WellSpyder

As a non-TD, I probably shouldn't try to give you definite advice on these, but as far as Fantunes is concerned (your Q3) my approach when playing the system is: a) 1-level bids definitely alerted for the reason you state - they are unexpectedly forcing. b) (Following advice from an EBU TD at a national competition) 2-level bids are announced as intermediate. It is true this isn't a full description of the bid, but that is a possibility with any announcement and oppo can always ask for more info. In practice, of course, we will have given oppo a very brief introduction to the system when they or we arrive at the table, so neither of these should come as much of a surprise to them.

Thanks, Justin. I see what you were getting at now (and I found the final paragraph [EDIT: the one about "another way to look at it] a useful additional way of thinking about it, too.) I must admit I tend not to concentrate too hard most of the time when people get into these sort of game-theoretic discussions since it doesn't seem to have too many implications for how to play the game in practice, but there is no harm in knowing the theory, and maybe I'll take it into account next time I am playing another reader of these forums...

The lack of a response up to now may suggest the novice/beginner forum isn't necessarily the best place for suit combinations. I suspect novices and beginners are reluctant to post either because they expect they will get it wrong or simply because they don't think these sort of problems are particularly relevant to the game at their level, while more advanced players don't want to spoil the problem for beginners. Anyway, here is my attempt at an answer:

Yes, I suppose it is an exaggeration - the evidence linking preemptive bidding and global warming is controversial, even if the others are not.... :)

Is that right? I can see the reasoning for that if you need to establish the suit for one loser (you pick up Jx offside, while playing to 10 on the second round doesn't set up the suit if RHO has Ax). But here you only need to establish a second winner, not the whole suit, so I'm not sure that argument applies.

I think campboy has this right, while your own explanation is very confusing. In fact I think your definition is the one that is back to front. However, this may not matter, since I suspect we all agree with your "in other words". In the present case, there are no hands which would not have given the insufficient bid had this been legal, so your condition is satisfied for any replacement call.

I think you have a point about the effect of the culture in England in general. But I think Trinidad and mfa1010 have explained clearly why the fact that this particular auction is a stop bid auction means that the problem doesn't exist on this occasion. TD to West: "Why did you ask about 2NT?" West to TD: "Because I wanted to give the impression to the rest of the table that I had something to think about." North/South to TD: "So West is helping East decide what to do!" TD to table: "The only UI here is that West understands the stop procedures."

Those are pretty dramatic figures, hrothgar. To look at them another way: - only half of acbl members who earned masterpoints in 2013 were aged 72 or under - only 1 in 5 was aged 65 or under - only 1 in 10 was aged 60 or under - only 1 in 20 was aged 55 or under - only 1 in 33 was aged 51 or under - only 1 in 50 was aged 46 or under - only 1 in 100 was aged 37 or under I knew there was concern about the age of membership of the acbl, but I didn't know quite how precarious the situation was. I wonder whether there is any way we could get comparable figures for England, where I play? My impression is that it isn't as bad as this, but that may be biased because I mostly see the population of tournament players rather than club players.

OK, that makes a difference! (I didn't appreciate this from your earlier description of the system.)

It sounds just as sensible as this strategy against Marmic, to make trap passes over a strong 1♣ and then seek to penalise when responder keeps the bidding open. Do you think Precision pairs would be seriously inconvenienced by this? Some people do indeed pass over a strong 1♣ with a good hand, but that is to distinguish these hands from the rubbish they want to bid with straight away, not because of the chance of a worthwhile penalty.

I can see why having something that worked well against better players might have been a bit of a waste of time for Meckwell.....

Fair enough. But the TD really needs to make some effort to find out whether there is any agreement over the meaning of the double at the time. It is impossible to come to any sensible conclusions about the LAs or what is suggested by UI without forming some view over what the actual auction showed.

Bad luck. But maybe not entirely a system problem. I guess we have all gone down 1 in 3NT before now.....

I would discuss a simple losing trick count. South has 7 losers compared with an expectation of 9 for his first bid, so bidding on seems 100% clear. In fact the LTC suggests jumping immediately to 4, but I agree with those who suggest this is too much and that a game try is more appropriate. North has 6 losers rather than a clear expectation of 7 for a single raise, and 4-card trump support where he might well have had only 3. It is hard to see what not to like about this hand when asked by partner whether or not you want to be in game.

Did gnasher say that? I thought he said it was required so you should do the best you can, but not that you could necessarily succeed!

I play something that I regard as simpler than either of the above. After 1x - 1M; 2M responder bids 2♠ or 2N (the first available bid) to ask. With 4-card support opener rebids 3M with a minimum and 4M with a maximum. With 3-card support he makes any other descriptive bid, including 2N or 3N.

So if asked "do you have a tendency to lead aggressively or passively?" am I supposed to answer with respect to our tendency as a partnership, or my (my partner's?) tendency as an individual? Is it even permitted to have different implicit understandings about such things according to which partner is on lead?

I agree with this in general, but I have a hard time with the implications of taking this to its logical conclusion, bearing in mind (a) that implicit agreements developed over time playing together are just as much partnership agreements as explicit partnership agreements and (b) aren't both members of a partnership supposed to be playing the same thing? I know one or two of my partners have different preferences between alternative leads - for example over the likelihood of a trump lead, or the relative merits of leading (from) an unsupported A or K. Similarly, and closer to the OP, there may be different tendencies in terms of the frequency of passive vs active leads against 3NT. There is certainly no partnership agreement here - in some cases I can imagine quite strong disagreements over the relative merits of different leads. But there is nevertheless some degree of recognition of what partner is more likely to do. is it enough simply to say these are differences in degree not absolutes so there is nothing to disclose? What about recognised differences in the percentage of the time we will deliberately not follow nominal agreements such as deciding it would be less misleading on this occasion to lead the middle card from 10xx even though our standard agreement is to treat the 10 as an honour and lead low? Or the likelihood of deciding this is an occasion on which it is better to lead an honour from KQxx against NT even though our normal agreement would be to lead 4th highest?

Maybe I have misunderstood something now, but does this say what you meant to say? I have always alerted a 3-level response to partner's take-out double precisely because it promises values whereas it would not do so if I weren't playing Lebensohl. It therefore shows something that would be unexpected by an oppo who didn't know I was playing Lebensohl. Isn't that a good reason for an alert?

Do you really need to alert this? Doesn't the EBU accept the divine right of kings?

How many people do you think Mycroft is suggesting use Excel? I didn't see anything in what he posted suggesting a number of users, and I suspect he is well aware that far more than 0.1% of the (relevant) population use Excel. The point as I understood it was that the rest would be just as well off with a different spreadsheet package, not that they actually used a different one.

Oops! Sorry - I didn't mean to keep firing when you already had your hands in the air... Looks like we are actually on the same wavelength for a given set of facts.

How does he know that?? Why should he believe the SC rather than the explanation actually given? For all he knows the opponents agreed to change this part of the system on the way to the event, but haven't yet got round to changing their SC. Are you suggesting that a TD should rule no MI if a player is given the wrong explanation but sees a different one on the SC that happens to be correct? (My own experience when this sort of thing has happened is that I have pointed out to oppo that the SC says something else - I know this gives up on a possible tactical advantage, but I don't see any other way of finding out the actual agreement - and oppo have invariably said something along the lines of "ignore the SC - that is out of date").

Good question! The honest answer is that I think in most situations the important thing is to have an agreement rather than to have the theoretically best agreement, and since this is what my partner wrote in the system notes this is what I play. I can't really tell you why this was his proposal, but I think the default agreement in the absence of Lebensohl would be some sort of natural bid rather than two places to play. We only tend to play the latter in situations where it is entirely clear that you are just competing for the partscore, which tends to be when both players have clearly limited their hand (eg by passing or bidding 1N, or whatever).

Have you discussed the slightly simpler auction (1♠) Double (2♠) 2NT? I think similar issues arise, and in a couple of my partnerships at least this is a recognised exception to our general rule that Lebensohl only applies when you are forced to bid. In those partnerships I would probably assume the same applied in the position raised in the OP and that 2NT was Lebensohl.