sfi

What are you hoping to achieve with a non-diamond lead? Two cashing side tricks? That seems a faint hope at best given the bidding, so you have two aims in finding a lead from a hand that doesn't have a standout alternative: - don't give up the setting trick - set up a trick for your side There is some inference that RHO might have both heart and club cards to go along with diamond weakness, so a diamond lead through whatever honours are in dummy looks like your best shot to achieve both these aims. A diamond looks enough like the normal lead that if LHO played a spot card in hearts or clubs instead I would wonder why. If you think that lead directing doubles don't have a significant cost against good opposition, you're not paying close enough attention. They will often show declarer the right line of play, they will talk them out of bidding non-making slams, and they give both opponents a chance to exchange information about the suit you have just told them is dangerous. These negatives are very expensive and you need a high percentage of hands where they would have bid and made slam without the right lead to make up for them.

In my one partnership where we play it as guaranteeing 4, we think that's sufficiently unusual that we highlight the agreement as declaring side when the auction finishes. But it does differ depending on where you are playing.

Playing a relatively gadget-free standard american system, I would expect something like: 1D - 1S 2C - 2S 2NT - 3H 4H Responder's second action is not clear, but other things seem worse.

My understanding has always been that the spectator cannot influence the game while in progress. Once the match or round is done, the players no longer have a decision to make, hence the limitation to the restriction.

Since they were moving for the next round, presumably the spectator did not do this at the table. If so, then 76B5 doesn't apply and it appears the kibitzer has not done anything out of order.

Our club prints them on the fly for much less than that. The running cost is about $.01/page on a commercial office printer.

That's not really true. You only need a 3-2 break to run the suit, so the odds are in your favour. If partner passes with a void they had best be able to conjure up 9 tricks on their own.

Not planning to play in Australia then? 'Cause that's what we've got.

I like East's logic - it looks clear to duck. East knows that South has the queen, and with Qxxx why would declarer play the King at trick one? But seriously, they're beginners. Tempo is going to be all over the place and it's never clear why.

Because I would expect 2NT on the actual sequence to accept the game try. North doesn't have extras, so the only bid available is 3D on the three card suit. North's bidding looks totally normal with this hand. South could have asked for a spade stopper by bidding 3S over 3D and then you would reach 3NT. Over a forcing 2C response, 2NT doesn't show extras.

To be fair, these issues do make it harder to find a better line.

Change your system. You should explain what is going on in the situation you describe but seriously, why are you doing this to the partnership?

That would indeed be an unlucky hand, but even that will make when one of the opponents holds a 5 card club suit.

North also has the AI of a 9 card suit, is at favourable vulnerability, and the opponents have just jumped to an almost certainly making slam against which this is a guaranteed good save. I'm struggling to see pass as a LA.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. When was the last time you asked an opponent how likely they are to lead a short major against NT vs. a 5 card minor? What sort of an answer would you expect? In any case, you can't have an agreement to disclose if you don't first talk about it with your partner.

So my partner and I separately each read one of these books a while ago and the results, while anecdotal, are illuminating. All play was at national competitions. I read the leading vs. suit contracts and it clearly improved my leads. There were several examples where I beat contracts I would have not otherwise done so, and only one instance I can remember where my previous choice would have worked out better. My partner didn't notice any change in leading style, so it did not affect his decision-making process. He read the leading vs. NT contracts a few months earlier. The very next tournament I started noticing that my inferences from the opening lead were often not valid, which meant that my defence was frequently less than optimal. I don't know whether his lead choices were an overall net gain or loss, largely because I did not realise why they had changed until the middle of the second tournament. I finally started reading the leading vs. NT contracts book before the last tournament and it all made much more sense. At last I could see why he was making the choices and that made the defence more comfortable. And I even paid attention when I picked up the following hand to lead against a 1NT - all pass auction: A963 AQ87 954 Q5 The passive diamond lead hit partner's long suit and we beat the contract 3 tricks on a hand where our teammates made an overtrick in the same contract on a different lead (it doesn't really matter which one). So, what conclusions have I drawn? 1. Defence against suits is much less about cashing length tricks, so it is much less important to hit the side's best suit. This means that the types of inferences drawn from the opening lead vary greatly between the two books, and it's easier to apply the leads vs. suits without involving partner. 2. There may be a double dummy bias in the analysis, but the practical advice has achieved positive outcomes in most cases. 3. Not letting partner know about your change in leading tendencies can throw the defence off. Talk to partner about the theory, particularly if you are going to stop leading 4th best from your long suits. My partner thinks the NT book gives more valuable advice, while I think the suit book does. I wonder if this is because we each prefer the one we read first or whether there is a substantive difference between them.

I actually agree with you - I think Messi is already the best player the game has ever seen. But I do feel a bit sorry for Ronaldo because one of the great players keeps being seen as second best, not just in his generation but in his league and in most of the games between the two teams.

It's probably worth watching some of Real Madrid's games when Ronaldo is fit then. If Messi weren't playing, Ronaldo would easily be the best player in the world today.

I haven't seen the US team before this tournament and I don't have anything against them. But is that really being considered a good performance from the outfield players? I thought it very short of quality apart from a Dempsey chance and a nicely taken goal. The defence should never have given Howard so many opportunities to look good. I do get the idea of context - after all, Australia managed to get beaten three times and still exceed expectations. It did seem like they should have played better though.

On the other hand, there was no way Howard deserved to lose the match. He was magnificent. But yeah - the right team went through.

I do live in a place where we can play brown sticker conventions, but none of my regular partnerships currently use any of them. Over time we have used and dropped a range of unusual two-level openings (including Myxo Twos and 2NT for either majors or minors) as well as 1NT overcall for takeout. I would like to add Wilkosz to one of the systems though.

IMO, the first half of the sentence is not relevant to whether or not he claimed the two queens. The later post changes matters significantly though.

Are you sure about that? The only things I could find relating to this were some US clarification stating this and some England clarification stating this to be a myth. Neither the laws nor FIFA's interpretations state this one way or the other. That being said, I can't imagine why the assistant referee was in any doubt.

He did claim the two queens. From the original post: "with the 2 minor suit queens taking the last two tricks" And rolling through a stop sign is hardly normal, in the sense that it's not proper behaviour.

Declarer knows the hearts are good. Defence knows that declarer knows the hearts are good. Declarer has shown that both by setting them up and then by actually claiming them as tricks. Trying to force declarer to pitch one of them on a card for which there is no evidence that it will be good smacks of rules lawyering rather than playing bridge. Your well known world class opponent was just trying to intimidate you. Next time, call their bluff and ask for a director's ruling since they have expressed concern about the validity of the claim. My bet is it would shut them up pretty quickly.