daveharty

The main reason I ducked the first diamond is that every so often, West will switch to a club. As Cyberyeti says, it's not really plausible that this diamond switch is a singleton.

This was the actual hand, I didn't want to alter it in any way to make it more "pure". You are right of course, but I also wanted to make the point that even when a hand doesn't have a textbook layout, using the same techniques can give declarer an advantage over simply taking a simple finesse; in this case even a wrong club guess at the end didn't scuttle declarer, as there was no way East could safely break clubs.

This hand comes from last week's game at my local club. It is a step up in complexity from the hand I described in "Psychobabble Smackdown", but it contains such an important (and common) theme that I decided to share it in the N/B forum. The thread title is a less-than-subtle clue about how to approach the hand (and it has nothing to do with disrobing in order to distract the opponents!). Click "Next" to see how the hand begins: [hv=pc=n&s=sk85hkq87da96caj8&n=s94hat653dt83ck97&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=1n(15-17)p2d(transfer)p3h(%22I%20really%20like%20hearts%22)p4hppp&p=sqs9sas5d5]480|360[/hv] A few notes about the auction are in order. Most of you will probably recognize North's 2D bid as a "transfer", showing 5+ cards in the next higher suit; in this case, hearts. When South bid 3H, he was "super-accepting" the transfer (2H would have been simply "accepting" the transfer, which is what occurs in the majority of cases). This shows four trumps and a maximum 1NT bid. In other words, a very good hand for playing in the transfer suit. This will occasionally get the partnership too high if responder has a really bad hand, but it will also enable the partnership to bid close games that they might otherwise have missed when responder has a borderline hand, as in this case. How would you tackle this hand as declarer? It looks like the defense is off to a good start; they've taken their spade ace, and attacked your weak suit, diamonds, where there are two losers waiting. Is it simply a matter of hoping that the club queen is with East, in which case a finesse will allow you to avoid any club losers? Or is there a way of improving your chances? If you want to see the whole hand played out as it was at the table, click here. I hope you found this theme a little bit challenging, but not frustratingly so. Familiarity with this common type of hand will vastly improve your declarer play, and pave the way for more advanced techniques further down the road.

I think you missed a pass...the 1H bid was made by advancer, not responder. I think it's still illegal to double partner's bid, although there have been several times I've wanted to do it lately.

The lack of a spade raise from RHO worries me a bit, but it's a vulnerable game. 4♥.

I am curious what rules GIB applies when the auction takes an "impossible" turn. Can GIB allow for a psyche by opener? Does it "trust" partner's bidding over that of the opponents if a conflict arises? If so, then GIB's bidding here is barely credible, if it thinks the partnership could have 32 HCP between them (leaving aside the issue of the bid descriptions; I have no idea how closely they are actually aligned with the decisions GIB makes). Bad, sure, but if the relevant algorithm goes something like "Partner has 25-30 points and I have a card for him" then I guess it makes a kind of warped sense. I'm also curious what "twice rebiddable" means to GIB; I guess I can imagine a scenario where I would bid a suit like 98742 twice (although that's not trivial), but not one where I would bid it three times.

I knew I was dialing it in a bit when I decided not to bid game on this hand, but GIB played very oddly: http://tinyurl.com/6prawrr

[hv=pc=n&s=skjhaqt65dkj9532c&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=p1sp2dp2sp3hp3np]133|200[/hv] IMPs. Vanilla 2/1, 2♠ is the default rebid and doesn't promise 6. Agree/disagree with South's bids so far? What now?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5t5_O8hdA

LOL that was pretty funny

Thread of the Year: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/52313-razz/ Also, JLOGIC's post (#40) in the same thread for Post of the Year.

Thanks for the replies. I guess I've crystalized my thoughts a bit better at this point; what I was really getting at was a two part question: 1. Is there a class of hands--typically high-ODR two suiters with less high card strength than your normal "minimum" one-level opener--for which it is a reasonable strategy to use a "preemptive two-step" as a constructive description? 2. If your answer to the above is "yes," then what are the parameters of this class of hands? If you answer "yes" to the first question, there must be some upper boundary between those hands where you would use this strategy (or at least consider it), and those hands that you simply open at the one level. On the other hand, if you answer "no" to the first question, there must be some lower bound separating those hands that you are willing to open at the one level, and those hands that you are not; presumably if a given hand falls below your threshold, you will either pass and hope to come in later, or make a preemptive bid with no plan of showing the secondary feature of your hand. In both cases I'm interested in where the boundary is. My own experience is strictly in the ACBL, where very few people use specialized two-level openers to show two suiters, as I understand is more common elsewhere; that probably colors my view. But my personal answer to the first question would be a tentative "yes", and the hand in my OP is pretty close to my instinctual boundary. If it's not close to yours, how much would you have to weaken it to make it uncomfortable for you to open 1H? Frances apparently thinks the answer is a resounding "no" to the first question, and thinks it may be a regional difference. I think that's really interesting; do you think that might have anything to do with the ACBL's historical systemic restrictions? Or are North Americans just crazier?

I thought we were trying to keep the jargon to a minimum in this forum? For those Novices and Beginners who are bewildered by the references to "LOTT", it stands for the "Law of Total Tricks". It is not a law in the sense of "legality" or "rules", but rather a statistical correlation between the total number of trumps held by the two partnerships and the total number of tricks available to them when playing in those fits. If that is confusing, it states, basically, that in a hand where NS have a 9-card heart fit and EW have a 8-card spade fit, then there will be 17 total tricks available to the two sides. Those tricks could be allocated in various ways; if, for example, NS could make 10 tricks with hearts as trumps, then EW could make only 7 tricks with spades as trumps (10 + 7 = 17). If, on the other hand, NS could make only 8 tricks with hearts as trumps, then EW could make 9 tricks with spades as trumps (8 + 9 = 17). The LoTT can therefore be used as a guide for competitive bidding; if you can estimate the total number of trumps (often you can do this with some accuracy from the auction), it can give you clues about things like How high should our side compete, or Should we double or bid one more, etc. One of the little corollaries of the LoTT is that it's rarely right to allow the opponents to play at the two level in an 8-card fit; this was what Charlie Yu was referring to when he said doubling the opponents at the two level in their 8-card fit was "anti-LoTT." The preceding paragraph was a gross oversimplification, of course. There are lots of little adjustments to make to the "raw" trick count for things like "double fits" and "suit purity", and people will hotly debate how effective the LoTT actually is, but there is no question that over the past 25 years or so (since the publication of Larry Cohen's To Bid or Not to Bid, which popularized the LoTT, although Cohen didn't invent it) it has had a huge impact on how people approach competitive bidding. It's an intermediate subject, although I think there are a lot of bright beginners who would be interested in it. I am only posting this in case some N/Bs are scratching their heading thinking "LOTT? WTF?"

At the table it was IMPs.

This is a significant consideration, IMO. In every regional or sectional team event that I've ever witnessed (all of which were hand-dealt), by the time the round is 35-40 minutes old, the early finishers are wandering freely among those tables still playing, and standing in pairs or small clusters of people discussing the round's points of interest, all within earshot of active tables. The directors will frequently make a plea for calm, but as they are engaged in the busiest part of the round dealing with incoming score reports, and as nobody has ever actually received a penalty for such behavior as far as I'm aware, such pleas are almost universally ignored; at best the chaos is momentarily reduced to a dull roar. I am (and most of my partners are) pretty fast at the table, but there have certainly been times, playing against slower opponents, that I was still at an active table during the hubbub, and it's definitely frustrating. Going to pre-duped hands would require a seismic cultural shift in the ACBL, including much stricter enforcement of regulations calling for peace and quiet in the playing area.

Double. I expect to beat it the vast majority of the time; If partner pulls, he has a weak distributional hand, which will play well opposite mine. Sometimes they make it but that's the price of doing business. I don't know many people who play a double of a 4S opening bid as "purely" takeout. Also, I would make the same call whether RHO is Grandma Phyllis or Jeff Meckstroth, but I would expect GP to go down a little more.

Just to be clear: neither would I.

I made a boo-boo. In a N/B thread, I raised the specter of opening with a preemptive bid and then freely rebidding a new suit if the opportunity presented itself. I shouldn't have done that! The actual hand in question was something like --/KQxxxx/Axxxx/xx, and I said I thought there was a good case for opening 2H and then freely rebidding diamonds. This is an area of bidding that I haven't really thought much about in the past. So, a few questions: 1. Do you ever do this? 2. If yes, what sorts of hands do you consider appropriate? (Do you think it's reasonable with the given hand, or was I way off base?) 3. If yes, have you ever given your partner a subconjunctival hemorrage?

[hv=pc=n&s=sak87htd62c975432&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=1hp2hpp]133|200[/hv]

Every Monday night in the Beginner/Intermediate Lounge, I moderate a Play-and-Discuss table. This past Monday, I changed the format a little and ran a team game for some of the regular attendees. In a battle I called the "Psychobabble Smackdown," the Freudian Slips took on the Jungian Archetypes; Team Freud prevailed in the eight-board match. The following hand came up during the match; it contains a very simple and extremely common theme. One declarer was caught off-guard; the other kept his cool and earned a big swing for his team. Follow the play of the first few tricks by clicking the "Next" button: [hv=pc=n&s=sa52ha5dak43cq864&n=sk9643hk82dj9ckj3&d=n&v=b&b=13&a=pp1n(15-17)p2h(transfer)p2sp3n(offering%20choice%20of%20games)p4sppp&p=hJh2h7hAh5h3hKh6h8h9s2h4sAsJs3s7s5ht]640|480[/hv] At this point, the paths taken at the two tables diverged. How would you proceed?

One of the more sensible "rules" that novices are taught goes something like "Once you preempt, you are done for the remainder of the auction. Partner makes all subsequent decisions." I think it holds true in the vast majority of cases, and I think it wouldn't be bad to recommend a "no exceptions" policy to newcomers. That being said, all such rules do have their exceptions, and I think a good case can be made for opening 2♥ with this hand, planning on freely bidding the diamonds next if the opportunity presents itself. That could go badly but there really isn't a good "standard" way of opening a hand like this. In a standard or 2/1 context, partner will expect a little more defense/less offense for a 1♥ opener. Another option would be to pass and hope to come in later with a "two suited" overcall, but that might not work for several reasons: the auction might not go as you need it to in order to make your planned bid; the auction might be at an uncomfortable level at your next turn; and it gives the opponents the chance to exchange a lot of information before your next turn, which vastly decreases the effectiveness of any preemptive action. So I wouldn't wait. If I was dead-set against opening 2♥ and rebidding diamonds, I would probably open 1♥. I think the hand has too much potential to pass, and opening 3♥ or 4♥ as dealer seems a little random. I would give a lot of thought to opening 4♥ in third seat.

You know, this got me asking the same question that has probably been bothering you...Was Jim Morrison a bridge player? As usual, it's best to return to the original text: Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain And all the children are insane All the children are insane Waiting for the summer rain, yeah... ...Ride the snake, ride the snake To the lake, the ancient lake, baby The snake is long...seven miles Ride the snake, he's old, and his skin is cold The west is the best The west is the best West is the best, huh? You make the call.

It's the solar flares.

Was this an analysis of hands that were actually played, or a simulation? Did it include auctions? (I am wondering how we know that the auction was 2NT-p-p-p on the hands in question.) Maybe it means that people should be doubling in the balancing seat on any excuse. Maybe it means that people should be competing more aggressively against 2NT openers, since 2NT-1 might not be a bad result when dummy hits with a yarborough. Maybe it means I just woke up so this actually seems like an interesting subject. Oh, and 35219: you've quoted yourself in your sig. I'm not sure but I think that's a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive.

The full deal: [hv=pc=n&s=shkqjt2d97653ca65&w=sj65ha5dj842ckj87&n=sakqt94h9876daqtc&e=s8732h43dkcqt9432]399|300[/hv] I assume those who bid 3NT also believe that North has an obvious pull. I wanted to bid 4H but I didn't know how GIB would treat it (yes I know I can hover over the bid and see the explanation but I try to avoid that), so I bid 4S; my experience has been that GIB almost always has a very good suit to jump rebid. 6H by North looks pretty great, anyone for a heart bid rather than 3S?