cherdanno

Sounds like you have the priorities right. Practice sessions online are also very good IF you take every hand seriously and review them afterwards.

Kfay's votes are wrong - did you miss his edit?

This thread is weirding me out. 4♠ is just a bad bid, this shows a completely different hand, North should double and bid spades. (It's a bad bid in the sense that it shows a misunderstanding of the auction, not in the sense that it will cost many IMPs.) 5♣ is aggressive but I don't think it's crazy. 4♠ shows s.th. like a 7-card suit in a 9-trick hand. We have ♣A and maybe two ruffs (assuming opponents don't have more than a 9-card fit). 9+3=12.

I really don't think you can bid 5♣ with this hand if 3♥ only showed 4 hearts. That's what a forcing pass is for.

wow gwnn forgets the exponential function

I agree though that generally the officiating has been great (I think I didn't like the USA-England referee but don't remember why).

That's why they say - double with AJ7, not with AJ8!

I don't particularly feel like either goal was offside, but I might not have seen very many replays. The goal by slovakia was clearly offside. (I don't know whether you can watch it from the US but the replay on http://www.sportschau.de/sp/layout/jsp/kom...99514#mbContent shows it clearly.)

Done! 17) 2 18) 1 19) 2 20) 1 21) 1 22) 2 23) 1 24) 1 25) 1 26) 2 27) 2 28) 1 29) 1 30) 1 31) 1 32) 1

[polemic] And the good ones haven't even played yet :D [/polemic] S.th. the Germans and the Dutch can agree on, for a change!

Time for the 2nd round of predictions maybe?

Mmmm - let's not go overboard, aside from a few high crosses the US created one opportunity (by Altidore). Their defense was vulnerable too when it didn't just have to deal with long high balls.

On the upside, you are doing better than hanp.

I just don't think the emotions in the quarter finals would be the same if it wasn't for a slightly more dull group phase before that.

No you did not understand gwnn correctly.

Btw, kfay you are crazy. I know you are the most skilled biker ever and all that stuff, but why even risk a 1% chance of a head injury? Time for a safety play!

I am quite happy to explain the general idea of wall-crossing for Gromov-Witten invariants in 2 minutes. Just not to everyone.

I know, and I'm goading KFay a bit here, in case you didn't pick up on it. Of all of the casualties of the internet, I miss irony the most. Disagree. On the internet, you have to write your irony well, you can't announce with a huge grin and smiley face to everyone who can't get out of your 1000 feet radius quickly enough. Yeah, bad irony is a casualty, but good irony will only be misunderstood by a few dumbnuts that we can then make fun of.

Not good enough for me - but anyway, thanks to RHO we actually have the room to bid 3♣ now and then spades at the 3- or 4-level later.

But usually they don't lead to such huge differences.

If that were a possibility, why would David Burn, who is not, so far as we can tell, a gibbering idiot, say that "3♠ ...is defined within the game as 'Stayman in principle, but if that's not what he has, he will have some other kind of game force.'" and that "North has no way specifically to ask you to bid 3NT with a spade guard"? Are you sure that the 3♠ bid was defined that tightly in the pre-game discussions? Are you sure that if you asked Zia whether a one-suited minor hand without a stopper might be 3♠ here, trying to get to 3N, he would say "No way!"? (And that would make neither David Burn nor Zia a gibbering idiot, nor would it tell us they are not world class.)

I hope bridge has more intelligent friends than Bart Stupak.

It also loses to most cases where LHO has KJxx, as you can only draw one trump before leading a second time from dummy. Low to the queen now, and low to the ten later? That was my intuitive answer but it loses to LHO's K, Kx, K9xx or KJ9xx.

- I think the case for 3♠ originally wins, although I don't hate double as much as others. - I really can't understand saving now. Is it our lack of aces, or our extreme shape that drives us to the 5-level opposite a 2-level overcall? We are a strong favorite to take two tricks against 4S, and so does partner (who would be more inclined to jump to 3♦ at these colors if he had no defense).

That will not tell you the odds. You just need to do it often enough.