tgoodwinsr

Qx is a very strong indicator to declare notrump, so JDonn's distinction between the two 2=2=5=4 hands he cites makes a lot of sense. Jx not so much . . . .

We opened it, too, and ended in 4S.

And what about -500 vs. -470?

I find the several comments from jdonn and JLOGIC about how to, and how not to, bid in a bidding contest to be very interesting. We thought the idea was to bid as we would in real life, but I can see the other point of view. Maybe next year we'll try a different strategy. And incidentally, the postmortems are as much fun as the contest itself.

Is it really so clear for North to double 4D (after 3NT-Dbl.-4C-Dbl.4D-?). Maybe it is easier if he passes and lets his partner double with equal majors.

JLOGIC is absolutely right about passing the double of two spades -- this from someone who did that, and paid the price.

AT of hearts and Qx of clubs, both positive declarer-values, suggested to us rebidding 2D rather than 2S. After that, 3NT was easy: responder raised to 3D, and opener converted.

Hanoi may be saying he thinks the hand isn't strong enough to overcall 1NT -- a sentiment with we agree, although we did bid 1NT at the table. It seems a little hard to stay out of 3NT after that, so we imagine Richard is right about having a lot of company there.

We shocked Richard, mostly by passing the diamond hand as dealer. Our sequence was P - 1S (potential canape); 2D - 3H (canape realized, and with a very strong heart suit; 2H would have been forcing); 3NT - P. That last pass didn't come very easily, but made some sense when partner couldn't open the bidding.

We started 2S-Dbl.-P-4NT (natural), leading quickly to 6NT (first trying diamonds along the way). Hanoi5, hosting us, didn't like 4NT. Any opinions?

I thought our sequence was just right: 1D (potential canape) - 1S; 2C (canape realized) - 3D (which we play as forcing, and which made things easy); 3H (grope) - 3S (no help in hearts, but good spades); 4S.

I wonder if bidding 6C should be called a "P*ltch bid." (Only kidding.)

Repeating a request made elsewhere by TimG, we could use a moderator for the bidding contest this afternoon (Eastern time). Anyone available?

Eddie Fisher.

We (TimG and I) haven't had any responses to requests for host/moderators, so it is beginning to look questionable whether we will be able to meet the deadline for bidding the contest hands. I think this is sad, as we have enjoyed participating in the earlier rounds of the contest. Sincerely, TLGoodwin

Two clubs is fine, then three clubs.

Negative double would be ideal IF (as some play) it doesn't show spades. This sort of hand is the best advertisement for that treatment (which was devised, or at least written up, by Alan Truscott). Truscott's argument was that if you have four (or five) spades you were going to bid one spade if they didn't overcall, so how wrong can it be to do that if they bid one heart? The treatment doesn't work if they overcall one spade and you have the same kind of hand, without four hearts and without a spade stopper. Then I guess you just have to grit your teeth and double anyway, unless you are prepared to pass (like they might have done in olden days) because no positive action is just right.

The real hand I was about to post before I aborted (above): -- AKxxx QJxx xx AKQ9xxxx Txx Q KTx We bid, with East dealer: -- 1S 2D 2S 3H 3NT P and now North doubled! I think he was long in spades and very short in diamonds, with the ace of clubs and a high heart honor, and thought maybe we wouldn't be able to find nine tricks. I also think he thought South would have enough diamonds to figure out that the double wasn't for a diamond lead. Wrong! South led the diamond Jack from Jack and one, and that greatly simplified the play of the hand. Looking at the hand later, we speculated about what would have happened if South had led his low diamond, not the Jack. It appears that declarer should duck this to guarantee his contract (by making sure he could get to his own hand with the ten of diamonds while still having a diamond left to get back to dummy). Further speculation: what if the diamonds had been one-one, with the Jack in North? Now it seems that declarer should still duck a low-diamond lead, letting North score his Jack but guaranteeing the contract. If that had happened, we would have a story to tell about losing a trick in a suit of AKQxxxxx opposite Txx, and thereby making a contract!

This was a real hand: --

So, it's a 16-way tie so far?

Gerben: "...I hope that at least the Iraqi people feel that their lives have improved. After all, the Baath party severely mismanaged the country similar to the situation in Zimbabwe, destroying a large part of the 'fertile crescent.'" It matters what words you use. "Severe mismanagement" sounds like maybe they didn't get their budget just right, or that maybe they planted too much of one crop and not enough of another, when what really happened (in both places mentioned) is that large numbers of people were oppressed, imprisoned, and murdered, just to satisfy the appetite of the megalomaniacs who happened to be in charge. It won't do to play this down by fudging the language.

A guiding principle be, shouldn't it, that "hands with tenaces declare," not (just) "strong hands declare"? You try to make a strong-notrump hand declarer not because it is strong, but because it is likely to contain tenaces. If you open 1NT on, say, Axx Axx Axxx Axx, there isn't likely to be much "declarer advantage" from your side of the table. (For this reason, you might avoid opening 1NT, or rebidding in notrump, on that sort of hand if your system allows you to.) Similarly, a multi 2D opener isn't likely to have a tenace in a side suit, so it tends to be desirable for his partner to declarer. Responder can see whether his own hand contains "declarer value," and may be able to arrange the bidding accordingly. The point is that "strong hand vs. weak hand" isn't the whole story by a long shot.

I am very far from expert in SA, 2/1, or SAYC bidding, so my opinion may not be worth anything. Still, I think it must be very hard on a partnership to bid, say, 1H-1S; 3D-3H; 3S or 1H-1S; 3D-3H; 4C and still not know which suit (if any) is trumps. From the comments here, it doesn't seem that anybody knows just how many diamonds opener shows via 3D, or how many hearts responder shows via 3H, or how many clubs opener shows via 4C. Maybe all of this is manageable, but I have my doubts. Wouldn't life be simpler if 3D showed four (or more) diamonds and 3H showed three hearts?

If the real agreement about two clubs was "We have no agreement, but we do play inverted raises when there is no intervention," why wouldn't that have to be Alerted (and explained exactly that way), in the interest of full disclosure? If instead that isn't the real agreement, but East thought two clubs was strong and West thought it was weak, then West was right not to Alert (if he thought the agreement was that two clubs was weak), and his failure to Alert wasn't an infraction. But there may well have been an infraction involving UI in the latter scenario: East thought the agreement was that two clubs was strong, but his partner's failure to Alert suggested that he was was wrong, and either it was the "weak" agreement, or it was "We have no agreement, but we do play inverted raises when there is no intervention." It does seem to me that North-South were damaged, either by a failure to Alert or by the use of UI, depending on what the actual East-West agreement turned out to be. You could say that North might have protected himself by asking before he balanced: but isn't the point of the Alert procedure precisely to obviate the need for asking about an unAlerted call? Whatever the correct ruling is in this case, one has sympathy for Wolff's "convention disruption" principle.

Somebody (Reese, maybe?) used to advocate playing 1NT-4H and 1NT-4C both to "sign off" in four hearts, and the same for 1NT-4S and 1NT-4D to sign off in four spades. The argument was that usually you want the 1NT opener to declare (thus the 4m transfer) to protect his presumed tenace(s) from the opening lead; but with extremely distributional hands, perhaps with a seven-card suit and a void, perhaps with a second suit (such as 6-5), you want to declare yourself and conceal your distributional surprises from the enemy. There were other advantages to the method, such as being able to continue toward slam after 1NT-4m, but the main one asserted was positional. You could even play that opener bids 1NT-4C; 4D instead of taking the transfer when he doesn't have anything that needs to be protected from the opening lead.