mr1303

I'm not that old. I'm only 23 :)

Well, I'm assuming standard "standard American" when 1C promises 3 cards, not a "short club" structure. Just because a 1C opening can be on three cards, there's no reason to guarantee that it IS on three cards. In fact I read somewhere (I forget where) that 90%+ of the time a 1C opening in Standard American has 4 or more clubs. That's plenty good enough odds for me. So 2C it is.

Hmm, a close one. I virtually never pass with hand of this strength unless I intend to defend at the 1 level, which I don't holding this hand. I think I'll pop in 1S, and not bid again unless I'm forced to. However, I think that 1NT is reasonable, since if I'm going to be in a game, 3NT looks superior as the opposition may get diamond ruffs. I wouldn't double in a month of Sundays.

I have a simple rule. If I'm only going to make one bid with a hand (and this is one of those hands) and I have a choice between bidding a suit of my own and supporting partner, I raise partner (unless my partner is rubbish, but that's another matter). Hence I bid 2C, and don't think twice about it. If partner has good hearts he can bid them himself.

Not convinced by my partner's bidding here: if he had club support he should show it himself. I lead a trump, since a diamond might give something away, and I don't lead from AQs By the way, this is the wrong place for a hand like this. Try "Interesting bridge hands". BPO is where we put our online bidding contests.

Any chance of you telling us what it was Jimmy?

!!!

For those of you who do play OBAR, what would you do holding: xx AKJTxx AKx Kx ?

Did I really finish second? I don't do things like that.....

Dreadful, hopeless director ruling, completely illegal. Again. As I understand it, your partner made a heavy weak jump overcall, perfectly reasonably given that both opponents had bid and you couldn't do anything over 1C, opponents made a bad decision to double for penalty, tried crying to the director about it, who for some unknown reason ruled in their favour. To be more specific, once a result has been obtained on a board (and it clearly was here) then any combination of averages cannot be given. Secondly, is the 2S bid allowed? Of course, you can bid whatever you like. Did you mis-inform your opponents? No, your opponents are entitled to know your agreements, not what is in your hand. The partnership agreement is that 2S showed a weak hand with a long spade suit, and although the hand was slightly stronger than expected, it is the right of the 2S bidder to have a better hand than the partnership might expect. If I were you I'd blacklist the TD and never play in his tournaments again. I won't comment on the possibility of private chat, since there is no proof of that.

Presumably we play auto-splinters here? In which case, I need more than a flat 10 count to bid more than 4H.

Presumably my methods involve 3X when X isn't hearts here showing a shortage, 3NT = 15-17 balanced ish, 3H = 18-19 balanced ish, 4 new suit = slammish 2 suiter, 4H = balanced minimum. Well, I have a 15 count, which with the singleton ace of diamonds, looks fairly balanced. So I'll try 3NT. I don't like to splinter with singleton aces

I'm leading a spade as well, simply because my partner has asked me to. I need a very good reason to overrule my partner, and Q964 is not a good reason

I would open this a Muiderberg 2H every day of the week. This is almost textbook.

I really wish people wouldn't call it "Keri Stayman". Keri is NOTHING like Stayman.

Horrible misfit. I'm going to try 1NT. If partner can't do something interesting in hearts I don't want to put this hand into game. To invite in clubs would be an error I believe without a fit.

I would disagree (although not very strongly). I'm not really sure what a slow 3S here would suggest. Does it suggest a hand that was close to a 4S bid, or a hand that was only just worth 3S? Could be anything. For what it's worth I would pass 3S here, but that's because I've got two top heart losers and no aces. However, I don't feel compelled to pass as a result of the UI.

4D is forcing? What am I meant to do with: xxxx xx xx xxxxx ?

3D/H are unfortunately insufficient. Maybe you could try 4H over 4D though....

Uggh, horrible hand. 5D, and hope partner doesn't bid 6. Hopefully this is the least encouraging bid I can make.

Now that last post was just completely not in the spirit of the thread! Personally I'd like to see the possibility of making insufficient bids, and then have LHOs such as Mike Bell accept them because he's too asleep to realise what's going on....

Not so much the case. How do you defend against a multi 2H? (showing a weak 2 in either hearts or spades). I for one have absolutely no idea. That's why I'm glad it's been banned. However, I consider it odd that I can play 2NT as a bad pre-empt in either minor on a normal Thursday night duplicate, or my local swiss teams congress, but I can't play it in an international match. (It is legal at EBU level IV, but brown sticker in WBF events)

1. Bid 4H. It could be disasterous, but that would be unlucky. It might be completely the wrong thing to do, but that's why we pre-empt. 2. Possibly double, but probably pass. You need partner to have a lot to make something, and without 4 hearts it could be messy.

No adjustment, and it didn't take me long to come to that conclusion. NS should enquire further as to what EW mean by "Unusual NT". Having failed to do so they have no ground for redress. Especially as they should realise fairly early on that West has the minors and not hearts and clubs.

Presumably partner could have bid something else without necessarily going past 3H if he had something else: E.g. he wouldn't have something like: xx AKxxx x KQxxx where he would most likely bid 3C? So therefore partner looks to have a balanced minimum, and opposite that hand I want to play in game. With only Ax as a spade stopper, it looks as though I need to have 9 top winners in NT unless partner has some help, so I bid 4H