WellSpyder

Well I wish you had asked me to explain my thinking, then! In fact I find this quite an objectionable statement given that I made clear at the appeal that this is what I was thinking about and no-one asked for any further information about why I was considering this. The NOS certainly accepted that the north hand was a minimum invite.

I don't think I feel entirely comfortable doing this, but I can certainly say that I have absolutely no complaints about the composition of the AC. Apart from lamford, who has outed himself, the other 2 members of the AC both have considerable international experience and have played on many occasions in Division 1 of the English Premier League.

You and everyone else who has commented apart from lamford, I think. Indeed. At the time I was genuinely baffled as to how anyone could think bidding on was suggested when my hand was minimum for the invite and partner's hand was arguably maximum for his 2♦ bid. But if the AC simply didn't accept this and thought my hand was a maximum invite while partner's was a minimum acceptance then the decision is much more understandable. For those who see it the AC's way, though, I would suggest imagining the south hand with ♦A and a low ♦ turned into ♣s instead. Now you can see why south's hand was so much better than it might have been, and why north was initially unsure whether to invite or not.

Do you mean on a different North hand? Or a different South hand?

Thanks, VixTD, that is helpful to hear. The result of the appeal starts to make a little sense to me if the AC have chosen to rely on your statement that a couple of the people you polled said they thought 3N was suggested. I think it is slightly unfortunate that the AC should choose to do this, since the whole point of an AC is that they have much more opportunity to get to grips with the nuances of the auction than those polled by the TD will have, but if they were undecided otherwise then I can see the attraction of using this aspect of the poll. (For future reference, is there any reason why you only asked those who were undecided about what they would bid what they thought a hesitation would suggest, rather than also asking those who knew what they would have done?) One other thing that I find slightly curious - though I don't see really see how it can be avoided - is the juxtaposition of on the one hand relying on the views of those polled about what is suggested with on the other hand lamford's argument that you can't actually say in a vacuum what is suggested but you can nevertheless assume that something is suggested for any particular pair.

There seems to be a curious misunderstanding here of how appeals are conducted in England these days. The players rarely get to state anything on an appeal form, and indeed NS on this occasion never even saw one. It is true that south clearly felt that pass would have been a very poor bid, and perhaps the second-best alternative to 3NT would have been 4♦. But as we made clear in response to a direct question from the AC chairman, the basis of the appeal was that if anything was suggested by the UI it was pass rather than 3N. You were very clear at the appeal that 3N and pass couldn't both be suggested by the hesitation, but it seems to me that you are suggesting that in practice they can indeed both be regarded as suggested.

I wonder just what extra values you are seeing in the North hand? Partner has already shown 11-3 balanced and denied a maximum with a diamond fit. The only alternative to 3♦ that I thought was worth considering was passing, as I made clear at the appeal and was accepted by the NOS. I do think if the AC felt they should disbelieve this disregard this as a self-serving statement then the least they should have done was ask me to explain why I thought I had a minimum invite. As the discussion went, it seemed that everyone accepted this. With anything more, partner would have bid 3♦ on the previous round! And as Trinidad said earlier, fit can matter more than points. As my partner explained, he can "see" 6 ♦ tricks (he expected me to have K to 6 rather than Q to 6) and ♠A, so he only needs 2 more tricks from me from a likely 7 or so points outside these 2 suits to be able to count 9 tricks, despite ♠Q being of little value. And the two unguarded suits are less significant when oppo are likely to lead spades. The NOS suggested that since my partner chose not to break the transfer to 3♦ on the previous round then he had no reason to change his mind on the next round. But that seems completely back to front, to me. If you are on the dividing line between two bids and choose to go for the weaker one, surely it is routine to accept a subsequent invite???

Is that independent of what responder actually has for his 3♠ bid? So you would adjust for a successful non-obvious 4♠ bid that turned out to be opposite a 2.51 ♠ bid, or for a successful non-obvious pass that turned out to be opposite a 3.49 ♠ bid? It is one thing to argue that you should adjust if opener apparently correctly reads which of 2.5 or 3.5 spades responder has, but it seems incredibly harsh to adjust when opener makes a decision that apparently misreads which responder has but still turns out to be successful! That really does seem to imply that you are completely stuffed as soon as partner hesitates.

I had a similar decision last night, holding ♠J852 ♥KQJ42 ♦975 ♣7 opposite a 15-17NT (imp scoring, love all). Like OP, I tried 2♣(Stayman) and heard 2♠ from partner. Would people just blast this one as well?

LOL. Personally I feel aggrieved that N-S should have had a good board taken away from them here! I was north at the table. I agreed that I had paused for thought over 2♦ (my partner hadn't noticed) because I was aware that I had been wondering whether to pass. In the end I felt that the possibility of a vulnerable game at imps still existed and couldn't be ignored. My view about the ruling was that partner couldn't possibly know what I was thinking about here, and if by any chance he did guess that I was considering passing then surely that would suggest he should pass rather than bid on. In fact I was 90% confident that the ruling would be in our favour. When it wasn't, I was 95% confident that we would win the appeal! Clearly I need to do something about my confidence levels. (Those involved in pre-project appraisal will be familiar with the concept of optimism bias....) Hopefully I will learn something when the AC's write-up of the case becomes available (though I don't suppose I will see this for several months), because whether or not one accepts that pass was a LA, I have still heard nothing to suggest that the UI suggests bidding on. In fact, my partner and I suggested to the AC that if he had passed then he might have been accused of using the hesitation to decide that I only had a marginal invite and that therefore he should pass rather than bid on. So the NOS could argue after a pass that we should have been in 3N, which they would obviously have taken off with a club lead.... One member of the AC did respond that both pass and 3N couldn't both be suggested over the other, so I await with interest their reasoning that 3N was the bid suggested.

Errm, doesn't that rather beg invite the question of what you do if partner does bid 2♦?

Two small clarifications on the NS system: 1) The 11-3 balanced option in the 1♣ opening always includes at least one 4-card major, so the information in the 2♦ bid was that opener had the weak option, not that he additionally had a 4-card major. 2) With a maximum weak NT and a good ♦ fit, south also had the option over 1NT of "breaking the transfer" by bidding 3♦ rather than 2♦, so he has already denied this possibility.

He already told us that:

I don't think Jacobs recommends rebidding 3OM with 15-17 points and 5M + 4OM (though I don't have the book with me at the moment). My Fantunes partnership rebids 2D after 1M - 2C with this shape with 15-7 points as well as other ranges, and keeps the 3OM bid for hands with extra shape as well as 15-7 points.

I think I've missed something somewhere. Why didn't you lose 1♥, 2♦s and a ♣?

The question is prompted by two hands that came up in a county match at the weekend (imp scoring). Both were first in hand: 1) Green (NV vs V) ♠53 ♥1032 ♦52 ♣KJ9853 2) Amber (V vs V) ♠Q104 ♥65 ♦K1098642 ♣7 (Weak 2 ♦opening not available.) I was intrigued to see all 4 possible choices between bidding and passing on the two hands being chosen at different tables. What would your approach be?

And did LHO know that? Presumably not. So what was false about his explanation?

I do not think pass is suggested by the UI. Whether 2S is suggested by the UI is slightly less clear, and I might need to ask West whether he has any agreement with his other partner about what partner's pass over the redouble would show here, but I don't actually need to decide whether or not 2S is suggested to be able to rule that the result stands. (If that rubs up SB the wrong way, so be it....)

"Encouraging"? (You're encouraged to respond knowing they are intermediate strength rather than weak.)

How about SONNET with "nebulous NT" for the central portion? EDIT: Maybe you need a better "E", too - "expansive" could easily be read as "expensive" at a glance....

I think you would have to drop the "notrump on" bit and just call it "Air Force 1"

Is it ethical to do this if you are hoping the finesse will lose?

2♣, for the same reasons as rmnka447. I think nigel was serious generous with his score for 2♦ on such poor shape.

FWIW I play a strong-club system with what I thought were light openings, but this is nowhere near a 2nd in hand vulnerable 1♠ opener for me.

Yes, we could all have a go at that to avoid bidding prematurely. Vampyr's point, though, is that it is a lot tougher to do that if you are actually also trying to decide what or whether to bid.