Statto

But partner does have six hearts, and the most useful minor suit Ace. If you just bid 4♥, I can't see partner bidding on with their hand.

If pard Lebens, we don't need to jump to 4♥, we can simply bid 3♥ which breaks Leben and is thus GF with ♥ agreed. Now we should hear a ♣ cue... (If there was no interference, after 2♠ we would also not need to jump to 4♥ as we have already set GF, though the rebid here will be 3♥ which makes that immaterial.)

You could agree to play that with your partner, it seems reasonable but is not standard. I think it's common to play 3♠ by opener after 3♥ as a cue bid showing ♥ support and the ♠A (though you probably don't want to worry too much about such bids right now), so most players would simply bid 3NT if they do not have ♥ support.

I found this. Apparently it stands for Transfers Over NT. After RHO opens 1NT X = penalty 2♣ = majors 2NT = minors 2♦/♥/♠/3♣ = transfer. It means the opening lead always comes from the strong hand.

Basic LTC - 0.753 New LTC - 0.852 (New LTC counts a missing Ace as 1½ losers, a missing King as 1 loser, and a missing Queen as ½ loser, and subtracts the total from 25, with a minimum opening hand typically having about 7½ losers.) (Bear in mind all these values are across all hands; there might be slightly better [or worse] correlation around the game and slam zone.)

I'm happy with 3♦X-5 instead of 6♣/6♠/6NT making for them.

Well, it does have the ♠1 and the ♠0 ;)

Oh, 3♠ from partner instead of 3♦, gotcha :)

Passing 3♦ when you would have bid on over 2♦ seems a little off-radar to me. Or are you expecting opps to reopen when 2♦ is about to be passed out, and to use that as a "leg-up"? Could you elaborate, thanks :unsure:

If it's teams I'd raise 2♠ to 4♠, or 3♠ to 4♠. But at either scoring I'd have probably rebid 3♦, which may help find 3NT or perhaps slam in ♠ or ♦ or NT, and at least makes it very hard for opps to now come in with their ♥ if partner is weak. The jump rebid (in Acol) promises a good 6+ card suit with 6+ playing tricks in a decent hand, and that's what I have - the ♠ support helps, as would a better hand defensively, but you can't have both (well, you can but then would be looking for a forcing bid) B-)

Or just like 4th suit forcing B-)

Perhaps a need to distinguish the meanings of the 2nd X and 3♣. Should one of them suggest a poor 5-card ♥ suit with an honour? X clearly allows the possibility of defending 2♠X...

I would have bid 2♥ first time. I don't like double because I don't have great ♦ tolerance and the ♠ are too long. I don't like passing because it will be hard to come into the auction later, and I still don't have ♦ tolerance. Maybe it goes (1♠)-p-(1NT)-p-(2♦)-p-(2♠) and the ♦ tolerance problem goes away, but do I want to suggest 4-4 when I'm 5-3? The ♥ suit is poor but the hand is good. Sometimes we'll find game, sometimes we'll go for -800. But more often than not it will be a partscore hand possibly worth a very useful 4-6 IMPs. Maybe the hand is too defensive to bid at all unless an opportunity arises, but if I'm going to act it has to be 2♥ right away. On the actual auction, partner has made a free bid. I'm still not thinking game, but I'd like to compete a bit more. How about 3♣?

Play when you have common time. Discuss via email when you don't have common time. Online play has the advantage that bidding/play records are kept so you don't necessarily need a post-mortem right there, maybe make a note for discussion later. Ideally find a pair of opps who are in a similar boat, so there can be post-mortems where you and opps can be mutually beneficial to each other (like in teams practise where the team gets together to play). Discussions should generally focus on whether there was a better play/lead/signal/bid/call in terms of improving partnership understanding (e.g. if I had ****, how would you have taken it? would you have expected me to **** with this hand?), less so on introducing any new gadgets, particularly nearer the event. Later reviewing all hands played is useful, you might spot something you missed at the time, maybe something worth discussing, but maybe just something that gives you a better understanding of partner's style.

Linear regression analysis over 100,000 random deals gives the following values for correlation between the combined partnership count and the number of tricks made double dummy in the best suit fit: KnR - 0.866 Zar - 0.865 Milton - 0.809 The maximum possible correlation would be 1, implying that with any given combined count the exact number of tricks you make double dummy is a given, which is clearly unachievable by any method, not least because you can't take fractions of tricks. I still prefer to start with the basic Milton and use various factors for upgrading/downgrading, which methods like Zar and KnR are an attempt to quantify. However, they don't distinguish between the "opening" hand and the "responding" hand, while short suits tend to be more useful in the "responding" hand. (Edit: "Regression" -> "Linear regression" for clarification.)

Anyone for 2♣ then 4NT? :ph34r:

Happy with East's 1st pass with the poor suit, but when it comes back round at 2♦, with 10 cards in the unbid suits, I think I should prebalance nonvul, for which the 6-card boss suit is a clear winner without specialist agreements.

Another rule of thumb is to play towards the hand with more honours first. Again this suggests playing towards the shorter hand here, but had it been KJ876 opposite Q54, the two competing theories almost neutralize each other. (It's marginally better a priori in this situation to start with small towards KJ for the specific [rare] case when an opp has A109xx over KJ876, as you can then escape only 1 off.)

For a passive continuation I'd try a low ♣, as it gives declarer a chance to go wrong. With ♠Jx-♥Axx-♦AQxx-♣J109x, declarer has to guess, though on the actual layout should be able to work out the only chance is to throw a ♦ and let it run round to the winning ♣J.

Actually it does in formal logic. But "implies" is the wrong word here, as there are no guarantees B-)

Seems like a common use of 2M openings in Multi. How does the poll relate to the question?

It's simpler if you just stick to considering the non-♣ cards. Opener has some number of clubs. The remainder will be randomly distributed amongst the other 2 hands yet to bid. Whether your other cards are ♦ or ♥ or ♠ will not affect that.

Um, how can there be 42 unknown cards? Are there 3 cards in my hand that I'm not allowed to look at? Besides the 13 cards in my own hand which I know about, I also know RHO has some diamonds, maybe only 3, but that still limits it to 36 unknown cards in the first case, if we're just interested in distribution.

Is it not a near minimum hand with good ♠ stops, inviting 3NT? Maybe that hand might pass 2♠X, but red v white?

Maybe we have 2 ♣, a ♦ and a ♠ in defence of 4♥. Also, I'm not sure LHO is that likely to act, we have a lot of the HCP.