sfi

Without thinking about it too much, my auction at IMPs is 1D - 2S - P - 4S. If East doesn't lead the DA it looks like it's going to make. At matchpoints I'm much less likely to bash game with the South hand. Only East's pass looks clear cut though.

Which, conveniently enough, is basically what you probably play after a strong 1NT overcall. So you don't need to change your defence at all.

That's not unheard of in the bridge family of card games. 500 is one such example that remains popular in Australia, where the last person to bid the suit gets to pick up the kitty and lead to the first trick. Another variation, seen in the American game Rook, is for the "declarer" to be determined by bidding to make a higher score than others. The declarer picks up the kitty and only then names trumps. These sorts of games require certain cards to have values when captured, rather than the tricks themselves being the important component. Or if you want something to do your head in at a party, try Egdirb. Cosmetically you just reverse everything compared to bridge - aces are low and deuces are high, bidding is counterclockwise, and clubs and diamonds are the majors, but NT is still highest. But the interesting gameplay element is that when you win a trick in one hand you lead from the other hand. So you can't set up and run a suit in the same way. Don't do it between sessions of bridge though, unless you don't care about the first couple of hands of the next session.

Worried.

QFT. This is the key point - a heart stopper can easily be shown later, but 3 card spade support may be lost if we don't show it immediately. Considering how the auction will proceed when the hand has multiple features of potential interest is a skill worth working on.

I'm sure you know that fashion dictates conventional agreements more than any theoretical advantage. All levels of players use this convention, and I've played it without issue in any number of national tournaments over the years without issue. In any case, the correlation between quality of players and theoretical quality of their conventions is pretty low most of the time, so that's not a good judge either. You can certainly construct hands where one or the other works well, and my regular partner and I have given it up because we decided knowing the major is more important, but the differences are small. And if you want to be able to show all available 2-suiters, that's one sensible way to do it. Another one is for the cuebid to always be ambiguous - over a minor it shows spades and another suit. This variation is probably the most common around here.

There's no real catch, and quite a few people in Australia play 2NT exactly this way. As others have mentioned, the biggest reason not to do so is that you might want to be sure which major is held, but it's certainly not a silly idea. (And had I known we were playing this the other day, we might have found our 6-6 diamond fit rather than me bidding my spades.)

2NT without a great deal of conviction seems about right. My second choice would be pass rather than double.

Yes. Dropping the stiff queen offside only helps when you have the 10.

Given that it is such a nightmare, have you ever considered that bridge may simply not be the game for you?

You really want me to go through all the internationals I know who have lower ratings than yours (all of them that I checked)? No thanks, but it's pretty clear that the data is poor when one of Australia's best players manages a rating of -0.02 despite winning another title on the weekend.

Congratulations, you are a full 50% better than Jimmy Cayne according to the ratings. That might actually be true, but it sure seems like an indictment of the system itself more than anything else.

My experience playing at the top level suggests that these players are generally more lax with the laws rather than less. For example, over the past week at one of Australia's top tournaments, there were about 10 situations at our table (both by the opponents and us) including exposed cards, two cards played at the same time, leads out of turn, and poorly worded but reasonable claims. In no case was the director called or any restrictions applied, and it did include an exposed card that might have allowed a doomed game to make in a close match. The director was called a couple of times for things that were genuinely unclear, so it's not like they are simply ignored. But the letter of the law is often skipped over in favour of fairness.

Depending on opponents, state of the match, and form of scoring, I might bid 3 or 4 hearts. But I wouldn't pretend anything except 1H is a normal action on the hand. The statement that you have no clear idea what to bid suggests that involving partner is a good thing to do. The fact that you have reasonable defence suggests that preempting is not particularly necessary. And the fact that you have a good hand suggests that you might be more successful with a constructive approach than an obstructive one here, opening bid notwithstanding. In most cases I'm not prepared to guess at the contract at this point, and that is essentially what you are doing when preempting. So just overcall and see what happens next.

I haven't heard that theory, but it wouldn't seem to be enough. Crop agriculture requires much less space to produce food, which means communities can be physically smaller and don't need to follow the good grass during the year. This then leads to a central point where items of value (food) can be stored, which means they can be stolen, which means they now need to be defended. And thus civilisation changed markedly. However, since I haven't really looked into this more than watching Bronowski's documentary (70s?) on it, I could be relying on outdated or biased viewpoints. But it sounded pretty convincing.

Since humans didn't cause it this doesn't fit the original criteria, but the evolution of wheat was crucial to the development of early agricultural societies and the subsequent development of civilisations.

Indeed - I was just answering the question since nobody else had actually done so. In the first example my partner actually tried the 10 which seemed as good as anything. Sadly he really did have the 2 so couldn't even play his spot card in hopes that I wouldn't be able to read it as low. In the second case I think the 8 has the best chance of letting partner read it, but definitely you need to play one of the top cards. But Art's point is one worth noting. All signalling methods have lose cases, one shouldn't signal at the cost of a trick, and it's worth knowing what those are for your chosen methods.

There are a number of situations, but the most obvious one is something like this: [hv=pc=n&s=sq853hdc&w=sak6hdc&n=s974hdc&e=sjt2hdc]399|300[/hv] West leads a top honour. Playing reverse signals there is no way for East to avoid blowing a trick. This is easily fixed by agreeing to play standard signals when leading a high honour and dummy only has small cards in the suit. Another situation is leading this suit against NT: [hv=pc=n&s=shj5dc&w=shak632dc&n=shq7dc&e=sht984dc]399|300[/hv] Low encourage blocks the suit, while high encourage allows E-W to cash 5 tricks. This type of situation requires more thought to identify and resolve, and probably not worth worrying about in a casual partnership.

I'm not sure how to vote - I want to choose the first two options. On the auction game isn't a bargain, but North really needs to take further action in the passout seat, and double looks normal. This might lead to N-S going down in a contract, but it might also collect a nice penalty or find a game in either spades or diamonds. None of this can happen if North doesn't show that they have a good hand here.

Didn't North just give up 1400 for no reason at all? Pulling the penalty double does not appear to be suggested by the explanation (either the one that describes their agreement or their hand). In any case, if West has no UI then they are free to do what they like. I believe there is even a specific clause in the alert regulations that states that tendency to forget is not to be part of the explanation. Table result stands.

I agree, but the UI does have a bearing on whether you look at East's action as wild or gambling as well. I was merely highlighting that UI existed for East, not casting aspersions on their action.

This action is problematic by itself. West has now given East unauthorised information, and it's not that hard to work out what's going on. As a result, East's actions need to be assessed as well.

TBH, nothing besides 2H would seriously occur to me at the table. Passing here allows the opponents to steal our contract far too often, and losing 10 for not bidding our game will happen much more than losing 12-15 for -1100. If I pass now and bid later, it will be clearer and easier for them to double me when it's right.

If you haven't claimed, then your opponents will always assume that you can't claim. Playing the hand won't mean that next time they will pay less attention because there might not be anything to think about, so you're not gaining anything from this particular uncertainty. What you will gain is unnecessary effort from your opponents on hands where there really is nothing to think about. This might be reflected in slight additional fatigue from opponents in a long match, but you will also gain a reputation for being annoying if you do it regularly. Some opponents will find ways to get back at you (drawing out the play when you're on defence is one obvious example) so it's unclear that the net change will be positive at all. Additionally, it's a small enough community that keeping a good reputation is probably of more long-term benefit. I understand Rosenberg's position in playing out the hand aguahombre raised, but it would not have occurred to me to do anything but claim. Perhaps that's because I play with enough slow people that I want to save the time for future hands, but the overtrick looked awfully remote.

David Stevenson has a fairly thorough description of existing conventions. It's worth checking out.