gszes

I have no strong reason to assume ANYTHNG will work. That means I go back to basics and try leading low from longest and strongest (low heart depending on your lead system).

Some players are just plain great at fast math. N showed 5 spades and less than 4 hearts (at least in theory no stayman) which leaves N with at least 5 minor suit cards and S has 3 spades (no jump to game and preferring spades to NT) and a max of 4 hearts (once again in theory) so that leaves them with at least at least 6 minor suit cards. P probably has around 6 hcp but could easily have only 3. So if p has 6-8 minor suit cards and only 3hcp what 3 hcp will most likely result in a set? That seems to be Kx of diamonds. Additional benefit is that the A is hugely unlikely to go away given the bidding and trump trick held by west. That means the risk factor plummets while the reward factor remains quite high. Finding p with a void only made a reasonable opening lead choice look suspicious.

IMHO FORGETABOUTIT Please PLEASE do not waste the time of the people you are going to play with/against trying to get a FEEL for the game. I have no clue how much you think you already know but the amount of information is so huge that even the best programmers in the world have been unable to effectively teach robots how to bid well. Those programmers have the tremendous advantage of KNOWING what is right and they still cannot effectively create programs that successfully mimic decent bidding. I do believe over time you could become an effective declarer and possibly even a fair defender but even then w/o the ability to understand signalling etc. you (and your poor partners) will be at a significant disadvantage. Go to www.BILBRIDGE.com and join the club there. Take advantage of the mountains of information in their library and ask for a FREE mentor who will be happy to get you started with the basics and hopefully give you the passion needed to delve into the more advanced material needed to progress. Enjoy the game and try to avoid taking away the enjoyment of your future partners by being totally clueless for a LONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG time.

2s p may be taking a conservative route -- since we are far from broke it seems best at IMPS to keep things going and 2s looks like the smallest lie. 3c cant mess around with 2s since that could easily be competitive and NF. x does not help in any way shape or form. 3c keeps things going and gives us our best shot at finding strain and level. pass very much want to compete to 3c but we have the wrong kinds of values (queens) for minor suit game and unsure we can keep partner quiet if we bid here. There is also that risk vs reward thing not sure any reward available but can certainly see risk. 6s no way to search for 7 so might as well bid what we think we can make. Rho certainly thinks we can make a lot.

Pass I have a sneaking admiration for Manudude 6c but I feel that bid is way more likely to get an A or K lead and thus a much greater chance at being set than 3n. 3N might even be cold. See zero benefit to using 4d short search however.

you cant let hands like this cause you stomach problems. P bid 6c missing the heart ace Dia AQ and club KQ if you do not belong in 7 they misbid their hand. go with the flow and trust partner. worst case scenario you have a chat and try to discuss with p the reasons for NOT arbitrarily leaping to 6 that way.

a simple FIX for many robot problems might be to simply start to NARROW the plausible range of bids based on past bidding. This is especially important when a player wants to "back in" in pass out set. The robot always considers the pass out seat bids to be full value when full value hands would have bid earlier in the bidding. The knowledge that a player may have LESS than normal in PO seat is also important and the robots never take that into consideration. IMHO that's how so many slams are bid when even the concept of slam should have been eliminated due to prior bidding (or lack thereof).

x marks the spot. Once upon a time a hand comes up where declarer makes 3cx but for the overwhelming majority of the time we are collecting a bonus and only the size of the bonus is up for grabs. There is a strong case to be made that our first pass gave south the impression N might have power they could not show over 2d. S was just unlucky we had pretty much all the power plus 5 clubs. Our 3 1/2 defensive tricks opposite a 2 lvl overcall could easily yield a huge gain.

The bidding has taken up all the bidding space and so we are left to ponder what p might have. That spade void still leaves me too much concern to consider slam. pass

i wonder what would have happened over my 1h overcall (sigh) anyway 3n appears the best we can do. We are a bit top heavy but the spade void should nicely compensate for that :(.

too scary to pass at imps 1nt and x can lead to huge spade headaches. 2c seems normal but leaves little room for exploration and if p bids spades leaves us poorly placed for a continuation. 1h leaves all kinds of room for exploration and will rarely lead to a horrific contract so it seems to be the best overall choice.

p = 8 x = 6 3s = 5 3n = You know way more about this game than I do I favor pass mainly because IF p can balance it gives us our best shot at getting to the right strain. There is risk involved with pass if p is bwaaaaaaaaak (a chicken) otherwise I would rate p closer to 10 rather then not quite 8. There just isn't the urgency to bid a Nvul game here at MP so taking a probable plus defending 3d is hardly the worst idea in the world. this is posted after the fact but it is beyond imaginable that p did not balance over 3d. The KNOW u have values just from the bidding. If they fail to balance with these types of hands you are going to have to take all kinds of risks in direct seat. Your p should not be afraid to balance because they can always correct a 3s bid to 4c w/o misleading you into thinking they have a monster hand.

A PARTNERSHIP would be best working on BIDDING. As a solo player working on PLAY (which I assume includes defense) will make you a player more accessible to more other players.

odd that you did not also ask "and when you find yourself in 7♦ on a 4-3 fit what then?"

IMPS 2n Yes the risk of getting slaughtered is still present but stretching for game is still viable at these colors so risk vs reward seems to indicate goforit. MP Pass chances of game seem slim and chances for -200 seems much greater given the lack of suit quality. -200 at imps no big deal but at MP ouchies.

4d seems wrong 4c makes much more sense since if opener has diamonds they can bid them over 4c but maybe not vice versa. 5c by opener (over 4d) seems right also since responder has ventured beyond 3n there has to be at least some slam interest. 5c would seem to be an excellent bid at that point with extras (forcing). I would slightly favor blaming the 4d bid over the non 5c bid (over 4d) so 55 responder 45 opener.

top spade. This might indeed allow declarer to escape with no heart losers (and regrettably go only down 1) but by delaying leading hearts it seems to increase the likelihood of scoring up at least 4 trumps or 3 trumps and a heart to go along with the club K. Giving up a dia trick later in the hand should work out fine since p still has the probable club ace as an emergency trick. The top spade also starts what might be a very needed separation of dummy vs declarer. Getting any plus here should be a good MP score since our aggressive style has possibly pushed the opps a lvl higher than other tables.

with 3 trumps and a possible missing key card there is no good reason for lho to avoid leading a short club. Using this "logic" I will draw the last trump and lead the club Q with the intent of trying the double finesse if the Q loses to the K the first round of the suit. If the Q is covered (and no J/9 falls from rho) I will return to hand and lead another club toward ----------- stay turned as we go to our commercial break for the new show "Your guess is probably better than mine". grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr i cannot get this spoiler to work and thus never reviewed my post. However I still stand by the main conclusion that with 2 trumps (ty mr ace for your very quick reply) and a possible missing key card I feel lho is far less likely to be short in clubs.

the very first post (cyberyeti) seemed like the best LOP (I gave a +). Just for grins, I read all of the rest of the 2 page posts and somehow cyber got no credit.

The 4d bid is spot on here since any (non dia values) hands responder might have put us in the slam zone. Wank was spot on as well noting that N instead of counting HCP should trust their p to know what they are doing and give a simple 5c raise. Followed by 5d 5s 6c (if your partnership cannot cue the club Q here u are missing out on much) 7s shows how easy this game can get sometimes. FWIW i would give the simple 5c bid with only 4 spades in hand much less 6 of them:)

3c for several reasons 1. I have no fear of 3n since a bid 4c lets p know my original raise was from a weak and distributional hand. 2. 3c makes it a TON harder for the opps to find their probable diamond fit. 3. This hand has a LOT of playing potential compared to say xxxx xx AJx xxxx 4. There are still a LOT of hands where 5c or even more is a great resting spot and that huge vul game bonus (i've gone down in many partials searching for that elusive vul game bonus perhaps the next 1000 years will bring me more luck). 5. Opener might be bidding cautiously due to spade shortness and rightfully thinking we might have wasted values there. 6. On the off chance opener has 3505 distribution would not a 3s (over 3c) bid almost force responder to grin before placing the 4s card on the table? 7. Passing 2c will rarely reap any benefits but getting to a making (vul) game can put tremendous pressure on the opps.

If the spade T were the J I would try 3c (hsgt) at any form of scoring. Qx (the T is just a bonus) vs QJ just does not seem like enough to keep me from trying for game at imps especially when p opened 1d increasing the odds of avoiding the suit with a loser I hope to pitch on spades. That huge bonus for making a vulnerable game has forced me to go down in many partials in a fruitless effort to find a vul game nugget. Ah well perhaps the next 1000 years will bring me more luck.

3s p 4s p p x is for takeout. All it means is that your hand was not good enough to x over 3s and once lho limited their hand with a 4s bid you feel much safer backing in to this bidding. Try to imagine a hand or two where pass over 3s was right and x over 4s should be considered penalty. If you manage a few hands like that now try to imagine how umpty ump more hands that come closer to the 0445 (south) type hand and prefer the x to be takeout. In conjunction with 4n showing 2 places to play you can cover almost every contingency of the tox situations and this is hugely important considering that there is no room to explore.

questions 2/3/4 never happened at my theoretical table since I played 5c x making who knows what. The real problem with xx is not so much that 5c should have decent play but that we almost certainly do not have enough defense vs the opps in a heart contract. In order for the xx to gain the contract must make AND the opps fail to run OR if they run we have to be able to set 5h at least 4 tricks. YEAH, read that again, FOUR tricks to make up for the score of 5c x making. Once you arrive at that conclusion I am pretty sure you will forever be happy to play in 5c x under these conditions.

I would just guess 6c in this case. The range of partner's hands is so vast that trying to gather information is a task fraught with peril. The only bid I might find interesting would be if we are playing 5s as exclusion rkc (I use it under these conditions but it is not common). 6c is a middle of the road guess that should make around 85% of the time or more with a fair number of times making 7. I bid 6 because I really expect a 9+ trick hand from partner but not one filled with a lot of hcp.