2NT both minor opening will be weaker than this one, South has to assume that NS has the majority of points and he has to submit that information to North. Dbl seems the only reasonable way to do that with the given hand. So I don't think that South dbl was SEWoG, not that it matters as it is obviously related to the MI. Given the correct information the probable results are 3♥-2 and 3♣=. North still knows that East has only 3 cards in the majors and that one major will split 4-1 or 5-0, so 3♣= should have some weight in a mixed score.

I find it unrealistic to expect that someone actually knows exactly what is going on. The ones that could in theory know best, are the people actually in the plant, but they have to work without light and have to avoid to go to places where the radiation level would kill them at once. Since they can't really take a look what is going on, they have to rely on estimations and assumptions. I doubt that it is important for them to know e.g. how low the water is, as they have to get it up again. Without electric current, damaged by the tsunami and perhaps destroyed by the radiation any surveillance instrument they might have had, is either not working or unreliable. And I guess that they have more important things to do, than keeping the media up to date.

If North had his 2♠ bid, the 3NT from South would not look that bad.

I think that Gerben, just like all of us, has no new informations to make a comment.

I blame North for bad cardplay.

It should have withstand a magnitude of 8, but you should remember that the scale is logarithmic.

Maybe there was a misinformation, but it caused no damage to West. North opened, East overcalled and West holds 15 HCP. It is obvious to West that South can only have a minimum hand, probably upgraded because of the shape. If West assumes 12HCP with opener, 8 HCP in partners hand and 15 in his own, there are only 5 left for South. Knowing that which other bid would West have made leading to a better contract? No adjustment for EW. North knows that LHO overcalled and that RHO dbled, that is sufficient warning not to overbid and even if the 2♥ bid was forcing, there is no need for him to bid. I don't think there is enough evidence for a split score.

North has the legal information that his partner has opening strength and that his hand has 11 HCP and a 6 card suit. Since the actual North hand is not given, it is difficult to decide, but the questions are: 1) is pass a LA 2) if pass is not a LA, is a specific bid of the remaining bids suggested over the others. Since West did not bid over South 1♦ in the first round, I think it is reasonable to assume, that South opening though in 3rd seat should be about usual minimum strength. I don't think that pass is an LA, because North knows his side has more HCP and if they don't have a ♦ or ♥ fit, than EW have less HCP and most likely no ♠ fit. So unless North unknown shape suggests something else, North will at least have to dbl.

I was unaware that the education system needs improving that much.....