EricK

If the Asptro bidder can have 5 cards in the other major or a singleton there, I don't think I'd ever have a hand which was comfortable making a non-forcing "natural" 2NT response.

On this hand I open 1♣, intending to bid 2NT over 1♠. On other hands I might open 1♦ with the same intended follow up. I would tend to bid the suit I would be less happy about partner having a singleton in.

I agree with you that the information is more likely to help the opps. But do you really mean that 3♥ is your only super accept? After 1NT 2♥, it makes more sense for 2NT to be the only super accept - to give partner maximum room just in case he wants more info, and to allow him room to re-transfer if he has nothing. Similarly after 1NT 2♦, 2♠ seems the most useful bid to use as a superaccept if you are only going to use a single bid.

But isn't it obvious (to them) that you still have the master spade and are going to play it next? So it can never cost to keep hold of the spade. If you had been on defense and held the club Ace, would you have discarded the spade or bared the Ace?

1♣ 1♥ 1♠ swish, what have I gained? You would have gained the ability to say "How could you pass?! You have a fit for both my suits!"

Chris Ryall's idea of including Acol 2s in the majors (i.e. hands with 8 playing tricks) in with the 2♣ opening works well here. http://chrisryall.net/bridge/two/clubs.htm

With a question like this it is easy to list pros and cons of each method. And people are very quick to say one method is clearly superior to another. But how do you know who or what to believe? Even if you spent one year playing one method and another year playing another, would you have seen enough hands to be sure that any difference you discovered was due to the methods rather than being a statistical fluke? And can you even be sure that any differences were due to the methods themselves rather than your potentially faulty implementation of them. eg in this example, if partner is always going to respond 1M even with a weak 4cd major, then you should be less inclined to lead his suit than if partner needed a better or longer suit to make that reply. But in practice, you might put too much or too little emphais on that when deciding on your opening lead.

Another benefit is that it allows opener to more freely raise a 1M response with 3 card support. And a further one, at least in the case of bidding 1NT instead of 1♥, is that it makes it harder for LHO to introduce ♠.

It could work if you lowered the opening bid to 1NT! eg 1NT 2♣ asks 2♦ =4441 (after which 2♥/2♠/3♣ are p/c; 2NT is asking) 2♥ =♥ 2♠=♠ 2NT = 22-24 balanced But this is probably not allowed by the authorities!

I don't see how including option 3 could be playable. How do you avoid getting way too high when partner has nothing much?

what does the s mean? it took me a while to remember, but I think it stood for "surely"

INT (asialbc)

I think you have to bid on as you are a couple of tricks better than you might have been for this sequence (I presume you'd bid the same way with ♦x instead of ♦K) But slams are so much easier to bid if you use Strong Jump Shifts!

I hope you get good scores from your WJS (or whatever JS you use) because I have lost track of the number of hands on here or rec.games.bridge where someone posts a slam they missed which is trivial to locate if SJS are being played.

I pass. "Defend when it's right to defend, declare when it's right to declare". On this balanced hand, with half my points in the suits the opponents are bidding, it looks right to defend.

But does that mean 3♠ is the best way to locate them?

It would be nice if we had a way to explore for a 4-4 ♥ fit at MP, before committing ourselves to ♠.

6♠ must surely get all the blame (unless we now apportion blame for holding a void in partner's suit - in which case 6♠ gets very nearly all the blame).

The one set of people you shouldn't ask "what makes a good bridge player?" is good bridge players. Because I believe to be a good bridge player, the primary consideration is to have a mind of a certain type. And when you have had a mind of a certain type all your life, it is easy to treat that as a given, and to look towards things like hard work, study, practice with a partner and so on. But just like some people can't use a map without constantly turning it around in their hands, some people just can't perform the right sort of mental manipulations to be a good bridge player. If you can imagine the holdings of both unseen hands and project the play forward a few tricks in your mind, and be confident of what all the hands have left, then you can, with hard work and study etc, become a good bridge player. If you get muddled doing that "simple" task, then you can't. And I don't believe you can develop this to any great extent with practice - it either comes naturally or it doesn't.

But how can a pair prepare adequate defenses to the opponent's system unless they know not only the meanings of all the bids, but also all the follow up agreements, agreements for coping with interference, etc This amounts to their entire system notes, doesn't it?

Why doesn't "Full Discolosure" imply that all players must make available their complete understanding of their own bidding system? I thought that the "powers that be" didn't approve of people trying to win through other's unfamiliarity with their methods.

Traditionally this is penalty. It seems to me that take out is more useful. If I've never discussed this with partner, I'll probably pass.

4♥. For me, there's not enough in ♠ to unilaterally decide on 3NT.

South underbid on the first round. But North can't really move over an immediate 4♠ by South. But... ...can South now move over the 4♠ raise by North? Clearly, even if South didn't like his hand as much as he should on the previous round, now he knows about ♠ support plus a few points from partner, it is absolutely huge. So to me, South has 100% of the blame twice! First when he underbid, and then when his underbid allowed him to re-evaluate his hand even higher.

Looks like a 2♥ bid to me.