rmnka447

Auctions are based on 2/1 with responder's simple rebid of his suit as passable. Cue bidding style is "old fashioned" (i.e. 1st round controls bid first). Longer form: 1 ♥ - 2 ♣ 2 ♠ - 3 ♣ 4 ♣ - 4 ♦ 4 ♥ - 4 NT 5 ♦ - 5 ♥ 5 NT - 7 ♣ Opener elects to reverse into a 3 card ♠ suit. Responder shows his 2/1 was based on ♣s. 4 ♣ by opener is a slam try showing ♦ shortness. Why not splinter? By agreement, showing shortness via a reverse auction implies a stronger hand (i.e. good honor texture in suits held) than a splinter. 4 NT is a waiting bid in the cue bidding sequence -- continued slam interest, but nothing more to show below the signoff point of 5 ♣. 5 ♦ shows a 2nd round control in ♦ and implies a ♠ control -- else opener would sign off in 5 ♣. 5 ♥ shows the ♥ singleton. At this point, opener can see that at worst the grand may depend on a ♠ finesse, and that responder will get pitches on opener's ♥ honors. 5 NT is GSF. Responder accepts and jumps to 7 ♣. Short form: 1 ♥ - 2 ♣ 2 ♠ - 3 ♣ 4 ♣ - 4 ♦ 5 ♥ - 7 ♣ Auction is the same through 4 ♦ -- opener shows big hand with ♦ shortness and responder starts cues with 4 ♦ (1st in ♦). Opener makes a sweep cue bid of 5 ♥ which shows in order -- a 1st round control in ♥, a 1st round control in ♠, a high ♣ honor, a 2nd round control in ♦, a 2nd round control in ♥, and denies a 2nd round control in ♠. Repsonder knows enough to bid 7 ♣ directly.

I'm another passer over 2 ♥ with this hand. You may see a 10 point hand, but I see a 9 loser hand with lots of quacks. If the hand were, say, ♠ xxx ♥ J10 ♦ Kxx ♣ AQxxx, I'd have no trouble inviting game.

Thanks, Stephen, for clarifying the differences between WJSs in the US and Europe. Either method should be playable provided you have a clear understanding of which way you're playing. I'm bidding an American style WJS 2 ♠ with this hand. It pretty well gets bidding ♠ off my chest and describes my hand to partner in one bid. I think it's especially attractive given the apparent misfit with partner. I'll admit part of my views on WJSs stems from playing weak opening NT (12-14) for many years. Because in this milieu, one of a minor openers tend to be stronger, restricting WJSs to the lighter variant avoids potentially missing games opposite a stronger WJS.

It's a Pass for me, too. Partner's a passed hand and seems to need too much to make slam feasible. A secondary analysis via LTC sort of confirms this. Your hand is a 6 loser hand. Partner advertises a limit raise hand which is normally an 8 loser hand. A combined 14 loser count between the two hands points toward you making 10 tricks on the hand. Even if partner's hand improves to the equivalent of an opener -- 7 losers -- LTC points toward the hand making only 11 tricks. Change the stiff ♦ K into a baby stiff and replace a small ♠ with ♠ K, then you may think more positively about slam and make a try. Your hand has improved to a 5 loser, so slam becomes more of a possibility.

3 NT is the worst call. When a preempt is bid, which a weak 2 ♦ is, preempter's partner is in control. That's because preempter's partner has a decent handle on what the preempting hand is, but the preempter hasn't a clue exactly what his partner has. Often, a further bid by preempter offers the opponents a fielder's choice. They get to choose to bid on or penalize the preempters. After the 2 ♦ bid, the auction is fine through 3 ♥. Responder passed trying to buy the contract at 2 ♦, then with a partial ♦ fit chose to compete further. After the 3 NT bid, South has a decision to make. At IMPs, the decision is easy, just pass and take a positive as the hand was a partscore hand. At matchpoints, there's more to consider. If North/South are making 2 ♥ or 3 ♥, they have to beat 3 NT at least 3 tricks to equal or better the ♥ partscore. So, South should Double the 3 NT contract to give his side the best chance for a good matchpoint result. Note that if 3 NT makes, it's hardly likely to change the matchpoint result much as it's highly unlikely anyone else will be in 3 NT. (I like to call this kind of double an "ornery matchpoint double".) So, South's pass is the 2nd worst call. As to the play, Eddie Kantar's advice from Advanced Bridge Defense about what a defender should do when dummy is tabled is most apropro. Eddie recommends a lot of counting -- count the points between dummy and your hand, starting working on counting the distribution, but most importantly count your tricks and count the opponents tricks. Looking at dummy, it has 2 tricks in ♥, possibly 3 ♠ tricks, 1 ♦ trick, and likely no ♣ tricks. If 3 NT is to make, then the opponents must set up and access long ♦ tricks in declarer's hand. With a doubleton ♦ in dummy, South can stop direct access to the long diamonds by holding up the ♦ A. The key to defending this hand then is to immediately attack the entries to declarer's hand. South can't attack a ♣ entry, but can attack a ♠ entry. At trick 2, it is imperative that South lead ♠s. (If declarer has the ♣ A, partner is virtually certain to have the ♠ A.) So the worst play is the return of a ♥ by South at trick 2.

Rather than worrying whose to blame, why not take it as a learning experience? Everyone makes mistakes, but what really helps you get better is to be able to learn from them. The first step is to try to get dispassionate about the hand and try to figure out what went wrong. Let's start with your 5 ♣ bid. Ask yourself this -- "Is your hand good enough to contract for 11 tricks opposite a run of the mill 12/13 point takeout double?". Consider that partner's takeout double has already purportedly shown shortness in the opponent's suit. Your singleton in ♠s then really doesn't carry much value. Based on the other values you have, you'd be very happy to settle in a partscore if RHO had passed. Game would not come into view unless partner shows some healthy extras. Despite the preemptive 4 ♠ bid, there's no reason to believe that that has changed. Indeed, if you bid on, it has to be on the basis of strength, distribution, or both to believe that 11 tricks are reasonably possible. Let's move on to partner's take out double. I think previous comments by posters are very appropriate. They boil down to this -- when the bulk of your values are in the opponents suit, it's probably not a good idea to make a takeout double. Here partner has nothing but small cards in both red suits. If you as advancer, bid a red suit suit then whatever honor holdings you have in them are more likely to be under opener's honors whatever they are. With doubler's values in ♠, opener rates to have the bulk of his points in the outside suits. So in effect, doubler's holding devalues whatever values you as advancer hold. If the takeout double had been made on something like xx Axxx Kxxx Axx, then doubler's points can work with whatever advancer has to surround and neutralize opener's values. Likely, after the 4 ♠ bid, you felt a bit taken advantage of. Well, vulnerable at IMPs, that's a feeling you just have to get used to. Often, the most prudent option is to just stay fixed by the opponent's preempt. Nobody likes it, but it's part of learning to play this form of the game well. I wish I could give some sage advice on when to compete and when to sit, but that's best learned by a process of experience as painful as it may be. Playing the blame game never helped any partnership get better. It hurts sometimes to take responsibility when things don't go well. That pain will be useful next time you both find yourselves in a similar situation. You'll both remember and find it easier to take the right action.

Although I very often open 4 loser hands 2 ♣, my gut feel on this one was to open 1 ♠. My auction probably would have been 1 ♠ - 2 ♠ - 4 ♠. But seeing JLOGIC's explanation of his "game try". I think that's better. Opening 2 ♣ isn't necessarily wrong with this hand, but just requires some careful bidding. 2 ♣ - 2 ♦ (waiting) 2 ♠ - 3 ♠ -strongest raise 8+ value and Hxx or xxxx in ♠ 3 NT (waiting bid slam interest) 4 ♣ - 1st or 2nd round club control 4 NT - 1430 5 ♦ - 0 or 3 5 ♠ If you're going to move towards slam, you should ask yourself what you need to know to ensure slam makes. Here, your concern is with the possibility of 2 Club losers. So you need to get responder to show a Club control. My favorite partner and I have decided that after finding a 8 or 9 card major fit that 3 NT isn't a logical contract. So we use it as a waiting bid initiating cue bidding and denying a Club control. Here, it allows responder to show the Club control. But the subsequent keycard check, reveals 2 losers, so you can stop.

Bid the highest, so that you can get in the second lower suit at the next level, if necessary. Partner can then still preference back to your first suit without raising the level of the contract.

2 ♦. It allows pard the most room to manuever and shows where my values are. If pard rebids in another suit, I sit -- we'll be in a decent contract. Bonus a) If pard can't sit for 2 ♦ Dbld, then any suit rebid should be natural -- 2 ♥ shows a ♥ fragment. With a doubleton ♦, I think pard sits for 2 ♦ Dbled. So, I'd take Redbl as showing ♦ support. b) Should be some sort of ♥ holding.

Pass. Like others have said, you're interested, but there's just no way to find out if partner has the right cards for slam to make. If pard has the wrong cards (like KJxxxx AQxxx - xx) even 4 might be a challenge.

Normally, you don't bid a grand slam unless you can count 13 tricks or have about a 65+% chance of making 13 tricks. (So, with fairly ordinary hands, you would bid a grand if you had an 8 card fit and all that was required to make 13 tricks was a 3-2 break in the suit.) Unfortunately, after partner's ♣ preempt, there's just no way to find out exactly what partner's hand is. So, the prudent action is to bid 6 ♣ and take the most likely best result. Especially at matchpoints, any slam bid and made is likely to be a pretty good result. The only exceptions are those few hands where literally every pair in the room will be in slam or where getting to the right (i.e. higher scoring) slam contract matters.

Sorry, but I'd never bid 6 ♦ with this hand. There's just too much that needed for that to be right -- bring in ♦s with no more than one loser AND have no losers outside. Even 5 ♦ may be too high if pard's values are concentrated in ♥. So 3 NT looks like the best bet to me. With a really good player, I'd just bid 3 NT fully expecting partner to pass. And that player would pass for a couple reasons. First, my hand had a chance to compete in ♥s and didn't. Second, after a simple 2 ♥ raise, partner would recognize that a 3 NT bid is highly unusual if not impossible bid. Partner would figure out that I had to have a good reason for making the bid and respect my judgement. That's called partnership trust. If partner did carry on to 4 ♥, it would probably be for holding something like ♥ AKQ10xxx. However, with lesser players, 3 NT would be more of a problem. They'd concentrate on the fact we had a ♥ fit, decide I'd done something stupid,and carry on to 4 ♥ to save me. With these partners, I'd probably bid 3 ♦ fully expecting them to carry on to 3 ♥. After 3 ♥, I'd try 3 NT and maybe then they'd get the message.

Pass. If they have made the right judgement to stop in 4 NT, so be it. You mentally tip your hat to them as top notch players and get on with the next board. But, as JLOGIC points out, there is a possibility they may have had a misunderstanding. There's also no absolute guarantee that the 2 NT bidder has more than one ♠ stopper. You'll get at least a second chance to play on ♠s. If partner can conjure up a useful stopper, 4 NT may be doomed anyway. So defensive prospects are at least reasonable. The worst thing would be to sac at 5 ♠ Dbld and find that 4 NT goes down. If you had just one A (where their chances of making increase quite a bit), then saccing at 5 ♠ would be more attractive. You have too much defense to do so here.

Just for the record, Hand 1 is never an opening bid for me. Hand 2 depends. With my aggressive bidding style partner, it would be a clear opener no matter what seat. With more conventional partners, I might pass in 1st or 2nd seat, but would open in 3rd or 4th seat. Depending on the partner, the 3rd seat opener might be either 1 ♠ or 2 ♠.

The rule of 20 popularized by Marty Bergen was simply the total of the two longest suits and HCP. Then some experts, after seeing how blatantly some people applied the rule, started advocating a rule of 22 which did include QTs along with long suits and HCP. A couple years ago, Mike Lawrence published a series of articles in the ACBL Bulletin on this very subject. Funny, but virtually all the examples Bergen uses in his books (Points Schmoints series, Marty Sez series) that he says meet the rule of 20 also meet the rule of 22 with one exception ♠ - ♥ 6 ♦ KJ109652 ♣ AJ1097. Furthermore, Bergen also points out that opening ♠ K ♥ QJ ♦ Q5432 ♣ Q5432 which meets the rule of 20 is ridiculous. He also states that he would never pass ♠ AQ1098 ♥ A1098 ♦ 1098 ♣ 10 which fails it. While Bergen never explicitly endorses a rule of 22, he does later state that "It may be out of fashion to count quick tricks, but you can't play good bridge without doing so". I think Bergen likes a little more flexibility than a hard and fast QT rule, but still uses them as part of the decision making process. P.S. The Lawrence articles were in the August 2009-October 2009 issues in the new player section.

Personally, I'd pass the North hand. 1 1/2 QTs and a bad 12 count -- dangling ♣ Q, Q empty fifth in ♦s with no intermediates in the suit -- just isn't enough. With the actual auction 1 ♦ - 1 ♥, I'd be very reluctant to bid 3 NT with just ♥ Qxx. For 3 NT to be right, it looks like responder needs some ♥ help from partner. I think a previous poster's comment about a negative double is a good one. Opener, at least, has a chance to bid 1 NT over it. Alas, the cards don't set well and 3 NT has no play despite the 26 HCP between the two hands. With no spots in ♦, there's really no suit to develop. The only hope was a doubleton ♦ A with East which is what declarer played for.

I'm raising to 3 ♥ also. Opener should have 6+ ♣. Responder has denied a major. So 3 ♣ appears odds on to make. Unless pard has made a funny bid, you're side has 9+ ♥. You might pass if you had only 3 ♥ and 5-6 value. But here you have a decent 4 card raise. So fight for the partscore! If you're off 1 or off 1 Dbled in 3 ♥, then you're no worse off letting 3 ♣ make. But the bonus comes when you push them to 4 and beat them 1 or if your side makes 3 ♥. Then you'll record one of those nice part score swings for 5-7 IMPs.

There's no way to know exactly what partner has except maybe 8 or 9 pretty decent ♠. If you bid 7 and it makes vs. the opponents being in 6, you'll gain 13 IMPs. If you bid 7 and it goes down vs. the opponents being in 6, you're losing 17 IMPs. The break even point is about a 56% chance that 7 makes. So you want to be pretty sure 7 makes if you bid it. For 7 to make, you need a way to get rid of your ♣ loser AND bring in your ♦ suit without a loser. That seems like a pretty tall order to me. I bid 6 ♥ feeling that is much more likely to make than 7 ♥.

+1 for Trinidad's comments.

Pass The hand is a complete misfit. So I'll just get out of the auction as quickly as possible even with a pretty good hand. The length and quality of your ♣ suit should give 2 ♣ a decent play.

4 ♥ If it goes for a bundle, that's life -- the preempt worked. With a decent 16 count and a decent 5 card ♥ suit, I've got too much not to act. Give opener something like 8 or 9 HCP and that leaves 15 or 16 HCP between the two passed hands. If they're split fairly evenly, we're likely to hold 23 or 24 total HCPs between us and game may be close. If worse comes to worse, I'd think it would be easier to explain an aggressive call, then trying to rationalize why we missed a lay down game.

Hand 1 2 ♣ - 2 ♦(waiting) 2 ♥ - 2 ♠(2nd neg.) 3 ♣ - 3 ♥ 4 ♥ Hand 2 - - 1 ♣ 1 ♥ - 2 ♣ 2 ♠ - 2 NT 3 ♥ - 4 ♥ 4 NT - 5 ♥ 6 ♥

There wouldn't be many as they'd make a judgement 15 HCP and 1 1/2 QTs is enough to open. But I'm not sure many would decide to open KJ KJ Q J. Setting a standard for QTs or controls for opening bids really addresses the issue of how many high cards are held in your point count. High cards are important in being able to prevent the opponents from cashing enough tricks to defeat your contract or preventing the opponents setting up the tricks to defeat your contract. Since most hands are a race between declarer and the defenders to set up enough tricks to make or defeat a contract, it's important that enough high cards are held between declarer's and dummy's hands to tilt that race in their favor. So using these measures as part of the judgement process involved in deciding to open is appropriate.

That hand is a solid minimum range opening hand. 12 HCP, 2 QTs/4 controls so the values and high cards are right. The Js are coupled with higher honors. The hand is rich in intermediates which are working with the other honors. There are good honors and intermediates in the 4 card suit. These are all positives. Despite the 4-3-3-3 distribution, I would expect most good players to consider this a "very good 12". Compare with, say, ♠ A43 ♥ K53 ♦ K32 ♣ Q652. Again, same 12 HCP, 2 QTs/4 controls, but none of the positives of your original hand. All the honors are isolated, especially the "dangling" Q. There are no intermediates supporting or helping the honors. The 4 card suit is about as bad as you can get other than xxxx. So, there are absolutely no positives. I would expect most good players to consider this a "bad 12" and wouldn't be surprised if some didn't open it. As for missing opening your original hand, we all have "a cow flew by" moments now and then.

It may be a tad old fashioned to some hereabouts, but most really expert players (Bergen, Lawrence, etc.) advocate not only looking at HCP, but also "Quick Tricks" [QTs] when deciding whether to open a hand. Quick tricks are as follows based on your holdings in any individual suit: AK(x...) = 2 QTs AQ(x...) = 1 1/2 QTs A(x...) = 1 QT KQ(x...)= 1 QT Kx(x...)= 1/2 QT The pretty much accepted standard is to open when you have 12 HCP and at least 2 QTs with a 1 level bid. You can also open 11 HCP hands with 2 1/2 QTs. Some experts say you should open any 3 QT hand, some might not open a hand like xxx Axx xxxx AKx. The best explanation as to why you are looking at QTs is this. QTs are the foundation of the hand's strength. They represent solid defensive values/controls vital to play. If you open at the 1 level, then you want to do so with a solid foundation for further bidding and play. Hence, the above standards represent a good minimum for that foundation. Applying the QT table to your hand, 0 QTs for ♠ Q103 0 QTs for ♥ QJ1086 0 QTs for ♦ J4 1 QT for ♣ KQ9 --- 1 QT total for the hand So the hand doesn't have enough QTs to warrant an opening bid.