wyman

2C was clearly @ Zel and re: 4522 in the auction 1H-1N

...in most systems. Pretty sure that the "or a vg 5" part is nonstandard. Certainly in every partnership I've played, 2H over a forcing NT unambiguously shows 6+.

I am confused. What I'm saying is that if you hold a 3-card limit raise, bid 4H over 2H. 3H over 2H shows the hand you posted.

2♣; it's clearly imperfect, but it's what we've got. edit to avoid anyone else having the misunderstanding that came following this post: This is in response to Zel's question about 4522.

If partner has an extra heart and you have a 3-card limit raise, just bid game imo.

raise hearts for sure edit: and as above posters have said, 2N is a NT invite.

Not clear to me whether the TD is ever going to give sotm to the people he polls, though it certainly helps the case of the "accused" if he tells the TD at the time what he thinks the sotm is (and, privately, that the opponents are weak, perhaps). The TD can look at some of the boards if he deems it relevant to polling. Maybe this isn't an effective use of the TD's time, though. But my only point is that, for example, if opps had had bidding misunderstandings and gotten to two no-play slams, and the other two boards were both 1N making 1 (1N - AP) for the OP, one of which is down on best defense but OP made it on a dbl squeeze, it should be pretty clear to all involved that OP expects to be ahead dramatically in the match. I would think it reasonable to provide that info when polling. [to answer your question: ideally, you'd just give everyone the hands and results, but in practice this is really impossible and not a good use of time. So I think if there exists a pretty clear SOTM, it should be summarized in the poll.]

Perhaps my lack of understanding then lies in the nomenclature. It wouldn't even occur to me that someone showing a hand with 6-9(10) opposite an opener would refer to their hand as "weak." I'd offer "constructive J/S" as a far better description of that particular treatment. My understanding (which, indeed, is not well-developed) of WJS has always been that it's worth less than a response (or alternately, less than a constructive response). OP's hand, to me, is probably WJS worthy by that definition due to the stiff heart and jack of diamonds, but change it to A109xxx / Jx / xx / xxx, and now I'm far more likely to bid 1S if those are my methods (we play IJS/fit, so they are not). Either way, thanks for offering up an explanation for my misunderstanding; my question was not intentionally dense.

Is there a "how to run a sim" thread somewhere? What kind of software do you guys use? I'm a programmer so this should be easy if there's some off-the-shelf software (hopefully that runs on a linux platform, but I can emulate windows).

To summarize Justin's method in the case of a cue or 3n: 3n always shows a stopper, and a cuebid always denies (that's with or without relay) And "slow shows" 4coM. Makes your pickup partnership Leb agreements really easy. This is what I like to play as well.

I thought that the modern approach was that raising to 3M was ambiguous and wide-ranging. It doesn't involve opener, but if opps bid a game anyway, and opener's hand has changed due to the fit or opps' bid, he can X to show "I would like to sac, but if you have a defensive hand and you think they stepped in it, by all means, let's rip it."

Give partner what he rates to have: ♠xx and 12 HCP in the other 3. On many of these layouts 5C has play. I mean -- if partner has his bid, it's a 30 point deck, of which we have at least 21, and partner's most likely shape gives us a double fit with one loser in spades. I still think dbl to show cards is best, but I don't think 5C is out in left field -- especially absent a "dbl = cards" agreement. I hate east's TOX though.

SOTM should be available to the people that you poll, though, to determine what the LAs are, and if the director didn't provide that info when polling, it would be reasonable to make such a case to the AC.

At the same time, it's annoying when you ask LHO what their carding agreements are (maybe you're getting at something that righty's done), and they say "you have to ask my partner. I was on lead." I understand where you're coming from, and snap-replying "4th best" while concealing a snicker is pretty infuriating. But really, this is a case of LHO making a non-standard lead and it working. But you didn't get MI. Even if the director was inclined to issue a PP to LHO for answering (I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a director that would), there's still no rectification for your side, right? If you're concerned about a CPU, that's what recorder forms are for. That they don't seem to mean anything is another issue entirely. But I'd make a mental note about this player and SB the ever-loving **** out of her in the future.

Reverse with your 15-17 5m4M hands?

2N for me, with the understanding that it can obviously go horribly wrong. I just think it's our best chance to bid a game.

Hi KK, Welcome to the boards. There can be many reasons for a host asking a player to leave: the player's skills or pace don't match the table expectations, the host has friends coming to play, one of the opponents has a regular partner (s)he'd like to play with, etc. Whatever the reason, don't take it personally. As a novice/beginner, if you were able to find a table to play at for an hour or so without change, I'd say you're well ahead of the curve. One more note organizational note: the novice/beginner forum (and the intermediate/advanced forum, and indeed the expert forum) tend to be places where N/B, I/A, and E players (respectively) to post questions about hands, systems, styles, conventions, etc. You might get better responses for something that is this BBO specific by posting on the "General BBO Discussion" board. You can see the full list of forums available at http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/. Again, welcome to the forums. Though sometimes it requires a bit of thick skin, posting hands and questions here is an absolutely great way to learn and discuss the game with some really wonderful bridge players from around the world (who vary in skill from novice to world class -- and I actually mean representing their countries in world open competitions).

"Systemically, I can't determine whether or not partner has a 3rd rd club control, and I'll otherwise need to pick up the Q to make the grand. Also, looking at our first four boards, I thought that we were up already at least 10 imps, and felt comfortable in the event that we missed a difficult-to-bid 7m." This assumes that you can't ask partner about 3rd rd club control, of course.

So playing wjs, 1x-2s is any less than inv hand w 6+ spades? How do we tell Kxxxxx and out from Axxxxx/Qx/x/Qxxx?

This depends on your motivation for awarding masterpoints.

The beauty of our political system is that these people only have as much power as we give them. It struck me when Will McAvoy (a fictional character with whom Winston may be acquainted) spoke of "the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate." Indeed.

Wolff signoff: 3C forces 3D (passable) with 3M now to play. 3D directly would be GF checkback. I'd sign off with this hand with heart shortness. edit: to be clear, I would auto respond 1S with this hand, but I'm not used to having a WJS available, so maybe I'm supposed to do that.

pass, we've said enough already.

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The real point is that we want to normalize out things over which we (and the players) have no control. I think it's interesting that you picked HR totals as a good indicator but reject RBIs. HRs are also opportunity based -- opposing pitching plays a role (but that almost certainly levels out over the course of a season, at least within a division), but more importantly a team plays half its games in its home ballpark. Calling a stat useless just means (I think -- I don't want to put words in your mouth) that you feel that you can use some other combination of stats to extract better information (presumably better information that contains all of the information frpm the "useless" stat). I'd imagine that with enough work, we could render almost all existing stats useless. But that's not the same as saying that we have no ability currently to predict in baseball. For example, RBIs might be a weaker predictor of performance than some other predictor, but they are not completely information-free.