gszes

I guess this all boils down to what you might imagine a 5h raise to mean. Would you consider say Q xxxxx xxx xxxx a reasonable 5h raise? how about x xxxxx xxx xxxx or Q xxxx xxxx xxxx? I realize seeing both hands makes it tougher to imagine what responder might have for a 5h bid. I was just curious to see the thinking involved with further asking bids.

personal favorite 2n 3h 3s 4h (splinter using 2n 4c to show both majors in conjunction with texas) and partnership should have little trouble arriving at small slam and room to safely investigate grand.

hand 1 2S appears to be too weak. Catering only to partner having spades and close to a dead minimum. There are plenty of hands where p has spades and semi scattered (near top) values where 3n is a great contract (even AT98xx xx xx Jxx needs the club finesse). hand 2 2h opener has no idea why responder is bidding as they are and should not be bidding 6h when responder might be waiting to x the 5s bid with a vengeance.

I have no heartache with the bidding through 4s but I cannot fathom a reason why south did not bid 4n instead of 5d. If 4s was not a void I am shocked and if responder has 2 aces how bad can 6d be? Responder is still trying for slam after our pass of 4h so some extra values has to be assumed.

That is correct at this point of the bidding which is the beginning of slam exploration. If all partner needs from you for slam is two useful queens they should be relatively easy to evaluate later in the bidding. The main point of keeping the bidding LOW (especially with really bad hands) is to try and give opener as much leeway as possible to describe their hand further. As more is learned about opener's hand, responder can then better evaluate how their hand looks in comparison. FWIW I would not consider a side QJ(xx) as a useful queen at this point of the proceedings.

maybe it is semantics but denying 2 useful queens is not the same as denying two potentially useful queens. IMHO after 2c 2d 2s responder knows only of the useful spade Q and has no reason to suspect the heart Q is useful thus 2n:)

your partner has held garbage all day and you pick up the following vul vs not in a close imp match typical 2/1. [hv=pc=n&s=sq2hq542d8764c743&n=sakj543hakj3dcakq&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=2cp2d(waiting)p2sp2n(less%20than%202%20useful%20queens%20no%20long%20suits)p3hp5h(some%20good%20reaon%20for%20rasing%20to%205%20level%20no%20cue%20bid%20available)p]266|200[/hv] Those that heard partner bid 4h the previous round do not have this problem since N would have passed in fear responder has something like x xxxx xxxx xxxx. We have to feel confident responder has at least 1 useful queen for us but both? how would we go about looking for a grand?

rho is actually kind of limited due to inability to bid 3n. P was also quite constrained due to the vul and the need for a fair amount of power to bid over 3d. The odds appear to greatly favor action and the probability of rho being able to x (and thus create a disaster) seem exceedingly low. I vote X. At MP the possibility of -200 (even w/o x) might scare me away from bidding but I hate being a chicken bwakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

partner is taking time to try and show entire hand pattern making 4d at worst 3 and probably 4 with a club void. The ability to pattern out allows for maximum reevaluation by responder and allowing the responder to not only help with level but strain (we might prefer to play a 9 card diamond fit vs 8 card heart fit at the 6 level). The failure by opener to splinter earlier in the bidding means this hand is most likely around 20 hcp (still trying to slam opposite known min by responder) while the immediate splinter would have been closer to 17.

we can see why 4c natural (vs a spade raise) is not helpful. There is little to no way responder can judge well what to do and it takes up a huge amount of space while bypassing a (possibly) vastly more lucrative 3n for no good reason. I am closer to a 2c bid than a natural 4c bid and do not have too much heartache for 3c bidders. 2d is interesting but can lead to disastrous results if responder has a decent hand and will not keep quiet.

chances of slam seem too remote with our void opposite the club suit now if the bidding had been 1d 1s 4d I would bid 4h as a cue but as it is I see little alternative to 4s.

When you say accurate did you mean double dummy? I ask this because it is not overly obvious (see Cyberyeti's comment) that I need to underlead my AQJxxx of clubs IF I fly with the dia ace at trick 2 after a "safe" heart lead. 4s will normally make IMHO because the backs of the cards are a constant source of irritation to the defense. This is especially true at MP where underleading the AQJxxx of clubs to get partner a possible ruff might all too easily lead to an overtrick that is disastrous to our MP score. ONE size does not fit all -- let us say you are on lead against 4s with Ax of diamonds after partner has opened a weak 2d. I would speculate that leading the A from Ax will have a greater than 75% chance of being the best way to start the defense unless you are looking at something even more glaringly obvious.

We have the entire 2 and 3 level to discover where we want to play. If p does not care for NT after 2d it is almost always going to be wrong and we have lots of exploration space to discover where and how high we want to go. If partner is exactly 55 !S!D we can always convert any dia contract to spades and wont often be worse off.

What strain r we playing in and how high? The best way to start this type of search would appear to be the fake reverse of 2d. This bid keeps the bidding low and Cyber's GF 2n at least keeps the bidding open but I still am not happy with losing an entire level of bidding when such a simple reverse is available. Partner has already bypassed diamonds so there should be no real danger in bidding 2d.

In your original logic you had Ax Jxx as winning when you played the T OR (K or Q) then small. This might be messing with your thinking since when u play the (K or Q) on the first round the A wins and the remaining Jx will eventually score up a second trick

With this vulnerability the x shows that defeating 1n will be our most likely best result IF opener has a semi normal looking hand. There is no set minimum or maximum for this bid and it does NOT deny support for openers major. EX: p opens 1S at favorable rho bids 1N and we hold xxxx Axx Axx Axx. We would normally be in at least 4s but we rate to set 1n red more than making 4s. If p feels their hand is too weak or distributional to leave the x in they can pull it.

late to the party I would have started with 1n 2c 2h 3d (letting p concentrate on hearts and club for nt) After 1n 2c 2h 2s(mss) 3d I will now bid 3s which once again asks p to concentrate on hearts and clubs for NT purposes. We are in no big hurry. After this start, I will not stop short of 6d but 7d or even a highly improbable 7n are still plausible.

who know what a bot is doing? I would have bid 2h fsf over 2d and maybe we would have gathered better info. As it is I feel compelled to bid 5s asking bot to bid 6 if it near max with singleton or even if near bottom with a void and pass even if near max if it is lying about short hearts sigh and lastly bid 7 if near max with a void. Who knows what the bot will dream up

There is a VERY good chance the opps are going down but before you bring out the x card ask yourself a couple of questions 1. What is your plan and will the mysterious void wreck it? 2. r u more likely to x with a trump void or a trump stack? So after meekly putting the x card out of your mind since there seems to be little benefit to risking a small slam for a +50 what to lead? If north has a dia void (with our AQ coming down in no time) a spade lead seems needed. I am also concerned with a side suit with north allowing a short suit pitch from the south hand. The odds seem slightly higher spades are short somewhere since they were never bid so I am going to hang my hat on the spade ace and be prepared to conveniently ignore this hand when I write my next book (yeah right) on opening leads. Oh and as an afterthought apologize to poor partner:))

At least now I have a better understanding on why the bots are such ridiculous bidders. They see these inexplicably work once in a tangerine moon and can't get over the thrill of being lucky. Skill at bidding bah that's for those humans. Though I do admit that spade suit would do me a world of good when playing poker:)

Unless there is some kind of conventional bid in use, I think the example hand and most of the proposed opening bidder hands should have been either opened 2c OR 1d followed by 3s (not merely 2s). The 3s bid showing not only this distribution but begging partner to put us in game with even one useful card in our suits. The problem with the 2s bid is that it fails to show the dynamics of the hand and leaves room for partner to think their club suit (if any) might somehow be useful. How would you bid Axxxx void AQJxxx xx? I think most would open 1d and after 2h p p would back in with 2s. That is the problem with the example hand. The club bidders are imagining far less robust suits when they are saving partner from themselves. Now how about the belated 3s bid surely this means there is some kind of club tolerance that allows the opening bidder to bid on since it has improved their hand. That makes the 4c stand out even more --- just a thought.

Reasons to open 1c 1. EVERY suit controlled in case partner has slam aspirations. 2. 1c a decent lead director in case opps win the bidding. 3. No rebid problem. 4. Way better (offensively) than most balanced 13 counts the universe opens. Reasons to pass 1. Playing with a bot and they will mess up any bidding anyway. 2. Tired and passing is easier than thinking about bidding. 3. Can't get name in forums with 1c bid but maybe I can with pass. 4. This partner keeps asking me for games maybe pass will finally get them to stop. hmmm 4 reasons for each action. Does that mean both are equally justifiable?

3c is not really a rescue per se (if it was 2sx then it would be a rescue) it is merely stating that you feel we would be better off in clubs than in spades or diamonds. P cannot imagine we r holding 8 clubs just from a 3c bid so now we make our first rescue bid of 4c.