ColdCrayon

Except when you're right and I'm wrong and I'm your partner. I was thinking of an auction that goes 1m-1M-3N, which would be a trick taking hand with a long suit. When responder jumps to 3NT, it's a balanced 15-17, as they teach in bidding 101 of course. http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif

I'd think in most systems the AK in diamonds (aside from the broken Q-high hearts) makes a preempt out of the question, but it's opening strength. So 1♥ for me too.

Definitely calls for active defense - if I understand the bid right, declarer is showing a trick source in clubs, with partial stops in the other suits, particularly the majors. That's as far as my opinion goes - working through "Killing Defense" right now where problems like this have you leading, say, the J♥ and it's way over my head.. Anyway, I'm strongest in hearts, but I can't see 3NT being bid without the AK or jack in declarer's hand, so a spade lead seems in order.

Partner's 2s would be attitude, I think, since he doesn't know you have a singleton when you play the ace. So he's not venturing an opinion other than he has no high honors in the spade suit. I hear the argument that opps are going to open diamonds themselves, and it's a good one, but the thought of having a two-way finessing position is just too appealing should partner wind up short in diamonds - you would essentially be able to cross-ruff in opponent's suit. Whereas if you can put partner in with a club, it means your queen is going to be stuck in front of dummy's king, so it's very hard for me to see how you gain tricks should partner turn up with the Ace. Just using the old "if something must be possible, assume it is" rule - I don't think we can set the contract unless we find partner with the A or K of diamonds - and not clubs - so I would play him for it. As for not opening a suit they'll play anyway, 1) they may be saving dummy's diamond for a throw-in play later on, and 2) if partner wants a diamond return, we need to give it to him now, before dummy's stiff winds up as a discard on one of declarer's tricks. Clubs will wait a while, and we risk giving up a trick by breaking them if all four of us have honors - and if we don't, why are we leading them? Just restating my opinion so that it's more clear. But I've been mucking up on defense a lot lately. Anyway, I really want to see how it turned out. What makes it even trickier is that if partner gets in, he might abstain from returning a spade because of that weird discard from E.

But you don't know that clubs are divided 3-3 (do you?) Also, West's play of the King doesn't make east more likely to have the T: if W doesn't duck, you can divide his clubs into two categories 1) K♣, and 2) everything else. If you put the T in his hand, he plays the King. Take the T out, he still plays the King. Put the T in east's hand, he plays a spot. Take it out, he plays a spot. So how can anything be inferred there? This is what I meant by overthinking: it's taking the principle of restricted choice and stretching it so far that Thomas Bayes is rolling over in his grave. Just make the standard "suit-combination" play, which is to finesse. [edit] You could even make the opposite argument, that holding Txx, east has a non-zero chance of playing second-hand high, whereas after the queen is played, West will never put an honor UNDER an honor. Neither side played the ten, but since only east had a chance to play it, it follows that West is more likely to have it. Nvm, forgot who was on lead on that hand.

Trumps I think are out of the question. I'd probably play T♦, since if partner has the A♣, I'd be put in a spot where my queen would be stuck in front dummy's king. So since it's hard for me to see a way to set the contract without throwing partner in with a diamond, you may as well assume he has one. Also, if he's got short, high diamonds, he could put you back in with a spade ruff, and you could squeeze dummy's trumps behind partner's. Also, if declarer has K♠ as seems likely, you might get two chances to put your partner in, in case declarer has a high diamond that needs to be knocked out; should E decide not to draw trumps immediately, but to lead the K♠, as he's got three at the most, and probably two, he might risk leading it to get rid of his spades so he can trump dummy's. If any of that makes sense. It's tough though, at least to me. I'd love to see how the hand turned out.

I think you're kind of obliged to play 2S if your conventions are "standard" - partner is bidding a 4-card spade suit, so like the Balrog, you cannot pass. There's no sense in 2♥ when you can show your partner support in spades. 4-3 fits aren't the end of the world, and I think you mentioned that if your partner would know your raise wasn't showing 4 card support. If you go down, you go down, but I'm pretty sure 2S is the by-the-book response.

To put it even more naively, there are equal slots in both hands. Why? Because West has 7 red cards, and east has six and the A of spades. So it's a play of standard technique. E-W holds the second highest club plus two others; you're in a finessing position. It's analogous to a 10 card fit missing the K. How do you play that? You lead small to the queen. The percentages are extremely close, so Rodwell is definitely going to review the whole hand looking for clues, but unless he's got a reason to believe east is holding the ten, he'll finesse (West playing the King earlier doesn't make it more or less likely that he has it - in that spot, he'll cover the Queen if he can - if he can't, he'll play something else, but he'll never play the T. And neither will East.. I believe there's some over-thinking on this problem going on. Was a similar position reached on the other board(s)? How did they play it?

Vacant space suggests W has the card, not East. You can't really infer anything by east's showing out on the diamond lead, since W. is almost always going to lead his longest suit; so the fact that West has long diamonds means absolutely nothing. West is forced to lead. The strategy is for him to lead from his longest suit. Unless he's got a totally flat hand he's going to have at least one longish suit every time; this is why you generally disregard opening leads when figuring vacant space, otherwise you're always going to be putting missing cards in East's hand. Anyway, West almost certainly has the T. You already know how the red cards are distributed, plus you know East has the A♠ (otherwise W gets into the bidding), so finessing is over 50%, while playing for the drop against 3 cards is 2-1 (I think). My conclusion might be naive, but one thing I'm sure of is that restricted choice has no bearing here, since the 8 and 5 aren't equivalent: one can capture south's 6, and one can't. full disclosure - I didn't see the hand. I missed the whole match, I've been teaching myself LISP.

Never, ever get conceited about Bridge. Anyway, I was trying to help and clarify my understanding at the same time. Could someone other than that guy explain what's "standard" for 5-bids, if not an attempt to make?

Just piping in here - according to Eddie Kantar who's as close to the authority on RKC as anyone, you should know where the void is. It's also obligatory; with 0 keycards (technically an even number) whether or not to show the void is dependent on partner agreement, situational factors, etc., but with 2 keycards and a useful void, 5NT is mandatory; if you fail to make that bid you're misleading your partner, which is a cardinal sin when they've assumed the captaincy. If you don't like that system, come up with another - you can make 6c an asking bid, where responder will show the void suit.

Umm, basically the answer is yes to both - the language outputs the html and javascript tags. And if you host it locally, you don't need a webserver. It'll require a bit of configuration on your local machine though.

Ah, okay, now it makes perfect sense.

There aren't any IFs in BML at present, but you can get a lot out of just using variables. I don't have my RKC module anymore, but it's easy enough to rewrite - it basically worked like this: PASTE RKC_1430 \X=H \Y=S // \X is the trump, \Y is the other major. COPY RKC_1430 4H SLAM. RKC 1430. 5C ABR. 1 or 4 Keycards. 5D ASK. Q!\X? 5\X ABR. No. 5\Y ABR. Yes, with a side king in \Y. 5N ABR. Yes, but no side-suit king. Shows at least one 3rd-round control. 6\X SO. To play. 6C ASK. Must have all 5 keycards. Grand-slam try. Bid 7\X if 3rd-round control is in !c, otherwise, sign off in 6\X. 6\X SO. To play. 7\X SO. To play. 6D ASK. Must have all 5 keycards. Grand-slam try. Bid 7\X if 3rd-round control in !d, otherwise, sign off in 6\X. 6\X SO. To play. 7\X SO. To play. 6\Y ASK. Must have all 5 keycards. Grand-slam try. Bid 7\X if 3rd-round control in !\Y, otherwise sign off in 6\X. 6\X SO. To play. 7\X SO. To play. 6C ABR. Yes, with king of !c. Denies K!\X. 6D ABR. Yes, with K!d. Denies K!\X or K!c. 6\X SO. Yes, but no outside king or 3rd-round control. To play. etc etc. ENDCOPY Then for 5D 0 or 3, you'd have a structure really similar to the above, but you wouldn't be able to deny the queen below the 6 level. This is how I used to have it set up before I switched to kickback, which is a lot trickier. Anyway, the thing to keep in mind is that BML does not care what order you put your lines in, so you can have 6H defined before 5S, and vice-versa. The only problem with the above code is the 6\Y Grand-slam try - since Spades are the other major, you'll have it asking for a third round control BEYOND 6H, which is the point of no return. I had some line in there like "Must have all 5 keycards and not be beyond 6\X." As long as you don't mind that, you can use the whole structure for the void showing, the king asks, etc.

That's interesting, because in my bidding system 2S has no meaning over 1H, and 3D over 1S doesn't either. I could push the 3C bid over one and use 2NT for.... what? I think it's already reasonably easy to show a balanced gf hand without the jump to 2NT; mostly what I hear is people finding Jacoby inadequate, and using the 1M 2NT as invitational instead. Can anyone explain to me why you want to do this?