StevenG

2♦. I thought, playing Asptro, it was the systemic bid. Pass might be better, it isn't usually.

I suppose that under "Other Aspects of System Which Opponents Should Note" I should write "We frequently make inexplicable mistakes". That should do the trick.

No, a typical intermediate player would not have a clue how to take this contract off. I've twice had to explain to very experienced partners that if they have Kxx, and they can see Ax in dummy, that ducking twice will inevitably mean their King becomes good (this after they'd covered the Queen and seen the suit run ...). If they can't see it when the suit's in dummy, they'll never see it when the suit's hidden.

I thought (post 7) that West was a robot.

... and passed a raise to 2♠?

The Windows client uses IE to deliver ads (regardless of your default browser). Should we be worried?

But the point is that's it's "common sense" that makes you think (guess, even) it can't be takeout, not partnership understanding. (Maybe it's just table feel, when it seems clear to all at the table that opps are sacrificing.) And that's completely inconsistent with the whole concept of alerting understandings (explicit or implicit). As you suggest in a later post, it isn't really possible to enumerate all the competitive situations in which your side might double, so you're just working it out at the table. (I often find that if I double "for takeout" in the hope that partner will realise I'd prefer it left in, my LHO has passed long before partner has worked out what might be going on, and then partner has no idea whether or not the double is alertable, nor, really, is she likely to even be considering the question, being too wrapped up in the actual bridge.)

So if the agreement is "takeout (unless it can't be)" I alert ALL our doubles? (other than the simplest negative double). They they ask and get constained by the UI. :lol:

I find it hard. Do you alert accoriding to your agreements, your meta-agreements or what the double is actually intended to mean? If you only alert based on tangible agreements, what do you do in undiscussed sequences? If, in an undiscussed sequence, your meta-agreement is takeout, but it has to be penalty due to bridge logic from the sequence, do you alert? If, however, it is unclear from the sequence, but you deduce from your hand it is penalty, do you alert? Is the whole logic of alerting doubles different from that of alerting bids, where you disclose your agreements, not what you suspect the bid might mean? Maybe established tournament partnershipss have agreements on doubles detailed enough to cope with the regulation, but lesser players, like me, are mostly just muddling through. (I've been asking these questions ever since these regulations first came in, and I've never had an authoritative reply.)

Does this logic not also apply to Acol-style bidding where the 1♠ rebid is non-forcing, and opener would have to rebid 2♠ to create a force? I don't know what Eagles and his partner play, but that's probably what the majority of the room are playing.

I've never known anyone play like that. I've ony ever seen 2C-2D-2M played as nonforcing - bidding two-suiters is difficult after any sort of artificial strong 2 opener. I don't understand why all you good players want to be in 3M going off when the field is in 2M making - the same problem exists with transfer superaccepts. Is it because you only think in terms of expert level IMPs, when most of us (especially people posting in N/B) are playing MPs at a less exalted level?

Is this not straightforward at pairs? 5♥ making might be somewhere near a middle, 5♥x making, an outright bottom.

Does that follow? If opps are left undoubled, one needs to give away 200 or 500 to gain. The double now includes 800, but still includes the 200 and 500 (or making!) hands as well. Surely the only requirement to justify the bid is that the combined odds appear to the bidder to now be greater than 50%, whereas before they were less.

That isn't correct, Vampyr. A Benji 2♣ is classified as a strong bid, and all strong bids have to conform to ER25. It's Benji 2♣ bids that cause the problem for good players, because many of these players get upset when weak players use a strong bid on a hand that theory suggests should be preempted with. As far as I am aware, ER25 is the only EBU rule designed to protect strong players from weak ones, rather than the other way around. As such, I do not think it a good rule - if opponents wish to bid badly, why stop them? And, even worse, sometimes the illegal "strong" bid is in practice the best constructive action.

How does knowledge benefit mankind when we manage so well in a state of ignorance? A tough question ...

I believe the poster is in EBUland. Jacoby is hardly played at all in the clubs where I play, although I expect that is not necessarily the case around the country as a whole.

Is this inference completely solid? If declarer started with JTx, surely he might as easily run the Jack, hoping the Queen is onside. In which case, West leading small from the Queen would equally provide a losing option. West won't lead small from QT, but will from AT, so the odds favour MrAce's line, but I don't think it certain.

That may help for parts of the country, but I don't see it being a practical general strategy. The last page of the EBU AGM minutes http://www.ebu.co.uk/documents/minutes-and-reports/agm/2013/02-october.pdf shows the distribution of juniors, county by county. It is clear there are several clusters around the large cities and top universities, but that the numbers are trivially small in the rest of the country. Bedfordshire now has no juniors, and I would think it quite feasible that we might never have another one. (We had very few anyway - those that came from Bedford School mostly stopped playing on going to university; the few that continued usually reaffiliated somewhere else. There is now no bridge teaching at Bedford School, so even that source has dried up.) The only people coming into the game are retirees, or those with adult children. Of these, the numbers that wish to play serious bridge are very small. Non-affiliated clubs are surviving reasonably well, but otherwise the situation doesn't look at all promising.

Since any non-psyched OBOOT puts the NOS into an unusual auction that they could get wrong (and be damaged in a way that cannot be replicated at any other table), then I don't think it unreasonable that a psyched OBOOT, forcing NOS into a decision with incorrect information, should automatically be a L23 case.

You're right about the points being meaningless - but other people do like them, and they act as a marketing tool for the EBU (or, at least, the EBU think they do). I don't see any reason why your not being an EBU member should stop any points your partner wins from being credited to him.

I choose to cut superaccepts out of my game at MPs. I'm not at all sure why they are such a good idea. In an uncontested auction, as long as responder invites game on any hand where he would have bid game after superacceptance, you have lost nothing. People are quoting competitive auctions where the bidding goes 1NT - (pass) - transfer - (pass) - transfer completion/superaccept, and then opponents compete and find a good contract. That rarely happens in my world. In fact I have no recollection of it ever happening. Does it at elite level? How often? On the other hand, superaccepting frequently takes you too high on hands where you have nothing and you lose big. Perhaps this is to some extent related to the fact that I play in a weak NT environment. I suppose that with a strong NT, you are more likely to be getting to a playable contract at the three level, even if responder is weak. I appreciate that the ridicule heaped on the idea of never superaccepting may be based on who the OP is, but I'd like to see a more reasoned debate.

There is a formula for multiplying up, when boards have not all been played the same amount of times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuberg_formula Results are flattened slightly leading to the 0.1 scores.

There's no point in claiming when I know all the tricks are mine if the opponents are not competent enough to understand the claim.

I would not be happy if partner passed as North with that hand (or any hand with two hearts), so I put him with at most one heart. I don't think they are useful for those of us, like Eagles, who play 4-card majors in Acol-land.

For most BBO games, the Laws of Kitchen Bridge would be appropriate.