[broze]

 lamford, on 2014-April-08, 07:47, said:

You use the thumb. "The thumb can be treated as a finger but mostly within the context of fingers. Both digits and fingers are hypernyms of the word thumb". You have to balance the cards on the thenar or the hypothenar. Better is to use the other hand for 5-8, scratching your nose with those fingers.

From where are you quoting?

I meant "finger" to include 'thumb'. I still don't see how you hold 13 cards with five digits on the back and still be able to see them properly. Not to mention the question of how you show a void...

[lamford]

 broze, on 2014-April-08, 08:12, said:

I meant "finger" to include 'thumb'. I still don't see how you hold 13 cards with five digits on the back and still be able to see them properly. Not to mention the question of how you show a void...

It takes a bit of practice. You need to bend the palm slightly and at an angle away from you, and all five fingers form a sort of cradle to support the cards. Holding them with a clenched fist is standard for a void. Using both hands with n-1 cards in the suit for the combined figures showing is a method advocated by some "doctoral" thesis.

One simple method which is a lot easier for beginners is to just use three and four fingers for odd and even numbers of hearts respectively. You will be surprised how much information this gives, and offers a greater edge than card-counting in Blackjack. It is also a lot harder to detect, because on some hands the information is of no value.

[bixby]

 lamford, on 2014-April-07, 17:57, said:

I merely repeated the allegation made by many commentators without indicating whether I believe they were true, and presented three hands, where, if the allegations were true, they might have been able to benefit. I should have said. "Truscott first made the claim, not I".

You can post or not post more hands in this series, that's up to you, but claiming that you are not accusing R-S of cheating, on the theory that you are "merely repeating" an allegation, is cowardly. The OP in this thread clearly implies that R-S were using finger signals to indicate heart length. The statement came with your name attached to it, not Truscott's. You need to take responsibility for your actions (and frankly, I don't understand why you are reluctant to do so).

[lamford]

 bixby, on 2014-April-08, 08:24, said:

You can post or not post more hands in this series, that's up to you, but claiming that you are not accusing R-S of cheating, on the theory that you are "merely repeating" an allegation, is cowardly. The OP in this thread clearly implies that R-S were using finger signals to indicate heart length. The statement came with your name attached to it, not Truscott's. You need to take responsibility for your actions (and frankly, I don't understand why you are reluctant to do so).

I have no problem with doing so. In my opinion they probably cheated on a number of occasions. I am presenting hands where they would definitely have taken the actions they did if they were cheating, and might have taken them if they were not cheating. I am happy to expand the series, but equally happy not to do so. It is up to the moderators. If the moderators choose to delete these three threads, I am quite happy for them to do so.

[gwnn]

There's a 42-page free sample of Truscott's book on ebooksbridge: http://ebooksbridge....products_id=408

I read one of the chapters and it said that two fingers were perhaps used as 2/5 like in RKCB and four fingers spread out could also show seven hearts.

[lamford]

 gwnn, on 2014-April-08, 08:52, said:

There's a 42-page free sample of Truscott's book on ebooksbridge: http://ebooksbridge....products_id=408

I read one of the chapters and it said that two fingers were perhaps used as 2/5 like in RKCB and four fingers spread out could also show seven hearts.

And I presume that 2 and 3 fingers accompanied by a cough showed shortage - probably 0/1 respectively.

[WellSpyder]

 lamford, on 2014-April-08, 08:41, said:

I am presenting hands where they would definitely have taken the actions they did if they were cheating....

I'm certainly not convinced by this part of the analysis, which does seem rather important for the whole argument. In fact I would have been less surprised to see two of these hands presented by the defence as evidence that the allegations where false.

[lamford]

 WellSpyder, on 2014-April-08, 09:00, said:

I'm certainly not convinced by this part of the analysis, which does seem rather important for the whole argument. In fact I would have been less surprised to see two of these hands presented by the defence as evidence that the allegations where false.

Then post your analysis of those two hands for others to see. Or, at the very least, give an example of where you think R&S would have done better than they did on these three hands if they knew their partner's heart holding. Given that they were almost card perfect, I think you will be struggling.

[nige1]

 broze, on 2014-April-08, 03:12, said:

How does one hold the cards to show five fingers anyway? I can see 1, 2, 3 and 4.

AFAIR, the alleged code was that the signal for 5,6,7 cards was the same as for 1, 2, 3 cards; except, in the former case, the fingers were splayed apart. For example a V-shape showed 5 cards.

[hrothgar]

 lamford, on 2014-April-08, 09:07, said:

Then post your analysis of those two hands for others to see. Or, at the very least, give an example of where you think R&S would have done better than they did on these three hands if they knew their partner's heart holding. Given that they were almost card perfect, I think you will be struggling.

In general, when people point out that your claims are full of *****, the expectation is that you should go off and do a better job rather than demanding that the critics show you how things should be done.

With this said and done, I will provide the following practical suggestion:

In general, you should be focusing on hands where the (supposed) knowledge of the heart length is germane to the discussion

To be more specific, showing us a hand where the key issue is that a reasonable sac didn't get bid at the other table doesn't convince me that R+S had to be signalling heart length at this table.

[aguahombre]

 hrothgar, on 2014-April-09, 08:40, said:

With this said and done, I will provide the following practical suggestion:

In general, you should be focusing on hands (fingers) where the (supposed) knowledge of the heart length is germane to the discussion

Edited the above to reemphasize that the focus should be on the illegal communication itself and its correlation to the holding of the person allegedly signalling. This is the cheating part. Whether a pair uses the information all the time, some of the time, or whatever is merely an interesting side subject.