PhilKing

I strongly prefer a 2♣ rebid ..... (>>> 2NT >>> 3♣). Your hand is not pulling it's full weight for NTs if partner can't scrape up a bid over 2♣, and if you bid 2NT and partner passes, you will often not make that. As bid, West has an easy bid over 3♣: 3♠ to show a decent club raise that does not wish to bypass 3NT.

The beginners and Acol players will bid 1♥-1♠-3NT or 1♣-1♥-3NT. On a diamond lead they will stick in the ten (second hand low) and play the spade honours in the wrong order, attempting to block the suit. However, there is no obvious way to go off, so they will rack up their contract. Of course, I would not expect this to happen very often, except that OP was obviously shocked by the score ...

When partner has all that we still need clubs and diamonds to come in to make game. The acid test in this kind of situation is to switch the West and North hands and see what would have happened. In this instance we would go for 800 or so.

This is a totally clear pass. At these colours, if you changed the hand to: ♠A43 ♥9 ♦K5 ♣AJ98654 I would still pass.

I like 5♦. It could work badly, but I like it a lot. I could not really criticise a double of 4♦ but I prefer to go for the pot with this much shape. Having said that, I could hardly have less, so pass now is clear.

I will try the approach of bidding my hand - 4♣ then 4♠ if partner cues 4♦ (or 4♥ if 4♦ would be RKCB). Partner can continue with 4NT (DI or "rolling") to confirm a heart control but not enough values to drive slam, in which case I will sign off (though the decision is close).

I'll get my coat.

These days, the very top players virtually never lead away from a king on an auction like this. The lead of a heart might score OK in the Bridge World, but that is because although times have changed, the panel contains a lot of octogenarians who are used to a far more aggressive style of leads.

You could sell me a 3♦ overcall against opponents who play weak preempts in the minors (a style I strongly disagree with at these colours). But against most people I would pass. If I bid 3♦ and follow through with 3NT over 3M, I will make it a superficially sufficient amount of the time, but the problem is that when I do go down, it will often be by four or five tricks. :(

It sounds like they believed the hesitation was not established, so there was nothing to consider.

But it can also pick up his king, or turn KJx, AJx, KQx and AQx into one trick.

I would recommend downloading bridgecomposer - http://bridgecomposer.com/ You can do this for free on a trial basis and then you can voluntarily pay the writer his money if you like the program. Alternatively, you can just open a pbn file using the bbo handviewer. This will automatically create a lin file. http://www.bridgebase.com/help/v2help/making_a_bridge_movie.html I am not sure if it works how you need it to - I have the old version on my computer and that works fine, but that is no longer available if you are a recent member. Good luck.

It was board 3. The bidding accident got you to an excellent spot. You should play on diamonds (leading the ♦J and unblock the 9) before playing trumps. Assuming hearts are not worse than 4-2, this only fails when the diamond loses and they can get a ruff with the short heart.

Board 7 - try this line. Trick 1 - heart ace tricks 2-4 - cash the top diamonds Running the heart is an illusion, and you want to keep an entry in dummy to ruff a heart. As it happens, it is quite lucky that when East has FIVE hearts West can't overruff. The ending is still a little messy (you may end up thankful that East has a singleton honour in spades), but you are better off when East is 2425 or similar, and on various other distributions. Sure, you could have still made the contract as it went, but that required a precise reading of the ending.

By bidding, you are punishing partner for competing. So to have a special gadget to do that in more convoluted ways does not seem that useful to me.

Probably he did - but it's attributed to Garozzo, I believe.

It's almost as rational to jump to slam on the North hand as it is to stop in part score. Put it this way - North has a clear jump to 3♥ on the second round and a 4♣ slam try on the fourth (they went to the bar on the third round).

I have the scars to prove it.

I was agreeing with you. :) Anyway, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that solving range and differentiating between singletons and voids is just too difficult - not systemically, but in practice it just increased the chances of partner making a fatal error and/or using up so much extra time remembering the responses that we get in to time trouble yet again. So I just use continuations that can be used in multiple sequences. Voids can still be diagnosed sometimes via cue-bidding or making a step 5-6 answer to RKCB.

PASS Without discussion, I would be worried that partner's double was showing the majors. :ph34r:

I would just assume partner has no clue.

I want to jump to 3NT so badly, but I lack the courage to incur a zero from Helen.

This. When you are in a game force and one play has "defined" their shape (via 3♣ in this case), we are in a classic serious/non-serious position. You can use step 1 as non-serious here and higher bids as serious (or vice versa if you want). So partner can jump to game with a horrible club holding, bid 3♦ with a decent hand that need you to hold at least a few extras, and cue to say slam is likely. In this sequence you can make it slightly fancier and say that new suits above 3♦ are shortage, 3M is extras no shortage and 3NT is a singleton in non-serious suit (diamonds). Once you get used to the rhythm of this method it can be transported to many other situations.

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4♠. But my double of 4♥ is slightly less takeout oriented than most.