Leaderboard

Easy solution. Trust opponents to be rational. Trust partner to always be at the bottom of the range. STOP doubling on general principles.

I absolutely agree with this.Well, I might not agree with calling them beliefs, but I agree with the concept. They are choices, or approaches to life, or commitments, or perhaps they are beliefs. But there is no chance at all that they can be proven through logic or through science. I don't get this. IMO one of the most important ethical standards is the "Golden rule". It comes in a variety of forms, but you see in many religions as well as among atheists that it is a good idea to treat others the way you like to be treated yourself. Where does this rule come from? Does it come from an Almighty God or something like that? Or does it come from the combined experience and wisdom of our ancestors? I (obviously) think the latter. Now I readily admit that our ancestors probably didn't use advanced scientific methodology to come to the conclusion that it is a good idea to treat others the way you like to be treated yourself. But I do think it came from observations leading to conclusions (call it primitive science if you must) on the one side and evolution on the other side (people who follow the "Golden rule" have a better chance to produce offspring). Rik

I have played this for years, but I have given up and come to the conclusion the whole concept is flawed. If you play simple overcalls as "constructive", because you are playing weak jump overcalls you frequently get hands, which are neither suitable for an overcall nor for a jump overcall. In other words you are either 1) not interfering often enough or 2) preempting too much with the wrong hands. If you preempt once RHO has bid you need a better preemptive hand not a worse one for doing so. Many players tend to do both. The whole concept is bad advice for advancing players. With regard to weak jump overcalls opponents are far more likely to catch you compared to a preempt when nobody has bid yet and it tends to gain much less when RHO has opened already. Thus weak jump overcalls are okay, but the right hands do not come up as often as proponents let you believe. I think it is beneficial to overcall frequently and for a weak jump overcall you need the right hand, depending on colors. Thus I have given up the old fashioned notion that simple overcalls are "constructive", because of weak jump overcalls. My overcalls have a purpose but are wide ranging. As a corollary partner should restrain himself before doubling opponents, who usually have a good knowledge of their combined assets once they have opened the bidding. Rainer Herrmann

Your second comment is more to the point. A player can plausibly need some time to plan what shape he wants to end up with, even though after that analysis he realises he is not actually under pressure. So South's conclusion that the only plausible think that might cause W to take time is being embarrassed by a lot of high cards is unwarranted. But I would explicitly disagree with your first comment. In the same way that it is generally ruled that taking time to select which of alternative small cards in a suit to play is not a good reason to take time, I think it would generally be ruled that taking time to think how best to mislead declarer with your discards would not be seen as a good reason to take time. In this case, I doubt that is what W is actually doing.

Love all, IMPs, longish match. [hv=pc=n&n=shajt864dkq963c62]133|100[/hv] What do people think about 4♥?

This is the last Brighton case I have for you. Although it's not a completed ruling, I thought it had interesting possibilities. Swiss Teams: [hv=pc=n&s=shat9843dqj765ck2&w=saqjt65hk652dk2c6&n=sk87432h7dt983c83&e=s9hqjda4caqjt9754&d=n&v=e&b=9&a=2s(neither%20announced%20nor%20alerted)3c(alerted)p4hppdpp5cdppp]399|300[/hv] 2♠ was weak, but was neither announced nor alerted 3♣ would be a takeout bid over a weak two, natural over a strong two I was called at the end of the auction because I think the uncertainty over the meaning of 2♠ was now apparent. I pointed out that all meanings of 2♠ openers require either an alert or an announcement, so they all should have been aware that something was missing. I didn't allow any calls to be retracted, and asked them to call me back if they needed me. I wasn't called back. I didn't ever find out the result on the board. If the contract had made, do you think NS would have a case for claiming damage? If the contract had failed, do you think EW would have a case for claiming damage?

[hv=pc=n&s=skj42hk2dk9862ck3&w=s763ha6dq43cjt765&n=sa985h874d7caq982&e=sqthqjt953dajt5c4&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=1hp1n(forcing)p2hppp]399|300[/hv] Matchpoints. NAP-A district qualifying. -110 for N/S was a matchpoint zero with a spade fit and the balance of the points. What should N/S have done to get in the auction?

South should bid 3♦ over 3♣, but 3♥ is not the worst bid ever seen. North is far too strong to sign off in 3NT. If South chose to bid 3♥ over 3♣, he had better bid 4♦ now. There is no way that South wants to play this hand in 3NT. There is just too much going on here to allocate a portion of the 100% blame to the members of this partnership. Every bid after 3♣ (and, in the case of South's final pass, every call) was either not best or downright silly. If I had to pick one call as the worst of the lot it is the final pass by South. Second worst is the 3NT bid by North.

Were you on the same wavelength about responsive doubles? It looks as though you thought it showed both majors, and partner didn't.

It's a simple squeeze without the count. The term "strip squeeze" normally implies that someone is endplayed to give an extra trick by leading into a tenace. Here we're not endplaying him, we're just forcing him to throw a winner.

Me and my partner are learning to play 2/1 and have different views on a bidding. He opened 1S in third seat and I bid 2D with 10p and Qxxxx. Since I was a passed hand its not gameforcing but shud show near openingstrength. My partner had a good opening and jumped to 4C with 5-5 in S and C but I thought it was a quebid accepting D as trumps. Wouldnt 3C, a new suit on the 3-level be forcing even if I was a passed hand ?

While I have many weaknesses in my game, what frustrates me the most is my inability to "Picture" distribution. If one opponent shows out, I use that knowledge to manage that suit, but I don't take advantage of the concept of using that data to get a complete picture of distribution as a whole. As such, end plays and squeezes are far more challenging. Can anyone suggest a web site or technique for practicing on how better to grasp the unseen hands as the play develops? I've learned much here on bidding, systems, conventions and leads. But I've not come across practicing the dynamics or tricks for determining distribution. I did just learn from the interesting article here on the Law of Total tricks how the total number of trumps can help determine distribution in the oppositions hands. Any help would be appreciated. Please, no suggestions about taking a memory course. My wife reminds me all the time.

Good point. Initially, it's easy to lose track of the actual cards played while keeping count. But it is getting easier. I also find that my count is often wrong at the end of the hand, that is I should know the suits of the last 2-3 tricks. But, As I keep going, I am getting better at developing winners. I also find that knowing the total count makes it a lot easier to decide which suit to develop as play progresses. I now able to effectively track discards, something that is making a big difference.

Do you really believe there are no posters who attempt to provide useful advice to newcomers? Or that there are no posters who are generally (>99%) constructive? As far as 32519 is concerned, I was involved in much discourse with him in the early days. I believe that all of my posts in those threads were positive and constructive. At some point I felt that the tone in the threads changed towards an attempt at trolling and I stopped responding aside from correcting blatant untruths or writing, in effect, "please refer to the earlier answer". As a result, this series of threads has almost died out. Having read the thread in question after the locking (previously having not opened it at all) it seems clear to me that Mike was identified as someone who could be goaded a little on the subject of religion. When that did not really work it all went a little strange in getting reactions from some other posters. In other words, noone should ever be discouraged from responding constructively to a thread, nor of correcting obviously ridiculous statements, particularly those that might be considered reasonable by other readers. However, also be aware that certain posters enjoy baiting others and that they are never worth getting upset over. If you enjoy showing how ridiculous they are to the community and can do so without aiding the threadjacking then fine. Otherwise it is usually better to ignore them and instead a write a reply that gets back to the discussion on-topic. By doing this you are depriving the disruptive individual the result that they are aiming for while simultaneously adding something positive to the thread and community. Let us all show that cherdano's pessimism is wrong and that we do care about the BBF community!

Have been trying very hard to think about the totality of hands, i.e., the "4531" hand, etc. Very new to me. I did start doing something that has proved to be an enormous help, perhaps something every advanced player but me does as a set routine. After the opening lead, I count the outstanding unseen cards by suit and now keep track. So, when dummy comes down, I get a suit count that initially adds up to 26 such as "5939". I then reduce the number by two for each trick so if diamonds are led and followed, 5939 becomes 5919. A round of clubs becomes 5917, etc. I use the 4 hand robot option with BBO and do not even care about the hands, just keeping track of the count slow enough to be accurate but fast enough to make play bearable when actually playing. I am getting to the point that the bidding can tell me minimum card holdings and one player showing out is starting to give me better distribution visualization. The link showing the pause, plan and execute gave me the thought. It is making a difference already. My goal is read the board and keep up with an expert that I will kibitz, something that I am not close to yet. However, my game has really improved already. Once again, thanks

You should double when you have trump tricks and a misfit or when you have a big surprise for declarer (ie their trumps are 5-0 and at least one of them made a non-forcing bid) or sometimes in MP pairs when there is a competitive auction where you are pretty sure you would have made your contract and the opponents bid one more but you do not want to be pushed higher. In the first two cases nearly all your doubles should get a positive score, in the last you can stand the oppo making a few as you were getting a bad score anyway so the double may turn a 20 % board into a zero or 100%. Also playing weak jump overcalls helps since most hands with little defense start with a jump which will warn you not to be trigger happy.

Your interpretation would have been headed "Autumn Congress final ruling" not "Autumn Congress Final ruling" :)

It lies in the implication in the following line: It suggests that "unprovable beliefs" stop us all from becoming psychopaths. (Okay, "psychopath" is a theatrical exageration, but change "becoming psychopaths" to "doing bad things" and the theatrics are gone.) It is a mystery to me why and how an unprovable belief stops us all from doing bad things. I would rather say that unprovable beliefs have caused us all to do some pretty bad things, of which some can certainly be characterized as psychopathic. Proven rules (e.g. the Golden rule), that have little to do with religion or believe, have helped us in being better people. Some religions, or perhaps even many, have adopted the obvious and incorporated it into their doctrine, but that doesn't make the Golden rule a religious, unprovable belief. Just because Jesus said that we should love each other, doesnot mean that loving each other is an exclusively Christian thing. If I say "The leaves turn colors in fall." then the coloring of the leaves is suddenly a Trinidadian religious thing? Or is it still just stating the obvious? Rik

Double. My trumps may look thin for a penalty double, but it is hard to see how I can have more than this on the bidding, when all three of the other players have already shown holdings in the suit.

Apparently (according to mods, mgoetze and others) this is not the point of the expert forum - I have had topics of mine moved because they were not 'expert' enough (despite the people moving them professing not to be experts themselves and acknowledged experts admitting to being unsure of the answers). Don't ask me what the point of the forum is though, because I haven't really received a satisfactory answer on this yet and the forum description is inconsistent with what actually gets posted here. Apparently an acceptable answer you might have given would be "because I am an expert". Sorry for the derail. I like 4H first/3rd in.

Because I wanted to ask the opinion of "experts".

Yes, what is 2NT? If natural, I double. If minors, I bid 3S. ahydra

1♥ for me, I may open 4 if I feel we are behind and need some action.

South has real support for north's first suit and a good fragment in the second. 3♥ conceals it all. Even after 3♥, north could bid 4♣, if you can still stop in 4NT on a misfit. But I think mostly south.

I run with a six-card minor and redouble with a 5-card suit.

What does it matter whether the double of 4♥ was gambling? It was not subsequent to the (possible) infraction of pulling to 5♣.

Let's start with board 6. Open: Levin, Fantoni: 1♣-Pass Narkiewicz: 1♣-2♥ Seniors: Hayden, Elinescu: 1♣-Pass Lasocki: 1♦-2♥ Poizat: 1♠-Pass VC: Zhang, Pasman, Eythorsdot: 1♣-Pass F. Brown: 1♦-Pass It would be best if you re-rephrase at this point before we continue

Just one point I would like to make. No one is asking or has ever asked anyone to respond to any of the numeric one's posts. If you don't like what he posts, just ignore read - read it if you like, but don't respond. Personally I enjoy reading his posts as I find the convoluted logic amusing. The thread can continue as normal with just that poster's posts ignored.

I am extremely angry, Barmar and Ben! I just spent one hour reading the religion thread when I should have been marking term papers. Please don't do this, (tease), again! :rolleyes: Please open the thread again. If you don't the numeric one may start posting about bridge again. :o

Well, we were asked for opinions, and I think that the thread has been fun. No one has to read it (or contribute to it) if they don't want to. One particular poster has been getting a bit hysterical, but I really think that it would be best to let other posters decide when they wish to ignore the posts (some have done this already) and that a person who does not wish to be ganged up on could possibly not post the same things over and over, not challenge people on made-up facts (the "fake" reason the LHC has been turned off?) and could even answer some of the questions he has been asked. On the other hand, a temporary lock may be a good idea, as it might allow "people" to think about their posts and those of others, and perhaps decide to engage in an actual discussion.

This caught my eye. Why is an 80-80 result "much worse" than a 60-60 result? Why should the TD care at all what it is, so long as it's the result of a correct ruling?

Does your partner bid like this: Unfav vul, 1♥-1♠ overcall with ♠KQJ65 ♥74 ♦J76 ♣T85 All white, 1♦-2♣ overcall with ♠6 ♥Q93 ♦Q2 ♣KJT8654 Fav vul, 1♣-1♦ overcall with ♠874 ♥72 ♦AQ98743 ♣5 Both vul, 1♠-2♥ overcall with ♠K73 ♥KQ753 ♦AT85 ♣2 Unfav vul, 1♣-1♠ overcall with ♠KJT864 ♥T954 ♦3 ♣KJ All white, 1♣-1♥ overcall with ♠T74 ♥AT7532 ♦96 ♣74 Then you need to bid like a world class Italian advancer Above boards: Nunes board 18, 4th final session world championship Fantoni board 24, 4th final session world championship Bocchi board 19, 2nd quarterfinal session world championship Lauria board 13, 1st semifinal session world championship Duboin board 19, 2nd semifinal session world championship Sementa board 8, 3rd semifinal session world championship

This really troubling aspect of Christianity to me is that the need to be forgiven stems from the fact that we are all born as human beings, that, according to the dogma, being born a human requires a blood sacrifice by an all-powerful being in order to make us "worthy". Excuse me, but I am just fine without your forgiveness for being born, thank you.

The best simple idea I've heard for a massive boost in new players is to have a simple bridge game built in to the Microsoft OS game folder.

As South I would have made a takeout double of 1♥, but i may be in the minority here.

It's a signal that people don't know about the Ignore function, or are otherwise incapable of impulse control. Someone Is Wrong On The Internet is a serious problem that afflicts many people who could be living normal lives. Please give to the SIWOTI Foundation today.

Is there a rule against ganging up on people who wilfully ignore all of the posts that are addressed to him? People were trying to address his 'questions' but he kept ignoring all the answers and kept asking the same ones anyway. On the few occasions that he made any replies to other posts, he usually just took 4-5 words and replied to those out of context. Is there a rule against calling him out on this? 'Ganging up on others is always bad' is not in the forum rules as far as I know. The only kind of personal attack I can think of was perpetrated by 32519 who said mikeh lives in a cesspool (ideologically). As far as I remember no-one used bad language etc. Could we stick to the rules please when locking threads? Or maybe make a new one, 'Do not discuss religion,' which is often a rule on internet forums.

I must correct something. My partner didnt have 5-5 in S and C. He had 6 spades and 4 clubs and 20 points.

A dubious assumption at best :huh:

In England, those declarers play 1nt 2S as showing 11 points and 1nt 2nt as 12 points...

I appreciate the comments and hopefully they will assist others. I had not considered prioritizing tricks, HCP's, etc., mentioned above, rather I was intent on learning a rote skill. I have found that kibitzing games whether I have all four hands shown or just one tends to hurt my efforts. The pace of the expert is just too fast. I learn a lot about bidding but can only marvel at the understanding declarers often have on setting up end plays and effectively using squeezes to offer a choice of losing options to defenders.

I have 4 regular partners at my Monday club game. 1st Monday I play the way you describe above, 2nd and 4th I play odd/even, 3rd Monday is a more complicated convention requiring hi/lo discard of a color asking or denying the other suit of that color. The latter can be rather confusing when you have insufficient cards to appropriately follow conventional rules. #1 Rule - Talk to your partner

Are people taught bridge any more?

My view of auctions such as these is that Responder's initial pass puts us in "non-constructive mode" and that our primary aim should be winning the part-score battle. After 1♠, 3♥ shows good hearts and is akin to a strong preempt. Doubling and bidding 2♥ suggests that we have clubs but not good enough to rebid; perhaps a 1624 hand. With the given hand both 2♥ and 3♥ over 1♠ are possible and may be correct with different agreements from the ones given here. However, my preferred course of action would be a double followed by 3♥, which shows a maximum one-suiter and puts us back into "constructive mode". The only other options I can envisage are 2♠ and double followed by 2♠ but my idea of hands that would qualify for these sequences is considerably different from the OP hand (not that I can ever remember having used either nor had any explicit agreement for them).

But why did he claim without statement? Surely such a claim tends to imply certainty over the number of tricks he will take, rather than implying he will take a finesse and concede a trick if itis wrong. It seems to me more likely that he has forgotten the J is out, and on seeing resistance to his claim, then remembered it. Taking the finesse which is the only sensible line if you have remembered the J is still out, but if you have forgotten you will just play the diamonds from the top. This isn't like other "forget" situations where people in practice aren't going to lose a trick to a forgotten card because they routinely draw lurkers and cash good suits from the top. I have often made the error of taking a finesse and then forgotten that the card I finessed against is still out. This situation is not exactly that, but it is similar. So I think it is plausible to suppose that this declarer forgot the J and was just going to play the diamonds from the top.

Counting shape can be important. Here's a link to the BBO counting game developed by Fred Gitelman - It trains us to immediately recognize the 4 number pattern totaling 13 for suits in a hand or a suit across 4 hands. http://bridgewinners.com/pages/counting-game/ Eddie Kantar's books on defense are very good at showing how to count. When it comes to counting shapes of hands, first ask what the bidding shows. You can know what shapes declarer is likely to have from the bidding in many cases. Best is to note bidding and likely shapes as the bidding evolves. This helps whether you are on lead or declaring. By the time it comes to make a play you will have started building your image of the missing hand shapes. When declaring, the opening lead offers hints at the suit split around the table (4th from longest and strongest). During the play, opponents count signals might help (though many do not signal all the time). Show - outs (when a defender or declarer discards) paint a clear picture of the distribution. The important thing is to do the mental work to note what the show-out says about the suit around the table, and the other suits in that hand. What's important is to take a few seconds and focus on the information as you receive it. Each bit of additional information (bidding, passing, lead, play) should help you refine your estimates. Importantly. sometimes it's right to count shape, sometimes HCP, sometimes tricks. You need the develop the discipline and the presence of mind to know which matter more and focus on that information. Suppose you declare 3N and get the ♦5 lead. With ♦98 opposite ♦A32, you know immediately that RHO has 3 cards higher and the ♦ are likely splitting 5-3 or 4-4. If RHO has the ♦4 you know they are 4-4. If LHO has 5♦s, then 5332 or 5431 are their more likely shapes. You can then begin forming inferences based on the rest of dummy and your hand. Here's something you might enjoy: http://www.cincybridge.com/Lessons/20100506_The_1st_90_Seconds.pdf

I'd have rebid 2♠ as opener, FWIW. I also appreciate the discussion, much food for thought here. I do have one comment: Most other pairs in the room will face the same problem as in the OP, so whatever we do we're likely to have some company. Playing 2♦ on a 4-2 fit is unlikely to be a bottom board. So we should strive to reach the best contract we can, but not feel too anxious if we don't get there.

Not enough system info (what is 1S-1N-2red-3C?) If that sequence is weak, that's what I'm bidding - I'm worth raising the level because I'm worth 2-3 tricks less in diamonds or spades I think, whereas partner's honors, wherever they are, will probably be useful to me. If that sequence is invite, then we are just hedged into Passing 2D, even if it could be 3 cards.

To elaborate: the easiest way to make money in sports betting must be to bet against fools misguided fans who believe in momentum.