gszes

N has a nice hand opposite a strong 2 bid. The main reason N takes 100% of the blame is that this system apparently has no mechanism for N to show values in support of hearts and N has to realize S might think they have xxxx xxx xxx xxx in order to bid this way (unless there is some sort of inference missing from the bidding description. The very least N should do is try 5h asking p to bid 6 with extra values. The system seems broken with the weak hand doing all the work:)

Good luck

This may be out of place for a :natural: bidding answer but what do you use 3h (by opener) after 1d 1s. Since 3n is gin opposite as little as !DA and JTxx hearts it hardly seems like an overbid to try a self splinter. Once that happens it all becomes responders fault if slam is not reached:) Caution is needed when using this type of bid, since you have to be willing to play 3n if responder bids it, so the self splinter is too scary to use with a hand like AQ x AKQJxxxx xx. If unwilling or unable to use 3h this way I admit to being partial to 3c as it will rarely steer your side to the wrong strain and helps pinpoint an obvious problem for NT purposes.

It seems perfectly safe to ask where an extra J might be located. The appearance of the club J (as well as the virtual certainty it is Jx) in p hand seems to make a grand slam a worthwhile venture.

opps are probably in a 7 card trump fit and if p has any sense they are not counting on cards like the !d KQ to be worth anything on defense. I would not be shocked to find p is VERY short in diamonds and it somehow feels right to lead a very plebian !D 2 to try and make sure the defense goes as well as can be expected. P knows we have a long weak dia suit and has expressed no game interest so let's trust them that 2s x just might be the best spot we can be in -- the heart A is a huge card we have not promised and the club void could make defese miraculous.

If p has x with KQJx !D and out this will not fare well but even 1 more dia and we might be able to put intolerable pressure on rho by running the diamonds. 2N is just too tiny a target and how will you ever convince p that Kxxxxx and out in diamonds is probably enough to bid 3n? Our initial decision to pass helps us tremendously since p might start to think slam with Axxx x KQxxxxx x knowing that we must be near the top of our pass to bid 3n.

trick 1` insert the heart J opps know nothing about south hand try to keep it that way. Playing low pretty much gives away the position of the T once the Q holds. We got lucky no dia shift so since we are in dummy play the spade Ace (who knows maybe the Q will drop singleton) and finesse the J hoping for 3s (or more) 5c 1h and keeping rho off lead in order to protect the dia K. That's my plan and I am sticking to it.

do not agree with 3 rounds of trumps pull just 2 rounds and lead a low heart toward the Q. We need 3 entries to lead toward diamonds twice and the heart Q once (in case hearts do not break 33 -- they wont, trust me) so take advantage of being in hand after winning the 2nd trump trick.

X marks the spot With a 6th dia I would bid 2d since 3n opposite a passed hand is still reasonable. With this hand game is very unlikely so we choose x because it allows for the widest range of strains at the lowest possible level. 2d loses too much of its value (lead direction) since the odds are kind of heavy we will be on opening lead.

hehe West saying OMG I am maximum of a minimum I cant fathom not bidding again and east thinking OMG I am maximum of a minimum surely that is more than enough to overcome the at least NINE card trump fit the opps have wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee gotta love robots:)

Late to the conversation so I already saw partner's hand and IMHO it is not unreasonable 3h bid since it has lots of hearts and zero defensive tricks (sounds like a preempt to me). a Preemptive raise is not exact science and at imps we are stretching to bid vul games anyway. I can see an argument for pass at MP since we might have already gotten a fair amount of MP but IMPS when all we need is something like Qxx Axxxx xx xx with the opening bidder on our right for game it seems far too timid to pass here Even if rho happens to have the heart AQ and a couple of side tricks they will probably not want to x expecting their heart Q to be dead so the risk factor is also limited dramatically and the rewards? well they are quite nice indeed.

echo most but if E follows with the J continue with the ten a no lose play in case east decided to randomize J9 and does not hurt anything if the J was singleton or KJ

100% east 3n is horribly grotesque. P chose 3c for a reason (vs say 2n/3n) so there is some sort of problem with one (or both) of the red sujits. That means 3n appears to be a horrible choice since it is guesswork at best but what other choices are there that better reflect this balanced 9 hcp hand (sort of what 3n sounds like). 3d unless this is artificial (no reason to suspect that here) it should at worst be "stuff" in diamonds and nothing much in hearts fro 3n purposes but could also be natural in the sense of length. No matter how you look at it this is diametrically opposed to what you want to portray with this hand. In fact this bid is actually worse than 3n since it sends the partnership on the road to destruction for no good reason. 3s downside is 3 fold 1. insufficient spade support 2. Does nothing to address potential problems for possible NT contract. 3. Hides your sides best asset (4 card club support) still this bid is better than 3d or 3n 4c vastly superior to the above since it reveals your sides best asset and leaves all sorts of room available for whatever opener wishes to do 5c being at max this seems like a shame but still hardly horrific rates better than 3d 3s or 3n whats left???? is there ANY good bid available here. If we swap around the heart and dia suit not a soul on the planet would have a problem with 3d so why is it so hard to imagine 3h is the right thing to do here? Even if opener supports hearts we can convert to clubs and opener will realize our 3h bid conveyed a dia weakeness that might be useful. 3h 10 4c 7 5c 5 3s 4 3n 3 4s 2 3d 0 don't ask for any credit for 6c or 7c since I don't readily give any credit for las vegas bids that happen to work.

I voted 100% N not because I think slam is so great but because N failed to use 1 scintilla of imagination when it came to slam potential opposite this passed hand. Kx Kxxxxx Kx xxx and 6H should roll and a tad better Kx Kxxxxx Ax xxx and 7 is starting to look feasible. If this partnership opens super light (cyber) then these types of hands should not exist or if your requirements for a weak 2 are very loose then these hands should also not exist but for the vast majority slam should at the very least be a consideration. I would bid 3c over 2h (don't tell me there is really a system in place where that is NF). Correcting to 4h whatever south does this sequence should at least give south reason to suspect slam potential and we still have not bypassed game level. The problem with 4h bid is it can be significantly weaker and more distributional. AKxxxx Axxx void xxx

32 32 AJ32 K5432 what contract do you want to be in opposite this hand (a dead min for the bidding) IMPS IMHO 6c is the place to be unless there is some specific reason we suspect a spade lead. IF we suspect a spade lead IMHO we should bid SEVEN clubs not 5 at IMPS. +17 imps when we make -13 when we lose and it is 5050. Those are great odds in anyone's game over a lifetime. If we are behind it is just as useful to stop in 5 as it is to bid 7 (hoping for a big swing) so take your best guess and go with it though bidding the grand is much more likely to produce the largest swing (maybe even x/xx).

Nice ting about MP is you can make hair thin doubles and live with the occasional disaster. Leb is not "standard" here but there is no reason to not use it especially at these colors where the odd you have exactly a 2n bid with no desire to x are very small. What do we know about hand so far? P has no 4 card spade suit and no strong desire to x 2h for penalty while expecting at least an invitational hand. This does not bode well for our side from an offensive standpoint since our heart K is looking less and less useful reducing our hand strength to under invitational. It would seem the best two options both revolve around 2h x or not to x. On the plus side of x is it might take as little as J9xx from p to doom 2h to vul doubled MP oblivion. OTOH P might be sitting with nothing more than xxx. Definitely a cruddy idea at IMPS but at MP x seems worth the gamble.

3h over 3d ggwhiz brings up a point that is often overlooked. How can 3h possibly feel wrong unless it promises 5 in your system (because of the lack of negative x)? We have reasonable extra values even completely discaounting the club Q opposite a partner that has a very high deree of probability of being short in clubs. do we really want to mimic a minimum opening bid with say Kxx in clubs? nah There are many good reasons to hate bidding 3n so why not make a bid that has almost zero downside and keeps the bidding open for a wide range of possible contracts. 3N might indeed be our final resing spot but that is hugely unlikely since exactly 9 tricks would be odd looking at our hand 10 or 11 in NT (if it is right) would seem much more likely. Blame goes almost solely to north for putting handcuffs on the south hand and pretending they had something like a min with Kx (or some such) in clubs. The rest is preempts work.

diamond is partner trying to hit me? highly unlikely in most systems a one suited hand can most easily be shown in PO seat and we failed to do that here (a better problem is do we try and fight with 2h bid or not?) so there is no reason partner is not trying to set up their own suit. It is not always merely card reading but bidding (or lack thereof) can help also.

cant imagine anyone being surprised they got a zero when opps bid and make a poor slam just the same as being in a great slam and going down due to rotten distribution. Bad luck happens the best bidding sometimes fails and rotten bidding is sometimes rewarded:)) don't hate the game due to bad luck enjoy it for the challenge:)))))))))

it is still guesswork but decidedly worth bidding game. If p is at all reasonable their invite will be of the aces variety and since they were expecting only 54 mi 65 is a monster plus. 4h I would not xx since I am not all that certain:))

I go with x here since we seem to have a decent chance to set this even if opener is AKQxxx KQJxx x x and they most likely would opt to open that 1c. Opening lead I would choose a small club since there is a chance we can gain control of the hand and possibly giving up a spade trick seems wrong. P should have around 9 hcp and we have 3 maybe 4 tricks in the majors and a side K. Once in a blue moon they will make this but it seems far more reasonable to take the bonus money and run with it.

I realize the club 8 is a scary card (since it looks like I have an infinite number of clubs -- sort of) but aside from the symbology I have little of use for partner and not only do not see x of 4c I have to wonder if they can make 5 knowing where virtually every card is. The fact the opps are in a :misfit: does not help much if lho is looking at 7 clubs:)) Oh PASS

Partners range is quite wide and the distribution will quickly become an open book for declarer. Anything other than pass is just a WAG and who knows maybe there is a 4s bid forthcoming and I know I would be a ton happier defending that than 3n. I might even x 4s with my probable 3 defensive tricks and a bidding partner.

P did not bid 3s to warn of a poor distributional hand nor did they x 3c to show a club stack so going for the throat here seems like a pretty good idea if you are willing to start with a small dia on opening lead. Trading away the queen in the hope of winning 2 or 3 extra side tricks seems like a great trade off.

assuming I am looking at the NORTH hand (else let me disavow not only my 1s opener but even the more egregious 2s bid) I see zero reason to enter the auction here. P 2s bid was competitive they had a chance to x 1n with a good hand. Yes things look like they are breaking badly for the opps but if you were to x here I bet declarer can figure your hand out VERY quickly and play double dummy.