gszes

The contract looks perfectly reasonable and normal. That means not taking undue risk when normal play will normally result in at worst avg - or so. Having said that there seems to be virtually zero risk in leading up to the AJ of spades in the hope south has the KQ of spades and splits them (though this will normally only happen if they hold KQT). The important point is to make sure you rise with the spade ace even if no K/Q appears from south. The chances of rising with the ace costing you the contract (or even extra undertricks) borders on nil so it is a chance worth taking. After rising with the spade ace run the clubs you never know what effect on discards showing the spade ace will cause.

IF you add a choice that reads like NO SANE PERSON could possibly care less about my opinion on this matter we might reach 1000

try imagining partners hand type/power and a possible reason for an unusual lead will usually reveal itself. It looks like partner had around 9/10 hcp let say they began life with the following: Q KTxxx Kxxx Qxx Is leading the heart K really so horrible? South might easily be short in hearts (they bypassed hearts to show spades stopped). Laying down the K might be a way of not only starting on your longest and strongest suit but also possibly smothering a stiff Q/J for good measure. Rather tan assume p has gone off the deep end and randomly selected a card from hand see if there can be a good reason (there will not always be one sigh). ENCOURAGE

When we have really good hearts there must be a really really good reason to introduce diamonds. Bidding 4h the 2nd round gets the idea of this hand across pretty well and makes competing at the 5 level a heck of a lot more sane when we can now verify that our diamonds are at least as long as our hearts. Bidding 4d sort of emphasizes the wrong suit and makes a true POC decision much less clear.

definitely feeling lucky my 2n could easily have been a bunch of K/Q/J instead of all these monster controls/tricks. While p may be having some sort of conniption fit over there it seems 6d should have reasonable play either because p is short or rho has a void. While I have a really icky club holding that does not mean my p (missing the AK of dia) has to have a mirror. I am feeling so lucky that I am bidding 5h hoping to hear 6c which will compel me to bid 7d.

void AQxxxx KQJTxxx void I think this looks a ton more like 1h 4d --- the given problem seems to be much better off starting with 1hxx (are we really afraid to be left in 1h xx I don't think so). The xx at least gets the good hand idea across to partner. The 4d bid just smacks too much of a preemptive hand and with 3 aces this hand has a lot of values for both offense and defense. This does not completely absolve south of all blame. With what appears to be zero chance of defeating 4s maybe bidding 5d is not such a bad thought as a sac but the decision to not press on was caused more by the poorly made 4d bid not thinking about the different type of hands that the bid could represent. As an aside I am not even all that sure starting with 2c is a poor idea but 1h just seems to feel better.

good luck to us all and thank JEC for once again providing the medical assist team for those of us ailing from JEC mack truck tire marks:))) I am unsure they are quaking in their boots with forum posters overall record sitting at 3-134

6h Disagree 3d would show 5+ (and not even sure I would agree it shows 4+ given the bidding). We need a forcing bid (temporizing) and diamonds happen to be the most handy and least space consuming. I say this only because I am assuming 2c/d are NOT forcing. If they are forcing then put me down for 2d. The 3h bid can be many things but one of the things for sure is that 3n did NOT look appetizing. P club weakness makes our hand better but still leaves us with a puzzle as to the proper strain/level. We have wasted a ton of bidding space and further exploration starts to get murky here since trumps have never been set. I think it is time to go with the odds and just blast 6h. There are a few hands where 7 is right and a few where going beyond 4 is wrong but the middle ground seems to be the place to be when there is insufficient science available.

Laws are supposed to maintain a fair result if possible. Depsite east's incredibly underwhelming claim there is no realistic possibility declarer can score more than 2 tricks. It is obvious from the tank west does not KNOW it is right to ruff the club K. This defense would hold declarer to 1 trick. I would grant declarer the club K and trump Q but the rest goes to the defense since they cannot actually lose more than 2 tricks (just like one cannot lose the trump ace by conceding all the remaining tricks). I have been wrong before so let's hear from some professionals:)))

1s W/o in depth agreements this bid leaves us the most prepared to take advantage of a variety of continuations by partner. This hand might easily play in !S !H !D or (far less likely NT) and the simple 1s bid allows for all of those probabilities (assuming lho does not barrage us with some monster number of clubs that is).

Too much to do and not enough entries to dummy to fully evaluate the south hand. I like to +1 with AJT also but that and the heart suit may require 3+ entries to dummy and those will be hard to come by after a simple 3h bid. No strong reason to stretch for game (I would raise at IMPS).

1. p 2. P 5. P 6. 1N 8. DQ

If the bidding continues 3c and opener bids 3s does that promise 4 or is it plausible they have "stuff" in spades and nothing in diamonds AK Kxxx xxx AQxx or some such. and would they prefer to bid 3s or 3n with xxxx Kxxx AQx AQ? This is reasonable because they know u have a heart fit OR 4 spades so 3n is their most accurate description. What if opener held xxxx KQ KQ AQxxx they think there is a massive club fit and while they have the "reds" covered for 3N they have squat in spades and bidding 3s just for the sake of shwoing4 of them appears to be tactically wrong in almost every way shape or form.

don't confuse this with a passed hand w/o interference. Remember that p is generally assuming you have around 7 hcp for their balancing action and you do not have a dia fit and not all that much more than what p expects. If you happen to miss a snarky game once in a while sobeit but better to stay low increasing the odds of a positive score. P chose 2d rather than x or NT for some reason and this alone increases the odds your side has no fit. Oh and those 3 small spades are ugllllly for offense

splinter bids lose some of their accuracy when there is a side 5 card + suit present. If you are playing 2/1 I think 2c is a standout but having begun this way I think a 3h bid here is a great way of showing p you have slam interest opposite their singleton and takes up virtually no space rather than making an unclear cuebid like 3s or worse trying 4c and seemingly denying a spade cue.

our hand offers little offense but with 1 and even possible 2.5 tricks we do not need the worlds fair from p to set this 1 trick. This is too dangerous at IMPS but at MP I would not be surprised if we set this at least 1 70& of the time for a ton of really good scores.

starting with x to show extra values and no clear direction seems right on target here. Yes we could try 2/3 NT but either would just be guesswork. I prefer to hear more from p before deciding where to go and how high. If p makes minimal noise then staying low seems preferable.

The HCP are not a problem but the lack of intermediates is. I would push this to game with the AJT AKxx QT9x Kx. Only a true optimist will give p enough power to make game and MP is designed to help one avoid sketchy games.

This looks like a good contract and making should be sufficient to get us a very good board. Worrying about overtricks at MP is for those hands that look totally normal. trick 2 ruff a spade (did lho not bid spades with KQTxxxx?) trick 3 low heart toward the T (even if rho shows out) and see what happens making 6 works anytime trumps are 31 and we still have great chances anytime trumps are 40 no matter which opp holds the 4 trumps. The finesse still gives us our chance at making 7. This differs only a little from RHM line but seems a tad better when trumps break 40(with east) since the heart 7 can still be a problem if spades don't behave well. Now I am going to read the spoiler and see how dumb I look sigh--------------------

P, looking at the probable spade stack, did not think it was wise to do anything to 3s. We, looking at maybe the weakest/defenseless overcall in the history of bridge, should be happy as a clam the opps stopped short of game and can take full credit (due to our savvy? bidding) when they rack up 170 or 200. X ?? huh? where in the world are we going to play that is not going to be hugely dangerous even if p does not want to convert the x to penalty thinking we might actually have something over here. Pass meekly and try to do so without a smirk.

YAY++++++++++++++ GL all

!D5 Oh I thought this was an opening lead problem to 3dx sorry about that. It is quite probable the reason P reopened with hearts vs x is they are short in diamonds. It is still unlikely lho has tooo many diamonds and I would like to cut down on club ruffs as much as possible. I would PASS at imps since the risk factor is too high but at MP the x seems much more likely to increase our MP score than not soooooooooo goforit. I agree somewhat that the x has a tendency to show a penalty x of 2c but it also has to have a decent amount of dia, given our lack of negative x (limiting our spades length), and lack of heart length. It seems hugely unlikely the opps will manage to safely land in spades and even then there is a great chance p has length there.

3s should show reasonable "stuff" in spades and "worry" about hearts. My feeling is that having only the ace in a worry suit (where partner most likely has little length) qualifies as a problem. I think we are looking at little/no "stuff" in hearts or only the ace. In either case, our hand has dramatically improved. Given the bidding so far it seems highly improbable we do not belong in at least a small slam. So the question becomes do we continue to search for more with our limited agreements or blast. We cannot bid 4n here since that could be taken as quant with hearts stopped but not spades. Given our limited agreements is it safe to continue to search or should we blast? I vote for 4c in order to show partner our slam interest and give partner a chance to cue bid (4h). This also focuses on clubs more than diamonds since we could have also bid 4d here. Note that this is perfectly safe since the earlier bidding has forced us to at least 4n. P may bid 4d to focus on diamonds vs clubs and while that is a pain it is not deadly as we can follow with our 4h shortness. If p cannot bid 4d or 4h then we should settle for 6c without further messing around.

i will be there BUT prefer to not play since I am scheduled to play the sat night

p shows game interest opposite many weak hands so opener has a fairly exceptional hand. These exceptional hands are almost always those with lots of controls though sometimes they are merely max hands with a problem with 3n and at least a 3 card club fit. AKx Axxx Kxx Kxx or AKJ AQJ xxxx Qxx. Since 3n is still a viable option it looks best for now to proceed with a simple 3d While this bid does not promise a dia suit <to me anyway to others it will> (and there may be other bidding mechanisms available to the partnership that guarantee this is not a dia suit--that we are unaware of) it definitely points out a problem with 1 or both of the majors for 3n. We will have to sit and wait to see what opener says before we proceed since they know what their hand looks like a lot better than we do at this time:) If the partnership is playing these 3lvl bids as splinter then I would go ahead and bid 3h. It is important to note that the 3d (or 3h) bid shows some extra values (GF at worst) since it takes more power to make 5m than 3n. This extra power (along with opener's super accept means the partnerships is at worst VERY close to slam. This shared knowledge leaves most of the 4 level open for slam exploration if the partnership needs it.