hotShot

I don't think this is normal at all, but I expect to find: Partner is 6+ - 5+ in the black suits and minimum (opened weak because of the distribution). If he is good it's 6+♠ and 5+♣ otherwise it's 6+♣ and 5+♠.

Could those who pass, please tell us the requirements for the reopening in 4th seat.

I would like to have 4+♠ or more points to bid dbl. So I prefer 3♣.

Every Team has a weakest player, you usually don't know in the first half and sometimes weakest is relative. But you should be aware how to make use of that knowledge.

Uday mentioned an important point, you need to be aware that by changing your routine you might weaken your own partnership.

III) "Tease the pro" If the client is silent and you don't have game but you are quite sure to have a clear majority of points, stop bidding at the 2 level. The pro will assume a part of the unbid HCP with his partner and might try to capture the contract. Prepare to penalty dbl in such situations.

I) "Mute the client", so the pro won't get information. 1) Play an uncommon System or exchange common conventions with uncommon conventions. If the client is not so skilled, he won't know the defenses. He'll be forced to make decisions and they will be unpredictable for the pro. 2) Open and overcall aggressive in front of the client. 5 card weak two's and 5 card weak jump overcalls force the client to enter bidding on the 2+ level. Bid extremely solid behind the client, so that the pro can't conclude how the strength is distributed between his client and his RHO. II) Exit to the client If you need to give away a trick and there is a chance to get a beneficial lead, exit to the client.

My impression is that areas that I can click on to start an action are colored in some sort of cyan. I can "JOIN" a tourney, and "ADD" my name to the partnership desk. But why is the invite area in the partnership list not colored cyan? If the number of participants of a tourney has reached the limit, it would be nice to have this information easier to find.

WTC7 was a separate building standing on solid ground, wasn't it? This not not quite true. Lets start with the solid ground. The ground around the WTC was/is full of tunnels. Subway, sewage water system, they have steams pipes there and of cause water, electricity, telephone have their own tunnels too. Probably there were even tunnels connecting the buildings or they shared the underground parking lot. The WTC subway station collaped when the towers came done and so did other tunnels. After that the ground under WTC7 was no longer solid. The building "fell" into that whole. And because it did not fall evenly it was ripped apart at several points. If you search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Station for "deep" you will find that the lowest platform is 53m underground and under that there are technical supply rooms. Not to mention the shock waves and vibrations caused by the collapse.

Think of the above mentioned board, GIB knows from his simulations that there is a good chance for slam. GIB also knows that if he bids the ♥-Splinter, the bidding will have to pass 4♠ to discover that you should not bid more than 4♠. Bidding the wrong splinter allows partner to bid his red suit controls below 4♠. So GIB can bid 4♠ signoff over 4♥. And has the mixed cuebid 4♥ over 4♦. So GIB has some control over the auction here.

GIB used to transfer 1NT opener to his 4-card major (with weak hands) every now and than.....

I pass. Partner passed in 1st seat, so I think 4♠ would have been a hard fight to make, why should I go higher? I don't believe that NT is opps best contract and they won't get my help to get into a better one. Playing NT I should be able to make my 2 Aces and the ♠K and even if there is a long standing ♦ suit, there is a chance that partner has a trick or two. If he can make 4NT with less than 24 HCP, well done opps.

I would think it's non forcing, because opener has a limited hand and responder could have bid a new suit ♣ now or bid 2♠ last round to show extra strength. So I think that 3♥ shows extra length and invitational strength probably based on distribution.

The NIST has a scientific and legal responsibility, they have to be able to prove anything they say. Their prove must be good enough to stand uncontested at court. So if they say, they don't know, you should read it as "we can't prove it" and not as "we don't have a clue". Lets use our imagination and assume that there is concrete that is cheaper than "the good stuff" that has more than traces of calcium sulfate in it. It's decomposition could release those sulfur components responsible for some of the steel corrosion. Such a finding your mean that the terrorists are not (fully) responsible for the collapse of the towers, but the architect, construction company and the officials who check such buildings. It would make a much better conspiracy theory to say they are covering something like that. The controlled demolition theory, has some very funny implications. 1) Everything was done between the impact and the collapse. => Superman exists. 2) The charges where present prior to the impact =>Flying airplanes into the building was completely unnecessary, someone could have used the charges without them. 3) A lot of people have been bold and blind when the charges where planted. If you think the NIST report does not explain everything, thats true, they don't. But what they find is not inconsistent with what everybody saw happen, it's more like they did not have data and events to compare their findings with. And maybe controlled demolition may explain some of the details that NIST scientists refused to explain officially, but it is inconclusive and illogical and creates much more questions than it answers. The only problem I can see that the official explanation has is that they estimate (and they only have an estimation) the temperature caused by the fire is lower than the temperature they need to explain what happened The reason for this is obvious, there are/were no former data to feed into a simulation that could calculate the temperature of this fire. Scientist proved using all knowledge in biology and flight engineering had at that time, that the bumble-bee can't fly. No to mention what they said about the Titanic. The are to many "don't know exactly" involved to calculate the temperature. You need an oxygen supply and something that acts as a chimney that draws (very) well. Without knowledge of the interior after the crash you are just guessing. The NIST would have to say: "We don't know." With all that debris from the buildings, it's easy to imagine that important evidence was not recognized as such when it was removed. Nothing that was mentioned as unexplained, is unexplainable. The expected temperature inside the burning area will have been close to 1000 deg. C hot enough to cause all the damage necessary to make the building collapse. Aluminum burns with a very bright white flame, so seeing a bright white fire would not be unexplainable and eyewitnesses are often not very reliable. Especially if they saw the TV reports and heard other victims/witnesses talk about what happened.

If you want to create a simulation of an accident the usual route to follow is to make controlled experiments with a lot of sensors producing data. It was done for crash tests for cars, but because the engineers and scientists involved will never guarantee that the simulation is perfect, there are still a few cars crashed at the end. There have been no test or simulations for planes *intentionally* hitting buildings. There had been simulations for nuclear power plants, but they where done assuming that the plane is slow and the crew is trying to avoid a collision. But how does controlled demolition explain these facts? For controlled demolition of a building you need to drill holes deep into the structure to place explosives or thermite there. Usually the structure is weakened with big machines before that. It takes days to weeks to drill the holes and weeks of planing. How did anyone manage to do that (twice) between the impact of the plane(s) and the collapse? If they did it prior to the attack, how did they manage to do that while the building was populated with more than 10000 people? And why didn't they just ordered the airline to secure the cockpit doors as it is done in Israel for years. Did they plant the controlled demolition materials inside the building, at the time it was originally built? Wouldn't that be irresponsibly dangerous to do that?

But did you consider unlike almost all other skyscraper the WTC towers main stability was it's steel exoskeleton. Did you consider that every normal apartment fire creates temperatures of 800-1000 C. Do you really think that the floors in the WTC were designed to carry the weight of a plane? I don't know how many kg/m2 it was designed for, but n normal houses you need to check the construction papers before putting in a large aquarium. Even parts of the plane will have been to heavy. Burning steel turns into rust, that can be blown away as dust. Overheated concrete turns into fragile calcium oxide that can turn into fine white dust. A lot of the interesting evidence have turned to dust and where blown away. Important peaces of evidence will have been smashed into small peaces from lager peaces of debris. And small pieces in a big mountain of debris could have been overlooked, because nobody thought they would be needed at that time.

The wonderful thing with science is, that if you apply it to a problem you get a valid result. Using the same rational deduction I have to get to the same result. Since you asked for links: About concrete look for subsection Fire is says that concrete modifies to fragile calcium oxide at about 1000 deg. C. Burning jet fuel can reach 980 C. Burning Aluminum from airplane car reach temperatures above 1000 C. Steel can be formed above temperatures from 500-700 C. The "punch" a airplane delivers to a building is described by the kinetic energy: E = 0.5 * mass * speed * speed Mass unit kg speed unit m/s Since the speed of a plane is more than 10 times larger than the speed of a van the impact is 100 times bigger!

Objection! Playing weak NT your 1m openings will usually have 4 cards in the minor (so you can bid support with 4-cards!) and balanced hands will have more strengths, but there are still a lot weak unbalanced hands around. With these you will still want to preempt. Of cause you need to adapt the upper limit of the 3m response so that game is unlikely opposite a strong balanced hand. If opener holds 15-17 HCP you don't need to preempt because if partner has 0 HCP opps still got only 25-23 HCP. You can use the extra space to investigate responders strength. Since the Upper limit of the 3m response had to be reduced, the lower limit of the 2m response is lower. With a minimum responder you can stop in 2NT.

Sometimes airplanes crash, often causing a big fire. Cars and vans often hit buildings and cause damage. Sometimes the damage is big enough to to make the building collapse, sometimes it can be repaired. Every day somewhere buildings are burning, if they burn long enough they collapse. A building was hit by an airplane, it was damaged, started burning and after a while collapsed. Nothing unexpected happened.

By demolition they mean, what the impact of the airplane exactly did to the structure. Inside the building it could have bounced against the next intact floor or ceiling or it could have rotated somehow or hit some important structure full speed. The temperature the fire could reach depends strongly on the airflow, the way the kerosene leaked out of the tank etc. These missing informations are made to input parameters of the simulation model and their setting changes the results.

My impression (after a just quick look) is that some redundant information that had several optional places to be, are now more often used.

The average strength of 1seat and 2nd seat is 8HCP, so we the average is 18(we):22(them). Passout will be a good score, because opps are stronger than we are, they have to score to win. You will like this behavior until you have good cards in 3rd seat......

1♠ rebid by opener is non-forcing. Learned something new today, I was not aware we play non standard methods around here.

1S is not forcing in standard methods. Introducing an unbid suit from an unlimited hand is not round forcing in std methods? I don't think that North is allowed to pass.

2♠ Why rush? Both opps passed their first turn so there is no need to preempt. South has a forcing 1♠ bid available and an easy ♦ bid as 4th suit forcing over any bid North might make. I think modern bidding is to go slow on strong hands, so the jump to 2♠ implies an more unbalanced hand with less HCP. I would guess that North expects South to have 6+♣ and 4+♠ and 3♣ is the weakest rebid North could make. ♥Kxxxx and ♠Qxx are harly the stopper you would bid NT with, and the South hand should play NT if its strong. So 3♠ promises help to stop ♠ and asks South to bid NT. South passing 3NT is a slam try. North can only assume that South is even more unbalanced, if he ignores partners weak hand and bids on. Notth has only 2 possibilities to stop at game level, 4♠ (assuming South has 5) and 5♣ unfortunately he choose 4♠.