WellSpyder

Why is that? If anything, I would have thought the opposite since there is less risk of getting too high when partner can pass more freely with a hand that is going nowhere.

Leaping Michaels!?!

I have certainly heard this view expressed about so-called strong 2's (or 2♣ Benji showing an "Acol"-2 in any suit), but I have never heard it expressed about a strong 1♣. Certainly in the case I referred to when kicking off this thread there was no suggestion that the opponents were disadvantaged by any aspect of the bid chosen, including the degree of disclosure. It was simply that they thought they had a chance to get a good score on the board despite going off in the contract actually played. In any case, at level 4 in the EBU it is permissible to play a two-way club in which 1♣ shows either a strong hand or a possibly weaker one, so in this case there is no real issue with the defending side thinking they are defending a strong bid and finding out that in fact it was only "strongish". So how about at least relaxing the rules on permitted agreements for the "strong" element of a "two-way" 1♣?

I know that as dummy I am allowed to try to stop partner leading out of turn, for example when he looks like he is about to lead from hand but should be leading from dummy. What about as defender? Am I allowed to stop partner who looks like he is about to lead to a trick when I actually won the previous trick? (Obviously I could try to do this by leading rather quickly myself, but I might want to take a little more time to think about it...)

You might also want to be aware if you play in England that the regulations around permitted agreements may prevent you from agreeing to upgrade some of the hands that you would otherwise want to - hands either have to have a minimum of 16 HCPs or satisfy the rule of 25, ie the sum of the HCPs and the length of the two longest suits must be at least 25 (there is also the possibility of 8 clearcut tricks, but that is less likely for a marginal strong 1C opener). One suiters (and three suiters) are less likely to satsify this requirement than two suiters. I started a thread in the forum on changing laws and regulations about this (sorry, not sure how to link to it). As a real-life example I held a few months ago, the English regulations would not allow you to agree to open a strong club with Q10x, AKQ10xx,Ax, xx.

Seems like it is easy to come up with reasons why you might not want to do this, but I must admit I am not entirely convinced. The Hog's point about whether or not 1♣-1♦;1♥ is forcing is an important one, I think. I don't play this as forcing since my strong club is actually a two-way club and we need a way of stopping with the weaker hands, and I think the option of including a strong balanced hand in the multi is very helpful. It is all very well to call strong 2N bids "slam killers" but it is even worse if you need to jump to 3N after 1♣-1♦ to show, say, 24-25 - putting one of the ranges within the multi avoids this. I'm also not convinced by the warning to avoid strong 4441s. On some hands you will certainly risk getting uncomfortably high, but at least you will have a fair idea of the most playable (least unplayable?) contract. And, of course, one of the main reasons for including such hands within the multi is not just to help get these hands across but also to rule them out in auctions that don't start with the multi...

If I had tried ranking cards rather than just suits, I'm pretty sure ♣J would have been my 13th choice. Just shows how much I still have to learn about this game....

I know, let's just cancel the final round and then we will have teams in the desired order! Slightly more seriously, I don't think the argument is that the teams WILL be in that order, just that it is the most likely order. But of course if that is the most likely order after n-1 rounds, it is also the most likely order after n rounds.

Much more important to my mind than asking what their agreements about Blackwood would have been is asking opener why she passed 4N if it wasn't to play. If the answer was along the lines of "it doesn't sound as if partner has much to spare so I thought we were probably high enough already" then there may indeed be a case for adjusting the score. If the answer was more along the lines of "4N sounds like it is asking me to pick a suit, perhaps with an emphasis on the minors, and I felt with no suits worth mentioning and a spade stop which I can hold up, that 10 tricks in NT was more likely than 11 tricks in a suit" then I would be tempted to go along with the view that the hesitation did not demonstrably suggest passing.

Which card do you think west should play from KJ doubleton when declarer leads to H9? Playing HK is the only chance to make 2 tricks. I don't think the finesse against HJ is marked and I am not convinced this is what declarer had in mind. I think it is quite likely that he carelessly thought now that his finesse had worked that he could play the rest of the suit from the top.

That may be your only interest, but I don't see why you should should try to impose that interest on everybody else. I consider it a completely uninteresting question since the answer is obvious. I don't object to the ruling you are proposing, indeed I have already stated that I agree with it. But I consider it ridiculous to compare a suit of AQxx opposite J with one of AQx opposite KJ. If the suit had been AQxx opposite Jx then I would agree that it is unnecessary to consider the possibility of declarer blocking the suit, but with the actual suit given it certainly seems a more reasonable question than considering whether we should allow declarer the chance to ruff the last heart.

So do I. In fact, I think the real question is whether the defence gets 1 or 2 tricks. If declarer plays spades from the top and then hearts from the top (which arguably is the most plausible interpretation of his claim statement) then S gets 2 heart tricks.

Well I guess I would ask N why they bid 3D. But I cannot conceive an explanation that would stop me adjusting the score, and surely if there was ever an example requiring a PP as well as an adjusted score then this is it?

Disagree. You are right in theory, of course, that his holding may affect his view of the problem LHO will be facing, but most of this judgment will be based on the auction to date. Everyone knows which auctions are likely to be tempo sensitive where they would prefer LHO not to convey UI by the length of their pause.

It seems to me entirely reasonable (as well as being clearly within the laws!) for RHO to want to draw attention to the irregularity but to want to leave it up to his partner to decide whether or not the lead should be accepted.

We have now made the same agreement. And I can understand your unhappiness if opponents do not follow the regulations so carefully. It is precisely because I think the current regulation is in danger of putting those who try to follow it at a disadvantage, that I have suggested in this thread that it ought to be changed (and also because I don't think opponents would have any more difficulty defending against a strong minor if a little more judgment were allowed - most of them seem to relish the chance to bid over a strong 1♣!).

A good point! I wonder which??? :D

As far as I can tell, the requirements for a strong-only 1♣ and the strong option of a two-way 1♣ are identical at level four, so this shouldn't have anything to do with it. Indeed. I used to play Precision, and still do in level 3 events (where a two-way club is not allowed), and it is clear that we need to be just as careful about upgrading hands to a Precision 1♣ as we do to a two-way 1♣. This must be a common problem for Precision players which is not faced by Acol players since the regulations on upgrading hands in Acol are much laxer than in Precision. (Yes, I know the same rules apply to 2♣ in Acol as apply to 1♣ in Precision, but since that is normally a significantly stronger hand, the likelihood of the regulations preventing good judgement is much less.)

Of course - there is a reason I posted this in the forum on changing laws & regulations! I do think the current regulations are unfairly damaging to people who want to play a strong club, and should be changed. But I have no intention of failing to follow the regulations we have at the moment. It might be worth reminding people of a point made in one of the other threads on similar issues that this does mean that those who are aware of the regulations are likely to be at a disadvantage compared with those who are not, since those not aware of just how restrictive the current regulations are will simply rely on judgment and may well decide to open 1♣ on a hand that is worth 1♣ even if it is outside the scope of permitted agreements.

I think this hits the nail on the head. It does seem unfortunate that the effect of the regulation is almost to rule out any judgment in this particular area of a very common system, while most aspects of every other system are left open to judgment. I've just learnt that at least one other strong club pair opened the same hand 1♣, and it wouldn't surprise me if there were others (though I don't know how many of the 16 or so pairs holding this hand will have been playing a strong club). These are not pairs who are constantly trying to push the boundaries of what is allowed, but simply ones trying to apply a bit of judgment to something that has been played for decades.

As I understand it, the current EBU regulations regarding the rule of 25 were devised in the context of the Benji 2♣opening, where there was concern that a bid described as strong was being made on hands that might have 8 playing tricks but were really pre-emptive hands, and that the misdescription as strong was unfairly deterring opponents from competing. The same restrictions have been placed on an artificial "strong" 1♣ opening. I wonder whether anyone sees any merits in regulating strong 1♣ and 2♣ bids differently? I can tell you from experience that very few people are deterred from intervening over 1♣ as a result of it being described as strong! (Indeed, one of the reasons we play 1♣ as two-way, including a weakish balanced option, is to alter the potential costs and benefits of random intervention.)

That's how it's always seemed to me (that's what the word "minimum" means), and I've been surprised that others have taken a different view. My problem (which I think the AC in this case accepted, too) is that you cannot define the strength of a hand purely in terms of HCPs and the length of the two longest suits. If you are going to deny any use of judgment, it would at least be helpful to define the minimum in terms that are a bit closer to describing the strength of the hand. Would you regard an Acol player as guilty of MI if they described the jump rebid as showing 16 or more points if partner opened 1♥ with ♠Q106 ♥AKQ1054 ♦A8 ♣84 and then rebid 3♥? I wouldn't, since I think the hand IS worth at least 16 points.

Why? You have admitted earlier in your post that your partnership already has an implicit agreement to upgrade "good" 15-counts. Because we currently have no agreement about which "good 15 point hands" are worth upgrading! I told the director and AC that we had an implicit agreement that some 15 point hands were worth upgrading because I believe in all my partnerships that there is an implicit agreement that point counts are a guide only for all bids, not a strict requirement, and it would have been unfair to the opponents to try to pretend that any upgrading was entirely unexpected. It seems to me that under current regulations we should probably be a bit more explicit about this, eg perhaps our convention card should describe the strong component of 1♣ as "16+ unbalanced, 17+ balanced (shapely 15 counts or occasionally 14 counts may be upgraded if justified by playing strength and the hand meets the rule of 25)". Of course, it might then be argued that we have only written the agreement this way to get round the rules, but I would be happy to base our bidding on such an agreement, which in effect is what I think we have been playing anyway. It remains the case, though, that there may be exceptional hands that I believe are worth upgrading that do not fit this agreement (and I think ♠Q106 ♥AKQ1054 ♦A8 ♣84 is probably a better example that the 4054 hand). Although I do not have it in front of me, I seem to recall that there is quite a bit of advice in one of the standard texts on Precision (Rigal's Precision in the 90s) on upgrading hands with less than 16 points and I am sure there are examples there that would get a Precision pair into trouble under a strict interpretation of the current regulations. It does strike me as unfortunate that such a widely-used book is apparently about an illegal system.

I do not envy anyone tasked with explaining to ordinary players that they should not discuss their choice of bids in these areas with their partners! :rolleyes:

Recent posts on the rule of 18 (EBU) and opening 1N with a singleton (ACBL?) have highlighted what I regard as a real problem with how certain permitted agreements are regulated, summed up in the view that you can exercise your judgement to open certain hands in a certain way that falls outside the permitted agreement, but only if your partner would not expect you to do it with the hand you hold (since that would then suggest an implicit agreement that was not legal). My own recent exposure to this occurred with a two-way 1♣ opening. I play this with my regular partner as either a Precision-style strong club or 11-13 balanced with at least one 4-card major. The strong variety is defined as 16+ unbalanced, or 17+ balanced, but we also have at least an implicit agreement that some hands with less than 16 HCPs may still be worth a strong club opening. We have never agreed the exact conditions for upgrading such hands, but they obviously include the normal things that any real bridge player would take into account in valuing a bridge hand, including suit quality (honour distribution and intermediates) and shape. So far, so good. However, the EBU regulations on permitted agreements insist that the strong version of a two-way club must by agreement satisfy the "extended rule of 25" - essentially in this context any hand without 16 HCPs must have a total of at least 25 when you add the HCPs to the length of the 2 longest suits (it is also OK if you have 8 "sure tricks", but that is less likely in this context). As it happened, my partner chose recently to upgrade a 15-count with 5440 shape, reasonably enough considering this was a significantly stronger hand than a 5422 shape with the same honours would have been - although both would only meet a rule of 24. (I am not sure I would have made the same judgement with his hand, but that is his perogative.) The opponents argued that this implied we were using an illegal agreement and sought an artificial score on the board. The director agreed (though an appeal committee did not). The particular merits of this case are less important to me than the implications for the future. I don't think I have upgraded a 15-count for several hundred boards with this partner, but sod's law intervened and only a few boards latter I picked up ♠Q10x♥AKQ10xx♦Ax♣xx - only a 15-count, but an excellent hand, surely, and worth more than the majority of 16-point hands. Imagine my horror, then, when I realised it did not satisfy the rule of 25. In theory I could still open 1♣ and argue that we had no particular agreement to upgrade such a hand, but what if my partner's judgment agreed with mine that this hand was indeed worth 1♣? In the end I took the coward's way out and opened 1♥ instead since I did not fancy another artificial score against us. But I feel there must be something wrong with a system of regulation that effectively denies a partnership the use of judgment if they happen to broadly agree on how to exercise that judgment! As a further example of the contortions this form of regulation imposes on players who are only trying to play a decent game of bridge by exercising some judgment I might add that I would not have dared post this if I thought my partner took part in this forum since this might be taken as creating an implicit agreement. What a mess! Anyone got any ideas of a better way of handling this aspect of regulation?