cherdanno

LOL

I didn't know that 2S could be considered not game-forcing.

I like 2NT. Yeah it feels awkward to suppress 4-card support but how can we have slam unless partner has 6 clubs? If he does we can raise his 3♣ re-rebid and I don't feel worse than us raising to 3♣ right away and him bidding 4♣. If he bids 3 of a red suit or 3NT over 2NT then I think we can be fairly confident that 3NT is right. Obviously I would never bid 3NT if that's what I have to do to show a minimal balanced hand.

Amazing if you still like soccer, then :) (1990 was the first cup I followed it on TV...)

Just to pick something I can follow from the OP, isn't this a problem? Responder can deduce that opener doesn't have 2 top trumps, how does he know where opener's bidding left the tracks and took a detour? Also, maybe opener realized his mistake and thus preferred not to try for a grand slam with the trump ace off-side? 6♠ sounds very practical indeed under the circumstances...

He was obviously hoping you would bid 3NT, there is nothing more to it. And how could he be hoping that? I mean, if the next hand had passed, you would have bid 4♥ with four whether or not you had a spade stop, and you would have bid 3NT if you did not have four hearts whether or not you had a spade stop. It is one thing to hope that partner can bid 3NT, but it is quite another thing when even if he bids it, you will have no idea whether or not it is the right contract. But maybe partner is world class and realizes that it is better to sometimes play 3NT with a stopper despite having a heart fit, than not being able to check for a stopper when having a long minor suit? And since he knows I am world class too, he will also realize that I realize that and so I will take 3S primarily as a stopper ask, and only bid 4H when I have four hearts and no stopper?

Phil, my point was just that I believe cue-then-NT shows a one-suiter with hearts stopped, not 18-19 balanced with a questionable stopper (and if we had that hand everybody would bid like that).

So by bidding 2H instead of 2NT you are committing to showing a game forcing single suiter with a heart stopper, instead of showing 18-19 hcp balanced with a heart stopper (what else does cuebid-then-NT show?) Great.

Even if you don't play 4♦ as COG, passing 4♥ is reallly obvious. I mean how much more suitable for playing hearts instead of spades can a 6-card spade suit get.

Double shows a misunderstanding of this auction. 4♠ has a wide range, only real game forcines in high cards would make a stronger bid (4♣). So West has a very offensive hand given all possible 4♠ bids, and thus he cannot double 5♣.

Both get blame for agreeing to play weak NT without discussing how to show a strong NT in competition (double of 2NT). The single worst call is 5♥ though, obviously.

Lol.

So playing PDI here double would mean "Please bid 5♥ if you had a 4♥ bid, but please pass in case you had both too much defense and too little offense (such as a defensive 7222)!"? I already have a bid for that - 5♥.

Even when we don't have a stopper 2NT might work best - making 2N beats whatever contract goes down after we bid 2H.

what? thats so random lol JOSs wHeDON!

You get 1:8 odds for backing US against England on Betfair.

Obviously the easiest way to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza is just to hire some trucks. If you wanted to bring some forbidden goods (such as coriander) you could use one of the many tunnels going underneath the border. But that´s maybe a little besides the point. The Israel embargo isn´t meant to starve people in Gaza to death. Nor are they just trying to prevent weapons from getting in. Instead it is meant to systematically bring the Gaza economy to a halt, as a collective punishment for electing Hamas. It includes such stupidities as forbidding high school graduates to go to college in West Jordan land. See http://www.economist.com/node/16264970 for a silly list of permitted and forbidden goods to bring to Gaza. But you cant do anything about a halted economy by bringing in humanitarian goods. Instead, they tried to create awareness for the situation. It certainly seemed to have helped, I would doubt cherdanno would have written a post about this on BBF otherwise.

1) 2 2) 2 3) 2 4) 1 5) 1 6) 2 7) 1 8) 1 9) 1 10)2 11)1 12)2 13)2 14)1 15) 2 16) 1

How do you cook pasta? Btw, even after 8 months in Britain I didn't get used to it (the lack of salt).

Don't ridiculously misdefend vulnerable games when you need a swing? (Or when you don't want a swing.) Anyway, I assume board 4 was a push also?

I would just consider it case law that treats the claim "I was wondering with which of three equivalent cards to falsecard in this situation" as not credible when the player in question knows exactly that hesitation in this situation usually implies something else about his hand. So this wouldn't be about changing the law, just setting a standard for weighing evidence. (Every bridge player who can falsecard learns to falsecard in tempo as you need to do that with 99% of all falsecards; since they are capable of that it is hard to believe they suddenly have to think about falsecarding when sitting with xxx behind dummy's AQJ).

I think Mike's description of the hand with a long minor jumping to 3N is way too strict. If you have AKTxxx(x) of a minor, stoppers in the majors, and a hand too strong to bid 3m, then usually you just bid 3N. Doubling and bidding 3N is dangerous as partner might pull to his 5-card suit. Doubling and bidding 3m might not be possible (if your suit is clubs and partner bids 2N Lebensohl, or if the opponents bid higher), and doesn't describe our hand well either. Anyway, I think I am worth 5N, pick-a-slam.

How could partner ever hang you on this auction? If partner accepts your "game or slam try", you pretend to have had a game try, and as his hand is limited he can not override that and will pass 4♥. If parter rejects the game try, you pretend to have had a slam try, and as is limited and[i/] rejected a game try, he cannot possible override 4♥. So this psych is safe just by bridge logic, and there is no special protection for this psych in Fred and Brad's (or Zia's and whoever his partner is atm, or ...) partnership understanding. It's the equivalent of making a transfer to diamonds opposite partner's 1N opening before bidding 7N (regardless of partner's possible superacceptance). This psych is 100% safe, but surely it wouldn't be a controlled psych?

Yeah, Not every good food is properly seasoned bacon.

I think it depends on the situation. If you are sitting behind AQJ in dummy, you can't hesitate with xxx to decide whether to give true or false count when declarer leads up to the Q. When declarer is running a long suit and you have only worthless cards, there is nothing wrong with thinking before your first discard figuring out the positions and which discards will prevent declarer from reading the position. All this is just IMHO.