Gordon Bennett, Brian. Imagine you are North, but we've rotated the hand diagram by 180 degrees. Who is [still] sitting on your left?   In the hand diagram, East is at the extreme left of the hand diagram, not at the top of it. Good grief.

The way the hand diagram appears on my screen, WEST will STILL be sitting on my left. - that's unless you mean that the axis of rotation is in the plane of the screen, of course, which seems rather unlikely.

I sent you that screenshot.

Brian, West (unseen) is Declarer. East (Dummy) sits on the left of North (Eszter), who was on lead against 4 . Eszter led the 8 through Dummy's AQ. I don't think there's anything wrong with the layout or the account of the hand.

Well then we need someone else to look at the hand diagram (I'm not talking about the .LIN file!), because it certainly appears to me that you have North seated on East's left, not vice versa as you correctly state should be the case. I will e-mail you a screenshot of how it appears on my screen on request. 

I'm talking about the position of the hands as shown below the text "You try the lead of the 8 and Dummy puts down"

                                     North
                                      AQJ1063
                                      J874
                                      8
                                      105

West                                                        East
  875                                                       
  AK6                                                      Q109532
  KJ2                                                        AQ10953
  K762                                                      3

                                      South
                                        K942
                                       
                                        764
                                        AQJ984

I chose to pass because the hand seemed to strong to open 2 , seemed to weak to open 1 (9HCP & fragmented suits), and to my regret did not even consider opening 1 (playing strength).  We ended up in 5 making 6.  The hand is difficult to bid after a pass or 2 opening.  Rather easy to bid with a 1 or 1 opening.  Of the 26 teams that played the hand 9 teams ended up in 6 .  Appreciate other comments from this seasoned crew....

As a matter of principle, I've always refused to believe that there's a gap between a 1 and a 2 opener. Given that, my choice is easy. 1 it is, and then bid  until the cows come home (or partner gives preference back to  ). I expect competition in  so I want to get started on my suits, 1 isn't an option IMO.

I'm 62, Brian. I'm allowed an occasional senior moment

I know! I'm allowed to call you an old fart for another two weeks yet. 

I think this theme used to be in one of the cooked hands which regularly appeared in simultaneous events back in the days when I used to play in such things. It was something like this :-

Vul E-W, Dealer West
North

  A54
  A3
  752
  AKJ97



South
  K32
  42
  A43
  Q10842

West opens 4 , North doubles, South bids 5 , all pass.

Now the double may not be everybody's choice, but you're stuck with it. West opens with the  K, on which East drops the  5. You appear to have four inescapable losers in 5 . The answer, of course, is as per Oliver's theme, that you have to hope you can pull all of West's cards in the other three suits. So, grab the  A, pull trumps, play  A and    AK, and then hope to throw West in with the second round of  and to find West with 2=8=1=2 shape for the vulnerable 4 opener. West has only  left, so on the first one you discard a  from one hand and a  from the other, on the next  a second  from one hand and ruff in the other, and there you go, 5 made losing only two  .

Very lucky, of course, but if you have only one possible winning line, play for it!

I think the official BBO view is quite clear, Ash, that you aren't allowed to ask without the OK from both opponents to do so. As you know from when you've played against me, I am 100% in Oliver's camp on this one, any time I am playing against pickup opponents (even if playing very basic Acol with Kerry!) I tell opponents to discuss their system whenever needed, and if I'm playing OCP then I don't care if they're a regular partnership. Georgi and I play my version of the 3rd and 4th hand 1 opener, and it is flat-out unreasonable to expect opponents to have discussed a defence to a 1NT opener that shows 11-15 HCP and 5 /4M or 6+ .

There are plenty of tables on BBO. If opponents refuse to let you ask something basic which you would normally have discussed, then play the hand out, put one or both opponents in your twit list, and find another table - or take your partner with you and open one yourself. I suspect that my twit list rivals yours for the number of entries, and in my case, it's strictly a one-way trip. I never open a table without having permission required to play, and if someone on my twit list asks to sit, I simply don't accept them.

Actually I've no place to criticise East here, because the Ace or King of Hearts is a perfectly normal and obvious lead.

Unless they're a pickup pair, or West is known to have a crappy internet connection, I would disagree. If I know my partner has a habit of doing this, and I know it's not a connection problem (living where I do, I knew all about those from when I only had a satellite ISP available!) then I don't care if I have the AKQJ, I am NOT leading one. It's kill or cure time - either partner learns not to do this, or (s)he goes on my twit list.

Of course, if East doesn't have the wits to realise what's going on, that's an entirely different matter. 

I can't resist adding the observation that trusting your partner also includes NOT playing for him to have misbid, at least not until you can prove the misbid with near-absolute certainty! Just because pard comes up with an unusual sequence is no excuse for not working out whether there's a set of hands which would fit it. 

As a more general point, which may be useful to some of our newer members, when you are playing a system as structured as OCP, it's extremely difficult, often impossible, to recover from a misbid. If you do realise that you've misbid, your best course of action is to pass as soon as it's reasonable for you to do so, and hope that opponents are as confused as your partner will undoubtedly be. You are NOT under any ethical obligation to inform your opponents if you have misbid, although if you're playing a tournament, then you'll have to be able to present reasonable evidence that it was a misbid - a (competent!) TD will assume mistaken explanation rather than mistaken bid without some fairly compelling evidence to the contrary. Under those circumstances, a private message to the opps may be your best option.

Brian.