WellSpyder

And to think that sometimes people are tempted to (wrongly) just give the name of a convention because it is shorter than actually explaining the meaning of a bid....

Personally, I think it only makes sense to assume declarer will play suits from the top when he thinks he is winning tricks, not when he thinks he is losing them. Since this assumption is not part of the laws anyway, I see no reason to apply it to the circumstances described.

Yes, I think the prof is providing tuition as well as the tutors. Any form of teaching counts. Tuition fees have been a big issue at UK universities, and are supposed to cover the teaching side of university costs, as opposed to any living costs, accommodation rents, etc.

I couldn't help noticing this example of how American English differs from British English. Over here, tuition is teaching, and it took me a little while to see that people weren't talking about colleges not providing any teaching! (To put it another way, to me "tuition-free" means "free of tuition", not simply "free tuition".)

Really? Who by?

At least we do have a general rule there that means a native Englishman doesn't need to have heard the place name before. Somebody may be able to come up with an exception, but in general when a place name ends in "ham" the syllable is unstressed, and the "h" is not sounded.

That was the point Ken was getting at, I think. You have to know them since there is no rule by which even a native Englishman can get them right if he or she hasn't heard them before.

People moaning about their pet peeves in the "driving me crazy" thread....

How do you apply "until his partner plays a card" to this case? (While playing a hand a couple of days ago I managed to produce an, I hope, rare example of a mis-designation. Playing in 3N, LHO led a ♦, and I held up my ace until the third round, discarding a ♣ from dummy on the third round. Now as I was about to lead ♠Q from my hand to the next trick, I noticed that dummy had one fewer ♠ than I expected. Anyway, there didn't seem to be much that I could do about it, and I made one fewer tricks than I would have done if I had discarded a ♣.... At the end of the hand, when I casually mentioned that I meant to discard a ♣, oppo and partner were clear that I had asked for a spade, though one opponent did mention that I was looking at the clubs when I said it. Assuming that there isn't a problem with deciding that my designation was unintended - which may not have been entirely obvious from the hand, but might have been helped by the fact that I had no real further information to go on at the time that I released my mistake than I had at the time of the discard - at what time does it become too late to sort it out? Is it when I played ♦A from hand?)

[hv=pc=n&n=sq84ha954dk96caj2&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=2dpp]133|200[/hv] MPs. LHO (a reasonably sound bidder despite the vulnerability) opens a weak 2♦. Do you re-open in 4th seat?

I don't think this is specifically a feature of not playing inverted minor suit raises or whatever. What do you expect Acol bidders to respond to 1♠ when holding a 3433 13-count? I think it has always been recognised that bidding a 3-card club suit may occasionally be necessary, but I have never known an opener try to make allowances for this possibility or to alert a 2♣ response for this reason.

While we are on the subject, what about this one 1♠ P P X; 2♥ X? I have one partner who has the clear agreement that this auction, like the other two discussed in this thread, shows a penalty double of spades. Of course, 4th hand can leave it in if he has good hearts for his TO X....

D7 at trick 13 was the second under-trick, so the defender did indeed get a plus score.

I couldn't find the relevant law - I wish my lawbook had a better index. :) Playing a dubious pseudo-squeeze on Sunday, the last three cards in my hand when I led my last trump (♥) were ♦A4 and ♠A. I think it was fairly clear to everyone that I had the aces, but spades had not been played before and LHO had a bit of a problem with ♦Qx and ♠Kx (♦K had already been played, and dummy had ♠Qx). After a bit of thought he made the wrong choice and threw a ♦, with the result that after ♠A and ♦A his partner won the last trick with ♦7. Now, of course, LHO claimed that his discard was a deliberate unblock in order to allow his partner to score the beer card... So who should get the beer?

Towards the end of a recent teams of 8 match, a player opened 1♠ and then found himself wondering whether to make a slam try after partner responded 4♠ (no opposition bidding). While he was thinking about this, at least 3 players at the table, including the player who was thinking, heard a comment from a player at another table who had already finished playing who said something to his partner along the lines of "I expect they will bid the 6♠...." What should happen now? My reading of Law 16 suggests that this is clearly UI. And since the auction has already started it does not appear that the TD has any option other than to allow the hand to continue (though my original thought at the time was that the board might well be cancelled). But this seems to put the opening bidder in an impossible situation if he judges that pass is a LA but that slam is probably odds on. That may be reasonable if the comment was made by a teammate. But should this still apply if the comment was made by a member of the opposing team? Is there something in the laws that I haven't spotted that distinguishes these situations? Or perhaps something in the way that TDs operate in practice? (The incident happened in England, so would the EBU White Book help me?)

Couldn't you have psyched a pass, then?

I started to wonder why they preferred this to "reverse Pi" - then I realised that having a "one" as your most encouraging signal probably makes more sense than having it as your most discouraging one...

I thought you were supposed to explain your agreement, not the meaning of the call... :)

I was wondering whether to pick up on this discussion, but it was the word "arguably" rather than the word "math" that I thought of querying....

I'm sure others have been round the houses on this before, but I'm not sure I agree. I certainly think of 12-14 as a 3-point range. And indeed when discussing NT ladders with at least one partner we have discussed whether it makes a significant difference to devise a ladder based on 2-point or 3-point ranges for stronger hands, eg whether you should be able to show 21-2 points with a 2N opening rather than 20-22. On that basis, 10-15 is a 6 point range.

Our legal experts need to know where you play before answering questions like this since the answer will depend on local regulations.

Fine. But what constitutes suit agreement?? Surely not the 2♥ bid in the OP sequence? For my money, it doesn't really make any difference whether or not 2♦ is GF. Even if you only play it as showing an invitation+ hand, then supporting partner via 4SF by bidding 2♠ now should be F.

There are two conflicting problems being discussed. 1) Playing natural discards, you sometimes have to discard a potential winner in a suit in order to get partner to play it 2) Playing some sort of suit preference discards, you are sometimes in the position that your only safe discard is in your long suit, but you can't discard one and at the same time encourage partner to play the suit. Personally, I have always found (2) to be more of a problem than (1). But I am intrigued by wank's idea that the balance between these two problems may depend on the level of the contract you are defending against.

I once had an opponent call the TD and complain that my partner said "thank you, partner" in an apparently sincere way. She claimed he had done the same on a previous hand and she had mis-defended by assuming that dummy was a pleasant rather than an unpleasant surprise......

But the regulations already tell you what VPs are awarded for a given net imp score. So just apply this for each team, and there is your "actual method".