gordontd

Why would you even think of bidding 4S with your hand - you weren't invited? Actually the 3S bid can be much more wide-ranging than the 2S bid, which is why you are usually expected to leave it to your partner to decide what to do. I do think your partner should have worked out to pull to 4S though.

Actually I think the double should have the meaning ascribed to it by most of the other responses, without you having to look at your heart length. But looking at your heart length does seem to provide additional evidence for it.

What hand do you think partner could have for this (given that we have three hearts)? What little surprise could partner have?

It's hard to see what point you are trying to make here in this thread.

Yes. Yes - in fact I think you might have gone a bit further and corrected to "it would have shown 0/3 if it were RKCB, but we don't have any agreement whether or not that is the case".

Having looked at the original post more carefully, I think you are correct that this would work (although, like RMB1, I would have much preferred a Hesitation Mitchell, rather than the given movement in which players only play 2/3 or 3/4 of the boards in circulation). However it's not the solution specified in the law book for this situation, and I think a NS pair who seemed to have had a good unopposed auction to the top spot (or were well on the way to it) would be entitled to feel aggrieved if they then lost the board because the director decided to improvise.

NS wouldn't have already played the hand.

Why not? That would be the normal solution.

How is that going to help?

Indeed.

...than thk?

Since it requires two finesses, I'm not sure why you would want to bid it.

More, it does mean you use it in a quite different way from others.

One way is to play that a bid of three of the other major (1NT - 2♣ - 2♠ - 3♥ or 1NT - 2♣ - 2♥ - 3♠) is a forcing raise.

I agree with this. I wouldn't have allowed you to discuss your defence during the hand, but I would have been prepared to consider an adjustment after the hand if you had been damaged, and I would have allowed you some time to discuss a defence after the hand for the rest of the match.

It sounds like your life will be better without that partner.

I can't imagine what prompted you to think this thread was needed! Who would ever think of re-bidding 1♠ (even if they did believe it to be forcing) with four-card heart support? Would they expect to be able to describe their hand better one round later?

Which facts are those?

I don't suppose this helped team morale.

I sometimes fill in a low-stakes rubber bridge game, and one day was partnering someone with incipient Alzheimer's. On the first hand of the afternoon we had an auction in which my partner made an unexpected leap to 6♣ which was promptly doubled. He won the opening lead and went into a trance. Then he confidently led to dummy's ♣A, led back to his own ♣A and went into another trance, shaking his head at the impossibility of making his contract. Finally I could stand it no more, and in spite of being dummy I drew attention to the defective pack that no-one else seemed to have noticed. We cancelled the board and found a replacement pack of cards. "That was a stroke of luck", said my partner. "There was no way I could have made that"!

They weren't illegal, until someone tried to make one.

Maybe a clearer one is when you have an 11-count and your partner opens in front of you. Now you know it's likely to be a part-score hand. Certainly you aren't going to make borderline invitations in such circumstances.

Yes.

What a strange argument for him to present, when the very law he quotes gives the lie to it. Perhaps pointing him to L50 as well would do the trick?

They don't look pre-emptive.