WellSpyder

Strong with clubs, anyone? I know strong jump shifts are pretty unfashionable these days, but they are still the default treatment in England for those who have not discussed something different, and I don't think the utility of this particular treatment is affected much by the limited nature of 1M.

I am impressed by your certainty on this point. I accept that among the better players this can be taken for granted. But in an ordinary bridge club in England, I guess the majority of players have no understanding at all of the principles behind p/c bids and indeed have probably never heard of them.

Personally, I don't think it actually does show willingness to play in the denomination named. It only shows willingness to play in that denomination if partner has that suit. As such, it is quite different from giving preference when partner has shown two suits.

Indeed. I've always been led to believe pass or convert bids should be alerted as artificial.

I agree - but I usually get the impression that this is a uniquely British approach to rules! (I'm reminded of an incident at the club earlier this week, when a lady used to playing in the US was extremely indignant at being expected to follow a rule she considered unnecessary - "only in England would this happen", she moaned to her partner, as if it was completely unreasonable to expect the game to be played by the rules.)

Do you???? Seems like you are trying to show a lot of different things with only a very limited number of bids available to do this, eg 3♠, 4♣ and 4♠. Are you prepared to lose alternative meanings for bids like double and 3N to increase the definition of your raises?

Assuming you mean North here, I don't know how likely it is. NS have been playing together for years, and still haven't agreed whether 2♥ is forcing or not in 1♣-X-1♦-1♠-2♥. Yes, sorry, I meant N not S. I'm not sure how comparable your example is, but if it is reasonable to assume that S would not expect N to be thinking of doubling 2N then I think there is a good case to be made that the UI does demonstrably suggest passing over the LA of bidding 4♠.

I agree with Lamford that 4♠ certainly looks like an LA to pass. What is demonstrably suggested by the hesitation? Of course, we can't know what alternative to 3♠ N may have been thinking about. My first thought, though, was that surely pass was by far the most likely alternative in N's mind, in which case the time needed to decide between pass and 3♠ certainly suggests passing now rather than raising to 4♠. On second thoughts, though, I wonder whether S could have been thinking of doubling 2NT instead? Is there any evidence of how NS would treat a double here? If they can show that a double followed by bidding 3♠ over 3♥ would be stronger than a direct 3♠ over 2N then hesitating between doubling and bidding 3♠ would demonstrably suggest raising to 4♠ rather than passing. If this is how they play the double, therefore, I don't think the hesitation demonstrably suggests either LA since S doesn't know what N's alternative choice would have been.

Well that's the point, really. I'm not convinced anyone really plays bridge like this all the time. SOME players will ALWAYS make the "lazy" discard of a spade, and ALL(?) players will SOMETIMES make the "lazy" discard of a spade. So Justin is surely right that in practical terms a reasonable declarer will be more or less bound to get this right if we pitch a spade and partner (perforce) pitches a heart.

I agree with Jeffrey that the EBU use of the term "dual meaning" isn't really any better protected from semantic confusion than the apparent ACBL use of the term (you could, for example, argue that a McKenney/Lavinthal discard had a dual meaning - both "I don't want this suit" and "I do want the higher (or lower) of the other two suits"). However, I also think that in practice it is easy to recognise what the EBU is referring to when you see it. In my mind it is easier to think about it not in terms of how many meanings are assigned to playing a particular card, but in terms of how many aspects of the card played are assigned a meaning - if both odd/even and high/low are involved in assigning the meaning then you have a "dual" signalling system.

Simplest to forget the order or exact cards played by RHO. There are 3 doubleton honour combinations he could have held and one tripleton honour, so the third-round finesse is 75% on to win.

I was a little surprised looking at the results to see what a high proportion of declarers made this contract. If I've read them correctly, 7 out of 8 pairs in the top division bid to 6♦ and 5 out of 7 declarers made it. In the second division 4 out of 8 pairs bid the slam and all of them made it (including my partner, after a double of Stayman). Looks like a lot better than a guess, somehow...

Would it make any difference if the 1♠ opening was limited by a failure to open a strong club? My partner bid 4♠ with this hand and I was quite impressed with his enterprise....

I know that feeling.... But curious, when the title implies that the ruling comes from an EBU Swiss Pairs competition, not a club event.

I've had a similar auction against me from a strong pair. The bidder had a 6-6 with good playing strength and felt the hand would be hard to show if he opened the bidding. Seemed a sensible meaning to me, but his partner was not on the same wavelength.....

Possibly. But "if you get caught stealing you have to give it back, if you don't get caught you can keep it" doesn't sound like much of a disincentive to steal to me.

I was struck by this on re-reading the older parts of this thread. I very much hope it does NOT work out exactly like that.... Dedicated readers may recall that my club has not been allowed to affiliate to the EBU this year, because we do not hold sufficiently regular club nights - indeed, we have for a while held only very occasional club nights. The good news is that we have now been able to organise a regular monthly club night at which a number of teams will be competing for an annual trophy. (This will, of course, be duplicate bridge, but it will be duplicate teams bridge not duplicate pairs bridge. The club was originally formed by a group of people who felt that teams bridge ought to have a higher profile amongst all the the matchpointed club nights around.) The less good news, perhaps, is that this will of necessity all be part of the unregulated game since we will still not be meeting regularly enough to satisfy the EBU's definition of a "club" - hence my hope that the unregulated game does not wither on the vine... It might also be worth noting that absolutely everyone who has entered for the event is already a member of the EBU - but they are willing to take part in an event outside the auspices of the EBU because we can offer a higher standard of bridge than most affiliated clubs. I don't think anyone gains from the club not be affiliated (although the monthly club nights are of course slightly cheaper as a result of not being subject to a pay to play levy) but I should stress that it is nothing to do with the club's wishes that we "remain in the badlands rather than coming on board".

True, but don't they lead unsupported kings even less often?

I think this primarily reflects a different philosophical approach to the laws. It seems to me that your approach is that the laws should be a coherent and consistent framework that provide an unambiguous answer to all potential questions that might arise, and without putting players into an impossible situation. I agree in theory. Indeed, I think this is entirely logical and intellectually an unassailable position. It seems to me, however, that the Cult of the TD reflects the view that: "Yes, in principle of course we ought to have a fully coherent, consistent and unambiguous set of rules. However, in practice that is extremely difficult (maybe even impossible) to achieve. So what really matters is a set of laws and interpretations that allows us to handle satisfactorily the situations that might actually arise at the table without TDs or players feeling they are being unfairly or arbitrarily treated." If that is all that can be achieved, I don't feel as a player that that is so bad.

Anyone remember "Tickets to the Devil" by Richard Powell? I seem to recall the lead of a singleton K resulting in divorce....

I totally and fundamentally disagree. I regularly play in some pretty low-standard club duplicates packed with beginners and social players who need to look-up the score for 4♥+1 and I have never in my life seen a player consult the scoring table during the auction. Looking at the scoring table during the auction is about as overt as one could possibly get in terms of breaching Law 40C3(a). Actually, I don't think you are disagreeing at all! Peachy's point was that most players use knowledge of the scoring table during the bidding in judging whether to sacrifice, double, accept a push or whatever. That doesn't mean that we look at a scoring table in order to get the necessary knowledge since experienced players have a pretty good idea of the scoring table without looking it up! So there is nothing contradictory at all in saying that using the scoring table is using AI, but that looking at the scoring table is a prohibited memory aid.

This does not seem right to me. There is no information conveyed if an alerted call is ALWAYS asked about, and there is no information conveyed if an alerted call is NEVER asked about. If neither of these is the case, then there will always be information conveyed when the bid is asked about and equally when it is not asked about. And surely such information is always UI in both cases? That does not mean that it necessarily causes a problem, though.

I'm interested to see that no-one has discussed the possibility of doubling and then bidding 3♦. Don't people who play 2♦ as forcing use this as a way of showing a hand too weak to bid 2♦? Or do people simply think it is not worth committing to playing at the 3 level if you can't do that immediately to jam the opponents' auction?

You don't seem to have had an answer to this yet. As another British poster, I would suggest that very few British players really understand anything by either Drury or reverse Drury - quite simply, no-one plays it here. (No doubt there are one or two exceptions among those brought up on the other side of the pond, but I haven't encountered any.) It is odd how conventions that seem essential in one part of the world can seem completely unnecessary elsewhere....

Sure - I agree that would have been a much closer scenario to the one I mentioned. (Was it one of Victor Mollo's characters in the Menagerie who said - in the context of hogging the bidding - that it was as well always to have a reason for your bid, such as "I wanted the lead to come round to my ♥AKQ", in order to avoid partner being upset by realising you didn't trust their declarer play?)