WellSpyder

Thanks for posting these charts, Al. I know quite a lot about the construction of price indices so am well able to understand that it does not make much sense, for instance, to try to measure today's inflation rate by looking at what is happening to the price of items that were the chief components of consumption in 1980. I know much less about the construction of temperature records, etc, but if the charts that you like posting on those issues are comparable to these CPI charts then I know how little weight to give to them.

I know economics "experts" tend not to be held in very high regard by others, but I really think you would do better to take some notice of the more or less universally held view among economists that zero trade deficits are neither a particularly likely nor a particularly desirable state of affairs.

Exactly. In many cases people make up for such a deficit by selling more (their labour) to their employer than they buy from the employer. But if you can persuade people to go on lending to you so that you don't need an offsetting trade surplus with your employer then you are even better off as far as your standard of living is concerned.

I decline. I have no intermediates to speak of or useful honour combinations, making the playing strength below par for the point count. The only factor that makes me hesitate is that I would prefer the lead to run up to my hand if partner wants to play in 3♣ anyway.

That does sound annoying! I suppose 7NT doesn't make? I guess East needs to train his partner to alert next time he (east) makes a psychic call! :)

No, no - you have missed the point, helene. South knew that it would be misleading to overcall 2♥! Next time, perhaps it will occur to him that it might also be misleading to double....

(1) Yes, I pull to 7NT (2) No it wouldn't make any difference if the double was alerted. I would certainly ask about the meaning of a double out of the blue like this if I felt it might be important for my decision, whether or not it was alerted (and even though I know the implications of the relevant part of the EBU regulations). I don't necessarily expect all my opponents to be completely clear on the alerting regulations here, and I can ask without causing other difficulties for my side in the auction. (3) It follows from my answer to (2) that I think it is the SB's attitude to winning the game of law rather than the game of bridge that is relevant here, rather than precise knowledge of the Blue Book.

Or one could argue that any non-forcing 1NT bid "proposed" to play in NT....

Yes, 4♠ may be the only LA if responder has a weak hand. But your original quote seems to imply that the TD said responder should always bid 4♠ because he knows from the lack of an announcement that partner hasn't correctly interpreted 3♥. That is clearly wrong, since as you correctly realise, responder isn't supposed to "know" that his partner misunderstood 3♥ at all.

Ha! I remember the look on my cousin's face when I castled against him when we tried out a friendly game more years ago than I like to think. (Reasonably enough he went off to his father to check that this was allowed.) And then in the next game he made a double pawn move in a position where I could take it en passant - I don't think I had the nerve to make another move that looked like I was making up the rules as I went along..... While on the subject of confusing bridge language, I also remember lending my mother a basic bridge book when she started playing an occasional social game again after a decades-long break. (She had only played at a very basic level in her youth, as will be apparent from what follows.) Unfortunately she got stuck on chapter 1 on card play- "what does it mean when it talks about ducking?"

Curiously, I had exactly this shape yesterday after an opposing 1♠ opening bid, albeit a rather stronger hand! ♠A ♥AKQJ1086 ♦- ♣Q8765. Game all, imps. Would you also overcall in hearts here rather than treating the hand as two-suited? FWIW, I agree the hand is basically single-suited, but I couldn't think of an appropriate number of hearts to bid..... (I was also reminded of another recent thread entitled something like "they stole my 2C opening".)

Curiously, I seem to recall that the same auction occurred at my local club last week when ChCh was visiting. On that occasion, ChCh did indeed have DA and refrained from asking about the diamond cue-bid. But our own equivalent of the SB tried to persuade the TD that this conveyed UI to ChCh's partner since the only reason he could have for not asking was that he knew the answer anyway so he must have DA. So I think at your club ChCh was probably only doing his best not to tell partner what he had by the questions he asked....

Not if he was thinking of passing 3♦, perhaps.

I still don't follow this logic. If he has ♦K then he knows which of ♦A or ♦K south has. But he still doesn't know whether south has actually shown ♦A or simply shown one of ♦A or K.

Faulty argument. Of course he needs to know what N and S know about each other's hands in order to try to visualise what they might be bidding on. Result stands.

It seems to me that the most likely alternative calls South was considering were Pass (in other words his diamonds might be better than his hearts, and he might only have a doubleton heart) or 4♥ (in other words his hand might be better than a minimum).

I don't understand how this case can ever reach a TD in real life. Why would any West other than SB ask for a ruling?

Maybe I have got a bit confused about exactly what we are discussing here, but I'm not sure it is as simple as that. My understanding is that fielded psyches are ruled against on the basis that they demonstrate a concealed partnership understanding, and therefore an illegal method. So the relevant question is "what would have happened without the illegal method?" This means without the psyche, as well as without the subsequent bid that reveals the CPU. If that is right, then I don't think your examples really cover the situation, and it is much harder to work out what would have happened without this method.

Yes.

That's not a defence for overbidding - quite the contrary. If you can make an extra trick you will score a top when playing in game anyway. (I think with a few simplifying assumptions a match point analysis shows that you should bid a slam when the room has a 50% chance of making 12 tricks, regardless of your own chances of making 12 tricks.)

How do you know what would have happened on the board without a fielded psyche?

That is possible, of course, and I do occasionally find the same thing happens to me - though it requires declarer to ignore the recommendation to pause before playing from dummy, and for my partner to acquiesce, too. When it does happen, my approach is to pause and think about dummy anyway. Then I look at what cards others have played at T1. Then I turn over the card I played at T1. And then I start thinking if necessary about T2..... I guess others might complain that this means my writing down the contract after the opening lead is delaying the game just as much as those who write it down before leading. But in the vast majority of cases this isn't true, because someone will have done the thinking they are supposed to do before playing to T1.

I agree. But any player who bids a non-forcing 3♦ before then bidding 3NT without hearing anything useful from partner has also suggested doubt about 3NT via his sequence of bids. So I don't think any particular choice of bids is suggested by the UI.

I wondered that, too, when I first read the post. But if you read the regulation which Gordon has posted you will see that the score is not adjusted if the offending side lose 3 imps or more, so in this context that seems a reasonable interpretation of "losing the board".

While it may be a slightly harsh way of putting it, this is indeed quite close to the assumption I make here. I find it hard to believe that many people think as effectively about their opening lead while also doing other things as they would do if they focused just on thinking about the lead. I therefore also believe that in almost all cases where people write down the contract and declarer first, the opening lead takes longer than it otherwise would have done.