sasioc

Comments like that make me wish bbf came with a 'like' button like facebook does

You hold ♠xx ♥ QJxx ♦ J9xx ♣ AJx at first in, favourable. The auction starts p 2♠ 4♦* p to you. 4♦ = game forcing with 5+♥ and 5+♦ What do you think p needs to take another bid over 4♥? Shockingly not actually an ATB thread :)

My p and I have the agreement that if a bid of 4M can possibly be nat/to play, it is. As many other people have said, I'd bid this way with a long spade suit and a hand too weak to bid initially, eg a poor 4s opener. Lots of people also play leaping michaels over 2s, so if I had a highly distributional 2 suiter I'd have bid that and if I decided I was too weak to bid 4m I may feel I couldn't back in over 4h either.

I don't play 2S there as weakness, just as 5+ S F1. I think that 2nt and 3C from p are non-forcing. Of those I would pass 3C and correct 2nt to 3C, expecting p to pass this. I play 3D here as fourth suit forcing and 3S as gf. If p bids 3S I will bid 4S and if p bids 3D I will bid 3S. If p bids 3H, showing a 6-5 hand I will bid 4C because I like my round suit holdings and am happy to co operate with partner if he has a monster (Kx AKxxx - AKxxxx is a pretty perfect hand for p to have but possible on this auction).

I'm with Phil on this one. I think p probably has Hx spade and something sitting past the diamonds - declarer must have longer spades than diamonds for this bidding to make any sense at all. I think declarer looks to be 2317 (or maybe 2416, although he might have bid 3NT over 3S with something useful in H). If this is the case his best chance for tricks is to ruff as much as possible so ace and another club sounds good to me. I would certainly have doubled this.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that I thought LHO had 4 hearts with the same probability that RHO had 4 clubs - I don't think that at all, although I'll admit that I didn't put a lot of thought into things from that angle when posting! You say that LHO has 6+ diamonds - I'm not sure about in the US but here is it not at all uncommon for players to have 2452 or 1453 hands to bid 1d:1s, 2d, rather than rebidding 1nt or 2c. I believe this hand came from an English women's teams event so I would expect 2D to be routine with either of those shapes or with 6D.

Just thinking about what you said about psychology of bidding something because you think that oppo won't want to make the "obvious" lead, a couple of things to point out: 1) I suspect a lot of players won't think about it in those terms and if your oppo aren't likely to think "I mustn't make the expected lead" then bidding 3nt without a guard in the suit that the auction suggests should be led is very risky. In short, you have to be pretty sure oppo won't make "the obvious lead" for this to work and I don't think that this is that common. I've certainly not had that kind of luck often! 2) If you don't have a guard but bid as if you do there is a pretty decent chance that the opponent on lead will have some of those cards you are missing and hence a clearer lead of the suit (ie can see you are bluffing or just knows it's a safe lead and possibly wants to knock out your guard) - you're not going to talk him out of leading from KQJx, KQTxx etc, which is a reasonably likely type of holding if neither you or p have any cards in the suit. Note that a cheap overcall of 1H over 1D was available to RHO so LHO probably rates to have the length in H. Of course, you may talk LHO out of leading from a shortish or gappy suit - there is also the chance that with that holding a H is not his natural lead anyway. Separately, I would also lead a club on that hand (presumably because I learnt most of my bridge from MickyB) because QT87 is a very appealing holding to lead from. I don't think a H lead is especially clearly indicated in the auction - west can easily have 4H, just as E can easily have 4C so I'd lead one of those suits based which holding I felt was safer to lead from/would gain more of the time.

I have checked "make money from it". This is so that you can get me a kitten.