cherdanno

3S is game forcing. So: 1. Spade stopper (maybe not best, that's certainly what it is without discussion) 2. My better suit (4C with no preference) 3. Slam try in D 4. To play, but 2N-bidder is allowed to bid more with a good hand of course. 5. Cue for m I am sure I failed the test so I do need the extra credit: 2N 3S 4C 4D Now it depends, but especially vulnerable I would be tempted to just bid 5D with the North hand (bad suit), if I was sick enough to bid 2N. Not vulnerable I would cue 4S and South would keycard -> 7D. So a 5 or 7 hand for me!

Obviously your math should be expected IMPs, not points. But my math goes like this: I get dealt a hand that is cold for slam opposite most balanced yarbs 3 or 4 times in my life. I just got dealt one. I bid slam. Here is a secret that you might want to know. Partner is not balanced.

When you go to a store in Germany, and buy s.th. for 20 Euros, then the store pays the VAT as part of the 20 Euros. Is that so different from the store taking all of the 20 Euros, then paying corporate tax from that revenue?

You know, health insurance for travel is ridiculously cheap.

is it twice more "a little bit" ? ok, maybe twice more is as exaggeration, but "a little bit more" it is too. edit again: it seems that twice more might be quite accurate: a 75000 euros/year will pay 33% income tax a 75000 US/year will pay 20% income tax if you factor in the sales tax, 19% versus 4%-8% you are getting there ... Lol, maybe you should start by comparing similar incomes, instead of comparing a 75k $ salary with a 105k $ salary. You might also be aware that the German income tax offers a lot more tax exemption. And if you start factoring in VAT, you might also want to add in corporate taxes. For 2007, the percentage of the total tax revenue as part of the GDP was 36% in Germany and 28% in USA, according to OECD figures. Edit: I guess I should have added that even though I trust the OECD to try to come up with comparable numbers, it is really impossible to compare. At which point does the premium for an extremely heavily regulated not-for-profit mandatory health insurance become part of the tax revenue? Where is the line between tax exemptions and subsidies? Still "twice more" is beyond what we call reality, and "twice as much" also ridiculous.

If you really think this hand is too good for 1S -> 3D -> pass, then you should open 2♣. No reason to force us to play 1S or 4N. But imo passing 3N after 1S 1N 3D 3N is clear.

Lol. I picked Dick Cheney. It asked me "Does your character always do something wrong?" Of course I clicked yes. Didn't deter akinator from guessing right, and was of course just the answer it had expected.

Your point sounds plausible. However, I would expect that the introduction of girls' events reinforces that bias, rather than helping with it.

I won't pass 3N after double, I would bid 4♥. Double does not promise 4 hearts so I think partner will bid 4♥ with 3 hearts very rarely.

I can give you a lot of examples where things would be cheaper if the US government would stick its nose into things a little more deeply. My car got stolen in May, and found again 2.5 months later. The police didn't immediately reach me (I was at the NABC actually), so they had it towed. I was also at the other coast, my friend who had the other key was away, etc; in any case, it took 4 days until another friend of mine could pick up the car from the towing company. The towing company charged 500$ for that (s.th. like 70$/day storage fee, and of course a couple of other fees). In Germany, we pay a little bit more in taxes, and so the police would have taken care of the car for a few days (i.e. keep it at a police lot somewhere). I doubt they would have spent 500$ for that, more like 100$. (They would also have taken fingerprints and tried to find the thieves, but that's another story.) But since you are Republican, I suppose the 500$ are good, because they are profits, and the 100$ are bad, because they are taxes.

Mine is similar - if partner makes a mixed raise, I should expect to make 3M. Also, of course you need a good suit. I think "takeout double strength, but wrong shape, and a very good 4-card major suit" would be another good definition. And yes, this means I disagree with all the examples in this thread except Marlowe's.

But it's the same principle.

Ok. So say congress stops an earmark worth half a million dollars for the Wasilia ice hockey arena. My estimate would be that this reduces the 2010 deficit by half a million, from 1,171,000 millions to 1,170,999.5 millions. Next year it turns out the actual deficit was 1,243,723 millions. By the logic of the posters here, my prediction was foolish.

How useful is this study? I don't really know what I'm talking about, but so far as I can make out, it seems to suffer from several flaws: - The participants had opted to participate and the control group had opted not to. Isn't that a big non-no? - The bulk of the study's evidence consists of subjective views of participants, parents and teachers about improvements in the participants' mental and social skills. Can you imagine any parent or teacher saying "I think little Johnny has become more stupid recently"? - All of the people providing these subjective assessments knew that the child they were assessing had participated. Again, they were unlikely to say that an organised extracurricular activity had had a negative effect. - For this part of the study they didn't ask the same questions of the control group. - The sample size was tiny. Those aren't intended as criticisms of the person who carried out the study - I am sure she was constrained by the available funds, the degree of cooperation that was available from the control group, and by matters of confidentiality. As far as conclusions go, however, it does seem to me that the evidence from the questionnaires was of little value, and that from the objective tests was a long way from being conclusive. Actually, all the study claims is that those who improved at mini-bridge also improved at other skills. ("The comparison with the control group did not yield a statistically significant conclusion.") Sounds very much like correlation, rather than causation.

I think "this requires a pre-alert" was just a polite way of saying "We believe you are lying".

On the first auction, the 2N bidder can still have a wide range of shapes. So any sort of raise should allow him to go one level higher if he has the right shape for it.

You know, sometimes someone revives a 3-year old thread...

This is scary, but I will apply...

Kxx KQJ9x xxx xx?

If you really think this is coincidence then you have no idea how big the number of possible bridge deals is. The fact that every other deal is equally unlikely doesn't matter: for the given deal there is an alternate explanation (same board dealt twice) that is not completely unlikely which does not exist for other deals. That alternate explanation is more likely than the coincidence by a huge factor. Btw, I wouldn't let the earlier results stand. Even if these players didn't notice it explicitly, they may have benefitted without realizing it (e.g. "learning" how to play a certain suit combination on the previous board).

Are we really discussing which cuebid to make after 1H 1S 3H 4H? The given hand was too strong for a 3H rebid, and this is what caused all the problems in the first place; bidding on over 4H is of course inconsistent. GIB doesn't mechanically cuebid ever as far as I know, it always considers quantitative evaluations when cooperating with slam tries. And it won't forget you bid 3H before.

Uhm, I would also have bid 5H there. GIBs reasoning seems sound to me...

Easy pass, we may often have +120 on. With a weaker hand of the same shape it would make more sense to remove to 2♦.

I had not looked at the draw yet, but: Wow. Group A has the teams ranked 10, 11, 19 in Nate Silver's ESPN world rankings, quite tough for the supposed easy draw of the home team! Group G has ranks 1, 7 and 9! http://espn.go.com/soccer/spi/rankings

Doubles of bad bids are penalty. So redoubles of bad doubles are business!