sasioc

Hi all I run the U15 squad in England and we are just kicking off the new cycle following the European Championships in Tromso. I'm about to take part in a 3 day residential event for young players (up to about age 20), where I will be running sessions for players aspiring to join the u15 squad. Many will be very inexperienced but none will be beginners. Apart from playing bridge, discussing hands and running teaches I also hope to have a session in which I help players to understand what they must do if they want to be in contention for future selection and how they can go about improving their game if that is their wish (I fully support young players who want to play socially and not compete in this sort of thing but that is a separate topic). What, in your opinion, can a young and inexperienced player do to improve their game? Please consider that suggestions must be appropriate for young teenagers (so forum use is out and evening games at clubs can be hard for players to arrange, as many run late) and also interesting to them (I will recommend some interesting books and am happy to hear any ideas here but realistically most of them are not going to want to sit down and read lots of bridge literature, especially if it is dry or technical). Quite a few of our young players are also geographically isolated from each other and obviously don't have the same flexibility of travel that older juniors do. My ideas so far - Bridgemaster hands, attendance at a regular BBO session for U15s (which is already in place), use of dropbox to access tailored material, use of email to discuss hands with a small group of experts who are carefully selected to work with this age group. Anyone have any thoughts?

Having sat next to Mike on the sofa while he made the hands up I can confirm that none of these is based on a specific real-life deal.

I agree that in this case it might put have the opponents at ease if the TD had said why he had found that there was no issue, e.g. "it was a mis-pull", but the idea of explaining why you have bid the way you have at the end of a hand or auction seems very odd to me. The latter sounds a great deal like being required to tell oppo what is in your hand before they lead and the former will almost certainly be construed as gloating if the explainer has done something accidental or offbeat that gained.

Imo Phil is completely right. West, having been woken up to the problem, should have alerted 2S to give opponents correct information (and, secondarily, to avoid giving partner UI). Had this occurred it seems likely that NS would have played in their spade fit. Whether or not they would have ever taken a penalty out of 2S is another consideration - if W believes 2H (and thus 2S) to be natural, it feels like a possibility. There is also a separate issue that W may have inadvertently taken advantage of UI by playing more than one round of H vs 4NT.

xx KQxxx Axxxxx - You are vul against not, in 2nd seat playing teams. RHO opens 3C - what do you do? You play 4D as leaping Michael's here.

The auction went [hv=d=w&v=0&b=8&a=pp1d(Nat%20or%2011-13%20%5Bbal%2C%20no%205cM%5D)1hd(Deny%204S)p1n2dd2hpp2nppp]133|100[/hv] On one side of the screen S alerted their 2D bid (screening with W) and, when asked, said "undiscussed". W was 2344 and intended 2nt as scrambling. On the other side of the screen there was no alert of 2D. x of 2D was taken as takeout in context and 2nt as natural in context by E because he understood 2D to be natural or natural-esque. It later emerged that if 1D had shown 3 cards or more the 2D would have shown 4S6H, which neither of EW volunteered during the auction. After 2NT had been passed by E, N now suggested that 2D was "maybe natural or maybe spades and hearts". Table result: 2nt-1 with 3D one off DD, practically certain to make in practice (required unusual, DD lead and switch) Edit: this was in a teams event held in Germany but attended by teams from several countries. I believe we were in EBL land. I am, however, interested in what might happen in other places. Do you rule? Does it matter what, if anything, E asked N about 2D? Should 2D have been alerted on either side?

Some players use this to mean "we throw the suit we don't want (partner to lead)". I think it's pretty ambiguous, even if you don't, which suggests that it is not a helpful explanation to give to at least some opponents. I have seen players give this explanation and found them to be playing rev att discards or similar plenty of times and think they have disclosed this.

This one of my pet hates, although when I've encountered it, it's usually phrased slightly differently (and less clearly), eg. "we throw what we don't want". This is used by players to either mean "attitude discards" or "no discard system" depending on who says it and they usually consider their chosen meaning of the explanation so obvious that any attempt to clarify causes confusion. The phrasing that they use in your club seems much more helpful though.

I can't imagine calling a director because someone did this at my table - declarer is trying to do defender a favour. I do not think that this constitutes a claim because I believe it is clear that declarer's intent is to save his opponent from thinking unnecessarily. If someone did this to me it would not occur to me that anyone might consider this to be a claim but I'll be more careful in future! As an aside, I have frequently seen people show their hand to their screenmate for this purpose in such a way that it is not clear to the opponent on the other side of the screen that their partner has seen declarer's hand. Clearly in this situation declarer could not say anything to the effect of "I am not claiming" without alerting the other opponent. I have seen this done, for example, as a way of saying "if you are not ruffing whatever your partner returns we're done", where declarer would like to give one opponent the choice to concede or to play on without explicitly telling his partner that there is a ruff to find if this opponent chooses the latter. Where would a scenario like that fit into all of this? This feels even more relevant because events that use screens also tend to be stricter with time penalties so saving time at the table can be very helpful (especially if you are as slow as me :) ).

Fwiw when I was given this hand without being told what the problem was I changed my line depending on the carding information I was given, rightly or wrongly. When the 8♣ might have been count it just seemed less likely that the suit was breaking and that my last chance was that by letting LHO in early I might make it harder for him to know what to play. If you are hypothetically certain that clubs are not breaking you surely have to try a diamond up - what else is there? I might have asked oppo if they have clear agreements about when they play which signal but this can be a tricky area to disclose properly imo. When people ask me stuff like that I always feel that I have an understanding about partner's card but that it isn't an explicit agreement and any explanation that starts with "I think..." and ends with "...but I can't be 100% certain" feels suboptimal. Plenty of less serious players haven't really discussed this kind of thing in depth anyway and there are many players who will give you their personal preference when asked for the partnership agreement and not make it clear that the situation has not been discussed. I would not have necessarily expected that the answer to the question "if the 8♣ is high/low, what would it mean in this situation?" would be helpful, clear or correct.

I think that a defender should not claim if there is a legal line of play from their partner which affected the number or tricks taken. When defending I almost never claim unless my claim is "my hand is high". I guess I think that the law should be something like that but mostly my opinion is based on what I think it is most sensible to do at the table rather than what I think everyone else should be made to do. Plenty of people make all sorts of ridiculous mis-defenses all the time - I once made a trick by force with Txx in the dummy facing xx in a suit that oppo bid and raised, when they led the K to the A, the J to the Q and then continued the suit, allowing me to discard a loser. I would hate to be denied the chance to defend as spectacularly as this by my forward-thinking partner. While common sense suggests that the rules for when a defender claims and it turns out that their partner could mess it up should be the same as for when declarer doesn't state a full line when claiming, in reality there is surely some factor that a player can know that xyz is the sort of position that their partner gets wrong sometimes and save them the decision?

I had not understood that 2♣ was Stayman... If that is the case, 2♦ then 3♥ does not show a five card suit - as mgoetze says, bidding 2♦ would say "I do not have *as many as four* hearts or spades" not "I do not have *exactly* four hearts or spades". I too would bid 2♥ over 2♣.

How do you play 2♣ over 1NT? What would these responses show? I'm a simple soul and tend to just show my shape as accurately as I can, having opened 1NT. Partner is usually in a better position than me to decide what needs to happen.

Everything that JLOGIC posted floats around somewhere in my head when I pick up one of these hands, having had the "don't double in on so much ****" talk directed at me many times. In practice I very rarely actually pass these hands, although at these conditions I would not double with a penny less. I don't pretend to be an expert on bidding theory but doubling in first on 15-18 and bidding 1NT with this sounds somewhat sub-optimal to me.

I've only just noticed this so I don't know if you are still looking. If you are, I am an English junior player and can put you in touch with the appropriate people if you are based in England.

I've just been reading the EBU Appeals booklets (what else would I do on a Friday night??) and wondered if players are permitted to appeal a ruling that they believe is correct if they think that their opponent should have been given a PP but was not. This could crop up if an opponent has taken blatant advantage of UI and been ruled against but a PP had not been issued or, as in a case in the 2009 book, it was ruled that the final contract should have been the same but reached by a different route so table result stands. Obviously you're not really appealing the ruling directly but if it was clear that a PP should have been applied it would not be an appeal without merit and it is easy to construct scenarios in which the non-offending side would overtake the offending side in a competition if a PP was applied...

You're all much smarter than me :( It took plenty of head-scratching for me to get this

This hand came up at our local duplicate tonight and is, imho, a reasonably pretty double dummy problem. You need to make 3nt as South on a heart lead. Clue: [hv=pc=n&s=sa98642hak6djcaqj&w=skq75hqt9843d863c&n=sth752dkt9754ckt7&e=sj3hjdaq2c9865432]399|300[/hv]

I'm completely certain that I'd lead a heart without thinking about it nearly long enough just because of my heart holding. It does feel like the double should at least make me think more about my options. One upside to not leading a heart is that when I don't lead shortage declarer will pin my shape very quickly (assuming he discovers that trumps are actually breaking) and trying something else may make this a little harder for him - of course, if I pick the wrong suit it could also burn a trick and partner may go wrong trying to give me a ruff. It's also possible that I'll manage to lead through dummy into partner in a useful way. I don't mind a minor suit lead, although I'm sure I wouldn't have really thought much about it at the table... I also have absolutely no idea if there is genuine merit to it or not.

I taught the beginners' lessons at my university for a while and have also taught bridge through clubs. As people have suggested, I found it best to start off with minibridge and get them used to points, tricks, trumps and the basics of card play before I went anywhere near bidding. Learning card play is massively more important than learning how to bid at the first stages of the game imo and it lets the students get straight into playing and enjoying playing rather than worrying about the memory load of even basic bidding. I was severely constrained in the number of sessions I was able to provide but would have liked every student to have been fairly comfortable with techniques such as basic counting (of trumps and maybe outside honours), finesses, crossing between hands, ruffing losers and counting winners and losers before moving on to bidding. Once I did start on bidding I covered one basic idea every session and then gave the students some random or prepared hands to play to practice that idea (prepared hands were used for things like 1NT openings and whenever else I had the time). I would have liked to allow one session in every 3 or 4 to just recap what we'd done but time did not really allow this. I think my order of bidding lessons went something like this: 1. One level openings and simple responses 2. 1NT openings with natural responses 3. Overcalling and simple bidding in competition 4. 2 level openings and jump overcalls 5. Takeout doubles 6. 'Advanced' 1nt responses (stayman, transfers) 7. Basic conventions (blackwood, fourth suit forcing). Many students found bidding significantly easier if it was explained to them as being like a conversation. I'd encourage them to think about what they'd already "said" to their partner and what their partner had "told" them. I also produced a bidding flowchart, which grew over the course of the lessons, to reduce the amount that students had to remember and get them putting it into practice. After the lessons, students were encouraged to join the main university bridge club, which was very friendly and relaxed, where they'd be exposed to more advanced bidding and play ideas. I strongly agree that the first system you teach should be as simple and natural as possible and that gadgets should only start to be built in when they are comfortable with the basic ideas behind bidding.

Bid 3♣

I once encountered a pair who played Benji (two strong and artificial openings at the 2 level) with a strong club. When asked how they dealt with opening hands with clubs they said, "some of those hands are a bit awkward and sometimes we just have to pass".

I don't understand why I'm looking for slam facing a minimum weak NT. I'm balanced, p is balanced, we have no evidence of a particularly big fit anywhere and we don't have that many points... I played this board in 3nt and certainly would do so on your start to the auction. If I am stuck with this start to the auction I would sign off in 5C and be happy it wasn't pairs.

4♣ for me, unless you respond really light.

I'd advise getting to know some of the English juniors a bit if it's practical for you to do so. Even if you don't find a partner directly, getting involved with the junior scene could give you contacts within a wider community of people who are perhaps more likely to share your goals.