hotShot

Perhaps you underestimate the physical aspect of soccer. In the premier leagues the player run 10-12 km each game, sometimes twice a week. Just google for doping and Turin or Marseille. There organized doping could be proved. I think it's absurd that FIFA/UEFA stopped the doping tests during the summer and winter break.

I don't like your choices, because while 6NT seems far away 6m could be makable. With your side's combined 30-32 HCP and balanced hands there is not much chance for LHO to enter the auction.

Would you agree that the measures taken e.g. at soccer are a joke compared to cycling? Especially if you think of the money involved .

As far as I understand, it is legal to play multi in this event, if you supply a written defense. I guess the team from Singapore checked if it's allowed to play multi and did not notice that they need to supply a defense. The lawful and gentleman-like way would be, to call the TD, let him ban the multi for the next boards and offer to use your own defense at this board, if necessary to avoid an artificial adjusted score.

Playing for swings is a losing strategy with a variance so high, that once in a blue moon one gets lucky and wins. Obviously the best strategy is to let opps do their losing effort and change nothing. So don't double their partscores to games, don't let them push your partscores a level to high and hope that the games opps bid are not so close that your side won't bid them.

This may be the wrong way to approach the problem, but I don't see any damage. Additionally the opponents don't name how they were damaged. If there is no damage to correct, why should I investigate?

I won't allow 4♠, it seems to me that North took the 1NT call as natural and made a GF 2♦ bid. The UI suggests bidding game, any reasoning to allow bidding game has to be beyond doubt. The reasoning from South is not convincing. It's base is that the 2♦ bid is undiscussed. Why should the continuations on the artificial 1NT be undiscussed? Especially since the 2 suggested auctions have agreed continuations. The sequence seems frequent enough to assume it happened before.

Pi - day

The race is over, if this is Formula 1 this season, I guess I'll lose any interest in it.

The sport pages here say that among the top 10 only Sutil (10th) picked the hard tires. So I think Webber is "only" slow.

Massa was about the same margin faster than Alonso, than Rosberg was faster than Schumacher.

And they got the 2nd car running!

At least they showed up and got a car running and they did not lose a wheel.

Well the show has started, the drivers and teams have given a a first idea what they can do. Tomorrow after the qualifying session we will know more.

The banks "insured" their loss and distributed it by selling CDO's. The buyers of the CDO's invented insurances for their risk and sold them. This process was sometimes repeated. In the end most of those papers where hold by big insurances and investment banks, and by people who had no idea what they are investing in. These people had a direct loss, but since the insurances invested the money that people where saving there in form of life insurances and pension plans, these pensions will be a little smaller because of the loss.

I don't like south dbl. I would have tried pass (don't drive them to game) or 4♦, because I expect a fit there. I assume that opps have 9+♠ so partner won't have more than 3. Partner should dbl holding 4(+)♥ and he could have raised ♣ with 5(+) cards. Partner should have 4♦ cards, right?

Perfect bidding, no one to blame. Just switch North minor holding, nothing will change except that opps can take 2 quick ♣ tricks.

I won't tell opps where to search for ♠ honors and about the split, so dbl is out. Fortunately partner did not dbl on his nonexisting ♥ tricks. So I have an easy pass.

Now that we have agreed on possible hands, lets take a look at Law 16: A t/o-dbl is a request to bid on, if a slow t/o dbl would suggest bidding on, there is no extraneous information. To play 3NT partner could bid that himself, if he has sufficient ♠ stopper, or he could make the only bid available to him that does not bypass 3NT. Partners dbl (slow or fast) is massive suggestion to play 3NT, if my hand has sufficient ♠ stopper. What extraneous information does the hesitation carry?

What about? d) A 2344 12-count with ♠Qx which could be wasted 2 points and unsure if dbl implies 4♥. e) A minimum opening 2(335) hand with a bad 5 card suit, that does not have 2 places to play.

Do you still discuss the OP? The situation seems quite simple. There is a undisputed BIT. What are the pairs methods? Thats unspecified in the OP, but assumed t/o. What are the LA's? Most consider 3NT to be LA, some consider pass or few think about 5♣. Is the BIT suggesting anything? Up to now most posters were unsure what the BIT suggests.

Well the races are kind of boring since overtaking is almost impossible, but it's always fun to see that the FIA changes the technical specifications to slow down the cars, and the engineers build cars with that spec's that are faster than the cars from last year.... And of cause some are better in choosing their pit stops than others.

How would they benefit? They just need to keep the balance between what they have to pay and what they charge you.

Partner has a big problem, bidding is already up to 3♠, so I don't think the slow double suggests anything. Fortunately there is nothing other than 3NT to consider.

Consider it a finger fault from the TD. I don't think it's the software.