David Stevenson
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That is not quite the same, Stan, by just deleting the score you have changed it to Not Played which is different. You need to put in an average and see what happens.
If you open 1N which may have a singleton then your announcement must say so. If the only singleton you allow is a singleton club then it would be helpful to include this in your announcement. In fact it is only a couple of days since I last played an opponent and when he bid 1N he explained “may have a singleton club”.
When I was young Acol players regularly opened a suit and rebid a low ranking suit with 4-4. Nowadays it has become quite normal for a major followed by a lower ranking suit to guarantee five cards in the first suit and this is a useful agreement. But to have this guarantee partnerships must agree what they are going to do with the difficult case of a 4=4=4=1, ie a singleton club. Opening 1D is my choice, and rebidding 2D over 2C if necessary. My partner and I alert the 2D rebid and tell opponents it does not show extra length.
In view of the fact that many players never open 1N with a singleton and an opening 1D leaves no rebid after a 2C response, opening 1H seems fairly logical.
The host has control over who plays at their table. This control includes the ability to stop one of the players continuing. To “boot them off” is a slang term for stopping one of the players continuing and getting a replacement.
I do strongly disapproved of this. There are all sorts of reasons for people playing slowly online but with the growing intolerance of a certain section of the bridge community there are growing complaints about slowness, often completely unjustified.
This is one of the most tricky questions I have had to answer. The correct way to cross imp a board which is played at one table but not the other is for the cross imping to be done normally at the table at which it was played. But for the other table there should be no scores included in the cross imping whatever. So if 24 boards were played then the pairs at the table where they played it will get the normal cross imp result and their total will be shown over 24 boards. It is normal to show the cross imps per board which will be that total divided by 24.
For the two pairs at the other table they will only get the cross imp result for the other 23 boards, and they will get a total over 23 boards and their result per board will be that total divided by 23.
Note that it makes no difference whether the two pairs at the table where the board was not played get average, average minus or average plus. There is no result added to the cross imps.
The thing that is worrying me and I have been so far unable to find out is whether BBO, RealBridge or EBUScore actually use this method so while I believe it to be correct I cannot be sure that is what they do.I am unconvinced that a 2/1 response forcing to 2N is really Acol because the basis of the system is different. Whatever the Dutch say, 5 card majors are not Acol.
A lot of people make assumptions when opponents bid Stayman and from time to time I have had difficulties given to me as a result in my forum here or earlier in Mr Bridge’s magazine BRIDGE. While some people may have agreements that Stayman shows a four card major and others may have agreements that it shows at least 11 points be warned that many people have no such agreements. So if 2C is bid and described as Stayman do not assume: if you need to know then ask. To give an extreme example, playing Stayman and Transfers if I held
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I would respond 2C to 1N then pass!
Acol is a fairly inclusive system that means you are playing four card heart suit openings and your 2/1 response is not too strong, a minimum of something like 8-10. In principle people play a 2N rebid after 1X – 2W as 15+, though the top end of the range varies.
Acol can include 3 card minor suit openings, 5 card spade openings and all sorts of opening 1N openings, everything from 9-11 to 16-18.
A modern development of Acol has been to play weak (11-14 or 12-14) throughout. This simplifies the choice of opening bid and makes it easy to play 4 card suits for all opening bids. This is the way it is taught now because it is sensible to learn it in a simple way. But there is no doubt that as players develop some players like to look at alternatives and playing different ranges for 1N and the possibilities of three card minors and even five card spade suits do not stop it being Acol. Acol can be played with any two bids.
It is helpful to opponents to give some idea of the basic approach and that is why players will tell you they are playing Acol even though it can be quite a different system from that taught originally.In general the board will be scored as no imps to either side. However there are two exceptions to this.
First, if the director decides that one side rather than the other was responsible for the loss of the board then he would give 3 imps to the side that was not responsible, so in effect the side that caused the loss of the board loses 3 imps.
Second, if the result at the other table was clearly favourable to one side then he can assign a score, in effect giving imps against what he thinks is normal.An example of the second case is this:
Table 1 loses the board through slow play.
Table 2 N/S plays in 6S, a fairly silly contract missing the ace and king of hearts and needing a finesse in trumps and goes 2 off. So they score -200 when the likely result in the other room would be 4S making for +650. If the non offending side were E/W he would give them 13 imps. However if the offending side was E/W and giving N/S the benefit of any slight doubt he might think there was a 20% chance they would also have reached the silly slam in the other room so he gives the offending side 80% of 13 imps (and 20% of 0 imps) which is 10 imps.
On further thought there seems to be a feeling that all you need is to know how many aces opener has. That makes it the perfect hand for Gerber. You could reach 6H off two cashing clubs but so you could on some of the auctions suggested and you are still likely to make it without a club lead. 7H is more difficult.
Let me make a general comment. A lot of pairs decide how to respond to 1N and they may play 3H has forcing. Some people play Texas transfers so 4D shows hearts or even South African Texas show 4C shows hearts and nearly everyone plays ordinary transfers so 2D shows hearts. But it is not always clear whether 4N after these bids is ace asking or quantitative and it is worth discussing to make sure that you and your partner are on the same wavelength.I have always played the 2N rebid as minimum, something like 11-13. But I have not played a 1N rebid in (say) the sequence 1H – 1S – 1N as showing at least 15 points for over 30 years so perhaps it is different for me. I also play a 1H opening as 15+ or 5+Hs (or both). We have a cunning method for 4=4=4=1 hands learnt in the Liverpool area 40 years ago but I am not recommending it here.
I wonder whether Meena really meant exactly what she said. Most people who post these sort of hands actually mean how should the hands be bid. Of course the answer to that depends on the agreement that Meena plays.
There is one thing I would say about the sequences shown which are always very easy to construct when you can see both hands. If you play 1N – 3H as a solid suit it will come up very rarely and make other slam hands with long heart suits very difficult to bid. If you play which seems more normal that 3H is a slam try without necessarily being a solid suit then I am sure after 1N – 3H the rebid should be 3N with a small doubleton heart.
Blackpool specifically may be affected by the change of ownership of the hotel from a top class owner to an owner that cuts staffing to the bone. I have the feeling that the numbers attending the last time before Covid may have meant that was its last year anyway.
There would be no particular objection to making notes and referring to them between hands. Well, I say no particular objection, there are sure to be some people that object but there is no particular reason why they should.
However during the hand it is not permitted to make a note or refer to it except to write the contract and the lead on your scorecard at the end of the auction.
