cherdanno

Agree with your title.

Definitely something would get lost. Either the interaction between spectators and commentators, or the interaction between the commentators and the vugraph operators. VuGraph is at its best when the operators can include some snippets about the table feel and so on, and some of the regular vugraph operators are great at that, and I bet they would get worse without the instant feedback from the commentators and spectators. I think there would also be quite a loss of excitement. Waiting on Vugraph for a player who is in the tank, and whose decision we know will likely decide the outcome of a Bermuda Bowl K.O. match is a different experience than looking the hand up in the bridge library, or reading about it in The Bridge World. That's pretty much irrational of course, but if we were rational, most of us would have stopped playing bridge long ago anyway :D

I sympathize with gnasher's sentiments but also it would not have occurred to me that 3♣ is FSF for anyone. For one thing I would never bid 1D-1S-2N with 4153 shapes. For another thing, the purpose of bidding out your shape with 3♣ with 4153 or 4054 is not only to find a club fit, but also to possible find out when to avoid 3NT when partner's hearts are too weak. Btw, if I played 3♣ as artificial here, I would just take it as a game try (AKA "please bid 3N if you have a club stop, or something higher than 3♦ if you think we should play 5♦), not as a game force.

The typical shape for this would be a lot more balanced, e.g. 6313 or 5224.

I lack the legal expertise to know whether this is murder or manslaughter. What he did was certainly wrong, and I don't understand what should be controversial about this case.

We did not make a strong JS, and I don't think pass is forcing without discussion. (I don't play it as forcing after discussion either.) If pass is forcing, then I agree partner may bid a grand with A+AQ. If pass is not forcing, I don't think there is a way partner will bid 7.

You are approaching this from the wrong point of view. The most important principle is full disclosure. You may not have more knowledge about the meaning of your partner's bid than the opponents. We can argue about psychs all night long. Full disclosure is 100 times as important, and the rules dealing with psychs (and your handling of them) may not violate full disclosure. If you think there is something wrong with the rules, then you should lobby for more permissive regulation of agreements. You shouldn't try to weaken full disclosure. I think I have posted "full disclosure" often enough for now, but I am happy to explain the importance of the concept further if you think it may be necessary.

2♦ is not forcing. The normal bid with the North hand is 2Nt over 1♠.

GIB's card play is very good. It does have some weirdnesses, e.g. it often removes guesses for you.

4NT = RKCB combines very well with Italian-style cuebidding (1st or 2nd round control), which seems to be an almost universal standard in the US.

To avoid the bad streaks, you should walk once around your PC after every hand. This has the same effect as changing seats.

Phil, I don't think you quite read this correctly. For starters, declarer doesn't have ♦J. His diamond play makes little sense unless he is either has ♦AQ, or he is very desperate. I don't see why you think declarer has ♣KQ tight. Why can't he have ♣KQJ and was testing whether the suit splits? Or ♣KQJT? Or ♣KQT, with partner playing low on the first trick since he read our lead and didn't want to give away the distribution? I think there is a good chance that declarer has ♠xx ♥Qxx ♦AQxxx ♣KQJ, or ♠xx ♥Kxx ♦AQxxx ♣KQT. The one thing we we must not do is to give him his heart trick when he has ♥K and ♦A. Given that partner always has the ♠Q when he doesn't have the ♦A, it is safe to switch to a spade (when declarer has ♠Q, he doesn't have ♦A and it is only a matter of undertricks).

Disagree.

Whenever there is a KO match between Nickell and any other team except the Italians, I am happy to offer you a bet of 50$ that Nickell is going to win that match.

It's not a light opening. This is a very powerful hand, both on offense and defense.

Having read this thread, you now know that a significant proportion of players wouldn't expect an unalerted 2♣ response to be made on a 2443 shape. Therefore you know that if you don't alert it, a significant proportion of your opponents will be misled. You appear to be both intelligent enough to understand the purpose of alerting, and honest enough to want to meet that purpose. Why would you now not alert 2♣? You cannot expect an alert, though. If you had sat down in a pairs event against Josh and Mike, and they just formed a pickup partnership (before this discussion), then either of them would have bid 2♣ with some game-forcing 2443 hands. But since they didn't have an agreement about that, there is no way they would have alerted that. Btw, would you also expect an alert with 3343 shape?

South didn't bid well (I disagree about 3♣ though, I think it is forcing without discussion), but the 3N bid is just very very very bad.

That was my immediate reaction, too. Then I realized that the ♦A lead pretty much beats it whenever partner has an ace or ♦K. That is almost always the case with an Ax and the trump ace. There is a reason you don't always make this lead. It's slightly better than usual because of the trump 9, but against that lead your long suit with 4 trumps will often be effective. Well usually you also need both opponents to have a tripleton in the suit for it to work. Here (I assume) we know LHO has 3 diamonds. And we don't need RHO to have more than a singleton, because of the ♥9 as you say. I think it helps the odds significantly (but I am not convinced it is right).

That was my immediate reaction, too. Then I realized that the ♦A lead pretty much beats it whenever partner has an ace or ♦K.

If not playing support doubles, I would pass. This does not look like a hand screaming to play in a Moysian.

Yeah, I should have mentioned the combination of strong opinion with ignorance, my bad.

I don't understand why 1S-3D-4S isn't good enough with this hand. In fact, I don't see how anything else does better.

Yeah, everyone dies eventually. How about your family and friends? Now (by careless agression) or later (naturally)? Wouldn't bother you, would it? :) I bet it wouldn't bother someone in Afghanistan. I didn't know you were so fond of making failed analogies Josh.

Or maybe you don't know what standard is. Seriously, you are quite impressive. I wonder whether there is anyone else in the world who plays internationally, spends a lot of time on bridge, has English as native language but has so little clue about North American standard treatments.

You are right about standard of course. I should have said 'whatever is a strong slam try' in your methods. In my methods, which I'm told are fairly standard in France, acceptance of a transfer shows 3-card support and then you can start cue bidding (in a standard way rather than shortage). Since the shortage is likely to be critical for a min-HCP slam, that agreement would be more suitable on this hand. Paul That's a different story then. After partner has shown 3-card support, the hand is worth a stronger slam try, especially as I can do that and still play in 4♠ after partner cooperates with a cue.