StevenG

Things change. I'm not aware that I know anyone who expects a Benji 2♣ with 8 playing tricks to equate to an Acol strong two. Shouldn't it be the people with extra requirements (even if they are implicit in an historic context) who need to disclose their methods accurately?

Almost everybody opens a 11 count if it's 5-5. I don't think the ten cards being 8-2 should make a (negative) difference. Everyone would open this hand 1♦ if a strong bid was unambiguously forbidden.

I meant, of course, a structure for responding to overcalls.

The problem is that partner will bid as though I have five. I don't want to be getting too high and going off in 3♠ or 4♠ if they can't make 3♥. A response structure that caters for partner overcalling with four isn't normal in the Acol environment in which the original question was set. Maybe other envronments have different response structures? Last time I looked at the vote, none of the 1♠ bidders were Acol players. This is the N/B forum. I think answers should assume that partner is intermediate at most, and keep it rigorous.

Is double so bad? If you get a 2♦ reply, you're unlikely to get left in, and it's not necessarily disastrous at MPs if you are. Otherwise, if partner has anything, you may get to push them to 3♥ which looks defensible. 1♠ guarantees 5 cards for me, so it's not a choice. If I pass, I find it difficult to see how partner will find anything intelligent. Giving up the partscore battle doesn't usually go well with that sort of hand at MPs.

I don't think that's true though. I often know what a partner is thinking about when they hesitate through knowledge of that partner. If I say why I chose an alternative, and the reason is valid, and partner has a hand consistent with that reason, is there any reason to adjust? On the other hand, if you postulate a situation where a partner's peer might hesitate, but my partner never does, and partner's hand is not consistent with your hypothesis, can you really justify adjusting? You have demonstrated nothing.

No, you compared a situation where there is an infraction, and therefore an OS, to one where there isn't. In your interpretation, player A hesitates but hasn't infracted. His partner, player B, who has done nothing wrong whatsoever, now has no bid that won't be ruled against despite there being no infraction. That is a lunatic way to run a game, and cannot possibly be the intent of the law-makers. I don't think anyone has any real idea what the phrase "could demonstrably have been suggested over another" actually means. How do you parse it grammatically? "Could" suggests some sort of conditionality, but conditionality of what? Trying to establish this from grammar sites (not bridge-related, and without the word "demonstrably") online, it seems to suggest something genuinely likely, rather than something theoretical, and the word "demonstrably" can only be there to strenghen the need for likelihood.

Hestitating isn't an infraction.

I'm not sure whether Lamford's question is meant as a practical or theoretical one. Unless you assume the distribution can be deduced solely from the mean, i.e. Poisson or similar, I don't see that there can be a theoretical answer. In practice, the number of players willng to turn without a partner can vary significantly due to other factors. If someone partnerless is an unsuitable partner (bad-tempered, say, or with early dementia) then other players will stay away rather than risk being forced to play with that person, and the numbers will tumble. Similarly, if the host's name is published beforehand, then players might be more likely to turn up if the host is fun to play with (and try to manipulate it so they partner the host). I used to have an arrangement with a regular partner that she'd host, and I'd stay at home. If she ended up partnerless, I'd get a phone call about 5 minutes before the scheduled start; I lived close enough to be there before the first board was completed. With that arrangement the host always got a game.

Do you think so? It's not a situation I remember ever being in, and there are a lot of options to be considered (especially at pairs - easier to pass quickly at IMPS, I think). From East's point of view, West must have a lot of possible hand types. Maybe it's easy enough for rhe grandmaster types, but as has been said in other threads, Brighton contains a wide experience range.

Am I missing something here? If West hasn't passed, then the auction period hasn't ended. How then can any cards be played? Doesn't Pran's solution require a ruling that West has passed? If so, how do you get there, when West has not pulled out a little green card to make three in a row?

Norfolk club bridge must be much stronger than you think. Ordinary club players round here don't use lebensohl. It doesn't reach people's game (mostly) until they are somewhere near "advanced." (in the BBO sense).

I've watched my partners butcher so many Moysians that, where possible, I avoid any prospect of them like the plague.

If it's MPs, trying to work out the best chance of getting it 2 off?

I'm not sure about that in an English club mainly playing Acol. I think, with a random partner, I'd bid this 1♦-1♠,2♦-3♠, (shut eyes and pray) 3NT. I really don't like this sequence, but I would think it, or something similar, would be much the most common at club level, at least in the bit of England in which I play.

But surely not by nearly enough to compensate also for the times when the TD is not called.

Assuming Eagles is playing weak NT, the 1N rebid isn't available.

Opener's direct double doesn't normally mean penalties. In fact, I don't really know what it does mean, because I rarely see it. (In my own methods it's shape showing. I am aware of one expert who mostly plays these low level doubles as penalty, very successfully, but he's the only person I know of with certainty.) Opener can pass round and pray partner doubles, but you can hardly call that a "method". In practice, people aren't going to risk it being passed out and writing down +90 when they have a partscore of their own. Clearly we are very unsophisticated. However, I find that at MPs you pick up a huge number of points by bidding partscores accurately, and I prefer to keep my low-level sequences accurate (and, therefore, descriptive). I wouldn't be overcalling on the given hand at IMPs, where disasters are more of a problem, but I'll make a lot of small gains at MPs for the occasional bad board.) (To sidetrack this discussion, I notice that very few posters here acknowledge the form of scoring when answering these questions. Their answers are nearly always based on IMP scoring. I learnt my bridge playing MPs in quite a decent club, and all my methods and judgements derive from that. Yes, I do tweak my system when playing teams, but teams is MPs tweaked, not vice versa. Whatever, I am quite comfortable with the way my methods hold up against good players when I play in higher-level competitions than I would usually.)

Actually, I am. I don't know anybody who plays support doubles (as far as I know). This is the thing about MPs. The right bid doesn't depend on "pure" bridge judgement. It depends on where you're playing, what bidding systems are in use amongst the field in general, and who your opponents are. I answered the poll honestly based on my experiences in English club bridge, and (occasionally) better. If my methods fail elsewhere in the world, well, I wouldn't really know that.

I see that it's matchpoints. What has game bonus got to do with a part-score hand? Anyway, where I play, people don't have methods to double here for penalties.

Is this discussion about IMPs or MPs or both?

The trouble with these problems is that you have to know your partner. On Monday my partner picked up a huge 1606 hand, but opened 1♣ thinking it was 1336. Despite her realising what she'd done before reversing into hearts on her second bid, we still ended in 3N rather than the laydown slam. I'd bid 4♠ on this one, assuming partner had done something similar. But that's based on my experiences in low-level club bridge. I've no idea what I'd make of it with a good partner.

A suggestion: Drury is a psychic control if and only if 3rd hand is more likely to psych when playing Drury than when not.

"at my club" is the critical phrase. Most intermediates in the BBO Acol club don't actually seem to play club bridge (certainly, checking real names for English players against the EBU database comes up with more misses than hits). I think you are forgetting that bridge exists other than in clubs. The point at which social players, however able, learn transfers seems to be when they start playing in clubs. This is speaking from the perspective of an English player in an area where, with few exceptions, the only players coming into the game are of retirement age.

From the BBO definitions What else - for players who learned before transfers? Transfers, in my experience, have not reached much social bridge in England. I suspect, without analysis, I see the same thing for Australian Acol players too. I must check a few profiles sometimes. I don't see why failure to know one particular convention, however prevalent amongst serious players, can make one a permanent beginner.