Jinksy

Also, what's the policy if they're confirmed? I hope instant permaban?

I just played a hand in a BBO tourney where they couldn't have been more obviously cheating if they tried... what's the easiest way to send it to the relevant people?

MPs, BBO randoms all round the table. [hv=pc=n&w=st74h74d9863cqj65&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1s2c3s]133|200[/hv] Your call?

I'm not sure it is. If I were confident what the best play was I wouldn't have asked :P I can't see anything to choose between them, though. Both seem to lose to split honours with N having at least a doubleton if the wrong honour is in the wrong place and work otherwise.

*head hit keyboard* Right...

Just noticed the vul came out wrong in the OP. It's unfavourable - any other colours I'd think it clear cut.

Maybe, but if P has that hand, the opps are likely to bid Cs, giving P a chance to X or you a chance to overcall. They'll prob find a sac, but they might have done that anyway.

He specified if they lead a ♠.

Why? It doesn't seem like you've achieved anything - you still have three diamonds to play and the ability to ruff the fourth, and you still lose if N has the K♦ and you misguess the J. This works iff S has either honour, right? Small to the 9 then running the Q looks better to me - you win if N has both honours or neither or the J only or stiff K. Y, makes sense. You still lose if S started with KJx, but that doesn't seem very likely now... Which is plausibler? :P

For me it's both. At the table, opening 2S got a disastrous result, and while I realise that's mainly bad luck, I think it's such a poor 10 count that conceivably passing it (playing Fantunes) could be the winning action at these colours. I don't normally loser count, but this is one of the only Fantunes 2-bids I can remember that had 8, and the KQH and JC look ridiculously overrated on Milton-Work. P will be punting game on most reasonably crisp 10 counts with 4♠s - he's also likely to compete heavily over Hs with reasonable ♠s, which might work badly. I'm not talking myself into not bidding it, but was uncertain enough to bring it here.

[hv=pc=n&w=shk8dat432cakjt64&e=skjthqt3dq95cq852&d=w&v=e&b=16&a=1c(Cs%2014%2B%20HCP%20or%20bal%2015%2Bhcp)2h2n4s4np5cppp]266|200[/hv] Three questions: 1) How do you play the D suit for one loser a priori? 2) Does the bidding change your line? 3) Do you agree with 2N by E, or is it too wet? (alternatives are pretty standard - X for TO and 3N)

[hv=pc=n&w=skjt652hkqd72cj96]133|100[/hv] (ETA) rats, I forgot to include vulnerability - it's unfavourable a) Playing a standard system (SAYC for argument's sake), do you open this 1♠, 2♠ or pass? b) Playing Fantunes, do you open 2♠ or pass? To give some context to the latter, our Fantunes 2-bid is '10-13 points after allowing for distribution, with 5+ cards in the suit, but promising a singleton outside if only 5'. So I find a better way to think about it is maybe 'about a point less than a minimum SAYC distribution-based opening bid'. Obviously NV you might take some liberties, but 1st in, vul, we try to keep them constructive. Somehow this hand feels on the cusp of both a Fantunes and weak 2.

I'd want a sense of how reliably P's 2♠ will have 4 to rely on that. As opener, with less than 5 cards in a minor or 4-4 in both, I'd often prefer bidding 2♠ on a three card suit. That means typically on either 33(43), also 3433 assuming not such good Hs that he feels like passing, and ditto on both 34(42)s. Do you think that's misguided? At MPs I think it must be winning bridge - even at IMPs, as long as P's on the same wavelength, it feels like the best strategy. Bidding 3m on some mediocre 4-card suit seems to land you in a Moyesian a level higher (and scoring an IMP fewer even if you make) too often for my blood, when P just felt like competing with eg 42(43). And let's face it, most of us are prone to competing in such positions on shapely 4333s...

Maybe, but I have a hard time keeping track of everything I've seen on here :) Yeah - but this seems to corroborate what I was saying. E must have had a chance to signal suit preference on the ♥s. On the assumption that he could read you for junk in ♦s (easier here if you lead the 10 as top of nothing, though I'm not sure if that's good long-term strategy), he only has two suits to signal preference between. It's still risky to trust him enough to lead away from your actual ♠ holding, but in a long-term partnership, by the time the third ♥ comes to you, you must have been able to signal more comprehensively. For eg, if the first and second cards offer count and the second suit preference, what would be the difference between him playing 4-9-8 and 8-9-4? As you say, when you switch to the ♣, P could still play the J to discourage (or if you trust this declarer to be exactly 5233, he could play a pip). I agree with lamford that you don't want to mindlessly give SP all the time, but assuming this is IMPs, IMO E can see fairly early that there's little other hope of beating the contract than for you to have good Ss (which maybe S's 3N bid hints at anyway, given that he presumably has a few points in the minors for it, not to mention S's failure to touch the suit, despite that seemingly excellent fragment in dummy). I'm in too much of a hurry to try to analyse the defence in depth, and couldn't add much to what others have said even if I wasn't, but I'm just arguing for the general principle that precise signalling agreements with your P seem like they could solve most instances of this sort of problem. Sure, followed slavishly they'll give info away to sharp opps, but theoretically most of the time you can probably read the necessary switch, so signalling is partially a crutch. If your opps are better enough than you on the day that they'll gain more from your signalling than you will, then you were probably never going to beat them anyway :P

I haven't had that problem yet. Surely much of the time after your opening lead is discouraged, you can give suit preference either by continuing the suit (admittedly risky when it might mislead P about your holding, but must be worth it sometimes when you're choosing between pip cards) or by a smith peter later in the play? Can you be more specific? I don't want to google around for a thread whose name is 'similar' to a key phrase :P

Yeah, I didn't think of it as an artificial bid any more than a normal game try is (and, for the record, I thought it was a game try in ♥s). It's just NF, because it's obviously NF no matter what else you reason about it, given that a) P knows you do have the suit and b) you're highly limited. That said, if there's one person in this forum whose opinion I'm going to take as all but settling a bridge issue, it's Justin's.

That's not how I interpreted it. In a major, leading from such a suit vs 3N with no majors shown by the opps seems like the best lead most of the time if you have has much as one likely outside entry. Perhaps against a 1N 2N / 3N type auction you might prefer a passive lead in the other major if available, but with eg xxx KJxxx Kxx Qx and the auction 1N 3N, I'd be pretty surprised if a ♥ wasn't the top lead.

Which card do you lead? My P and I play top of nothing specifically three small, which has helped a bit with this problem - usually it's not going to matter too much to him whether you've led from two or three small.

I hadn't thought about this until now, but one of my regular Ps thought the E hand was worth a 2♣ opening on the grounds that a) it has more quick tricks than losers (one of his heuristics), and b) it's easy to construct hands that would pass 1♠ and make 4 - xxx xxxx xxx QJx, for eg. I'm notoriously conservative when it comes to 2♣ openers, so thought I'd forward the question straight here - how far (if at all) from a 2♣ opener do you consider E's hand?

Surely that hand just passes 1♠? Is it so worried about them competing?

We don't normally allow room for bids in constructive auctions solely to improve the denomination unless both hands are strictly limited and it doesn't interfere with our game bidding. Here 2♠ 'to play' would cost us a game try in ♠s with a potentially 16-point hand maybe (I guess opener could try 2♣ or 2N with a max for his 1♠) opposite a potentially 9-point one, and just for the sake of correcting a Moyesian to another Moyesian. That seems like totally misaligned priorities to me. So I agree with mgoetze - this bid should be a game try (albeit obviously a NF one), and we have a clear accept.

I do appreciate your concern for my bridge prowess, especially given your wealth of knowledge on the system you're criticising.

Vul over vul with a trusted partner, I'd prob venture 2N on E's hand (I don't like 2♥ with a small XX in ♣s, where W's liable to return). On somewhere like BBO, I'd prob just pass and stay fixed.

Partner showed a hand with 4♠s and something resembling tolerance for each minor. Looking at just the N/S cards, do you really think 2♦x is significantly better than 1♠x? On a really bad day, P might only have 2♦s. Even on the actual cards, I'm not sure N/S make any more tricks in ♦s than in ♠s. 2♦ looks like 4 down DD as well as I can read it, and maybe 5 down at the table.

Do you find this happens often enough to be a comparable risk? I haven't played much nonpromissory Stayman compared to the amount of rangefinding I've played, but I've definitely found the easy X of the latter be a constant concern. By comparison I hardly remember any overcalls when I've been playing promissory Stayman, which intuitively I would guess isn't much less likely to suffer them. When they do have the strength to overcall, I'd guess it's reasonably often going to keep you out of a non-making 3N anyway, assuming neither of you is strong enough in their suit to penalise them for it.