hotShot

3NT is almost never a forcing bid. I usually ague that bidding is a cooperative effort, but sometimes one has to take captaincy. You know that ♦ is your fit, you know how little is needed to make the slam. So it is your turn to ask. You hold a hand with only 4looser, that is nearly gameforcing (3looser). You hold an 8card suit, with 9 developed tricks if the ♦ are 2-2-1 distributed. There is no way that partner will expect this hand. The 1♦ opening is to weak for your hand. It is the right openig bid for your hand, but now you have to do something forcing.

Somewhere in the general Condition of Contest of the WBL there is an 8 min/board limit that is usually copied to then national general condition of contest. Usually you add a minute per round in a pairs event for the "movement". If cards have to be shuffeld it is usual to add some time for that. So if you are playing a team event and there are prepared boards 64 min. should be ok.

I won't go for 3 NT, i have a 4 looser hand and partner has 12+ HCP, we are in the slam zone. Worst thing that can happen is that partner does not have the ♠A and RHO gets the first trick, finessing ♥ to his partner. But for this to happen LHO's ♣ must be xxxxx and RHO can't have more than ♠A (and a J). Our agreement about minorwood is: Any unforced (by opps) 4m that is repeating an own suit or raising partners suit is minorwood. If it is the own suit it is suit setting as well. Example: 1♦ - p 1♥ - 3♠ 4♦ Not minorwood, because forced by opps. 1♦ - p 2♥ - 3♣ 4♦ Minorwood suit setting, because unforced by opps. Disadvantages, if you pass 3NT and you don't want to go to slam (e.g. your example but 3♥ is much weaker) you have to bid 5m at once. So i can bid 4♦, minorwood without a problem.

Partner has included all you have into his balancing bid. So you have to pass. Sometimes this is the only way to get the jackpot, this time it's a mistake.

An established partnership, with an agreed system and trust in partners judgement, will only have play problems to discuss. Further more once you have accepted that your system cannot work with all hands, you can stop to change your system after every board that did not work well.

A lot of people think that after agreeing on playing a suit, 4NT is always some sort of Blackwood. The question is: Did 2♠ agree to play a suit. Transfer seems very simple but in fact it is a very complex thing to agree about. Most people when agreeing transfer, think that this includes only the part of bidding the next higher suit. Other think that this implies superaccept and so on. Seems to me that you are trying hard to improve, an attitude that in incompatible with "crap". I don't think that you have more problems to keep a partner than others. Bridge players have a tendency to think the way they bid with their regular face to face partner is "common sence". This makes almost everybody else to an irregular player. This is a matter of agreement, seems to me you did not have an agreement here. You should consider a few things: 1. Face to face, 80% of the communication is non verbal. Online you can't see partners disapointment or any other emotion that would normally tell you that partner did not intend to hurt you. 2. Limited language skills cause people to simplyfy what the want to say. So they often read much harscher than they where intended. 3. People are alone with their computer, they don't get the emotional feedback from the one they are "talking" to. So they don't "see" that they have gone to far. 4. There are cultural differences about how much emotion you should express. Some are more passionate others less, this leads to missunderstandings. Well it's hard to know, lots of people seem to think that doing nothing is not taking side, but they are wrong. It is easier to see the splinter in someone else's eye and avoid the forest in one's own eye. If they don't know how to play better, how can they know they made a mistake? It is much easier to teach bidding, than to teach playing. The "systemic" bid is defined by HCP and length. The play is hidden in the cards played, analysing opponents strategies and understanding partners actions. Experts extend their bidding system with judgement and understand the play. The mathematic genius Gauss said: Nothing shows lack of mathematical insight more, than accuracy dealing with numbers. I'd like to adapt that, saying that nothing shows the lack of bridge abilities more, than pernickety with hcp ranges.

We bid very solid over preempts in 2nd seat, so it's not unlikely that partner has a little something. So if 4♠ can be preemptive, i prefer to bid. dbl, is for take out here.

♥A followed by ♥J

1. dbl 2. No, it's pass now.

1) With X opp showed ♠'s, so partner has no interest in bidding his own. His hand does not look good in NT (probably weakish with only QJT), and is to weak to enter the 2 level. He has 2 ♥ and leaves you with the decision to bid 2♥ with minimum or pass with more than that. e.g. Qxxx - xx - QJxx QxX 2) He is very balanced (4333) 11-14, probably with 4♦ and wants you to set the final contract.

No! It is very unlikely that we have a fit in the majors, and it is possible that there is no fit at all. If partner has at least a little something, opps will have no fit and not enough HCP. I prefer them to go down.

Thank you Ken! But i think bridge is much easier, if you bid your cards and not partners.

Seems to me that the 2♦relay over 2♣ is allowed in that ACBL jurisdiction. So if 1♥ over 1♦ is a forcing relay or 4+♥, it is no psyche. There may be a rule forbidding 1level relays, but it is no psyche. As fas as i can see, relay systems are banned by the GCC and not single relays. As to beeing a convention, if the ACBL does not provide a definition of their own, the WBL defines: This definition is usually published in each book of bridge laws. About bidding 3+ card major suits, i guess you are allowed to rise a 5 card major, with 3card support without alert and without beeing thrown out by the TD. So bidding a 3card major must be, ok.

If 5♠ is an "empathetic splinter", what on earth would his 1♠ have been?

Assuming 4♦ agreed to play ♥, than partner obviously wants to play at least 6♥ and go for the grand if i hold ....... ? Since 4♥ does not deny ♣ control, i think partner wants us to know that his ♠ are a source for tricks, and if i have first round control of ♣, we can make 7.

I don't think the FD feature has been noticed by the majoraty of BBO user. Many don't even know that a CC can be posted. Perhaps a little front page advertising might be usefull. Seems to me that this TD was not familiar with the use of FD, i prefer that view to thinking he is unfamiliar with posting his condition of contest.

The answer to your question depends an the strength that opener is likely to hold. How strong would e.g. 1♦ - 1♠ 2NT be? Would you open any shape of 21HCP hand with 2♣? What other strong openings are in your system? Usually opener will have (11)12-20 HCP, most likely a balanced hand with 12-14 HCP. More than 95% of the time, there is only a partscore for your side, mostly you are in a minoraty HCP position. With an established 7 card fit and the minoraty of points, there is no reason to bid. If within a system (e.g. by playing 12-14 NT), bidding a minor will often show a strong and/or imbalanced hand, you should bid, because you might at least have half of the HCP, and you should be able to play at least 2♠ (even with 7 cards), to get a good result. At last there are tactical reasons. Your LHO's hand is probably the strongest one in this deal, and if one of your opps is unbalanced, they might be close to game. So if your partner usually opens light, you should bid 1♠ to make life harder for opps, otherwise pass.

The concept of subbing is flawed, but what is the alternative? The correct way to handle the problem of loosing players would be, to replace the pair with sitouts, cancel the board and remove all scores of this pair from previous boards. When a tourney has 2 sitout pairs, they can be eliminated when the next round is seated. Of cause the downside is, that the partner of the disconnected player is out of the tourney too.

sorry about this, but what is hard about doing it as it stands? Now you change the time for all rounds, if you decide to add a minute, you have to remove it when the round changes. But usually you get lots of TD calls, about unfinished boards than.... Those TD calls pop up in dialog boxes that get the active window. So no matter what you are just typing or doing is interrupted, and each key you presseed is send to this dialog box. If e.g. you happend to press enter so compleat a message to a player, the enter is send to the TD call dialog. This causes you to move to another table and your message is incompleat and unsend. Every message to the TD at the other table is lost, and at the new table the player who called you is upset, because you ignored him .... and left immediatelly. By the way if you happen to notice the table number you can get back later otherwise you lost the TD call. Clear enough? Oh yes i have to set the round clock back ....

Well seems to me you were too regulated. How would partner have shown a shortness? 4♥? You lost the 2 level to Jacoby and you are willing to to give up most o the 3 and 4 level to show shortness, that is wasting far to much bidding space. The idea of Jacoby is to start quebidding at the 3 level, that way you can cue bid aces, kings and queens before you reach 6M. Do you have a good reason to mix cuebids with RCKB? You allready knew that partner had A♦. He had a much better view of the hands from his side. With 2NT he gained control over the auction and with 4NT you took it back. Here is an alternative follow up for your Jacoby bidding: over 3♣ use 3♦ as some sort of voidwood. 3♥ void 3♠ 03 aces 3NT 41 aces ..... If you are void, partner uses the next bid to reask for aces without ♣. This way you can allways investigate aces below 4♠.

The maximum number of tricks a declarer can get with his trumps is playing a crossruff. In an ideal case with a void in his hand and at dummy, he can make a trick with each trump in each hand. If this is the case, leading trump will reduce 2 crossruff tricks to one trump trick. The other situation where a trump lead is the right choice is, if declarer needs to ruff on the side holding only few trumps (1-2). In allmost all other cases the downsides of leading a trump will overweight a possible use. 1) While your side is on lead, you control the game. You decide what suits are developed and you can get your quick tricks, before declarer can drop his loosers. 2) Leading a trump is playing a trump finesse for the declarer, this is very helpfull. A good trump lead is a winner, but lots of weak player follow the rule "If you don't know what to do, play trump!". Following this rule will be a looser at least 9 times out of 10.

Your are right, and they should state that "loud and clear".

As far as i know, BBO has no book of laws of their own. So the only set of bridge laws arround are those of the WBL. Any other organisazion adapts them for their use. The only organisations that certifies TD's, are doing this using the laws of the WBL. So this is the set of laws they are certified to enforce. So if you decide only to use a subset of those laws, you should state that in your condition of contest. The right to host tourneys on BBO, has nothing to do with beeing a certified TD.

Ok so he has the red suits. But how strong can he be? I still bid 6♦ to show that my ♥ are longer than my ♦. Partner can correct to 6♥ if he wants to. What would 5♣ have shown? I think partner is preempting opps slam, but since you hold AK♠ they don't have one. So I get out of this as low as possible. He could hold anything between: xx AKxxx AKQxxx - and x JTxxx Txxxxx x

This seams to be one of these 50+ HCP boards. And it smells like 2NT is both minors and not both red suits. Someone is bidding much stronger than he actually is. The only one who's bid may have been weak is partner, so i bid 6♦ now. Since i have allready shown the ♥ preference.