[gnasher]

---

Matchpoints.

The play went:
♣5 to dummy's ace, East encouraging.
Spade to the 8, jack and king
♣9 to the king
Spade to dummy's queen
♥J to the king
Club ruffed by South.
South cashed his remaining trumps. On the last trump, West threw ♦10. East threw an encouraging diamond, ♣Q and another diamond.
South played two rounds of spades hoping to endplay West, but West cashed ♣2 for -1

Systemically, EW lead 2nd from both xxx and xxxx. On the second round, they play low from an original xxx and high from an original xxxx.

The EW convention card says:

Quote

  Opening lead style: "2nd/4th"
  ...
  Leads
    Hi-x: Odd
    Lo-x: Even

South understood this to mean that the systemic lead from 9532 was the 2. He said that with correct information he would have known that West was 4=3=2=4, and he would have dropped ♦K.

EW argued that the term "2nd/4th" is normally used to mean that they lead 2nd from either xxx or xxxx, and that "Hi-x" means "playing a high spot card followed by a lower one".

South pointed out these sections of the guide to completing the WBF convention card.

Quote

2nd/4th: Second best from short, fourth best from long holdings. (Note: this is NOT the designation for second from a bad holding, fourth from an honour).
...
For example, [if] you lead...
Second highest from four or more small cards: xSxx(+) in the "Hi-x" section

In case it's relevant, here is a discussion of the meaning of the term "2nd/4th": http://www.bridgebas...47-2nd-and-4th/

I was South. EW were Romanian.

[wank]

imo this is the kind of situation where playing these european things you have to expect a linguistic problem and have them right down all the things they might have led from. of course this is rather time consuming, and might be an issue if you're playing the pairs with 2 board rounds.

i much prefer the EBU style convention cards where you just ring what you would lead from various holdings. wbf style convention cards really do have a lot of pointless crap on them - the only things i care about on a convention card are leads, carding and opening bids. who really checks things like opps' nt overcall at the start of a round so they can discuss their defence to raptor? or in the subsequent bidding section, who really needs to check the card to see if your checkback is 2 way, 3 way, 1 way or whatever?

imo RAs should purge all this extraneous stuff which would encourage people to take completing the important bits more seriously.

[nige1]

The score should be adjusted in Gnasher's favour but his Romanian opponents deserve sympathy. After you've grown accustomed to a system-card style devised by and for local people, a new format can confuse, especially with unfamiliar rules for specifying leads and signals. IMO, local people tend to be familiar with local methods. Therefore, system-cards and regulations should be designed with strangers and foreigners in mind. A corollary is that, Ideally, TFLB should specify a simple universal standard format (perhaps allowing for more or less detail, depending on the level of player). Anyway, fewer formats and regulations would save pointless hassle and Amazon rain-forests.