PhilKing

3♦ is a huge underbid, even if partner has a 10 count 100% of the time. I would bid 3♣. I would not sit for 3NT. We could be cold for slam with 3NT down. ♠x ♥Kxxxx ♦Kxxx ♣ATx is a decent slam and partner would pass 3♦. Give him the red queens as well and we are down in 3NT. And don't tell me partner would not bid it with a stiff spade - I have seen it 100 times. I will have to manufacture some sort of recovery shot now. 4♣! If partner has 11 points, maybe he will cue 4♠. :P

I like how East did not raise to slam, having shown their values already. :(

Let's focus on the the occasion when East hold ♣Jx. How bovine would he have to be to realise that a heart lead will cause us no pain, given how we have played the hand? Anyway, I am increasing the percentage of players I will use the club-from-hand line against. On reflection, I will go with a low club against about 75% of defenders in a good club field. Moo!

♦A - no second choice. ♥Txx in partner's hand may be enough to beat this, and our ace may disappear if we don't cash it. My real hope is that we have several winners to cash. If they can bid a slam missing two key cards, why not three?

Depends on level of defenders, I suppose. East should sniff it out really. South is marked 2335 or 2326 from the bidding and it should be obvious which from the first two tricks and his heart holding. But if East is weak, I guess he will just look at dummy and play a heart.

Trick 1. ♦Q. Trick 2. ♣ to the queen. If it loses, crunch the diamonds and finesse again. I am just aiming to max my chance of five club tricks, but the entry position isn't conducive to dealing with KJxx onside. The lines I see so far seem to just set up five losers on normal breaks. I am catering to all 3-2 breaks with one honour onside. Stiff king or jack onside and stiff jack offside.

Ah, OK. I have them as the delayed 2NT and 3NT, which seems more intuitive to me.

Pass then 3♥, I think. In a perfect world, Pass then 3♠ should be 5-7 but weaker. I think (hope) my generic rules would cover this.

Pass NV. 2NT vul. Our best chance of game is probably 3NT unless pard has extra shape.

I think this is almost never the situation. My experience is that, given the lack of a major-suit overcall by either opponent, partner is likely to have length and strength in the majors. In particular, partner is almost nailed on to have four spades here.

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Yep, run the ♠9 looks best at this point. Lefty is 3325 for sure.

My definition of highly contested was rather strict - it only included hands where the opponents bid up to the five level. Having to counter a preempt or overcall plus a raise was just considered as "normal", and the stats suggest that it was not that big of a deal, although obviously competing vigorously on hands where the opponents can make slam would tend to be profitable, but there is no evidence whatsoever that young Europeans have started a trend in this regarded. I may separate them out at some stage.

This sequence is a mess. Just play: 3♦ = invitational. Not forcing, since 5♦ is a long way off if partner cannot bid 3NT 3M = forcing. Whilst there may be the occasional hand where we want to jump but wouldn't mind if partner passed, I just do not like that approach and would rather be in game if I have extras and a major. 3♣ = forcing with long diamonds (circa 8 playing tricks, but possibly even higher for me)

Play the king. If it loses, so what? I doubt we were beating it. But if partner has: ♠Jxx ♥Axx ♦Jxx ♣AJxx he will not be impressed by our wooden defence. From partners point of view, things look pretty bad, but not hopeless. South seems to have good diamonds and spades seem to be running - but there is a chance he can get us in with a heart for a club through. He is not worried about South having the ♥KQ, since there was no 3NT bid. In before this gets transferred the the L and A section. :P

There's no rush - 2♥ for now. In order for partner to judge accurately, a jump to 4♠ should show a spade more and a high card fewer.

I have some large data files where I can perform some searches, but not that one, so I did it by hand. I put one hand where one pair bid slam (failing) and one pair bid 4NT (failing) under "both failed in slam", but I may have missed one or two at most. I might have more categories in a larger search.

No. But fortunately you already have enough data to suggest that holding back because of a bogus stat based on two tournaments is not the way to go! I have files for hands from the big 5 tournaments since 2000 (Spingold, USBC, Vanderbilt, World Championships and European) where one side bid slam and one did not, but I have not searched for hands where 12 tricks were made. I have enough on my plate processing those at the moment.

Did you see that 3♣ was doubled?

Thanks Jogs. Thanks a bunch. Your knowledge of how the game has changed is clearly superior to mine, or maybe I did not explain plainly enough that slam bidding has been MORE accurate in the last few Spingolds, and my stats date back a mere 17 years. You are on "ignore" until I am worthy. Obviously a match where one team bid a load of grands off various winners (no offence) is far more statistically relevant, and not an outlier as I mistakenly thought. And ROFL that you are only interested in 2. and 3. Do you not see the fallacy?

OK. It took a few hours, but here you go. I chose the Spingold for my statistical study, since all the finals are available since 1996 with the exception of 2002. I have also included one semi-final where possible, so about 1500 deals all told. I will not regard the findings as definitive untill I have examined closer to 10K deals (which I will at some stage). I collated four sets of statisitics: 1. Both sides bid slam. 39 times slam made at both tables. 9 times one side made slam and the other went off, usually because they were in different slams. 4 times both sides bid slam and went off. That is a raw total of 87 successful slam ventures and 13 unsuccessful - higher than the 80% top of my head figure. On highly competitive auctions it was wrong to bid slam on two times out of three (these are treated separately for various reasons). 2. Only one side bid slam. More often, only one side reached slam. On broadly uncontested auctions, slam was successful 45 times and failed 21 times. On highly contested auctions, bidding slam was right twice, wrong three times, and had an unclear outcome twice. This evidence utterly contradicts the myth of expert slam overbidding. They are not bidding enough. Having said that, in the years 2010 to 2012, there were quite a few bad slams bid that came home on very friendly distribution. On the other hand, some of the more desperate slams were the result of match situation, so the decision to bid slam was sometimes still sound. 3. One side bids Seven. Grand failed seven times and succeeded on four. Even worse, on one occasion, the other side played the wrong small slam. 4. Both sides bid seven. On ten occasions both sides bid and made seven. On one occasion both went down one, and one time one side made and the other did not. Including section 3, that is 25 making grands and 10 failing. Conclusion The decision to bid slam was right vastly more often than not, even when only one side bid slam. The poor decisions were usually those that involved NOT reaching slam. Overall, slam bidding appears to have improved over the period examined, but I will not look at this more till I have collated the other major world class events.

Maybe partner has 13 tricks and was just trying to get doubled. And maybe they don't. I think that covers it. Would bid 7♣ of course, since I have a straight flush.

The fact that one suggestion for avoiding responding 1NT on less than the "modern" 8-10 points is to bid a 3-card major demonstrates what appalling advice Smith/Seagram are giving. Look at it this way: in a normal constructive sequence, we sometimes have to bid 1NT on 6 points because we are too strong to pass. Opposite a take-out double we have to respond with zero points, yet can't bid 1NT with fewer than eight! This high requirement for responding in no trumps when we have no suit to bid has no basis in logic. Playing in 3-3 fits is no fun for any player, but particularly novices.

What are you going to do with this information (which is wrong, as it happens)? Say you KNEW opponnents were in slam - do you suggest stopping in game based on that evidence alone? Let me make a stat up off the top of my head - when two top class pairs bid slam, there is an 80% chance it is cold (which is approximately true). By staying out of slam does it become odds against? You can see the logical disjoint - if you bid slam it will almost certainly make, yet if you don't apparently it is probably going off. :(

Sweeping, I believe. Scanning is when you ask for cards in a relay chain, missing out a step for each card you are not interested in and partner shows consecutive cards in the chain via steps. Some of us still play spiral scan after low level RKCB as per the Rosencrantz methods.