sfi

You're going to penalise declarer because he didn't notice a discard? That's pretty harsh. His claim was perfectly normal - just incorrect.

Aren't there 8 obviously good tricks? What is the defence concerned about?

Why is that the definition of "natural 1NT"? That seems to me to be just as much a convention as anything else, but the word natural has been co-opted to describe this convention. Natural would be "a hand that has reasonable expectations of taking 7 tricks", and should cover a range of hand types. Mind you, this is the same organisation that has defined a 1C opening on 4-4-3-2 hands to be natural, so I'm not surprised by this odd view.

Spider was for many years a top national director from Texas. He retired in 1993, if memory serves me correctly, and passed away shortly thereafter. He invented the Web movement among other accomplishments.

Can I bid 3C asking for a major and then 4C asking for a minor? Knowing what our system is would help rather a lot.

Or you could play half a dozen hands with someone. If you can't tell how good they are, they are good enough to play with more regularly.

I believe that's a synonym of 'to anthropomorphise'.

My immediate thought is that playing a weak NT overcall is probably not a good idea, so any defence suggestion should include switching to a strong NT if necessary.

Withdrawals are covered in section IV of the USBF General Conditions of Contest, and I suspect most jurisdictions would have regulations allowing it. For another example, Section 12.14 of the Australian Bridge Federation tournament regulations specifically allow a team to withdraw from a match.

Winding up in this situation seems pretty masochistic. Given that, 3D looks likely to increase the pain, so I choose that now. Maybe redouble will achieve that better... Seriously - no 1D opening? No 2C reopening? No obvious pass after the double? Do I hate partner that much?

You don't need to cash the HQ, so a singleton heart doesn't hurt you. And I don't think you can even make double-dummy if there is a singleton club unless hearts are 3-3.

Good point - I magically gave dummy a fourth club for some reason. Hmmph.

You can do slightly better.

There are brief writeups if you search for Scanian signals (note the spelling). But a quick search did not turn up anything sufficiently detailed to be worthy of specific recommendation.

To quote one of the comments on that page:

I don't much like the pass of 4S with nice extras, but signing off with the North hand is a joke and a bad one at that. If forced to give percentages, I would say South 30% and North 100% (maybe more).

It's a lot better than doubling 6H in the other topic. At least here there are a few potential winning scenarios (many hands with heart or club fits will wind up fine). However, there will be too many times when partner either passes or bids 3NT. In either of these cases your hand will be a real disappointment and you could lose quite a bit. At least as important is that partner may start skewing their bids if they no longer know what to expect from your double, and that could lead to losing choices even on the hands where you have a normal takeout double and the normal action would have given you a good score.

His partner is not a top player? (Answering in the abstract only. I have no idea who is being talked about.)

I don't think East's rebid is obvious. 2D, 3D, and 2H all look like alternatives, and the system after the reverse is important to know before bidding this hand. What I would like to do is show a 4-6 with extras and retain the ability to play 3D in a misfit, but if I can't do that I'll probably give up on the hearts and bid some number of diamonds (probably 3 because everything is working on the hand). What is obvious is that West's 3NT bid is poor. Even if partner has help in clubs, West doesn't have the entries to set up and run a suit that requires giving up a club trick. And if East had enough tricks to play 3NT they would have forced the bidding.

Would you really open KQx ATxx Jxxx xx with 1D? Or KJxx x KQxxx xxx? Both of those look like perfectly good invitations after partner opens 1S, but not really opening bids in 1st/2nd seats. If you really follow this rule your opening bids are going to be light enough that you're playing a light opening bid system, where the considerations are much different. In a couple of my recent partnerships we liked the Drury concept enough that we have adopted a version of it even over 1st/2nd seat openings. The ability to invite and remain at the 2-level is enough of a clear win that we restructed much of our system around it. The only time I have scrapped Drury in a partnership was when we were playing a 10-12 NT. That means you open most of the hands you would want to invite on (like my first example), so its frequency is much lower. The hands you do want to invite with (such as my second example) are distributional, so getting to the 3-level has a second way to win, by potentially preempting the opposition.

That seems perfectly logical given your lead convention. With Axxxx in hearts and Qxxxx in diamonds, encouraging diamonds looks like a mistake.

Because slam is excellent opposite x KQxxx Axxxxx x. Throw in the CA as well and you will have just played 4H when the rest of the room is in 7NT.

That's hardly fair - I'll do the work: Tang The Space Pen, with the documentary synopsis found here Heavy Boots

Nah, that just shows you have lots of peers.