gszes

3h both imps and mp at mp I agree with original pass at IMPS where game is a favorite if p has as little as Qx AJTxx xxx xx we have pretty good play for 4h I would use whatever device you use to invite game and let p decide

makes perfect sense to try 4s at imps you should come out ahead in the long run, But (if its invitational) I would have no problems if p bid 3s here. At MP I am not so sure. As long as we play 3s as invitational (and not just blocking) I have no problem bidding 3s here. I need some kind of extra juice from p to make game and I am more than happy inviting and letting p decide if their hand is good or not. If 3s is blocking vs invitational (hardly uncommon) we have a problem and I would have to bid 4s just because it might still be better than them making 3d (assuming no x). getting p involved in the decision making process has a tendency to work far better than merely guessing.

I hope the league will consider making all matches of equal length including any playoffs. I require no prize money to compete and I would most likely frown on having to pay a league fee to play. IMO league starts out with a round robin where each team plays all of the other teams once--the top 4 (head to head competition is tie breaker) do a finals 1 vs 4 2 vs 3 with the winners facing each other for bragging rights. Once we get settled one match a week does not seem overwhelming. I would like to join but still dont see a clear way to do so. Is there a complete list of team captains somewhere??

I am curious---I would like to add something to the original parameters of the auction. You suspect your team has fallen far behind. Nothing else has changed. Would anyone that voted pass now consider x??? I strongly suspect many would (myself included). I do not know what the circumstances were in the match you discussed but there are many things that can change how a person will bid. 15 (10? 5?)hands in a row with nothing but pass makes us all a bit antsy and we may start to shade things a bit in our desire to contribute. Thank goodness none of us are robots because they stink to high heaven. The same thing that seems to limit artificial intelligence also lends a hand in some of our inconsistencies. It is also possible that reading our forums has slightly altered many of our perceptions on when/how to bid (even if it is at an unconscious level at best). X may have seemed like a good thing (but close) and on second thought maybe pass is better. We have all played with partners that do something (rarely) we find hard to understand but we dont worry about it if we enjoy our game overall with that partner. Bringing up one example of inconsistency seems to say more of the marvelous consistancy of a player vs how horrid they are. The tone of this post has managed to become my SECOND vote down. Hopefully we will get back to discussing ideas again and not posting things due to having a hissy fit.

The chosen LOP gave away too much information making the general overall discarding by the opps too easy thus no useful information can be gleaned from their carding. the end postions are either Kxx void void void vs void jxx void void void Jxx void void vs Kxx void void void for position 1 to be reached lho would have had to start with 5152 and rho with 4432 for position 2 to be reached lho would have had to start with 2452 and rho 7132 the odds of positon 1 are around 21.5% the odds of positon 2 are around 6% % of all (including 3/2 hearts) possible holdings which means positon 1 is a 3 1/2 to 1 favorite of relevant positions. The sad part is rho can do nothing to dissuade us from playing for postion 1. It is up to lho to weave a believeable tale of woe due to forced discards that they have 4 hearts.

deleted garbage due to misread of trick 10

Whats not to like???? Some of the form contributors will yawn because they have a steady diet of playing the best of the best but most of us pay big bucks to travel somewhere and mostly just get to sit in the same room. (watching vugraph is nice but too much of the bidding is left to the imagination). I applaud your idea that has drawn a consensus enthusiasm form a crowd that rarely agrees on anythng:))) I gladly throw my name into the ring and time is rarely a consideration for me. I hope the time I was submitting opinions under gszeszycki (name shortened due to demand) will count in case there is a certain minimum number of submissions required. My only suggestion is to not use count only because many issues are adequately covered by the first 2/3 entries and anyone arriving late may not feel like going through the effort of commenting when they have nothing else to add except I agree with (enterfavoritepostersnamehere). Try to examine content and see which comments spur interest (even if its hatred hehe) because few of us would bother to post if the problems were all covered by the first 2/3 posters

the opening lead appears to be 5th best assuming 3rd/5th best info not supplied so it is an assumption. The opening lead also indicates a non continuous heart sequence at the top. Using those assumptions is seems highly unlikely lho has a singleton club or dia since they would probably prefer to lead the singleton vs 5th best from a yuck suit. In fact, lho would probably be more likely to be void in dia or clubs vs having a singleton. The odds are roughly 70/30 (most of that 30% includes hands with lho holding a singleton club or dia) that lho will have a relatively benign distribution like 2633 or some such making the play of taking the two top dia and a third dia (going for a ruff or 33 break) the best try. The fact that opener strongly rates to have 6 hearts means all we have to do is ruff one dia and use the heart A for a club pitch. We cannot safely test alternate lines and still retain this option because the trump suit is our only entry to the dummy and the vital heart A. Hoping the club finesse works puts us in at best a 50% contract with no strong reason to assume the finesse will work (lho had cruddy hearts so they have values elsewhere.

I am mostly concerned with the bidding. Using 4n to ask for key cards is fine but do not sign off when you have all of the key cards because p must assume our side is missing a key card when you bid 6 and they can never go to 7 with a surprise:)))))))))))))))))). Even if you want to stop in 6 go through 5n (if it is safe like it is here) and then sign off in 6 after your p bids. I will look at the play of the hand later.

this hand is wayyyy too weak to consider the 3h followed by club route. p hand range might be KJTxx void Ax Axxxxx (maybe even weaker) but not strong enough for them to bid 3h. We have to take into consideration p has lost the ability to bid 2c and thus our bidding needs to take that into consideration. If p is near minimum we are probably best served by preeemting (opps probably have a huge dia fit and may be stronger making a splinter bid ill advised). IMO we should probably make a 4H bid not because of some odd convention but because p will realize it is a preemtive slam try. If p wishes take over they can 4n or cue bid if they have doubt. The 4h bid will let p know we are weak because we gave no consideration to 3h (to look for 3n or make a delayed club raise to show slam interest and power) and that we have a massive club fit. The principle of fast arrival also dictates avoiding a 3h bid because we need that bid to show strong hands. opposite many minimums 5c will not succeed but on a fair number of those the opps can make 5d so taking the preemptive route might be considered a form of insurance when we are not sure which side can make what.

as pointed out a couple of times 6d should be used to ask for more info. The point if bidding 6d is that you want to go for 7 but need something else to make it happen. It also needs to be fairly obvious. Your side has all of the key cards and trump Q and club K yet p is still searching. You having a dia void cannot be the key so the only logical solution to the 6d question is do you have the spade K or no. If p needed queens they should not have blackwooded but cue bid more:)

first hand is quite good (heart Q is probably useless) but still 6th heart and club A more than enough to bid 5c. This should show your first round control whcih might be hugely important if p wants to search for 7. your 12 14 is already such a narrow range i would not be overly concerned about showing mini maxi within that small frame of reference:) second hand is indeed minimum yet slam might still be in reach just bid 5h shich should let p know you are dead minimum and have second round control of clubs and let them decide:)))

There is so much potential with this hand a low level penalty just seems to be the wrong way to look at this hand at this vulnerability. Sure we might set the opps 4 in one major but miss 6 or even 7 in the other major. I also have less than zero desire to try 1d xx as a final contract too big a risk start with the forcing 1s call and opt for xx only if your partnership plays 1s as non forcing.

2h at MP I have no strong disagreement with 3h 3h at IMPS

read your post again and let me know how I was supposed to know this was a multi auction:))) I could find no clues so I tried to cover all the obvious bases

If the opps are not playing multi (ie weak 2 dia and 2h is unlimited and forcing) I would x with this garbage only if I was interested in getting rid of my current partner or trying to gain special favor from one of my very attractive opponents (it wont work trust me). If the opps are playing multi you are playing with fire. There is no reason rho wont send an xx back at you and the number you are looking at is staggering. Even if opps dont play 2h x or xx is this really a lead director????? The only thing you might be accomplishing is convincing p to lead a heart toward your entryless garbage vs making a killing lead elsewhere. Someday (never with the same partner) your lead directing x will be understood by p as lead directing vs takeout and only a heart lead will win the day. Its a game of % after all and 9 years and a cornucopia of new partners later you will have your desired reward. This post brought out my dark side and brings the total number of posts I would vote down so far to ONE.

IMO the x is an attempt to successfully compete against 3h. There are a lot of hands p may have for a 1s overcall followed by x and we have to trust p uses good judgement. In any case there is still a big difference btn us having a hand like void x xxxxxx xxxxxx where I would love to bid 4n pick a minor and our hand which has some defensive potential in case the opps compete further. With this hand I would bid 4h pick a minor. I disagree with the opinion that 3n is pick a minor what would i do with say x QJx xxx KQxxxx? 3n is the only bid that comes even close to getting us to what might be only makeable game and we have to give up game to cater to hands that might be say x xxx xxxxx xxxx? not a good trade off by any means.

yes and its the best we can do (I have never been a fan of the weak hand playing a 43 fit ---though with really good spades QJTx maybe 3s could work) bridge is a game of %--every once in a while you will arrive in a less than optimal spot just because risk vs reward makes searching worthwhile. If p turns up with 4333 and a minimum they must return to 4c. There is way too much offensive potential in this hand to sit after 3d. If you wish to save x for stronger hands (generally more balanced) bidding 3h in this situation clarifies things for p as to your hand type.

e 100% way too much stuff to pass 3d bid 3h bids out our pattern shows the extra values and is safe (if p would bypass a 4 card heart suit in order to repeat 2s your p likes to keep you uninformed find another one)--- yes indeed you could be 3415 for this bid but if p raises hearts just convert back to spades because they have to have 5 of them (then look for another p). this allows you to find spade and club contracts and p should not have any trouble understanding 3h as an offensive hand.

your lop has convinced me I was lazy if trumps break 31 or 22 trick 1 dia A trick 2 spade J (see my explanation above for 75% chance of producing a spade trick) then proceed along best lines preferring to use a second round of spades if necessary as a quick reentry to your hand if available. The general idea being ruff 1 heart low and if the spade J has not produced a spade trick then either depend on 43 hearts or (with 3/1 trumps) ruffing a second heart high.

trick 1 dia ace trick 2 club ace if trumps no worse than 3/1 trick 3 heart to ace trick 4 ruff heart low trick 5 low trump to hand (you never know trumps might break 22) trick 6 ruff heart trick 7 dia k trick 8 ruff dia trick 9 pull last trump (if necessary) or lead spade (see trick 10) trick 10 lead a spade toward K hoping for highly improbable overtrick if trumps are 4/0 trick 3 lead spade J* I give up the 25% chance of lho having the spade AQ and depend on the other 75% existing and rho telling me how to play the spade suit. If rho has the A (w/o) the Q they have a legitimate worry we have Qx and a stiff dia or stiff Q of spades and if they duck the A we have no spade losers (with Qx we pitch spade X on dia K). If rho has the Q w/o the ace they are extremely unlikely to cover since there is no reason to assume we do not have the spade A for this play. If rho has the AQ then covering with the Q makes sense and we will later take a ruffing finesse against the A if needed. No matter what happens in spades we are creating another quick entry to our hand so we can set up crossruff and still pull trumps. trick 4 will depend on who wins trick 3 and what they return for ex if E wins Q at trick 3 and returns a spade pitch a heart taking the ruffing finesse against the suposed AQ with RHO. basically the plan is to hope the 75% play we made in spades to pay off for 1 spade trick and 1 low heart ruff. Even if lho wins the spade Q we are not dead because we can convert to hoping hearts are 43 by ruffing 1 heart low. It is far easier to duck with the spade A when you lead up toward the KJT it is far more difficult to duck the spade A when you lead the J. The key to playing the spade J is to do it early in the play so opps have no chance to see most of your assets.

I would always start with 1d. since 1s "tends" to show spades that means future bidding has to take into consideration we might not have spades---fine with me 1s. w/o this agreement in spades I prefer to downplay this hand a bit (especially at MP) and I would now bid (though I wish I didnt have to) 2h <if p cannot now bid 2n or 3n NT is unlikely to be the right spot> (unless I knew for sure the 1h bid showed an unbalanced hand) in which case I like my hand more and would bid 3c. In all cases if we are to arrive in game I want p to declare if possible. I do not like 2n over 1c for the following reasons 1. opps will have at least 7 if not 8/9 spades and with no stopper we are probably wrong siding nt. 2. Taking 1 into consideration the 2n bid makes it difficult for p to show a weaker but distributional hand when we are anything but sure nt is right. 3. opposite a vast majority of balanced 14 counts 3n is going to be difficult to make p will need at least 3 dia or long clubs to give us a chance and bidding 1d gives us the best chance to find this stuff out.

I vote with aquahombre but if we cant force the x I would be happy with 6s by south

IMO 2n natural here serves no purpose. I would much rather save 2n as minor suit TO Axxx x QJxx Qxxx and use X as a way of showing I was max for my 1n and p can expect a couple of tricks from me on defense. If p made a distributional TOX, with less than say 4 tricks, they should bid 2n as a run out and I would then bid 3d. P heard your 1n bid and passed over 2s dont compete to 2n it is bidding the same values twice. At least using x will be a ton more flexible. If you dont feel the hand is good enough for an x pass

Kx xxx AQTxxx xx Is that hand really worse than than the hand shown?? if you open this one 1d than by all means open the given hand 1d. The downside of 1d opener are numerous 1. little defense 2. no preemption on a hand with little defense 3. if auction becomes competitive we are poorly placed if p has decided to x opps and we never get a chance to show our dia length. 2d shows a hand with dia length a suit of about this quality and just about this amount of defense. The downside of 2d is what to do if p bids 2n. while you are indeed maximum you have no stopper and 3n is normally reserved for solid suit. I have to admit if presented with this problem (p bidding 2n) i would bid 3c and have my SORRY PARTNER card all ready to go when opps take first 7 club tricks with 6d being cold. 2d also provides a small amount of preemption. 2d also gets where I live off my chest and might allow a quick easy decision for p. If 2d is not available I would opt for 3d before I would bid 1d.