cherdanno

Double, takeout.

♠A for me, seems fairly clear. It's not that I like the lead so much, I just hate everything else.

I don't understand 1♠, unless you play it forcing, and promising an unbalanced hand. Playing more standard methods, surely this hand has to force to game with 2♠ (assuming you want to bid spades), and show the great diamond support next. Responder has an awkward bid over 2♠, but whatever he does, after he hears about the diamond support he has a huge hand and will bid slam. E.g. 1C 1D 2S 2N 4D 4N 5D 6D

Risk? You avoid the certainty that partner KNOWS you dont' have 4 spades :(

Wow, I am supposed to downgrade AQT4 because my LHO overcalled in a different suit?

Herzlichen Glueckwunsch!

43? Couldn't believe it the first time, but I guess if BBF says so too...happy birthday to the new home-owner!

This is the kind of comment that makes BBF so tiring to read. Yeah, this is your opinion. I don't even have anything against it. But to just repeat your opinion, completely ignoring the well-argued points against it (see Fluffy's post above), is a complete waste of a post.

That's odd. He's one of my favorites. ;) We could tell.

See, this is where we diverge already. I am sure the style you suggest is fine, but outside of England it might be difficult to find partners who play it, for the rest of us 1♣ says "uh, i have opening strength, or i guess s.th. resembling it that i feel like open, but i don't have a 5-card major - lets see whether we can find our 4-4 major suit fit? oh, and if you really care, my clubs aren't worse than my diamonds" ;) :) More seriously though, I just don't think my hand screams playing diamonds instead of NT. (Thanks for the ♥T, dealer!) Also, possibly having to ruff with trump honors doesn't work so well unless it is partner who has the intermediates.

I think to install them you just copy the file symbol.ttf to the directory /usr/share/fonts/truetype/symbol .

I have had lots of bad and few good experiences by not bidding a balanced hand as a balanced hand (years ago a partner of mine liked to do this). I think you are vastly overestimating the importance of right-siding.

Double.

I see, so holding [hv=s=saj8h863dakj4caj9]133|100|[/hv] and having his telepathy turned off (translation the ICQ server had a denial of service attack) he is supposed to guess to bid 6? No, he has a clear pass.

Despite Ken's lengthy speech, the ♣7 on the first one seems obvious to me, whether or not partner is a bridge player. If he is a bridge player, he would know that this can be made from 5 cards, if he doesn't, he won't consider this possibility - in either case, he will play us for four cards in the suit and play one more round, then see what happened. On the second hand, I see no benefit to lying - I would just play back the systemic ♥4 and hope that partner guesses right, or that we get a second chance to continue hearts.

I think this is the easiest way to run BBO under Linux - yes the Window looks very different, but once you get used to it, it is actually much nicer. Yes you will need to have a flash player installed to use this, I don't know whether LinuxOS comes with one preinstalled.

I disagree with the previous posts here. 5♣ is clearly a bad bid, a partner who refuses to make any cuebid cannot have two aces, a king and the trump queen. In fact, I would make one cuebid with the Nort hand rather than bidding 4♠. Given that, I think 6♣ is the right bid. It is impossible for opener to make a slam try missing two heart controls, both minor aces, and the trump queen, after we didn't make a single cuebid. Hence we are worth a slam force and might just try to get to the best slam while we are getting there.

I don't know anyone who pauses for 10 seconds after P 1N P 3N.

Somewhere on here, MikeH has a lengthy discussion about xyz. He might discuss 2-way NMF as well, I don't remember, but the systems function very similarly, and IMO, it is a much better resource than Jeff's. It is much more current too :) I suppose you mean http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...t=0entry90802 . I am not sure though, Mikeh's post agrees with two of Jeff's treatments you don't like, maybe you are referring to a more recent post by Mikeh? It also says nothing about many other sequences that you need to discuss, are you really sure it is a better resource than Jeff's website?

I don't think you have pointed out flaws Phil, just examples where you have a different opinion, or where you think current majority use is s.th. else. Just as an example, rebidding 2♠ after 1H 1S 1N 2D with a good doubleton makes perfect sense to me. Your possible shapes are already very constrained, and it seems useful to distinguish between a good doubleton and a weak doubleton, and surely you can show 3-card support anyway? I don't think this treatment implies that you always raise 1S with 3-card support.

I strongly disagree with your view here. I have been playing something similar for a few years now (2N forces 3♣, either to play, or a slam try with 4 in my major and 5-card support) and find it extremely useful. It is a big benefit to distinguish slam tries with 4 in my major from those with 5 in my major. It is extremely useful to show shortness with such hands, sometimes just to pick the right game. I can't remember a single lead-directing double on such an auction.

Phil, your hand sample does not look realistic to me. Partner will have a club void quite often. Partner will have less than 4 spades quite often. In fact, he could have a doubleton spade - what else but double would you bid on Kx AQJxx AKxxx x? I also think the minimum for doubling is less than what you think. You double any time when you think you are beating it, and when you think you may make a 5-level contract when partner bids with a very distributional hand.

So you think partner bid 3♥ to play?, the fact that you have 10 more HCP than you could doesn't make you worth a bid? wow. So you think that partner 3♥ shows 9 top tricks? Do not remember where I read it , but this concept of bidding over preempt as if partner have 7-8 bal points worked well for me. Correspondinly responder should know that most of his points are already accounted for. So pass NV, 3NT Vul 1. You have a King more than 7 hcp. That's a trick. One trick more => let's play 4H not 3H! 2. You are a passed hand. If partner had no hope of making game opposite a nice balanced 10 count, he would have passed.

Bridge is a game that will sharpen your mind and test your emotional skills. ブリッジは、あなたの心をシャープにし、あなたの感情的なスキルをテストするゲームです。 Bridge is to sharpen your mind, is an emotional game to test your skills. 橋のあなたの心をシャープにする、あなたのスキルをテストするため感情的なゲームです。 Sharpen your mind of the bridge is an emotional game to test your skills. 橋のあなたの心をシャープあなたのスキルをテストするため感情的なゲームです。 It is an emotional game to test your skills sharp your mind of the bridge. それはあなたのスキルをあなたの心を橋の急激なテストに感情的なゲームです。 It is an emotional game of bridge a rapid test your skills in your mind. この橋の感情的なゲームの迅速検査はあなたの心に自分のスキルです。 Emotional quick inspection of the bridge game is in the heart of your skills. ブリッジゲームの感情的な迅速検査のスキルの中心にあります。 Rapid test skills at the heart of an emotional bridge game. 感情的な橋のゲームの中心部での迅速なテストのスキル。 Skills quick test of the bridge in the center of an emotional game. 感情的なゲームの中心に橋のスキル簡単なテスト。 Simple test skills of a bridge in the center of an emotional game. 感情的なゲームの中心に橋の簡単なテストのスキル。 Simple test skills of a bridge in the center of an emotional game.

In US standard bidding, 4S shows a better hand than 3S. You would bid 4S with a 3-card limit raise, and 3S with a constructive raise, leaving 4H for hands really worth a game force.