hotShot

I don't think that this is a simple ATB. South has both majors and is strong enough to bid ♠ over (almost) any answer his partner may give over a dbl. I would expect a direct 4♠ to be a weaker hand with longer ♠ without a 2nd suit. Playing with a pickup partner I can understand doubts that 4NT will be understood as some sort Blackwood. But I think North should bid Blackwood anyway. South looks at 4 keycards (♠AK ♥K and ♣K) the trump Q and shortness in the only suit where he does not have the K. North has bid 6♠ without knowing about all this. South could at least consider to bid 7♠. Both contributed to the result so I would say 60% North and 40% South.

If you are nitpicking like that, you should not forget to mention the possibility of misplay. But seriously partners behavior depends on our agreements. We know about our 13 HCP and estimate that opener holds about 5-11 HCP. That leaves the other 2 players with 22-16 HCP. So we assume partner to hold about half of that. From the simulation of Tjolpe Flodqvist we know partners average shape is: I don't think that partner will (or should) enter the auction with 8-11 HCP and a 4342 or 5341 shape. If you would tell me what kind of strength or shape partner should have to act, I could modify my simulation to consider that. LHO's shape is: What do you expect him to bid with a 5341 or a 4342 shape and 8-11 HCP? Of cause there is no guarantee that LHO and partner will pass, but it's very likely.

That part in parentheses in the last sentence is really important! Also "So pass will give you a positive score about 53% of the time" can not be concluded from your results at all. If opps make 3♣ 468 times of 1000 simulations, they go down in 532 of 1000. If they go down I get a positive score. 532 of 1000 is about 53%. I think that is a valid logical conclusion from my data.

Just rerun the simulation allowing opener to have only 6♣ and this changes a lot. Now opps only make their 3♣ (or better) 42% of the time, so in 58% of the cases you are better off passing. You can only make 3♥ or better in 52% of the boards and both sides going down goes up to 23%. This makes bidding a lot less attractive.

I think the decision is closer than one might think: East restrictions: HCP: 5-11, 6- loser, shape: ♠0-3, ♥0-3, ♦ 0-4, ♣7+ South hand set to: A9 AJ853 T43 A42 Looking at 1000 simulated deals: 4+♥ makes: 377 times 3♥ makes: 203 times 2♥ makes: 177 times opps 3♣ only makes: 468 times Failing in 3♥ while 3♣ won't make: 159 So pass will give you a positive score about 53% of the time (and if partner has a good hand, he will reopen). If you manage to bid 3♥ and partner will only bid more with good cards, you will score positive about 57% of the time. Down 1 even dbled is still better than 3♣=. Only in about 16% you will go down, while opps won't make. Since this is MP, it does not matter much if you score -300 or -1400 as both will be (close to ) zero. So if my agreements include such a hand over a 3 level preempt, I'll bid 3♥, knowing my partner will not go wild with a weak hand. At IMPs big numbers can hurt your overall result much more, so I would probably pass.

try to enter to a command prompt: nslookup www.bridgebase.com This should give you the IP-number, if the DNS-Service is working. If the DNS is not the problem, try: tracetr www.bridgebase.com You'll get some cryptic output where your data are sent. Today it took 20 steps to get my data there, if you data get stuck somewhere, you can see where they get stuck.

Without a systemic 2 suited opening I would pass. I don't expect both LHO and partner to pass, so I'll have another chance to bid.

I would bid a weak 2♠.

I think your agreement over 2♣ is (very) good, but you used a lot of bidding space. So there is a need to make the best use of the remaining bidding space. Both South and North have to use every available bid to describe their shape. North has shown an unlimited balanced hand with good ♥ support. 3♠ is a forcing bid. South has no information about the number of available keycards and North strength, so he is in no position to to make decisions. He describes his hand so that North can make the right decision.

If North would count the keycards, he'd realize that 2 are missing. So even if 4♣ would be promising extra values in ♣ (which seems not to be the case) a slam would have at most 50% on the ♣ finesse.

South looks at his 11 HCP and both LHO and partner have promised opening strength, so obviously 3♠ must have been preemptive (where is the alert?). This means that LHO and MHO have minimum opening strength. Too much of South HCP are wasted in ♠ so I don't think that bidding 4♥ is the best move. North has a minimum dbl (unless you have a different agreement), but the ♠A is a big minus, so I would evaluate the hand as subminimum and I consider dbl not to be the optimal choice. But both bids are not unreasonable, but I'll choose 50-50.

How many times where buildings hit by big airplanes before? What about the McCormick Place Exhibition Center 1967? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCormick_Place Burning a big airplane inside a building is similar to this event. Or the Windsor Tower in Madrid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Building Even without crashing an airplane into a building and burning tons of jet fuel a fire can collapse a building. Or the Partial Freeway Collapse in Oakland/Emerville CA 2007: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269196,00.html "Burning fuel" ... "weakened structure", does that sound familiar?

North has an overcall over 2♠, but I think pass is a close 2nd choice. It don't matter much whether the dbl of 3♣ is t/o or penalty as in both cases north has a dbl of 3NT.

Lionel

Thermide does not explode it just gets very hot. It does get hot, because it's a solid-phase/solid-phase reaction and no external cool air is needed. It's reaction-speed depends on the size of the contact surface. In theory the smaller you dust the rust and aluminum the larger your surface gets and the faster the reaction can occur. In practice the aluminum is covered with a oxid-layer that is preventing the reaction from happening. When your aluminum particles get smaller the ration of aluminum (inside) to aluminumoxide (outside) gets to bad for a good reaction. Scientist have tried to overcome that problem. But still pure nanothermite is no explosive and you will need tons of it to create enough heat to weaken the structure of a building. So while we know that there where tons of aircraft fuel burning, we now need mysterious people who carried tons of thermite into the building to create a 2nd fire that caused the collapse. I don't buy that. It's much more likely that in the cloud of dust, aluminum and rust particles where present and meet when the dust settled down. PS: If you are really interested in thermites read: S. H. Fischer and M. C. Grueblich "Theoretical energy release of thermites, intermetallics and combustible metals" in "Proceedings of the 24th International Pyrotechnics Seminar", Monterey, California USA 27-31 July, 1998

And even if the could spell them they probably expect that non chinese speaking people are more familiar with numbers.

Pass! At least one of the other 3 player will have an opening, so you will be able to bid later.

A hint about the bidding system ( e.g. Strong Club or 5-card majors) of your opps would also be helpful.

If you don't want to use the BBO Software with a prepared .lin file. You can try http://www.bridgify.net/ to playback a .pbn file. But probably the cards are not big enough.

And would we recognize intelligent life, if we see it (elsewhere)?

You should not conceal a 6 card major to bid a 5 card minor.

Maybe you should optimize your browsers cache settings.

All this talk about avoiding double examinations is useless, because even if you have your results with you where ever you go they think the can do it more accurately or more reliable. And by the way, there are paper documents from 1000 years ago, but data on disk, tape or optical storage are often unreadable after less than 2 years.

Did you have access to your students criminal record or their financial data? It's not about a technical security problem (although that is an issue to) it's about who has access to what part of the data. Do you think it would be a good idea, if your (future) employer has access to all health records of your lifetime? Would you want to risk a job, because you were treated one night in hospital for alcohol abuse when you were 18? Maybe you had a cancer therapy 10 years ago, and your future employers heath insurance rates for you are higher than those of an other candidate. If you break your leg, is it really helpful or necessary for the doctor (and all of his team) to know about a sexual inflicted disease you had during your army days? What informations does the pharmacist need before he can give you your prescription?

I'll hardly ever make more than my 1 post per day.....