WellSpyder

To summarise (most of these points have already been made): Showing 2-suiters via Michaels, Ghestem or whatever relies on there being one suit that you don't need to show. So I think the default approach is to assume that "could be short" minor suit openings are natural, and to exclude that suit from the ones you are able to show, just as you would over a natural minor suit opening. A common alternative over a potentially short 1♣ for those who play Michaels is to keep 2♣ as natural and to use 2♦ to show the majors. Even in this case, though, I would expect the 1♣ opening bid to be treated as natural for the purposes of an unusual 2NT overcall. There is no convenient similar way of keeping a natural 2♦ overcall over a "could be short" 1♦ opening bid, so here 2♦ would still be used to show the majors. It is usual to treat a strong 1♣ opening (eg Precision) differently, with lots of artificial defences available. If you feel you need a method that keeps all 4 suits in play over "could be short" minor openings then you might want to consider your defence over a 1NT opening, where you have the same issue that you might have any of the 4 suits. Some people agree that 2-level bids over a strong 1♣ have exactly the same meaning that they have over a 1NT opening.

Anybody else find themselves reading this with a different meaning of "depose" in mind?

A declarer who hasn't seen that the club suit is not guaranteed to provide 6 tricks (after all LHO could have 10xxxx, rather than RHO) should be presumed not to see the value of cashing Q as the first trick in the suit.

You will probably defend 2SX more often if you play take-out doubles than if you play penalty doubles (because a hand with values but without spades can double, and partner with spades but not enough values to make a penalty double on his own can leave it in).

In England it is quite common (though far from universal) for the bidding cards to be left on the table until the opening lead is faced. If they have not been and I want to ask about the bidding, I will typically ask for the bidding cards to be re-instated. I don't recall anyone making difficulties about doing this.

Where is the UI if the chosen method is consistently followed?

And that W didn't lead a lower C. Or not a C. Or switch at T2.....

I don't see the problem. You have already won the trick, so you aren't accepting a trick you can't win or accepting the score for the wrong number of tricks. Just because the trick will be taken away from you if the revoke is noticed doesn't mean you haven't won it at the point of time that is relevant for the claim.

Well, yes and no. The US's allies are expected to agree with the US on everything, but the US isn't expected to agree with its allies on everything.

This seems rather a good question to me. I assume that in the absence of UI opener can attribute whatever meaning he thinks is appropriate to the IB. But suppose responder said something along the lines of "oops, I didn't see the 2♦ overcall". Now do we need a poll to decide what the LAs for opener are? Without the UI opener might wonder whether partner thought the overcall was 2♣, or perhaps they had an aberration and thought they were opening the bidding, or......

I agree with this. But if had a normal 1N opening available to describe my hand and I thought there was a significant risk that I might be barred on the next round of the auction, I would be very tempted to tell partner what I had by opening 1N, so that he had a decent chance of guessing the best final contract. So I'm not entirely sure that the initial pass was suggested by the UI.

Curiously, one of my partnerships uses 1N - 4N as B/W (or at least, that is the agreement - I don't think we have actually ever used it). Quantitative invites go via 2S.

A classic example of not checking carefully enough came up yesterday. Board 1 NS 4H+1 score -450. That looks OK at first glance. But actually it should of course be +450. Was the wrong declarer entered? Not at all. But the Bridgemates had been set up only to accept the actual number of tricks made, not the number relative to the contract. This became apparent on a subsequent board when the machine refused to accept "=" as the result. But on this first hand it simply ignored the "+" and accepted the number of tricks made as 1, ie 9 less than contracted for!

I agree with Ken that the stats aren't really very well presented. For instance, the death rate was x% higher in the US than in peer countries. OK, I guess that is a comparison with the average of other countries (and we do learn eventually the sort of countries that the comparison is with). I wonder whether the average is weighted by population or not? But I also wonder whether being 57% higher than the average is an outlier or not? The US might not even be worst country on that particular statistic, and if it is (ie the #1 referred to in the thread title), is it only just worse than the second-worst country, or is it much worse than any other peer country?

Law 5B

Why not? (Unless you are using "superior" in some sort of normative sense.) It seems clear to me that there is some correlation between intelligence and income; also between parental intelligence and children's intelligence; and also between intelligence and ability to benefit from a Stanford education. Each of those correlations is a long way from perfect, of course, but they don't need to be completely correlated to support Ken's conclusion.

Who knows? Perhaps RHO might now decide to double the contract?

Yes, I agree PASS probably satisfies the requirements for a comparable call. But LHO could certainly prevent him from making this change if he accepted the 3NT call!

I don't think we are talking about the possibility of raising. We are talking about a 1NT response to 1 heart denying as many as 3 spades.

In England, I would expect that alone to make 1NT alertable, whatever other agreements you have about it.

I think you are missing the basic point that the Dow is much narrower than the S&P, not broader.

Or: 4 Players who wait until the stop card is removed, then ask about the meaning of the bid and start thinking?

I expect declarer to play a card from his hand before dummy leads to T2. Should I assume this was ♥10 rather than ♥5?

Of course you can pay interest by borrowing more money if you want to, just as long as someone will go on lending to you. That doesn't make it costless, though, as you will find out if you try this strategy yourself.

Vampyr, people who have been over to play in the Gold Coast Congress say it is the best congress in the world bar none, so I wouldn't let a few uncertainties about how effective written bidding is put you off.