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MADNESS was such a nice response but since 7n was so much worse I could not quite bring myself to vote for it on the 3N issue. Why was there not a choice of "total disrespect for south's ability to balance"??? p p 3c p (don't get me started on this) p what does south know about the hand? rho averages around 8 lho averages around 8 for the preempt that leaves OUR side with an average of around 24. That means south can easily figure out north's average holding and tailor their passout seat bid accordingly. If I figured north to have around 14 and I was looking at longish diamonds and a club stop would I not try 3n with a hand like x QJxx Axxxxx Kx? South balancing with 3d should be a huge red flag to north. South would try very hard to bid 3n if it looked reasonable and yet they backed in with 3d. I would make the case that south is vastly more likely to hold some sort of 45 or 46 hand w/o a club stop than any holding with a club stop. The decision for me would be is my hand now worth a shot at game opposite my passed partner and 3n is NOT the target. Would you balance with 3d with a holding of Qx Qxx Qxxxxxx x? I think such a balance by a passed hand is a lot less mad than 3n by north on the given conditions.

Yes indeed much more common I was referring to a couple of hands mentioned by FelicityR where I would pass 1n with horrid spades even if 6133 or 5143 (I mentioned if 5134 I would bid 2c since that leaves all strains in play). For the most part I agree with MrAce that in the vast majority of cases opener will not pass 1n with 6133 or 5431 type hand distribution.

It may be quite some time before I ever see the words "world class" - referring to bridge anyway - near my name anywhere. I have not a clue what west was doing or thinking though their system may have hampered their ability to communicate. I have to give them credit though, that was a wonderful sequence to convince me to try the spade ace :(((((((((((((((((((((((((

you open the bidding 1n (15-17) with Axx Kx AQxxx Axx (no opp biding) p bids 2d and you dutifully accept the transfer to 2h and next partner surprises you with 3d (gf natural). Your 17 count and 5332 hand have suddenly become so good that stopping short of 6d seems ridiculous and even 7d is on the radar. The point being is that under these conditions if might be quite acceptable for the LIMITED opener to bid 4n (unless the partnership has some special agreements as to how to handle these situations). If responder shows 1 key card 6d is enough if they show 2 keys we should make one more grand slam try and if responder can show some life bidding 7d should be no worse than a 33 heart split and probably much better if not ice cold. This is admittedly a somewhat extreme example but even limited hands can reevaluate significantly as the bidding proceeds. Another might be AQJ AQJ JTxx xxx You open 1n 15-17 (again no opp bidding) partner bids 2d and you dutifully accept the transfer to 2h and p now bids 2s (playing this as at least 55 majors and invitational - not all will agree). You look at your 15 count and boring balanced distribution and bid 4s (this is an attempt to rightside the contract in case responder has some Kx that needs protection from the opening lead since we have nothing that needs such protection. It may not always make but the odds are pretty darn huge we have at least 9 if not 10 major suit tricks. You have to REEVALUATE constantly even if you have what appears to be a boring balanced hand. LISTEN to the bidding and decide if your hand has gotten better or worse or stayed the same:))))))

3d xxxxxx A Kxx AKx xxxxx A Kxxx AKx are a couple of hand I would pass 1n with as opener (and be happy to reopen with x). I would bid 2c with the 2nd example if the minors were reversed and be hoping I did not hear 2s next.

I remember this now sigh i was ticked off at yet another problem with NT instead of playing in my longgggggggggggggggg minor suit. I was envisioning the same end position in 6c not NT sorry all for the confusion in 6n the dia k will be gone but not so in 6c where there is an easy spade ruff reentry to hand.

IMHO (at these colors) playing 3h as "weak" makes close to zero sense. Fighting over a part score with a weak hand is looking for a disaster (when we could settle for the opps making a club partial) and where does one draw the line on "weak"? I think 3h should be considered invitational and this hand qualifies due to 2 factors. 1. The 6 card length offers a reasonable degree of safety. 2. Even though it is only worth around 6.5 the opening 1n bidder's hand has improved significantly being :behind: the club bidder and where the vast majority of the defensive assets are most likely located. Opener's hand range and card types still mater quite a bit so an invite is proper as opener may very well be stuck for a bid over 3c because they do not want to compete opposite a broke 2d bidder. I would go with the following scheme x = GF No club stop (may have other assets if 3n OR a penalty pass does not look appealing) 3d = natural and invitational (with GF just x) 3h = invitational 3s = patterning out with a hand that intended to bid 2s over 2h. For me that means at least 55 majors and invitational. 3n = club stop (little to no slam interest) 4c = splinter and 6+ hearts 4d = splinter and 6+ hearts 4h = A hand with short clubs that was going to just simply raise 2h to 3h after the transfer but has improved due to the club bidding by the opps.

do you feel these hands match the bidding?

I will go with the spade A. West has essentially gone hog wild and placed the contract in 6 opposite nothing more than a good dia raise on a max of 29 hcp. I infer that the only reason west felt their hand was that good was because they were short in spades when their p denied a spade stop. I am hoping west is not void with my lead. The lead addresses my real fear, that west is something like 1246 and opposite 2353 will be able to pitch their spade loser on the third heart.

I stared at this trying like crazy trying to figure out WHY this is effective. I can picture the end position and how reading the position can allow one to make no matter which opp holds which cards so from that aspect I understand why this LOP looks decent. I have to ask this though. Even though this lop allows one to make 6 (with a proper read of the end position) why is this not the exact end position that is achieved if one plays the clubs from the top? Assuming south wins the 3rd club and returns a diamond? No matter how hard I try I cannot see the benefit of ducking a club when a 22 break allows me to play for an overtrick.

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I was talking about bidding 2c after 1h 1s which was the question by the author:)))))))))))))

My question is what would you lead against 5s W/O the x? A lightner x asks for a specific (unusual) lead to give our partnership what may be its only chance to set a slam. A penalty x that requires a specific defense for a 1 trick set should be reserved for emergencies (like lightner). I think I can take 3 tricks vs 5s IF my p has certain distribution and HCP AND they happen to lead what they would normally lead w/o the x AND they opps are not more distributional than we expect is NOT a good X. W/O the x I would lead a top heart what about you? just a thought.

lots of lousy choices so here is my guess: I am going for 4h 2s 1d 2c and my back up plan is 2h 3s 2d 2c. I am going to try for 43 hearts with the QT split. trick 2 win the A in dummy (assuming lho plays wither the J or T) trick 3 cash the heart K trick 4 club to the Q please PLEASE dont tell me that clubs broke 33 and this hand suddenly looks decent (I hate good luck) trick 5 heart A pitch a dia trick 6 (here goes nothing) heart J hoping against hope either opp began with Txx in hearts because the hand is over and we are playing for overtrick(s) * if this does NOT work properly we are reduced to relying on both the dia finesse AND spades breaking 33 this lop also works if the QT of hearts fall in the first 2 rounds of the suit * It is far more psychologically damaging to the opps if we can PIN the T vs just merely depending on the Q being 3rd where they were always helpless anyway. If the primary plan fails we are going to have to hope the opp with the winning 3rd heart has only one of the top 3 spade winners so we can duck a spade to their partner else we will lose 2c 2h 1s no matter what.

If laying down the dia AK fails the fog of war is gone and the opps will have little to no problem with the defense from that point and the spade ace is still out there. The fog of war concept is a potent ally and may prevent the opps from effectively defending when they win the spade ace. Remember that if the opps win the spade ace and do make a "entry killing" shift we can always fall back on laying down the dia AK so there is little reason to do so immediately.

Allow me to just BEG for no one to consider 2c PLEASE. You might get lucky but it should set off HUGE ALARM BELLS warning against this action when it is minutely possible for responder to have something like Kxxxxx A xxx xxx and PASS EWW BONGGGGG (the relentless claxon of huge alarm bells) while missing a lead/position friendly 6s. 3c 3s 4s splinter all have flaws but compared to 2c they are downright tame tiny little friendly flaws. I am a personal fan of 3c since searching for 3n is a higher priority than playing in a minor and responder will stain to bid 3n with stuff in diamonds (bad for slam) which I will happily convert to 4s. 3c also leaves a LOT of room for exploration if slam is possible and I can convert any huge club jump to spades.

available Hate straight knockout events, too hard for the lowest seeded players to EVER gain seeding points. TY once again for running these things.

GL with that in any ACBL game. Last I heard there are significant minimal (HCP) qualifications to open 2c.

Agree with JANISW that a 2h bid at least tries to get a picture of your hand to partner. I feel the follow up should be 2N as artificial support allowing opener to pattern out. 2N is a very tiny target opposite what rates to be a distributional opening hand so giving up 2n is fine saving 3d for a preference with no strong reason to bid 3n. The 2n bid does not rule out 3n as a final contract but facilitates finding out more about opener's hand and thus making a much more informed decision about how to proceed when the odds of 5m or more are increased. This hand would go 1d 1n 2h 2n 3c (I prefer opener to show short suit if any) 4c (cue the club ace to show possible slam and warn p out of expecting too much if they were void in clubs) 4d rkc (p is showing a great hand for slam 4d cannot be to play) 4h (1 or 4) 4s dia Q? 5s yes and spade K opener now know responder has Spade K dia Q and club A. It is unreasonable to ask for more than this for a 1n response so 7d is at BEST on a finesse settle for 6d.

4h = POC 4s = spades or clubs covers everything the two suiter might have. In conjunction with this those first two choices might be best off as limited to a hand not good enough to x. A passed hand can still have a tremendous range as far as effectiveness and slam capability that cannot be simply expressed with a 4h or 4s bid. X should be reserved for those hands that might consider slam. It could be as simple as Axxx Axxx xx xxx a big major suit fit with a couple of aces all the way to Kxxxx x xxxx Axx and a strong willingness to consider slam IF spades is the major. Thus a sequence of 3d 4c 4d x p 4h p 4s would show this type of slam interested hand. That may be what you meant when you said show your major but I felt it necessary to add the extra info.

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HEHE I have never even had anyone say a "penny for your thoughts" so 20 cents is someone with an astronomical ego:)))) TYTY for running these and I would be happy to take on the job but am clueless how you manage to do everything that you do. FWIW Best hand IMPS (this will help eliminate the anti bridge passing due to the risk of missing games). Scoring a round robin by total score is just not fair since the hands are not duplicated and a string of dull hands and small victories can get one eliminated when there are much more whimsical hands elsewhere. I would propose a round robin of say 16 board matches using win/loss of each match (swiss style) (TIES COUNT AS TIES) rather than the size of the victory in deciding who moves on to the knock out round. If there are TIES at the end of the round robin start with head to head then go to total imps. If this fails to remedy the problem then give the player with the HIGHER seeding the benefit of moving forward. NO COIN TOSSES SHEESH. SEEDING for the knock out round is changed to reflect how each player did in the round robin phase. One more change I would propose is that the length of the knock out matches be decided and played as a GROUP. Give each player say 1 week (if this is programmatically possible) to complete their (who knows how many boards) and turn in their result when both have completed all of their boards. NO BOARD DOOVERS due to stuff like my hand wasn't the best hand. A mechanical error can occur that can be quite costly. If this happens STOP and ask the TD (who should err on the side of NOT granting a undo) for an undo which will be granted UNLESS the bot play has revealed some important piece of information affecting your LOP/DEFENSE if you have already followed at your next opportunity forget it. There is also no redress if you are playing a hopeless (including unfavorable suit splits) contract (even if it was a sacrifice). If an undo is not programmatically possible then eliminating the board is a great option rather than a replay. If a knock out round ends in a tie then let the higher seeded player move on. If the championship round ends in a tie then both are declared winners. (this isn't las vegas where breaking ties are worth a ton of money).

A take out x (TOX) is asking partner to offer an opinion as to the best strain/level if the Xer has a generally balanced hand outside the tox suit (in this case hearts). Our overall totally decrepit hand should be sending out huge warning signals that leaving 3hx in place is courting disaster. We are expecting the TOXer to take at least 5 tricks on defense when they have promised none (though none is sort of excessive picture KQJx void KQJxx KQJx and tell me u would not x 3h). 4c here does not promise anything and is more along the lines of trying to avoid the total disaster that 3hx making would be. What type of hand might I bid 4c with? xxx xxx xxx xxxx is the simplest. A 5c bid might look x xxx xxx Axxxxx so 4c is somewhere btn totally busted and my example of a 5c bid.

4s is almost always an underpowered stab in the dark designed primarily to preempt the opps vs actually making 4s. Partner has offered a sentiment that 4s is not making. It is not just that p chose x but if p was looking at something like xxx in spades they would KNOW we were short and instead of x they would have chosen 4n as takeout (their passed hand status makes 4n as a slam search impossible). Partner might be wrong with the x but they have no strong reason to depend on us for more than 1 trick. Poor partner should not silenced when they hold something like QJT Axx Axxx xxx (unless you commonly open such hands in which case I will probably run/flee/scurry to 5c).

club If partners final x depended on finding me with a spade to lead we need to make better doubles. P depending on our side taking heart and/or diamond tricks (given the bidding) just seems plain wrong. A club lead into the great unknown gives away NOTHING that declarer could not get on their own. If the opps have a double fit the bidding just plain makes no sense. P rates to have some serious club length and/or power. A club might also manage to get our side a trump trick we might otherwise not be able to get.