StevenG

Is your response structure different from what it would be if you guarantee 5 cards?

My problem in all these cases is the assertion than "2-The slow 2S suggest extra strenght or extra lenght." This just isn't true in my experience. Maybe it's true in yours, but not in mine. My partners are quite capable of adding up their points, or doing LTC, or whatever they prefer. There might be a bit of a twitch if it's borderline, but it's as likely as not not be an underbid as an overbid. What a real hitch almost invariably suggests - at my level - is a misfit. The one thing I could assume, if I wanted to use the UI, is that partner does not have enough trumps. I strongly suspect that those people who are most confident of the assertion are those who prefer rulings of the "if it hesitates, shoot it" type, and need a reason, however specious, to justify it. In the original case, bidder admitted being influenced by the UI, but if I say, truthfully, that my partner is a rampant overbidder, and that a hesitation invariably shows a weak hand, should I be ruled against for ethically bidding up when partner has the hand suggested by the UI?

Why? It's not normally played as such around here.

I would have bid 5♦ in a strong field, but I was concerned about the absence of spades, and unsure whether I should be preempting or trying to bid constructively. I tried 4♦ to try to get a bit more idea of what was going on (knowing that I can usually get away with it at this level). LHO bid 5♣ and partner raised to 5♦ where we stopped. Partner made 13 tricks.[hv=pc=n&s=shkj762dajt94cq93&w=sak6ht5dcajt76542&n=sq9842haqdkq8632c&e=sjt753h9843d75ck8&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=1c1dp4d5c5dppp]399|300[/hv] Obviously, you might not like my 4♦. Other than that, we both thought we might have bid it badly, which, given the result, is why I asked the question.

No fit-showing heart bids. 3♠ should, in theory, be a splinter. Whether partner would read it as such is another matter. I'm pretty sure 4♠ as a void would not be understood. We have only played together a few times this year (after a six-months partnership a few years ago), so it's mainly a case of trying to avoid misunderstandings.

[hv=pc=n&s=shkj762dajt94cq93&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=1c1dp]133|200[/hv] Club game, MPs. Mediocre field, decent opps. All playing Acol(ish). What's best here?

They are much the same colour and shape. That's good enough for my rather poor eye/brain co-ordination.

So, you try to work out which bids are legal under both L16B and L73C and then pick the best option. And then "something's wrong with that"? I don't see why - it's not as if the laws say that you have to throw the board when in receipt of UI.

Rik I'm posting as a club player who has dabbled in tournament play. Quite frankly, playing MP pairs is not much fun for those who are not going to do well. Playing a series of matches (because that is how we see it) is fun. Giving masterpoints for each match means that you (almost) always come home with something. The one time I played in the National Pairs Regional Final, my partner hated it so much she refused to play in the qualifying heats again. It's not about providing the purest bridge possible, it's about providing events the membership enjoys. (Despite what others have said, swiss pairs is not the dominant event at basic tournament level. Swiss teams is. Bedfordshire, my county, runs three swiss teams and one ordinary (not green-pointed) MPs. It does not run a swiss pairs. On a weekend given over to county congress type events, there are usually a lot of swiss teams on the Sunday, and rather fewer swiss pairs on the Saturday.)

I did see the spoiler before I played the hand, and, yes, it did spoil it. I would appreciate the spoiler being removed.

I don't really see the match element kicking in - after all, you don't get a bonus for winning the match (discounting master points awards), as the score just goes 9-11, 10-10, 11-9 etc.. If winning the match was important, why aren't positions determined by matches won, with VPs (or MPs) as the tiebreaker?

If 4♠ is "obviously" a LA, wouldn't he have bid more than 2♠ first time around?

Having read this thread, I am no wiser as to why people think pass is an LA for South. Surely the LAs are 2NT and 3NT - 3NT is suggested by the hesitation, so 2NT is the legal bid amd North will raise to 3NT. So result stands, but a word in South's ear. I don't know why South bid 1NT on his first round, but there is no way to judge without asking him. (A probably stupid question from an Acol-only player - isn't 1NT forcing in some strains of "standard"?) When dealing with weak players, I don't think the logic "this bid means this to me" therefore "this bid means the same thing to him" holds. In particular, I don't see really weak players understanding the concept of forcing and non-forcing bids; they just make a seemingly descriptive bid and shrug their shoulders when it is passed out.

I fail to see anyone getting rich playing 3 weak twos in a Benji environment. OK, you're not going to win the Bermuda Bowl playing Benji - but, then, you're not going to win the Bermuda Bowl anyway. (If you think you might someday, this post is not for you :) ) Personally, I think Benji works pretty well for club players, if that's what they're used to. Having two strong bids might seem like a waste of a bid, but in practice people who change to three weak twos seem to find their 2♣ opener overloaded, and mess up a lot of previously straight-forward auctions.

I think Lamford's interpretation of his construction suggests that if any player makes a remark about bridge which is overheard, then all future boards effectively become unplayable by the whole room.

A 12-14 1NT is frequently an 8-loser hand.

I do things I wouldn't have done if partner acted in normal tempo. I am constrained by L16B.

I would think that Gerber is far and away the most commonly played meaning for that bid in the UK. If I played with a stranger, I would expect Gerber if I thought that player weak, and a splinter otherwise. I would not wish to explain my reasoning in public.

A curious example, since your partner seems to have a rather wider General Bridge Knowledge than one might expect from a complete stranger. Had it been me, you would have been stuck with Benji (or 3 weak twos at a pinch) and 4-card majors and very little other clever stuff. (But of, course, considering the needs of players like me seems to be far beneath you.) If, then, the first hand had gone 1♥ - (pass)- 4♣ (undiscussed), and you thought me an unsophisticated duffer, how might you explain the bid if asked?

Because they learn them from their friends before they go to classes.

Is North trying to stop the beginners from coming back?

This is nonsense. If your opponents use a convention you have never heard of and therefore have no defence to, and pass is not sensible, how can you possible conform to this? If you volunteer to "host" as some clubs do, and find yourself playing with a complete stranger, who has maybe braved a bridge club for the first time and has never played duplicate before, how can you possibly conform to this? I play at low-grade non-EBU clubs. If I were to ask opponents about their agreements and call the TD when I got a muddled answer because they were clueless, that would probably work well for me against 80%+ of opponents - and I would consider myself a cheat. Play at an EBU club and even then you're probably up somewhere around 50% of opponents, at leat for non-routine sequences. Once again, the elite who discuss every nuance of every sequence after the game are trying to dictate impossible regulations to the rest of the bridge world. Do they not realise that if a normal pair gets in a muddle, they just forget it, throw their scorecard away, go home at the end of the evening, and not even think about bridge until the next session? If you want to do this as regulation (not law) for tournament bridge, then that's fine by me - but even at that level you still can't expect a pair to have every situation discussed. But it's impossible at club level, and the elite shouldn't think that it is.

Ok, may I ask? Partner has opened and I have 10 points. Partner couldn't find a bid after the interference, so is weak. So it looks like the points split is something like 22-18 and we don't have much of a fit anywhere. They have at least 8 trumps, we have at most 8, possibly 7. I'm no great fan of the LoTT, but it seems to me that if they're making 2♥, we're unlikely to be making anything at the 3 level, so -110 is roughly par. If they're not, +100 is comparable to what we might get declaring, and +200 is a lot better. Double might come off if partner has a second spade, but otherwise I fail to see its purpose.

Have you any idea how many insufficient bids are made in weak clubs full of old people? That would make the game totally unplayable (except that the director is never called, anyway).

All the AI tells us is that partner made a mistake somewhere.