WellSpyder

Teammates didn't average that many points, only around 21.3 per board. But they did have 7 hands with 25+ points between them. And they did very well, with two making slams, 8 making games and just two failing games.

Thank you both! So this will happen about once in every 470 matches, I think. Disappointing, but not that exceptional. Not surprisingly, we didn't bid that many games - and only made one of the three that we did bid.....

Peter, I've got another probability question which your HCP distribution for a pair of hands should be able to answer. What is the probability of a combined pair of hands having 25 HCP or more? (Is the Normal approximation accurate for this question?) Working from this, I should be able to work out the probability of playing a 32-board match in which my partner and I never held as many as 25 HCPs between us, as we did last Sunday....

I think I am with mr1303 here - if I'm honest, I'm not at all sure my lead would differ with any of the possible explanations of 4♠ listed. Probably a heart in all cases since nothing else looks very attractive.

Perhaps we'll all end up just calling then cubes.....

I do wonder about this point - I don't think I have any more idea with my most regular partner than with anyone else what specific difficulty he is facing on any given hand. I have never forgotten a ruling I was involved in when I hesitated before inviting game. My partner had no idea what I was thinking about, and decided he had enough to accept the invitation. The TD (and AC) decided that pass was a LA - as they were fully entitled to do, of course. But they also decided that people apparently more often have strong invitations than weak ones when they hesitate, and my partner would have known if this was true for me, so bidding on was suggested. The fact that I was actually debating whether to pass rather than invite was completely ignored!

Or mark a point on the table and take the one that lands nearest for (a) and exclude the one that lands nearest for (b)....

This is an assumption, not a deduction. There is nothing in the law you quote that prevents it being followed by another one applying specifically to goalkeepers that is quite different from what you are assuming. There might be rules limiting deliberate handling if the previous touch of the ball was a kick by a teammate rather than an opponent, for example....

I am with campboy on this one. We can assume that the goalkeeper is treated differently since otherwise there wouldn't be much need for a rule that only applied to non-goalkeepers. But we can't fully deduce from the rule how the goalkeeper will be treated.

I think I have more sympathy with Lamford's devil's advocacy on this ruling than on many others. If you try too hard to follow a claim line that does not make sense then you risk tying yourself in knots. When the claim statement breaks down (in terms of its linguistic rather than bridge logic) then it seems sensible to revert to how you would rule in the absence of a statement, and in this case that means one down - as it would also mean if RHO had Kx of hearts.

But that misses the point, doesn't it? A player may realise his partner's explanation is correct, and therefore there is no reason to give a correction to the opponents, even though he didn't actually recall this agreement until he heard his partner's explanation of a later call. If each partner explains bids in turn then this misunderstanding will become clear, but if everything is left to his partner then it will not become clear. This means in the latter case that oppo have been disadvantaged by a violation of correct procedure that is apparently not normally punished. That seems to me to be unfortunate.....

So would you issue a PP when the whole auction is explained by one partner? I have heard TDs imply in the past that although it is not the normal procedure there is nothing wrong with it.

Many years ago I had a team-mate who liked to play NT ranges that varied with position as well as vulnerability. On every hand before taking his cards from the board I'm told he used to say something like "we are red, so a 1NT opening by this hand would be x-y and by that hand would be a-b". It used to upset oppo a bit because, of course, they suspected that he was doing it primarily to remind his partner rather than to help them. But nobody seemed to think there was anything illegal about it....

I don't see what difference it would have made if both CCs had said "garbage Stayman", other than perhaps to avoid discussions being side-tracked from the core issue. It seems overwhelmingly likely to me that the pair agreed to play "garbage Stayman", but that one member of the partnership thought that allowed for hands such as the one he held to bid 2C, and the other one didn't. If that is the case, then is clear that the explanation given did not match the partnership agreement, and that is all there is to it. Whether or not there was damage from the MI may still need to be discussed, but that does not seem to have been the cause of disagreements about this ruling.

This somehow reminds of the claim that emigration from Scotland to England raises the average IQ in both countries....

Exactly. That's why I commented on the fact that I don't think we can tell whether the UI is indicating that he doesn't have a 3rd seat opening or that he doesn't have a 4th seat opening.

1) Yes, there is UI that the 1♥ bidder does not have an opening bid. In principle this is true of either a 3rd or 4th in hand opening bid, but I don't think we really know which so I'm not convinced this particular aspect of the UI makes much difference. 2) It is not clear to me that the UI suggests anything very obvious between the choices available to his partner other than keeping the bidding lower on hands that would only be worth game opposite an opening bid. Showing us the whole hand opposite might help us decide whether any LA is suggested over another. 3) It is quite possible that OS have the agreement claimed about doubling with 12+ points in the protective seat. Obviously it would help if this was on their SC, but it hardly ever is.... Arguably there is MI in not making this information available unless requested - certainly I think it should be spelt out on the SC if they have any such agreement about direct overcalls (which a few people do seem to play), but in 4th seat it is normal to play the upper limit for an overcall as somewhat lower than in 2nd seat even though the actual limit will vary (and may not be an explicit agreement at all).

You reminded me of John Mortimer's play "The Dock Brief". In it a barrister tasked with defending someone accused of murder rehearses an argument along the lines of "the victim's heart stopped... so he died of heart failure" before abandoning it as unlikely to secure an acquittal.

I thought the point about being designated a vexatious litigant was that you don't get the chance to win anything in a court of law!

I think it is obvious that declarer intended to draw trumps first, even if he doesn't seem to have considered the possibility that they will break 5-0. It would be a more interesting question without ♠K in dummy since now the club position becomes more relevant. Declarer would probably be expecting to make 4 trumps, 2 diamonds and 5 clubs. But if after drawing trumps he cashes his 2nd diamond trick before playing clubs he will find that the club suit is blocked even though he can pick up the jack with the aid of the marked finesse.

When you are fixed, stay fixed. 4♠ will get you a sensible result most of the time, even though you will miss the best result some of the time. Any other call may well get you a silly result.

I don't think you have to disagree with anything fromage said to find cyberyeti's comment amusing.

How many votes do you think you could swing by saying "It won't be good for the UK, but it will be good for Europe?"

Watching all this from the outside is incredibly depressing. Do your politicians not care at all about how much disrepute they bring their profession into? Are they really naïve enough to believe it will all stick to the other side rather than the whole political process? Or is this just an example of the "we are right so we can justify doing anything" attitude that the US sometimes appears to display towards the rest of the world?

I have always felt that opening 1C to show 16+ in a Precision-style system fits your definition of a utilitarian sacrifice. It is not worth playing because of the 1C auctions, but because of the benefits of removing 16+ hands from all the other 1-level opening bids.