gszes

i searched high and low for a trump to lead (looked at clubs 3 times) gave up and asked myself why i would x when i had no strong idea on what the hey to lead>>>>> ANYWAY after much fidgeting and asking the director if it was too late to claim i had accidentally dropped the x card I pulled out the dia J hoping against hope dummy didnt hit with precisely a singleton dia.

my p was speaking for himself only with that boot camp comment once was enough:)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

from the standpoint of the contract and the lie of the cards he is right it is a nothing hand. he is wrong to assume all tables would bid the hand the same way and your 4h making was most likely the best result by far.

Almost no defense and suggesting a sacrifice at this vulnerability is to much like walking a tight rope. 2s lets p know about the overall weakness of your hand yet at these colors also shows good enough spades to play opposite a singleton. p need not fear spade losers and can invite with less than normal due to knowing the spade suit is better than normal. Preemption at a low level eliminating trump suit worries for p and showing little to no defense all wrapped up in a nice cozy 2s bid.

with the worst hand at the table: managed to get in a responsive x overbid by making a free raise to 3d avoided getting doubled vulnerable pushed the opps to a maybe poorly splitting 3 level contract pass while p is still willing to make overcalls with less than fort knox

even if rho has 18 p has around 10 and their inability to bid should indicate a generally balanced hand. P may be even stronger and a doubleton heart kept them from acting in direct seat. The odds of the oppps getting to game would appear to be small and setting 1d will probably be difficult. If the opps get to a better partial so be it but just letting them play 1d seems too cowardly given the circumstances.

Due to limited entry situation I think the best overall LOP involves a successful heart finesse combined with getting 2 dia tricks. trick 1 spade J (no sense risking losing to singleton T) trick 2 heart finesse If this loses we are in big trouble and our game % falls to single digits (ick) assuming the heart wins we attack dia from the top hoping for any HH Jx or Tx and the inability of the opps to score 3 clubs.

my hand has vastly improved after the 3h bid and my *underbid of 2c with my 2 3/4 club hand (courtesy of cyberyeti) and I am now interested in slam. IMO we should now bid 4d dia splinter and at the very worst 3 card spade support (could also have 3/4 card heart support) the important part of the message is we have a fit and my hand has improved dramatically since my simple 2c bid. If p does not have slam aspirations they can sign off in 4h and we will correct to 4s if we are say 3217. We can also use the same logic to correct any 6 level heart contract to spades. There is a down side to this--if p now wanted to use rkc there is no simple method of differentiating hearts from spades. How does p go about asking for heart honors when there has been no agreed trump suit. We are prepared to question p 3h bid vs a much less space consuming 2d bid earlier :))))))))))

bridge squeezes complete by clyde e love provides a great "formula" for how to guage the practicaility of a huge number of squeezes. There are tons of examples but no story lines if you also like entertainment vs strictly education.

sometimes the hands are easier than they seem we have 3spa 1h 3d 2c tricks. That is 9 off the top we also have a free play for trick 10 via playing for the drop in spades. There is no strong reason in the bidding or the play to assume where the spade J is and therefore we take our avg at worst and take our chance with a tie for top with the drop. At imps there is no choice as this is the only right play. In addition to that if you play your 3 top dia before deciding on the spades you will have the following end position (you will see that lho should have led a small heart vs clearing the suit). AKTx void void xx Qx void void KQxx If rho began life with spades Jxxx and club T987 what 6 cards are they going to hold onto? If they hold 3c and 3s when we play for the drop the J appears If they hold less than 3 clubs the clubs run. For those that feel the spade finesse is 100% free of risk--is there even the tiniest bit of doubt that rho may have begun life with 4 hearts vs 3?????? You have to hate the fact that lho cleared the heart suit (with no possible entry) vs leading low keeping communications open.

too much risk of a ruff and sluff with a club too much risk of giving away heart position with a heart too much risk of giving away dia position with a dia no risk in giving up anything with a spade ok i talked myself into it a spade.

since it takes a significant increase in values to make 5 of a minor vs 4 of a major----there would seem to be only a small window of opportunity for an exact 4d bid where there is a whole ton of possible hands where being able to show a short dia can be of significant benefit. There is good benefit to being able to play 3d as competitive (vs a game force) but it becomes much more difficult to come up with a hair splitting hand that makes 4d correct and 5d wrong. That is the main reason for using the 4d as an auto splinter.

its impossible to do this w/o knowing the rest of your system. for ex what is 3d (auto splinter?) what responses do i get if i use the relay system? I will hazard a 3s bid here. With any luck p will bid 3n with a non slammish type hand (ie lots of Q and J) and i will pass. P might even be able to take control and start asking for aces immediately and we will have to hope that our promise of a 6th spade will not lead p astray. If P cue bids (lots of controls) I will bid 6s at MP (when it makes it will score better) 6c at IMPS (safer and it will make more often)

This does not seem to be the hand to try for a trump guess. The risk appears to be reasonably large of a ruff no matter which opp we finesse and we are wrong. Our contract is ice cold anytime trumps break 32 and there is a pretty fair chance the Q will drop doubleton if we play AK off the top. IMO playing the AK of trumps is the "safe" way of trying for a top. We still have play if trumps are 4/1 (though our odds diminish appreciably)

At IMPS I would bid 4d (self splinter) since I would stretch to bid game anyway. This is MP however and there is no reason to stretch. We have a 5 loser hand and we need p to eliminate at least 2 of those losers and the odds of p eliminating those 2 losers go up if they can accept the invite.

there is a HUGE difference btn learning something for the first time and trying to replace learned knowledge with new information. A new student thinks every bridge situation is a problem because they know how to solve nothing. Their concentration is quite high. A person that has learned something (and used it effectively for a long time) does not concentrate as much when facing the familiar. They see their invitational hand and "know" what to do next. It takes a reasonable amount of repetition to completely eliminate the learned (and effective) techniques and replace them with better ones. Have them do 15-20 hands in a row and make sure this problem area is addressed frequently until you see a change has taken place. Remember that some are better at "reprogramming" their thinking than others have patience.

i would have been a ton happier if i had bid 3d over 2s. I would then not have nagging doubts about gettting slaughtered by a ton of spades in any nt contract. It is imps and it is hugely unlikely p has made a 4n bid without a fairly distributional hand and a lot of power. I have a fair amount of offense myself in diamonds and If I am going down in a contract it will not be 3/4/5 tricks. I will bid 6d here and hope that p understands that my spade stop might have been a tad on the sketchy side.

there is significantly more safety involved with bidding over the opps 1n overcall than their 1n opener. When it is an overcall the power of our hand plus p opening bid gives us a fairly decent idea of how high we can go at a minimum. For ex I would x 1n overcall for penalty with say Kxx Kxx QJx Axxx but I would pass with this hand over a 1n opening bid. With a hand like QJT9xx Kx Ax xxx I would be happy to X 1n overcall for penalty but would prefer to be able to bid 2s after a 1n opener. With a hand like KQJxxx xx xx xxx it would be nice to be able to bid 2h transfer after a 1n overcall but i would pass a 1n opening bid unless the vulnerability made a spade bid reasonably safe. Being able to show 2 suits is also important and i use 2c (over opps 1n overcall) to show any 2 suited hand. The main reason for this is because if I have values opps most likely will rarely be able to compete effectively so there is no need to rush to show my 2 suits and the fact I did not x limits the overall power of my hand very effectively.(ie im willing to compete but not strong enough to x). When rho opens 1n (and i have dia and hearts) if I can convey that message in one bid p will have a huge head start if the opps compete (which they may well be able to do opposite a non opening/passed partner).

my hand is pretty good but the mere fact p bid 1n means they have a fair amount of wasted values in clubs. I am torn between a forcing 3d* (our best shot at 3n) and a invitational 3h bid (at least letting p know i have decent hearts). *I would not hazard a 3d bid unless I was sure p would take it as forcing however. at imps I would try 3d* since game is more important then strain.

both major suits are good for game. Neither minor is generally all that great for game. When you have the minors we are primarily interested in NT. With that in mind I would generally prefer to stress my 6 card minor to advertising my 2nd minor. The main reason for this is that 3n may be a ton easier to reach if p can count on possible 6 tricks than knowing you are some 45 54 55 64 distribution in the minors. I would not rebid a bad 6 card suit like Kxxxxx if i had a reasonable 4 card club suit.

something to live by-- AVBAF all vague bids are forcing:)))) your p 4c bid may be vague but it is not natural so do the best you can within your bridge knowledge and bid accordingly. Noone expects you to know everything as an intermediate player but we all hate to get passed in what seems like an obvious cue bid of some sort. I would also play the 4c as p asking you to choose a major.

i think 2d is a fine start but 3h ventures into the danger zone. P can still be quite weak with this bidding and IMO it would be best to make a bid that will allow p to describe their hand/power before commiting our side to probably the 4 level. my second bid would be x with the intention of correcting 3c to 3d raising 3h to 4h raising 2n to 3n passing 3d or 3n figuring out what to do if the bidding gets higher.

normally i would just bid 3n but the hand looks like things may not go as planned so I will bid 2n aksing p for a bit more before proceeding to game.

at imps I would be unwilling to sit for a small slam s i would just bid 7c right away. While it is true that every once in a while we will go -500 vs a partial I'll pay off to that in exchange for not losing out to any slams over the long haul. It is also remotely possible neither opp will feel safe x 7c and we play undoubled or (can it be ) making. Its MP however and we can reap huge benefits for merely making it diffcult for the opps to gauge how high they want to go. IMO the MP bid is 5c. Then leave the opps alone and see how well you have done.

we are 25% from making 7d opposite AJ9xx Axx xx xxx and yet if p has AKJ9x QJTx xx Ax we are only 50% to make 5d. We have little defense and there is no rational method of discovering how good p hand is for slam. IMO our best bet is to make sure the opps cant steal the hand for anything less than 6c. If we now bid 5d P will have the option of x 6c (knowing we promised little/no defense. Anything other than 5d takes a large position that p will comprehend the length of our diamonds if we repeat them. Even if we have a spade fit (62) it is unlikely to do all that well unless we were heading to making dia also.