daveharty

There are people at my local club who have been playing bridge since the Earth cooled, and they have still not progressed past the same "kitchen bridge" level they were playing 40 years ago. Yet there are also some people who showed up at the club as rank novices, and are quite creditable players after a couple of years. If you approach the game seriously, and work at improving, you WILL improve. Read books, get a partner at about the same level as you and practice bidding hands (and study the results to see where you could have done better), get the Bridge Master software and practice your declarer play, don't neglect your defense, and most of all play against people who are better than you. Heck, play rubber bridge for money if you can afford it; I've been told that is the fastest way to improve, bar none. Don't give up; this game is so rich you will never learn everything there is to know, but the rewards are worth the effort a hundred times over. Also I highly recommend taking those lessons, unless the lessons consist of an intermediate player standing in front of a bunch of beginners and describing a bunch of conventions. That kind of lesson is essentially worthless.

Of course you don't know this. You just have to make bids that describe the nature of your hand. In my view, the OP's hand has significant extra playing strength and a very good club suit; 3C seems like the most descriptive rebid. It doesn't preclude playing in spades, or notrump; it simply says "I have a hand with good, long clubs and extra values." And OP's partner, hearing that description, would likely bid 3NT (they aren't really interested in pursuing a spade contract with only four bad spades, and they have stoppers in the two unbid suits, and an absolutely golden club Q). And on this hand, 3NT would make. Imagine that! :)

I'm not sure I understand this. 3C is the bid that shows extra strength, not the other way around. If you bid 2S, you are quite likely to play it there, but if you bid 3C, you will probably be playing 3NT, making. Are you suggesting that the OP's partner would have passed a 3C rebid? mck4711: You're right, it's a pretty long PDF. But it's well worth the effort; it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject that I've come across.

I don't think anyone has addressed this here, it's probably been done in another thread but here are a couple of suggestions. Mike Lawrence's "Complete Book of Overcalls" is pretty good. More advanced is Robson and Segal's "Partnership Bidding at Bridge: The Contested Auction", which is even better for being a freely downloadable PDF. I don't have the link handy but it should be fairly easy to find.

11) My BBO --> User Profile --> Skill Level = "Expert"

You might be right, but I'm impressed when a self-described B/I player goes through a thought process to arrive at the conclusion that the best way to keep the auction under control is to bid a three-card suit. In my experience that's not something that is on most B/I players' radars. EDIT: Anyway, it seems to me that the most important lesson to be drawn from this hand--and many other hands that get posted in this forum--is that making simple, descriptive bids that describe your hand type leads to better contracts. Had the OP's partner simply bid normally, the OP wouldn't have been in the position of having to "come up with" something. Thinking outside the box is obviously a very useful skill, but should probably be reserved for those hands that can't be adequately described using simple, obvious methods. Having to guess what your partner might have on every single auction can be exhausting.

I think Phil's guess is probably correct. Delayed Texas is extremely common (not universal) among A and upper-B players here in Michigan, but almost unheard of among C players.

This was a creative solution you came up with, but why did your partner put you in this position? Either a 1NT rebid, showing a balanced 12-14, or a 2H rebid (not unreasonable with HHx in your major and a side doubleton), look better than 2C with partner's hand. Then you could have simply used New Minor Forcing (or whatever equivalent you play) to discover the heart fit at a lower level, and give the partnership plenty of room to determine the best game or slam. On the given auction, I would have been tempted to (ahem) splinter with your hand at your second turn--but I understand the "S" word is frowned upon in this forum. :)

I think Han was suggesting that if North had a bit less, i.e. was less interested in slam, he would be happy to simply play in 4H, which rates to be an excellent scoring contract.

Yes. This is a really good hand, possibly improved by partner's 1S bid. 3C is a pretty good description of its playing strength. Partner has a comfortable 3NT rebid over it, too. (As others have said, if partner rebids 3D or 3H, you could then bid 3S.)

What pooltuna said. Your partner has a perfectly ordinary 1H opener; 1H doesn't promise high cards in hearts, it just promises hearts. That being said, I would try doubling (if you felt compelled to bid that is; partner "can't" have a hand as good as s/he actually does). That might find a heart fit, and if partner bids clubs, you can always return to diamonds.

Lou Reed, actually. It's a portion of a short story he wrote as a college student, and later read by John Cale on the Velvet Underground track "The Gift".

+1 for the VU reference

The full hand: [hv=pc=n&s=sjthqt982dk64ct64&w=s6hj73daqj932c953&n=s98543h65d875c872&e=sakq72hak4dtcakqj&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=2dp2sp3dp3nppp]399|300[/hv] +490 was decent but obviously 6D is where you want to be. At the table, I thought 2S was pretty clear, but then I felt I'd endplayed myself into being unable to find out enough about partner's diamond holding. Pretty pessimistic I suppose. At least if I'd started with 2NT, I would have felt better after partner showed a good suit, but slam would still be pretty bad opposite AQ9xxx, there would STILL be room for pessimism.

I agree with this, but when partner pulled I started second-guessing myself and wondering if this auction was somehow an exception to the normal rule I play (similar to ggwhiz) that when 3NT has been bid to play, then 4NT is also. The two hands were: [hv=pc=n&w=skqjt98ht852dj3c5&e=s7hkj4daqtcaqj982]266|100[/hv] I should have passed 4S, figuring partner for something like this, as xxhong and Zelandakh have suggested. Just hadn't seen this auction before. Unfortunately, once we got past 3NT or 4S, anything was probably going to end badly.

Maybe I should have given pass some consideration, but in my experience partner will often lead a trump when you convert a negative double to penalty, so that's one fewer dummy entry declarer would need to pick up the suit. Also I figured that LHO, in order to make a vulnerable overcall on an obviously not-so-hot suit would likely have exceptional distribution (seventh diamond, club void, etc.). It turns out that she made a fairly bizarre bid; 2DX would have probably gone off one for a below average score (for us). For those that suggest 4NT now, are you 100% certain that is to play? I thought so, so that's what I bid, but my partner was on a different wavelength.

Okay, seems like 2S is the popular option, which was my choice at the table. After partner's 3D rebid, what is your plan for finding out trump quality? Is it possible to cater to x/xxx/AJ9xxx/xxx (when 3NT looks best), or xx/Qx/KQJ9xx/xxx (6NT), or the various permutations where 6D makes, etc. Is it just a guess whether to try for slam or not, or do you think the odds favor it? It would really suck to get past 3NT and find partner with xx/QJx/QJ9xxxx/xx. mtvesuvius mentioned his temptation to bid 3NT, which was my (agonized) choice at the table. Afterwards I found myself wishing that I had more tightly defined Ogust responses available, i.e. "a good suit is one that can reasonable expect to play for one loser opposite a small doubleton" or something like that, rather than just the "2 of the top 3 honors" that I would have assumed (but wasn't discussed). Anybody have better working definitions of good/bad hand and suit?

With only one likely trump trick? Didn't occur to me, to be honest. Maybe it should have.

1. [hv=pc=n&e=sat2h6dat632cj962&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1hd2n3d4h5d5h]133|200[/hv] 2NT showed a limit raise with 4+ hearts. FWIW, your opponents this round are the best NS pair in the room. 2. [hv=pc=n&e=s7hkj4daqtcaqj982&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=1c2ddp3np4sp]133|200[/hv] Agree/disagree with 3NT? Now what?

[hv=pc=n&e=sakq72hak4dtcakqj&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=2dp]133|200[/hv] Best hand I'd picked up in a while, and partner tried to spoil it. For better or worse, you have agreed to play a "free-wheeling" weak 2 style with Ogust responses to 2NT. New suits are F1. A direct jump to 4C would be a keycard ask. What is your plan? Bonus upvote to the first person to correctly identify who said it, and in what movie.

That's what I get for being born in 1970.

My understanding was that Roth named them almost immediately after the launch of Sputnik in '57, in order to mark the beginning of a "Space Age" in bridge. But you could be right.

Truth. It seems like this is one of the hardest forms of discipline to learn.

No, but they played Sputnik doubles. So named by Al Roth I believe, although I don't think it was his idea originally. Not sure when "Sputnik" changed to "negative".