hotShot

Please let us start to call them "hosts", because thats what they are. Some hosts have experience as TD and some don't.

I once played a wide ranged weak only Multi to show a 6card M preempt and used 2M for 5 card preempts that could have a side suit. But the competition was not good enough to know if that was a good idea.

You can't blame anyone for making the systemic bid. So there is no blame to assign. South has no options to do anything different, but North had some options that could have lead to a different result. The combination of ♠ and ♥ with this semi strong hand is a typical problem hand in both SAYC and 2/1. North has a few bad ways to deviate from the system that could help, but probably won't in this specific case. North could open 1NT to right side a potential NT contract, if the partnership does allow occasional 5cM's, but that won't help. North could bid 2NT instead of 2♥ but that lie would miss the ♥ fit. North could try to force, bidding 2 of a minor, if that is agreed. North could try to bid 3♥, but that would misdescribe his shape, and would lead to a desaster if South has one of then many slightly different possible hands. Do we really want our partner to guess one of these if he has a similar hand again?

If a regular partnership meets another regular partnership at a f2f tournament, we know our agreements and we are confident that opps know their agreements too. Psyches are rare since partnerships are not allowed to repeat the same psyche often. Without screens we expect bidders partner to alert and explain their agreements, this way we can be quite sure that the explanations we get are correct. Since our side has an established partnership trust, we can usually deal with psyches sometimes we win sometimes we lose and everything is fine. Playing online things change quite a bit. People who like to psyche, can do it very often, because the will usually have a different partner or TD and most TD's don't keep records about psyching. Since you often play with an unknown partner and since you don't have many agreements, you don't have any partnership experience and therefore no partnership trust. This makes it much harder to expose a psyche. Online, if I explain my own bid, my explanation is invisible to my partner, so he does not know if my explanation fits our agreements. There is high potential for abuse. People feel cheated if people explain their own bids and have a different hand than they disclosed. Online I don't care to much about cheating, cheating opps provide you with a similar kind of competition than a regular expert/ world class partnership.

But it can't be much worse than that to make 3NT a serious suggestion if he understood 2NT correctly.

I think he is referring to the suggestion from Luxembourg, that was rejected by Mrs. Merkel.

Why can't partner have: [hv=pc=n&w=sA52hA23dA654cAK7&e=s43hqdt32cqj65432&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=p1n(12-14)d(Pens)2np3nppp]266|200[/hv]

rhm showed that a hand that is better than OP's west hand (because it has 6+♥) will only have a 29.5% chance for game opposite likely east hands when opener has a precision 2♣ opening and his partner passes. His results indicate that that such a west hand should bid over 2♣ but east should usually not bid on. It is logical to conclude that east should pass, if west can have weaker hands than this. The simulation does not say if the actual west hand should bid over 2♣. My problem with this simulation is that the posting says nothing about the the east hand. If the east hand is set to what it actually is on the OP, than the best move for East is to pass 2♥. If the east hands are unrestricted in this simulation, than the results contain a lot of east hands that are weaker than the posted one.

I tend to disagree. Playing precision 2♣ and 1♠ are limited bids and RHO's pass is a limited bid. Why should someone holding a "single raise" bid 3♥ if his side can buy the contract in 2♥ and he can still bid 3♥ if LHO decides to compete? Ain't it more useful to have an invitation and some sort of a GF/ slam interest bid available?

The numbers indicate that the defense loses tricks to double dummy at low level contracts, while the declarer loses playing slams. This correlates with the amount of information the defense and the declarer possesses. In a low level contract the defense has almost no information, while it is often unavoidable for the declarer to lose a specific trick playing a slam.

It's a style issue, you can overcall solid in 2nd seat and reopen aggressively in 4th seat or you can bid aggressively in 2nd seat and reopen with better hands. I favor the later, but most important is to use the same style as your partner. If the given West hand is a minimum, than West has no 3♠ or 5♥ bid. If the given West hand is a maximum, than West has a slam try opposite partners 3♣ bid that should be much stronger.

Right now there are two kinds of threats you need to keep an eye on. 1) Emails: You get emails with attachments that infect your computer or that contains links to faked or infectious websites. They usually need your cooperation to infect you. (You need click the link or open the attachment.) But I bet a HTML-Mail could do without your cooperation ..... 2) Websites Prominent websites are being hacked and turned into infectious sources. All you have to to is visit the website, a manipulated JPEG picture, somthing made in Flash, Java or pdf can do the trick. Often a javascript is all they need withing a normal HTML file. Your cooperation is not needed to infect your computer and if it is needed you get a faked text in the dialogbox ..... Modern infections deactivate your anti virus software and do everything possible to stay undetected. If they want to spy on you, the install keyloggers that capture your passwords and open a backdoor so that they can e.g. change your banking orders on the fly. More often they are not interested in you, but want to use your computer e.g. to send spam mails, distribute illegal content, participate in DDS attacks or use your calculation power to hack someone else. The fact that you don't have a problem is almost meaningless. There are several very good free anti virus software products available, usually they are identical to a commercial product but only update once a day and not every hour or they don't scan emails during download, so they will detect an attached virus later when you save it to disk or open it. Like a medical virus treatment, a computer virus treatment will take some time to discover the virus and prepare a vaccine. During that time you are vulnerable commercial or not.

What is the minimum strength for the 2♥ overcall? If it is less than what West actually holds, the East hand is not worth a 3♣ or 3♥ call.

The think the article the OP mentioned misses a main point if not the main point. Some countries have a "competition" attitude about school, they are interested in the best and don't care much about those who fail. They don't even care much about the fact that a lot of children with a high potential, don't make it to the top or even finish school. Company's will hire top people from other countries if there are not enough. My understanding is that Finland has a different attitude more like the armed forces "We don't leave our people behind" mantra. Pupils that already understood what the teacher has explained, are immediately involved into teaching those who did not get it the first time. To do this the teacher creates small groups who teach each other. This way the teacher can focus his efforts to those who need "special education". The "Nerds" gain social competence and are better integrated into the class. With a little luck every child can be a tutor to his/her classmates somewhere between math and sports.

There is very little blame to assign, but your partnership should reevaluate the usefulness of the 1♠ rebid. It's my experience that you rarely benefit from bidding 1♠ if you have ♥ support. Depending on your agreements North could (mini-)splinter or whatever you do to show a GF rise, after that finding the slam is possible.

A lot of top athletes** with big income prefer to live in <fill in your favorite no/low tax country> because they save a lot in taxes as long as they live there. Officially they start for their country, but they don't feel an obligation to support it with their taxes. I would prefer if they started for the country they live in. ** Oviously these are not bridge players .....

I can't speak for all, but if you are dealing with somebody who lost his emotional and mental balance, what is working with one could make another one explode. Bringing a 2nd gun into the situation will usually make things more unpredictable. Sure you can get an illegal weapon, but there is a chance that you came to your senses before you get one. Assuming that the doofus has the guts to try that with a knife, the same thing could happen. But running away very effective would have been very effective for most people in the room or if the cooperated they would have a chance to overpower the doofus.

I vote up posts that I think are outstanding in insight, explanation and tone. There are not much posts of that quality, and this way a reputation would be meaningful. This sort of reputation might inspire people to explain their reasoning, instead of just "LOL"ing. If we vote up all posts we agree with, the reputation is a measure of popularity and not a measure of quality. There is nothing wrong with that approach, but we should define for everybody to see, what "vote up" should mean.

It may be true that the victims could have defended themselves if they had guns, but I find the argument much more convincing that if the villain has no gun, he won't shoot anyone.

The diagram shows non vul. all and if the scoring was IMPs, partner could risk going down 3 as -500/-420 is nothing to worry to much about. West 5♣ is a "Hail Mary Pass" and East did not catch it. West is to blame for a bad pass and East gets the blame for a bad catch. Both are to blame.

No, if partner had something, he would have acted over 1♥ and it is likely that ♥ is his best suit. I won't dbl 2♥ into game .....

Take a look at ACBL's SAYC booklett.

You can use google a lot of the forum is available there.

If 3♠ is "very strong", then South should have raised to 4. If 3♠ can be much weaker, then North needs to do more e.g. 4♣ or 4♠.

Let me guess, you are new to the game and never heard of the advantages of Canapé bidding. South is very strong and he does not need much from partner to make game or slam. Obviously it is better to play a ♦ fit, since the ♥ suit is a great source of tricks. Bidding 5♦ is save, because if partner is short (which is unlikely since opener usually won't have a 4 card side suit) , opps will probably dbl and you can escape to ♥. On the other hand partner is unlikely to support a ♥ bid, even if he is strong enough, because he can't know that we have 8 cards there.