wuudturner

The title is not really a serious question. ;) It was time to play a bot game today. Nothing special. No goulash. Just a mild bot game before breakfast. To no surprise since I don't have that many high cards, East is able to open the bidding with 1♣. I'm debating how to show this monster as South, as a blast to the 6 level, maybe if 4NT shows a big 2 suiter, or can I walk the dog a bit to get doubled in a slam. I decide to go slow, with 2NT. It will show the red suits. A nice thing about a bot game is I know I have the biggest hand at the table in terms of high card points. So with 13 points, I know that nobody else has more than 13. I am still hoping to find partner with some decent values. If North has not too much more than the heart ace for example, a grand would start to look inviting. West now bids 3♢. The bots play a variation of UVU - unusual versus unusual. 3♣ shows a limit raise or better in clubs. So 10+ total points with club length. That leaves room for few values for my partner. So when partner passes, I expect that the heart ace is unlikely. But after 4♣, I need to find a way into a small slam in a red suit. This is when you need to look carefully at how your bot partner will treat your various bids. After scanning through options like 4NT, 5♣, 5♢, 5♡, 5NT, etc., I decide that the one which will force partner to make a choice in the red suits is 5♣. Of course, it does show 29+ HCP according to the bot system. I do have decent spot cards, so 29 seems a good assessment of the hand. :rolleyes: East rolled out a double, giving me a chance to roll out a fairly rare penalty redouble. Yes, that was arguably greedy, since it might have pushed them into a sacrifice - one of those who knows what will make bids. [hv=pc=n&s=shkqj954dakt8542c&w=sqj763hd3cakj9876&n=st954ht7632dq6cq3&e=sak82ha8dj97ct542&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=p1c2n3d(Limit%20raise%20or%20better%20in%20clubs)p4c(4%2B%20%E2%99%A3%2C%2015-22%20total%20points)5cp6hdrppp]399|300[/hv] +2070 was one of the coldest tops I've had in a long time. Of course, 6♠ makes for them, and either black suit grand makes for them if we get off to the wrong lead. As it turns out, the redouble was completely unnecessary, as the pairs who were in slam were all making singly doubled diamond slams. Two pairs did try 7♡ though. They were forced to sacrifice in 7♡, because they gave E-W time to find the spade fit (and thus the spade slam) in the bidding. In my sequence, 2NT forced West to decide between showing a 5 card spade suit, or a 7 card club fit for partner.

As Badger points out, West is surely leading from a stiff jack, or Jx. The bots like to lead doubleton honors. But if West is short in hearts, then diamond length will be no huge surprise. At least, you can hope for the queen. Heart shortness makes West MUCH less likely to have diamond shortness too. So the first line I would consider is to run the diamond jack through West. Suppose West ducks, then when you open your eyes and the jack has won the trick, you ruff a low club in dummy. Cash the two remaining trumps in dummy, then two more diamonds, pitching a heart and a club from hand. Ruff a red card back to your hand, draw trumps, claiming 13 tricks. What happens if West covers the ♢J? Since ducking a trick in a grand seems a poor way to play, you win in dummy. Cash some high spades, still remaining in dummy. Now you cannot really go wrong. Say you draw two rounds of trumps, with the 9 then the king. That way, in case trumps were 3-2 or 2-3, you can ruff a diamond in your hand with an honor, then still have a re-entry to dummy that would draw the last trump. But when you see that East has only 1 trump, you cash the king then 10 of diamonds to throw a heart and low club. Then you see the diamond 9 drop, so you can safely cash the 8 of diamonds, throwing your other small club. A strong defender, holding 4 diamonds to the 9 in the East, might decide to toss the 9 on the third round under the 10, hoping you would then assume West had started with Qxxx, and that West still had trumps remaining. After all, the bidding seems to paint you with a 5 card spade suit, so East expects West has 4 of them. But the bots lack imagination to try to create such a picture in your mind on defense. I'm not sure what you mean by legitimate though. Is the line I described 100%? Of course not, just as a crossruff line is not so, since you need to be able to cash three high clubs with no ruffs, and you need to get those small ruffs in the South hand by ruffing red cards.

As others have said, 1NT by a passed hand is often no longer forcing. Definitely no so in BOT 2/1. I have some friends who insist it must still be so, and when I play with them, I am bound by agreement. But in general 1NT makes sense not to be forcing as a passed hand. Why not? The main reason why 1NT may want to be forcing is that responder MAY include a 3 card limit raise in 1NT. But as a passed hand, those 3 card limit raise hands are described by a Drury response, and the bots play a version of Drury. So look at your hand in context of a passed hand responder, one who has denied 3 card or longer spade support. You have 12 HCP, and no spade fit. Yes, you can pray, and hope to find a heart fit with 2♡, or a preference to 2♠. But with a relatively minimum hand, you may want to stay low. Is there a risk (or gain) in bidding 2♡? Yes, since your bot partner may bounce you into 4♡ with a great fit. Or, your partner may have shape 1255, and you will be a in a sad place after 2♡. How many hearts does partner rate to hold? There are 9 missing hearts. If we ignore the evenly distributed case where they are 4333 around the table, then one of three people has heart length. Roughly 1/3 of the time, that is partner, and I would expect to see an average of roughly 3 hearts for partner. But when you do choose to bid 2♡ with a passed hand partner here, you are aiming at either a 5-2 spade fit, or a 4-3 heart fit as the most probable landing spots. Likewise, if you pass 1NT, can they run a million diamonds against you? Perhaps. But that would require someone (who is not partner) to have diamond length, and for them to find the lead. How many diamonds does partner have? They have not preempted in diamonds, yet you know both of your opponents have limited hands. Using the same logic as before, there are 12 diamonds missing. Partner rates to have a few of them. I might even guess 4 cards, on average. I'd suggest that passing 1NT was not a bad idea. Bidding 2♡ also has potential. Both have risks, and potential rewards. But passing 1NT seems to be a little safer when your hand is indeed moderately weak. Weak hands with no found fits want to get out of the auction.

The slam is simply not that truly great. Certainly not enough to be horrified at having missed. At most, disappointed. Making 13 tricks will still give you an above average score in many games. Given the bidding and the known spade length in the East, a quick simulation shows the opposing heart length to be roughly: West length 4-5 cards ~ 33% 3 cards - 40% 0-2 cards - 27% So 6♡ is in deep trouble when West has 4 or more cards, unless you get pretty lucky. When West has exactly 3 cards, 60% of that time the Queen will be wrong. So you would want diamonds 3-3, or be able to safely ruff a diamond. Can you really cash one high trump, then play to ruff a diamond? If West has 3 cards, then East has a doubleton. If East also has diamond shortness, then only if West has exactly QT9 will East not be able to overruff dummy. And if East has 6 spades and 2 hearts, then East has 5 cards in the minors. Roughly half the time they will be distributed so East has no more than 2 diamonds. So we really are talking a roughly 50% slam, and one that is difficult to bid. It just is not worth losing a lot of sleep over. As for the bidding, you might have tried 3♠ directly. Then when partner bids 3NT as I expect they might on this hand, now 4♡. Partner might now get the hint their cards are prime, so they might go further.

This hand is pushing it even for me to bid. Most of the values are in short suits. My spades are terrible. If they get the contract, do I really want to tell partner to lead spades? The hand is worth something well under the 11 HCP it counts to. (The K&R number mentioned above seems about right for the real value of the hand.) Partner passed in this auction. We learn that partner would have opened most 11 counts, with 1NT=12-14. So partner might have a balanced 11 count. One thing I worry about is that partner was in second seat, vulnerable. That is the one position when partner is most likely to rein things in a bit by an initial pass, meaning partner might have sufficient values to get excited when I do bid. I do not want to be in 2NT or 3♠ on this hand. Just toss it in and hope for something good on the next hand.

Here is my take... Double and 3♡ are both flawed. As usual, no bid in bridge is absolutely perfect, but they are the only choices I would consider for more than a millisecond. I can accept the bid of 3♡ on a 5 card suit. But be honest. Is that really a 5 card suit? I'd call it about a 4.5 card suit. ;-) The spots are ratty, and there is nothing in the suit to support the king. The virtue of 3♡ is this is match points. If we belong in a major suit game, then we want to be there on this hand. If both 4♡ and 5♢ just make, then we need to find 4♡. The flaw of 3♡ however is South has preempted. So the odds are good that South is short in hearts. Will partner raise 3♡ to 4♡ on a holding like xxx? Of course. Partner might even do so on a holding like Qx in a pinch. 3♡ is forcing. The point of double is it keeps both red suits in the picture, just in case partner has a hand where even 6♢ is possible. Double allows for the case where partner wants to double their sorry a$$es when they made a risky white versus red preempt. Do opponents ever stretch to preempt when the vulnerability is white versus red? Of course! So I lean towards double with this hand. If the scoring was IMPs on the hand, then I would lean yet more strongly towards double because then I don't fear a 5♢ contract. And, yes, if partner is exactly 5341 in shape, then we might have problems getting to our heart fit. If you made the heart suit slightly stronger, even swapping the red suits, then I would start to lean towards 3♡.

That is, be on the lookout for a larcenous, thieving bot. Or, how to get a 92.9% result on a board, and still feel disappointed as if someone had just stolen my candy. Playing in an online game, my partner is as usual a bot. But then, so are my direct opponents at the table. Nobody is vulnerable, and I pick up a 13 count, with 5 spades. As my mind wanders briefly into the pastures of whether this hand is worth an upgrade to 1NT, I see that while partner has passed in first seat, and that right-bot has opened 1♣. The hand is now only worth an overcall of 1♠ in my opinion, so I do so. When partner bids 1NT, all pass since I cannot see taking another bid. Since partner won the bid, I am now declarer in the North seat, so these are the hands: [hv=pc=n&s=sak987hq94d752ca9&n=sjha832daqt9ct542&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=p1c1sp1nppp]266|200[/hv] East bot leads the club king, as BBO moves me to the North seat to play the hand. It looks like I can probably find roughly 8 tricks in 1NT, but doing well at match points means I need to look for more. Diamonds is a suit I need to develop, so I start doing so at trick 2, with a low diamond to the 9. East wins the jack, then cashes the ♣QJ. West follows suit to the second round of clubs, but then tosses the diamond 3 on the third round. Now, East exits with the diamond king. What is happening? East is a bot, one who does not know if North holds the diamond ace. But since East is a bot, IF north does hold the diamond ace, and East started with the doubleton KJ of diamonds, then East assumes I will "know" to cash the ace to drop the now stiff king. This is basic bot psychology, something that results from the use of double dummy engines to play the hands. That means the lead of a now stiff diamond king here makes sense. If North does not have the ace or queen, then exiting with the king now gets out of the way for West to win a later diamond trick. And if North has both the ace and queen, then the bot assumes declarer will know to drop a stiff king offside, so leading the king costs nothing in any case. Conversely, if East has Kx(x) remaining in diamonds, then East bot will see the king as a likely entry, and may decide to set up the long club winner that I know it holds. This makes me think that East has started with KJ in diamonds, plus the known KQJ76 in clubs. What else does East hold in terms of points. 10 points are slightly too light for an opening bid, and there are 3 major suit honors missing, the ♠Q, and the ♡KJ. It looks like East has 6 cards in the majors, and needs one of the missing queen and king, but probably not both. With both, East may have chosen to open 1NT, well, at least if East was balanced. Given 6 cards in the majors, does East have shortness? East opened the bidding with 1♣, with I think 6 cards in the majors. If there is a stiff in one of them, they held 5 cards in the other major. I think then East would have chosen to open one of the major. So East is most likely semi-balanced, perhaps 3325, 4225 or 2425, but did NOT open 1NT. Next, does East hold the heart king, but not the spade queen? With both red kings, I would be willing to bet that East would clear the club suit, setting up along club, hoping for an entry with a red king. Only a defender who lacks side suit entries decides not to bother setting up winners in a long suit against notrump contracts. All of this is leading me to a nice picture of the East hand. 3325, 2425, 4225 shape. An opening bid, but not the ♡K, so probably the ♠Q to get to opening values. I don't know about the ♡J. There are two lines I should consider now. I can cash the minor suit winners in dummy, then run the spade jack through East. If East covers, I can cash the top spades, then exit with the 9. If I've manage to strip the West hand, AND West is forced to win the last spade with the 10, then I'll have managed an end play, forcing West to lead away from the ♡K. This risks the possibility that East has started with QTx(x) in spades, so naturally covers the jack. That will put East in with the spade 10, and a long club. Anyway, even if I do manage to set up the spades, I'll then not have an entry to those spade winners. Better seems to be to exit immediately with a low heart from the North hand. If you see where I am going with this, I am actually looking for an intra-finesse position. As expected, East does not play an honor, and certainly does not jump up with the king. So on the play of the heart 5, I insert the 9. This forces the jack from West, who exits with the diamond 4 spot. Queen from North, then East commits larceny, stealing my chance for an intra-finesse. East pitches the heart 10! Yes, East is probably worried about an impending squeeze. Of course now the rest of the tricks are mine. Cash the other diamond, the club 10, pitching spade losers. Come to the South hand with two top spades. North remains with the A8 in hearts, South with the Q4, and I know the heart king is in the slot. Just lead the queen, and regardless of whether West covers of not, I will win the last two tricks. So it WOULD have been an intra-finesse, but I felt cheated of the opportunity. Making 9 tricks was a good score, but I'd have traded that 92.9% score for the opportunity to smother the heart 10 when I led the queen. [hv=pc=n&s=sak987hq94d752ca9&w=st65hkj76d8643c83&n=sjha832daqt9ct542&e=sq432ht5dkjckqj76&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=p1c1sp1nppp&p=ckcac3c2d2d8d9djcqc9c8c4cjs7d3c5dkd5d6dah2h5h9hjd4dqhtd7dtc6s8stctc7s9h6sjs2sks5sas6h3s3hqh7h8s4h4hkha]399|300[/hv] http://tinyurl.com/y8kjd78g

Online can be a terribly frustrating place to try to play and learn. I might start with places like BIL. A good place to learn, and to find people who would be of similar skill levels, and have a willingness to learn. https://www.bilbridge.com On BBO, look at the intermediate/advanced club. Personally? I don't play with random partners, essentially ever. I have friends from real life bridge that I will play online with, and some friends that I have met online. Beyond that, it is not worth the effort. So I very much do understand your pain. A problem with BBO bridge is the ability to assign a skill rating to yourself. This causes everybody to call themselves an expert, or even world class. Partly because nobody will play with them if they do not. World class on BBO often means that someone has once won a club duplicate game. ;-) Seriously, assign yourself an accurate rating on BBO. If you choose to call yourself an expert, then you had better bid and play like an expert, else you will earn a great deal of abuse. You will see people abandon you in the middle of a hand, every time you fail to do what they think is correct, even if they are wrong. A rule that I try to follow when I do play bridge is to be willing to accept blame, to look at myself through the eyes of my partner. If I do something that in the end causes us to get a poor score, I will immediately shoulder the blame, even if along the way, partner might have helped out in that cause. For example, suppose I hold the hand 8762 KJx QJ9 Q9x Playing a standard 2/1 system, partner opens 1♣, pass to me. So partner has at least 3 clubs. I might respond 1♠, but then partner might raise my spades on 3 card support, and we might be too high. I play with my partners that over a minor suit opening, 1NT shows 8-10 HCP. So in my eyes, 1NT is probably a better description of my hand. However, if it turns out that after my 1NT response, that partner did have spades, and we never find a spade part score, instead playing it in 1NT? If it we get a good result, then I'll say nothing. If the result is a poor one, then I'll immediately admit my culpability. An immediate "sorry partner" from me. And since I only play with someone who I know and trust, I have no fears they will blast me for my choice. Said another way, NEVER tell partner during a game that they were wrong in a bid or play they made. But be freely willing to admit that YOU were wrong. The point in all this is, to find a truly relaxed game, find a place to play with people who are of a similar skill level as you. Find friends who can accept you, and are at ease with themselves. And to cultivate those friends, teach them that they can trust you, learn to be a good partner.

Tips to improve? There are many things you can do. Some require help of course. I'll focus on ideas that may be a little off the beaten track, since others have discussed much already. 1. Find a mentor. This can be difficult to find someone who will be patient with your problems, helping to identify them. Helping to work through things. And some might actually like a mentor who bashes them upside the head when they do wrong. Figuratively, of course. (I know of one person with that style. It works with some people, not on others.) So find a mentor who fits you. How do I do mentoring? I've found BBO to be a perfect resource. I'll set a bidding table, with only the two of us present. Set the generator to give us hands where we have at least half the points, as that will give us things to discuss. Then we bid the hands, and discuss each one. How should the hands have been bid? (In fact, I often do the same thing with my regular partners. Over the span of 20 hands or so, a huge number of things seem to come up that are worth discussion.) Next, I'll set a table up for play, with bots as E-W, no constraints this time. Bid the hands. If I end up as declarer, we swap seats. Partner plays EVERY hand that came our way. But I don't just let partner play the hand out as fast as they want. I force them to think about everything that happened. Before they play, I'll ask who has what, based on the bidding. I'll have them assess the contract, their chances to make. I'll have partner tell me their plan. What will they do if trumps split poorly, etc. What backups do they have. Each hand goes slowly, but who cares? Finally, when I do play with my student, we agree to discuss all hands after the game. Go over the hand records. As needed, I'll write up a discussion about hands that were difficult. Finding a mentor that will do any of the above is not always easy. But if you can find someone, it will greatly improve your game. 2. Find a group of friends who will act as a sounding board. For many years, I have had a group of friends who periodically send out e-mails when a hard hand comes up. We ask how others might have treated a hand for bidding or play. This can be hugely valuable, since you all grow together in skill and knowledge. Yes, you can do the same sort of thing on a bridge forum. But a group of friends will tend to be more patient with you. 3. Forums are great resources, of course. You can learn a huge amount. READ THEM. You will quickly learn which responders tend to give sage, sound advice. 4. Writing is a valuable tool for me. Long ago, I found that the best thing for my game was to write up a hand. Start with the hand, as if you are talking to someone. Tell them everything you think as you count the hand, as you bid it, as you play it. Think of it as a hand diary. It forces you to consciously rethink what made you make a decision. Did you screw up? Why? Did you do something well? Hey, this is you, talking to you. Be honest. Writing it all down forces you to look critically at what you did. Did you find a squeeze or an endplay, even if you stumbled into it? Go back, thinking over the play. Think about what you did that made it work. This way, the next time, you may be able to work it out in advance, to actually foresee that play. 5. When you are playing a hand, make sure you discard the last hand. Toss every thought about previous results into the bit bucket. Focus on the current hand. After the game, all of those hands will return to your mind as you peruse the hand records. 6. During play of the hand, do things to help you focus. Make it a habit to mentally record the opening lead. Look at the card. Burn it into short term memory. When someone shows out in a suit, immediately reconstruct the distribution of that suit around the table. When you are playing a suit and you see an honor played, ask yourself which honors remain outstanding. Is that 8 now a winner? Practice these things. As dummy, I do the same things, practicing my declarer play as dummy. Never say anything to partner of course, about how they should have made that hand, at least not until after the game and you are discussing the hands. 7. Ask yourself what is your most glaring weakness as a player. Everybody has one. If you can't see it, then ask the best player in the club. Then focus on improving that particular skill. Everyone is different. Everyone seems to learn differently. Find what works best for you.

Is it a 2♣ opener? Not in my book, even though I would be mildly worried about playing it in 1♣. The problem is multi-suited hands are bad for 2♣ openers. You need room to find a fit, if there is one to be had. Since I play weak jumps with my partners, responder just bids 1♡. It is fully forcing. Then the question becomes what is my rebid? I reverse into DIAMONDS, not a jump shift into spades. This gives partner the chance to rebid 2♡, a forcing response to a reverse in our agreements. Given my shape, that is what I expect to hear, and then I can rebid 2♠, getting all three suits off my chest. On that sequence, I'd argue that partner should be able to visualize my three suited shape. But on this hand, partner should take the initiative over my reverse, making a jump in hearts, to 3♡. This is game forcing, and shows a nice suit, though I'm not sure opener will visualize that good of a suit. 1♣ - 1♡ 2♢ - 3♡ 3♠ - 6♡ pass Even opposite a potential void, the North hand should bid slam in hearts.

I don't agree that there is no alternative to bidding 3♢. There are several, although it depends on the meaning of 2NT. Assuming that 2NT is just an offer to play and not forcing, it is a valid choice. In fact, this is one of those hands where you hate all of your choices, and of course, why they preempt. So, your choices are: 1. Double - obscene, since it really promises more than a doubleton heart. You don't want to see partner respond in any number of hearts here, and on this bidding, given a doubleton heart in your hand, the odds of 4 harts with partner are very high. 2. 2NT - not happy, since that spade holding is not terribly useful. However, they often preempt on complete trash these days. I'd not be amazed to see partner show up with Jxx in spades, or even Axx. Ax is also possible, but now your queen is wasted. 3. 3♣ - an underbid on strict point count, and an overstatement of your club holding. At the same time, 5 points for the spade KQ is a significant overestimate of the value of that holding most of the time. Partner can easily have a 3 card club suit, although 4+ clubs is likely. 3♣ will probably end the bidding there, and a plus score at IMPS is better than a minus score. 4. 3♢- a clear overbid. Forcing. These days, people (me included) are willing to open the bidding on air. That hand is simply not sufficient to essentially force to game, although at team scoring you can afford to be pushy. So really, you have 3 semi-viable choices here, none of which are anything to write home about. I'd not fault partner for choosing any of options 2, 3, or 4, and I would NEVER say something at the table. For me, that would be a quiet discussion we would have in the parking lot after the game, where we would each try to see what partner did through their eyes. My choice would probably have been 2NT (if it is natural and non-forcing), because 3NT is our most probable game if one exists for us, and this is team scoring. At match points, I would argue for 3♣. If I did bid 3♢, I could see the bidding go: 1♣ - (2♠) - 3 ♢ - pass 3♡ - pass - 3♠ - pass ??? 3♠ for me would now invite 3NT from partner, with help in spades. It suggests I may have something in spades, but am not willing to bid 3NT on my own. The nice thing is, now partner can bid 3NT if they do have that magic help in spades. The problem is, odds are they do not, and I have now just forced partner to make a choice at the 4 level, very often getting us wildly overbid on two semi-balanced hands. That means 3♢ is for me a Dirty Harry bid. Do you feel lucky, punk? So if I bid 3♢, it is because I am hoping I can get us to 3NT, because I hope that partner has help in spades! And that is why at teams, this is an unhappy 2NT for me. The objective of bidding in bridge is often to find the smallest lie.

Be very careful about bidding 2♠ here. That should arguably be treated as the impossible 2♠ bid, thus nice support for diamonds, a hand that improved quite a bit once partner bid 2♢. I see a hand that does not fit partner. Length and values in the suits partner does not have. Worse, AQJ tight in spades, with the king likely sitting wrongly. So we will take 2 spade tricks, but there is no potential for taking more tricks. Even if partner does have the spade king, it will almost never be in a 4 card suit on this bidding, and that would waste the AKQJ of spades to take 3 tricks in the suit. Regardless, we have too many points in short spades, thus cards that do not contribute to establishing length tricks in the suit. So this is a hand that has high card points, but points that fit poorly with partner. Look at the heart suit. Who has heart length? Probably South, so they are likely sitting poorly. You can visualize poor transportation between the hands. Avoid bidding notrumps on hands like that. It is a misfit, and rather than making a forward going bid, you want to get out of Dodge on misfits. What does partner have? Did partner bid 2♢ on a 3 card suit? Partner had a valid call if they were 5332, or something like that. That call would have been pass. Partner does indeed have at least 4 diamonds. You never know, maybe 5 of them. I would pass 2♢. You have some extra values. It is a contract that partner should be able to make, and plus scores are a good thing.

First, I'll challenge your initial plan. 4333 hands tend to not take extra tricks in suit contracts. They play rather poorly in fact. So my plan, had RHO never interfered would have been a simple 3NT. Yes, we might miss a major suit fit. But so what? If we do have a major suit fit, it will be a source of tricks in 3NT, often just as many tricks in 3NT as in a heart or spade game. So a perfectly balanced hand, with nice spot cards as held here will often want to play in a 9 trick game more than a 10 trick game. Just blasting game here makes them guess what to lead too. In fact, many is the time when I find myself in 3NT with a blind auction like 1NT-3NT, yet a fit in some suit, and they lead my suit! So I'll argue the best plan should have been simple. Don't tell the opponents anything about your hand. Just blast. 3NT is a game try. Let them try to set partner, but my bets would all have been on partner making 3NT. But here, your pesky opponents got in the way. (Got to do something about those opponents. Why do they do this, just when we put up a big sign saying that we probably own the hand?) In fact, their 2NT, suggesting that any suit contract will probably see bad splits, also suggests that your target should not be some potential 4-3 fit, which is just asking for trouble when no ruffs in the short hand are available. The problem is people want to bid. We have a lot of points, so I need to bid to tell partner what I have. There is one alternative to making a bid, that is, make a call. Double. This suggests the ability to hurt them in at least one of their suits. You can surely do that, in diamonds. Yes, I admit that they might bid 3♣. If partner cannot double them in a club contract, then you will need to guess what to do. But that is later. For now, this hand can announce the good possibility they have bitten off too much, wanting to play in a 9 trick contract. A good rule that a friend of mine has used for years - "Flat hands defend".

Yes, a better description.

I was kibbing a BBO Vugraf match the other day, when I saw a pretty end position. You can follow what he did in this link: Vugraf hand In the end position, with South on play, he has lost no tricks so far, having taken 8 tricks to that point. [hv=pc=n&s=sj7hkdck9&w=shd52cjt8&n=sat8h98dc&e=skq9hj7dc]399|300[/hv] At first glance, it seems you might be hoping the hearts split 3-3 to gain a 12th trick. If you do cash the heart though, and then play the club king, East has no problem, throwing the spade 9, saving his heart winner and the spade KQ. He will get two tricks in the end. But instead, look at what happens if you cash the club king now before the heart. Importantly, pitch a heart on the club! East is caught in a guard squeeze. If he pitches a spade, then declarer can simply duck a spade to East to set up the long spade while the heart suit is under control. So East must pitch a heart. Then you cash the heart winner, stripping the hearts. In turn, that allows you to safely duck the spade jack to East, endplaying him to lead into the spade tenace. At the table, declarer lacked the peripheral vision to find this play, taking the more prosaic line of hoping the hearts might split. I'd have stood up and clapped if he did find the line for 12 tricks. Maybe I can get my eye doctor to prescribe side focal lenses.

BBO is SUCH an international site, with so many viewers and players from around the world. Not everyone will be speaking in english, or whatever your personal language of choice may be. This is important when playing, and an opponent explains their bids in French, German, Chinese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cuneiform, whatever. As important is when you are kibbing a vugraf between France and Germany, and the commentary is in one of those languages. Yes, I can SOMETIMES guess what was intended from my long ago taken classes in various languages. In these days of automatic translation capabilities, I'd love to see the capability to set a native language setting for myself (english in my case). Now, if someone else has set their native language to Chinese or French, then BBO would see that we would not communicate well. All comments made by that person will be run automatically through a translate tool when the comment is sent to my chat window. And any response by me will be automatically translated for them. Yes, I know that the result would sometimes be a garbled mess. But a string of Chinese characters is not much better from my point of view. And it certainly would beat me being forced to copy what they just said, switch windows to Google translate, then paste in the text to do that same (sometimes horribly garbled) translation. Another option might be to have me be able to right click a line in chat, and have then translated to my indicated language. Think of how nice this would be! And while I know that auto-translation tools are far from perfect, those tools are improving every year. I'd forgive you of course, if there were no settings to go between the various versions of English spoken around the world.

Yes. The person with this hand then jumped to 6♠. Of course this makes (for a push.) A comment by the person who bid it was that he was always planning on bidding a slam when partner opened, so 6♠ made sense to him.

At an ACBL sectional swiss, you hold the following big two suiter. (If it is relevant, you are a diamond LM, and partner a gold LM. Your opponents are of roughly equal caliber.) AKJT76x 6 AJ87x --- With everybody vulnerable, LHO deals and passes, and you are pleased to hear partner open the bidding. Of course, he bids 1♣, but even so 2♠ by you is a strong jump shift. Partner takes out into 3♣. What is your bid? Does it make sense to bid slowly, with a forcing 3♦? This may get you to a diamond slam when that is best, or possibly even a club slam. Now, consider that parter has alerted 2♠, as a weak jump shift. Now a simple new suit bid by you will be seen as still a weak hand, but a very distributional one. Partner might even pass. It seems the one bid that is unacceptable is a jump to slam (6♠) here, a wild shot knowing that partner thinks you have a weak hand, to prevent him stopping the auction in a low place. You cannot use an alert from partner to know that one action on your part might work out well. So the ethical action seems to me a bid of 3♦, the bid you might make had partner not alerted. Is this logic correct? I'm asking because my teammates at the table did not object, even though one of our teammates is a certified director herself. Nobody else at their table even seemed to think something wrong had happened.

When I am finishing a tourney, I find I tend to be faster than many others in play. So I often step in to kib some others who are still playing the last few hands. I join each table, hoping to find one who has several boards to play, so I can compare how they played the board to my results. I'd love to see a marker on the list of players in an event that tells me what board they are on. The above idea also has some other advantages. I'll sometimes want to play with another person who is playing a game. But I cannot contact them while they are playing. So it would be useful to know if they are on board 3 of a 12 board game, or they are just starting board 12. Again, a useful tool is some indicator of where they are in their game.

As much as the bots do their very best to screw up our minds, occasionally they tell the truth just enough to keep us coming back. And if you believe them, see what neat things can happen? [hv=pc=n&s=saq4hk962dacakt98&w=sj986hqjt5dqt94c3&n=skha84d8753cqj642&e=st7532h73dkj62c75&d=s&v=b&b=7&a=2np3sp4cp4sp4np5dp5hp5sp7cppp]399|300[/hv] In a bot game, I opened 2NT, because while the bots may hang you in a major, they tend not to hang you in a minor suit. 3♠ as minor suit stayman was a magical bid from the bot, then it showed spade shortness with 4S. The hands surely have play for 6♣, but with visions of 7 in mind, a keycard ask seems right. The one key card missing is the heart ace, so we know there are no immediate losers, but how about the queen of trumps? Anyway, I'm still worried about hearts. 5♥ asks for the trump queen, and now my bot friend bids 5♠, showing the queen of trumps as well as the spade king. We can now visualize the North hand. A stiff ♠king, the ♥ace and the ♣queen. I know that I'll get two pitches on the ♠AQ, so as long as partner has no more than 4 hearts I can discard them. Anyway, partner is hardly likely to have 1444 shape and not have tried Stayman looking for a heart fit. More likely, partner is 1345, 1354, or 1255. It matters not, as 7♣ looks eminently reasonable.

The funny thing is, I'm surprised the bots did not assume you really did have 35 HCP, and then correct to 7NT with an 11 count. Had that happened, would West-bot double with an ace on lead?

South: 51% North: 29% East: 10% West: 9% I knew the East bot was a hand hog. ;) Now I have proof! I wonder though, positionally, is there a reason why East might play more hands? In fact, this almost makes sense, if you assume the human sitting in the South seat is a bit more likely to balance.

I'm trying to convince partner to play inverted Fishbein. Think about it. B-)

I totally agree with this, but taking it one step further, after one opens 1NT the opponents are now able to place the points more accurately, so you should decide to dump all natural NT bids. There is now no reason to dump (or keep) Stayman. Think how much easier bidding will be with NO conventions at all? All bids give some information to partner and your opponents. The trick in all bidding is to apply judgment.

As tools like Google Translate come into existence, a neat idea would be an auto-translator for comments/chat. Allow the person to set an option that would automatically translate any incoming chat lines into their chosen language for them. Imagine how nice it would be to actually understand the vugraf comments in some matches when the commentators are writing in something other than your native language? Perhaps as valuable, is when your opponents are gabbing away in another language. Exactly what are they discussing? Or when your opponents at the table explain their bid in a language you don't recognize, does it really help you? Yes, I know this would be a compute hog. But it could be nice.