Cthulhu D

"I am unable to accept the conditions of contest, but because of the way the voting tool works, it is mandatory to select an option in the 2nd part of poll." with less words.

I think it depends on your methods as well, playing 1D is 4+ unbalanced (so basically 5 always), it can be really useful to know if it's a 3 or 4 card raise to tell you if it's right to bid 3D to compete for the part score, assuming that a major showing double isn't required. Similarly, playing an overcall method that allows you to show secondary 4 card suits fairly reliably, support doubles after a an auction like (1C)-1D-(1S) are really useful because partner doesn't have 4H otherwise he would have overcalled 2D. Playing 1C as Clubs or balanced, support doubles are pretty much useless.

Yeah the real objective is to find all 5-3 and 4-4 spade fits, without playing in any 4-3 spade fits (though you may play in some 5-2 heart fits or play in 4-3 spade fit by choice to avoid the 5-2 fit). It's a competitor against flannery for this purpose. You also get to play 1NT more often, because responder gets to show 'I have a weak NT with a 5 card spade suit' most frequent response and then opener can safely pass. This means you are less behind the standard bidders who have the auction 1H-1NT as well. Our judgement about when to try 2C isn't that hot though, our basic philosophy is pass opener's 1NT rebid a lot. I'm not sure it makes a big difference, but the finding of 4-4 and 5-3 spade fits is helpful, especially as I think 5-3 fits are the most common.

I'd note that the fact that it's a K and not a Q is probable reasonably sized black mark against the lead - P is much more likely to hold the K or J vs the A or Q.

You got a link? Google doesn't turn up anything. Edit: or is this it? https://github.com/anntzer/redeal

OK I was going to start a small fire but kuhchung has that covered, so what's the logic?

It is free: http://bridge.thomasoandrews.com/deal/downloading.html It just requires some scripting skills.

I read the topic as suggesting you would be a Max for 2C? Maybe that doesn't make sense. I guess I agree with Tyler I am worried about getting passed when game is very good. Some of this may be a partnership style thing, but opening most 11 counts I could easily have x xxx AKxxx KJxx And my hand is a lot better than that. Edit: It would be so good to be playing 1NT here shows extras in an unbalanced diamond context, then I can bid 1NT and not the much dicey-er 3C like echognome and Phil suggested in the thread about transfer rebids by opener some time ago.

I suspect being able to bid a weak 2 in clubs will be a big winner, and with my original line of thinking it was that, I cannot bid a weak 2 in hearts naturally so it would be nice to be able to do so. Testing reveals it is not hugely workable because I think the costs on the predominant strong NT hands (50% more frequent than the weak options) outweighs the negatives, but you need to try these things to find out! I suspect at the table it will result in strange responses to your 1NT openings as well because most people are exceptionally bad against defending against Strong or Weak type hands where the frequency of the weak options is close to the frequency of the strong options for no reason I can deduce.

I'm sitting North - so I could have bid 1S over 1D no problems :D I'm playing canape overcalls, so let's do it? Edit: Oh wait the hand diagram is probably supposed to be 'south' which would make a ton more sense.

I would have bid 1S (3-4 spades w/5 hearts, precisely with the aim of blitzing their chances of finding a spade fit. I could bid 2D as well with a weak 2 in hearts or spades, but the suit quality is to bad) or 1H (4+ overcall structure style, while I don't want a heart lead, partner will make a support double with 3 and tell me if 3H is going to be a LoTT bid) the previous round in my regular partnerships. I think the decision to balance depends in part on if they are going to raise on 3 cards. If they do that, I am going to pass. If they don't, I still think I am going to pass but I will be less happy about it. I am not sure if these are *good* bids, but it is what I would do. Thought i was north per the original diagram

Tell partner about the fit, then take it from there. This is both my agreement with partner, and not in the least because 1NT would be inv(-) NF with 5 spades and I could drown the heart fit starting with 1S (0-4 spades F1) would just be bananas.

That is very helpful, thank you. That does exactly what I want. Can you do something similar for lead analysis? Yeah, I had just modified DDline to output in a CSV format I could easily import into openoffice. But the answer to the other question is invaluable.

For me 1D is unbalanced and 2NT implies a spade shortage (though I want to change to playing it as 3 card support with a 6 card diamond suit). 1NT promises hearts, so let's try 3C - given the 3 card support, my hand has improved as my heart stiff rates to be well placed.

I don't particularly want a spade lead and my hand is terrible. Pass. Also 50% shot I'm pre-empting partner 2nd in.

Edit: Fixing this post, I forgot to take the 14-16 NTs out of north openers. OK take two. Removing obvious overcalls from east's hand, and 14-16 NTs from norths hand (5332 exactly), and 11-12 HCP hands with 2 clubs (I suspect a huge % of these will be and should be passed), Game makes 208 times out of 400, where 8 of those being 4S making when hearts and diamonds go down. It's gotta be worth a shot on those odds.

So this thread has a simple enough problem: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/68382-do-you-have-any-chance/page__pid__817039#entry817039 If north opens 1S, and south bids 3C, what % of the time am I making one of (north declares) 3NT or (south declares) 4H or 5C - anyone know how to actually DO this? I've deduced I can use the ddline output to get results formatted like so: AKQ93..QJT53.A96|754.KQ764.AK964.|2.AJT32.2.QJT832|JT86.985.87.K754|9 7 9 11 9|4 5 4 1 4|8 7 8 11 9|4 5 4 1 4 but obviously I only care about the North and South results. I've consulted the documentation, but I don't understand the usage of deal::tricks - how do I capture that analysis as output? I really just want to know, 50% of hands that meet my criteria make game, and 50% don't or whatever it is. My workaround is to edit ddline format to create a customish format, then importing that into a spreadsheet for manual analysis,

The original, stated objective of the rule of 20 was to get people to be less passive with shapely hands. If you're already more active, go crazy.

The rule of 20 and length points are both means to the same end - encouraging you to give some value to distribution when making a decision about whether to open. Marty Bergen intended length points to be replaced by the rule of 20 in deciding whether to open your hand. When you are applying both length points and the rule of 20 in the same hand, you are effectively counting the length points twice. BUT (a big but!), these rules are by no means cast iron, they should be subject to your judgement - you want to discuss with your partner(s) was constitutes an opening for you. If you want to open the 2nd hand, talk to partner about a style in which you can do that. The rule of 20 is just a rule of thumb about what to do to help shape your judgement, once you have actual judgement you should replace the rule of thumb! I'd open both your example hands - touching AK combination is good, I want partner to lead a diamond if they contest the contract, and I like that my values are in aces and kings in the longest suits - but I'm sure the decision to open the 2nd hand would not be universal, not in the least because it is a balanced 11 count. Playing a 12-14 weak NT you cannot open this.. probably, and rebidding 1NT after a 1M bid from partner might be to much of a strain on your 1NT rebid, which will be 11-14 points.

Having the same problem, while 3C had occured to me I thought it was pretty mis-representative. I'm not sure though? Tough hand for the methods. If you start with a semi forcing 1NT, 1NT rates to be ridiculous, and I'm not sure anything more sensible happens after 1S-1NT-2D-2H?3C? Edit: I have three regular partnerships playing similar methods, the first one bid 1S-1NT-2D-2H (surprisingly he had no doubt about this bid) - All pass. 2nd one thought for a lot longer as he hates it when I distort 6m5M hands eventually made the same response bidding 2H over 2D. Part of the reason I don't like it I guess is that we play a 14-16 NT, so a bunch of the balanced hands, so partner is going to be bidding 3NT with a lot of 12 and 13 counts, and I'm not sure the 21HCP game is there. Compiling dealer to test. Edit: So, as seen by the general discussion forum it's not that easy to do stats analysis in Deal 3.19 (or atleast, I am bad. Your pick). But over a sample of 50 deals, where south has the hand presented and north has a 12-16 HCP hand with 5+ spades, you make game in hearts or clubs 28 times of 50 (1 more if you could somehow get north to declare). My analysis isn't very sophisticated, I need to remove 11-12 HCP hands with 2 clubs, which I think are just going to sit 3C even though some will make 4H because they don't know about the heart situation. Edit 2: Sample of 200 deals, game makes 101 times out of 200, rising to 115 times if you assume east doesn't have a 6 bagger for his pass. Not sure if you're going to bid them all though, if partner bids 3C, does this scream J9873.Q87.AJ.A97 club slam to you? Maybe you'll bid 5. If partner can know to pass stuff like this AKT964.K6.Q3.976 you're looking good though.

Not for sure - GIB uses simulations to determine what the is the best bid in a number of places, and those sims are seeded with a random number generator. It's possible that different seeds result in sufficently different auctions to generate a different bid.

If S has 8 spades and 6 Hearts suitplay wants to lead small from AT432. If South only has 7 spades, it wants to lead small from AT432, but leading the 5 and covering with the T is almost, but not quite, as good. As that comparison is interesting, let's call small from AT432 A and the 5 from QT5 as B A wins when the suit breaks Kxxx - J, Jxxx - K, xxx - KJ, xx - KJx, x- - KJxxx and V - KJxxx (in the sense that it goes off one less on the Hawaiian break). B wins against K - Jxxx, Jxx - Kxx, J - Kxxx. All other breaks are the same trick expectation. Here is the table of odds and trick expectation produced: http://i.imgur.com/weaRV3H.png With the vacant spaces set: http://i.imgur.com/OsAmaNi.png Side note, I wish I could be as good as suitplay when deciding the best line in a suit! edit: If you only have two entries to dummy, it wants to start with the 5 up to the 10.

A dead max has to be something like: AQxxx Ax x Axxxx which feels pretty max to me - you're losing the A of Diamonds, and likely to lose a club or a spade. Would partner consider doubling with Axxx Ax x Axxxxx I feel like that is even more likely to take 3 defensive tricks on the auction, but the 6 level is fairly unsafe. If you want partner to have bid 2NT to start with that would be different but he didn't so he doesn't have a big hand. That isn't considering any hand on which partner has two diamonds (Axxx A xx AQxxx

For the 5\5 vs 5\4+ one it is the same argument as any aggressive pre-empt - partner is less likely to be able to advance but you are ~400% more likely to have actually preempted at all. Additionally as you have fewer pure hand types, it is harder for them to use the information in play. (1H) - 3C is a really tough auction for the opponents. It is less clear that 54 either way around is better as it is more difficult to advance. However I recommend trying the 5+\4+ approach on a BBO bidding table some time. You can very easily cause intractable bidding problems, it is twice as frequent as the WJO and I would argue partner is better positioned than opposite a WJO because he knows about two suits. I believe in the assertion from partnership bidding at bridge that double fit auctions are critical, and describing your hand in 1 bid is of paramount importance to fully inform partner. It works a lot better when both suits are specified though, because partner can get out faster when it is right to do so. I do not like being cavalier when both suits are not specified, we play (1C) - 2C as 5 diamonds + 5 of a major for example. More interesting is to compare it to a WJO, playing the overcall structure' you lose some of these. I think you are being overly dismissive of Fout's work on the topic here. With regards to playing it either way around, that may very well be bad, but we have mad the xoncious decision that getting both suits in the picture more effectively enables us to compete.

Yeah, we got doubled for -500, but it didn't matter because everyone else made 10 or 11 tricks in 4H. Really? Like, while my actions on the actual deal are dumb and I have no defence for my thought processes (edit, well, I do, south who is normally pretty good just coughed up two 100% for no reason on the previous two boards, clearly was unsure whether to open it 1H or 2C, so you better believe I was bidding, but the double was stupid), I do have a two suited hand with spades and clubs. I should in theory have 1 extra black card, but who hasn't opened 1H or 1S 3rd in with a 4 card suit? It is not a 'gross' misstatement to be sure. I'm still not sure what the double should mean - I tend to agree with mgoetze or The Hog that this should be three pretty firm defensive tricks, but partner likes a more action double. Plenty of food for thought.