WellSpyder

Have the red suits been transposed in the diagram?? Otherwise, I cannot see why this is a problem hand...

I have no problems with your analysis there. But of course low interest rates would be likely to push up house prices even if there were no buying-to-let taking place at all.

If you are postulating an increase in the number of houses bought to let out then what you describe is likely to happen. If you are postulating an increase in the number of houses being built, which are then bought to let, then they are not reducing the supply of houses in the buy to live part of the market. My understanding is that Cherdano was addressing the second point.

I don't see any evidence in your anecdote that property markets don't work in the way economists might expect them to. Cherdano pointed out that increasing supply would reduce prices. You quote an example where increasing demand has increased prices. Why can't both be true?

I would like to echo the sentiment expressed by a number of regular posters that I think it would be a shame to lose Paul's SB posts. I can see the difficulty they create for moderators - they are unlikely to be of help very often to ordinary TDs seeking help with practical issues that have arisen at the table. The difficulty for the forums, however, is that such people don't in practice make up the bulk of regular posters, who are actually interested in tricky rulings. Maybe a new forum on "interpreting difficult laws" or something? The extra difficulty in this case is that it is a genuinely tricky situation that might well arise in real life. Frankly, as a player, I am not expecting to be clear what I can or cannot do if I ever find myself in this sort of situation, even though I will, of course, ask the TD to try to make it as clear as possible at the time. In fact I was considering making a tongue-in-cheek appeal for any fellow posters who would like to co-operate in creating such a situation at the table since the chances of both pairs getting a good score after an eventual ruling based on TD error in failing to make the situation clear must be pretty high....

Anyone know the highest number of votes a poll here has ever achieved before unanimity is lost? 50 seems a pretty good attempt at the record...

Yes, I noticed. My wife keep asking me why anybody believes we are going to have a referendum on the EU this time round when we were promised one last time but never had it...

Good forecast! My reading of 50E is that North is NOT allowed to know that his partner has the three of hearts, but that he IS allowed to know that his partner will have to play the three of hearts if North leads a heart (or a diamond). This is, of course, impossible...

I'm not sure I would accept "game try" as an explanation. Is it the only game try available? If not, how does it differ from the alternatives?

Or maybe we have stopped playing auction bridge and finally realised it.

Deleted.

But we haven't been asked what the widgetters should tell their opponents, we have been asked what information the opponents are entitled to! As has already been implied, these don't have to be the same thing. The first is relevant to what we would expect to happen at the table. The second is relevant to what the score should be adjusted to if we decide there has been MI (and presumably also to the ruling about whether or not there has actually been MI, which does not seem to be in doubt on this occasion).

I am in the "no agreement" camp. But this does not feel like sufficient information to me, since it doesn't tell oppo everything that the widget bidders know, namely that they think they have an agreement. The name of this agreement, and the official meaning, are completely irrelevant. But I think oppo ought really to know "we don't have an agreement, but we think we do" (which is, of course, a logically impossible answer to give when asked for an explanation.....)

I understand now why one often sees Trinidad and Tobago being combined. That way, you have a convention that comes up twice as often as either of the individual alternative conventions, with only a minor loss of bidding accuracy....

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion. But are you suggesting West should be bidding 5♦ to make? If so, which of the plus features you list didn't he have on the previous round of bidding?

Of course the rules allow a forcing pass - but it forces partner to lead, rather than to bid.....

I'm not sure there is much more I can say, really - it is not a deeply worked out theory, I'm afraid. It's more a response to the idea that playing a strong ♣ can give you unsolvable problems over big pre-empts. I usually comment that you can't be any worse off than you would have been if oppo had made the same opening bid in front of you before you had had a chance to show a strong hand at all. And of course in that case everyone might have been faced with the same problem, so they would all have had to come up with some solution or other. If you can decide what would be the normal action in those circumstances, it is likely to be an option here, too.... The other part of my comment was simply about how you treat doubles of high-level opening bids. The modern trend, I guess, is to play such doubles pretty much for take-out, in the same way that doubles of slightly lower-level pre-empts are. But I am old-fashioned enough to feel comfortable playing them more as showing transferable values, ie values that should defeat the contract much of the time if we defend, but which should also help partner if he thinks that that makes declaring more attractive - he is only expected to take out the double to a contract that he thinks has a decent chance of making opposite such a hand, so I expect to defend opposite a weak flattish hand for instance.

Being startled may not be regarded as a legitimate reason to hesitate with a singleton, but I would like to see some evidence that the laws do not allow you to think about what you want to do in this situation when you have a genuine choice to make, before accepting the assertion that it is not legitimate to think here.

Oops! Could we have a facility to downvote one's own posts? (I'm happy not be able to upvote them!) Others have done a rather better job than me in recognising that the lead came from the wrong hand at T3. In my view that completely alters the first assessment I gave of this case, and I think N has an entirely legitimate reason to think about whether or not he wants to accept this. Bad luck on declarer if he drew the wrong inference about what N had to be thinking about because he didn't realise N had a genuine choice at this point even with a singleton Q....

Yes, in my view. I know you can argue that playing the K only gains when N has QJ, and he wouldn't have anything to think about with that. But I don't think this is relevant. One thing you know for sure, is that he would have nothing to think about with Q singleton, and once S follows then QJ doubleton is the only possibility left. If you don't adjust here you give players carte blanche to mess around and see if it puts declarer off. So if N was really thinking about what they wanted for dinner, or even the bridge reason of what to discard on the next round of trumps, then I think they need to issue a disclaimer to avoid misleading declarer.

When I play Acol and my partner opens 1NT, I announce "12-14", even though for all I know I might find 1 in 1000 times that partner has a singleton. When I play Fantunes and my partner opens 1NT, I announce "12-14, may contain a singleton" since there are some hands where the system doesn't really provide any alternative on 4441 hands with 12-3 points. Another local pair announces "12-14, may contain a singleton club" since their other agreements don't provide a good solution for 4=4=4=1 hands.

If you play a strong 1♣ you find yourself in this sort of situation more often than those who play a strong 2♣. One of the things I do when faced with this sort of problem is to think about what I would do if the pre-empt had been the first bid of the auction. Usually, I think the same choice I would make then is likely to be appropriate now, though obviously modified to some extent by the greater minimum strength partner will assume I have shown. That means I would double here. I only expect partner to take it out if he has enough shape to think he has a decent chance of making his contract opposite a reasonably balanced hand.

I like VixTD's approach. Obviously you won't get "no agreement" at the table since both players thought they had an agreement, so everyone will rule MI. But it seems clear that there isn't an actual agreement at all, so that is all oppo are entitled to know (though I assume there is agreement that the bid is conventional, so that should be disclosed). If they are told "A" then they will draw the wrong conclusions about what responder has got and could be entitled to redress - I think there is sufficient evidence to the contrary that the presumption in favour of MI rather than misbid is irrelevant. If they are told "B" they will have the wrong idea about what the Widget bidder has got, and could be entitled to redress. "C" forms no part of the agreement in any meaningful sense and is, I think, irrelevant. I would prefer both A and B to be disclosed, and I hope that is what the Widget bidders would prefer, too, but I don't think that can be the basis on which the TD decides on the appropriate adjustment for MI.

I have some sympathy with the 2-way finesse position, where maybe the only thing declarer is thinking about is what he can learn from your or your partner's body language. But in the situation described by OP I don't really see the problem. The only time it matters what declarer does is when you and your partner each have one of the critical cards, and this will be the case when it is right to play the J and when it is right to play K, so how can declarer realistically hope to learn anything from table presence as opposed to analysis of bidding or cards played to date?

This summarises my own view of these situations well. I do, though, have my own, possibly slightly more complicated example to add. (Unlike Lamford's, this is a real life example. I'm pretty sure I have mentioned it before on this forum, but I think it was quite a while ago.) My partner opened 1♥. I thought my hand was borderline between raising to 2 or 3♥. After some thought, I decided on the latter. So on moving my hand towards the bidding box, I pulled out the stop card. This was followed by the 2♥ card! I don't to this day know how this happened, but I can't help feeling it would be a bit of a coincidence if this was a pure mechanical error caused by stuck cards, or whatever. When the other players looked at me rather strangely, I looked down and saw the 2♥ bid and immediately said that wasn't what I meant to do. Director, please.....