EricK

Is it worth my pointing out that I think this should be fit-showing? It won't help you in determining what expert standard is.

I think 3♠ is a mistake. 4♠ in response to FSF should show a hand like this . i.e. self supporting spades (good 7 or very good 6), and good 4 card hearts (else they wouldn't be mentioned in the first place). Bidding the grand is still difficult though, but certainly responder should drive to 6 with all his controls

Is this so in response to FSF? How would opener bid KQJxx QJxx Jx Kx?

I think a 4 loser hand is very exciting for a 3 level raise. But I agree we are worth a slam try.

There is no "standard" in Acol - fashions coma and go like dust in the wind. In the old days everybody used to open these hands 1M. Nowadays more and more people are opening them 1NT. A useful principle to bear in mind is that if a hand is only worth one bid make the most descriptive bid.

Everybody else thinks I'm weird, so it would be weird of me not to agree with them. That being said, I don't think I'm weird.

Fantoni-Nunes? Their system is clearly EHAA-style... They made adjustements of course to make it more playable (f.i. for the intermediate hands with both majors, you mentioned) Steven Sure, but Fantoni-Nunes 2s are more constructive. The very random nature of the 2x preempts of EHAA is what makes it unusable for competitive play. What would they open (if anything) with, say, ♠65432 ♥Jx ♦Qx ♣AKxx? If that is a 2♠ opening, then the system is clearly EHAA-like IMO (at least wrt the weak 2s). If they require some substance to the suit then it isn't.

I wouldn't be overly surprised if a large carefully controlled study did show that passing weak balanced hands without a 4 card major scored better than opening them 1m. Then again I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be the other way. In many ways 1m makes it easier for opponents to find their major fits (as the standards for a 1M overcall are lower than for a 1M opening, and standards for a take out double are lower than for an opening of any sort), so if the hand is a partscore battle, keeping silent might be the best approach.

Maybe you should bid 2♣ here. But only if you and your partner are guaranteed to be on the same page in every follow up auction. Except in the case of partnerships with very clear agreements, I expect the probability of missing slam altogether, or getting to the wrong slam to easily outweigh the probability of getting to a making grand slam in one of responder's suits. Who said anything about grand slam? How about this for an idea: If you find a 4-4 spade fit bid 6S, otherwise bid 6N. That way you get to 6S when you have a fit and 6N when you don't which imo is a clear improvement over always playing 6N. If the bidding starts 1NT 2♣ 2♥ I still doubt that too many partnerships are 100% sure how to find the 4-4 spade fit without "accidentally" stopping in game and generating another "who's to blame" post. Even if the bidding goess 1NT 2♣ 2♠ etc, I'm not certain that, in practice, 6♠ will outperform a direct 6NT. Do the hands where we get a ruff for our twelfth trick compensate for the hands where the opponents get a ruff or where we have two unavoidable trump losers but twelve tricks elsewhere? And that doesn't take into account the poosibility for 4th hand to make a lead directional call over 2♣, or that the lead over 1NT 6NT is generally harder than over a more revealing sequence.

Maybe you should bid 2♣ here. But only if you and your partner are guaranteed to be on the same page in every follow up auction. Except in the case of partnerships with very clear agreements, I expect the probability of missing slam altogether, or getting to the wrong slam to easily outweigh the probability of getting to a making grand slam in one of responder's suits.

This looks like a "1NT, 6NT, well played partner." sort of hand to me.

This has got to be constructive else you have no bid for constructive unbalanced hands. Also, I think that pre-emptive is hardly ever going to be useful as on those hands you would often have had a 1M or double overcall by 2nd hand or a double by 4th hand.

Bid slams if they are 50.000001% to make. That is estimating your own skill level in that, of course. Making it simple: If no one bids the 50% slam that you bid and all bid game, you get a top when it makes and a bottom when it doesn't, averaging a 50%. If the slam is over 50%, you stand a better chance of getting a good matchpoint score by bidding it regardless of what the rest of the field is doing. And if you are playing in a weak field, you might make slams with no real play simply because the opponents blow tricks just as much as you do. You get good by practicing making good judgements. If you get to a slam that is less than 50%, then look at it as a learning tool - somewhere either partner led you astray, or you led yourself astray - learn from it. And try to make it anyway. Stretch your imagination, your planning, your play. If it doesn't make, don't worry about it; the score on the particular hand will be forgotten after the night, but the lesson from the hand can be applied for at least two nights :) I think it is important to point out that 50% is actually a more stringent condition than it sounds. eg a slam missing "just" the trump king is not usually a 50% slam - very often a bad break in trumps or the possibility, however slim, of a ruff on the opening lead, will drop the odds below 50%.

You can use 1♦ 1M 2NT to show good 6+ ♦ maximum hand and <3 card M (with 1♦ 1M 3♦ showing good 6+ ♦ maximum hand and 3 card M). I don't know about 1♦ 1NT 2NT. Maybe strong hand with 6♦ and 4♣.

I might have exaggerated slightly the number of hands (I did try to count them from the scoring paper but I may have accidentally counted some overtrick scores or slam bonuses as hands in their own right).

While not a change in the IMP scale itself, I would like to see the abolition of any score for undoubled overtricks. A number of benefits (or what I see as benefits) in no particular order 1. It would speed up the game (If you are in 3NT and have 9 tricks on top you would claim at the outset rather than mess about looking for ten or eleven tricks) 2. It makes competitive part-score bidding more interesting (IMO) - eg opponents have stopped in 2♥, we compete and push them to 3♥. In the current system, we will do at least as well as if we hadn't competed. But in the new system, if 3♥ is on, then we have rescued them from an inferior scoring contract 3. With more bids needed as contracts, bidding would have to be more natural, but we would be achieving this without imposing arbitrary system restrictions. 4. It is more in line with the "spirit" of bridge i.e. we are rewarded for bidding and making contracts, not just for making as many tricks as we can.

I played some rubber bridge with some work colleagues during our lunch break yesterday. I pointed out to them beforehand that I always held terrible cards but they didn't believe me. Of the twenty five or so hands we played, my strongest hand had 11 points. In terms of length I had two hands with 6 card suits, and no hands with voids. Would anyone care to estimate the probability of holding such uninspiring cards? In fact my overall strongest hand taking into account strength and length was ♠Qx ♥JTxxxx ♦xx ♣AKx. The bidding went CHO RHO Me LHO 1♠ 2♣ 2♥ 3♣ 4♥ AP Partner came down with ♠AKJTx ♥AKxx ♦Axxx ♣---- so naturally I made 3 overtricks. Not, when all is said and done, my most enjoyable bridge session ever.

If you know something about the other hand you don't make stupid bids, you make sensible but "inspired" bids.

[hv=d=s&v=n&n=skj72haqj9542dct5&s=sq6ht763d4caj8742]133|200|Scoring: MP[/hv] This is the full N-S hand. I chose to make this a 4 card limit raise, LHO bid 2 spades, Partner went to 4 hearts, RHO bid 5 diamonds, passed to partner who bid 5 hearts, playing it there. Partner guessed hearts and scored it up. As 3rd hand I would just open 4♥.

But give him something like Kxx KJxxxx x AQx and slam probably won't be bid as he will discount his singleton ♦. It is not clear to me that 4♦ (I have the offensive strength for the 4 level and 5 card diamonds) fills him in more than 2NT (I have an all round hand with the offensive and defensive strength for at least the 3 level).

Same here. Have we really lost the spade suit by passing? I don't think so. w/w MPs is fun, but partner's glares as he puts down a 12 in 3N as we go bake 2 are not. This is one of the advantages of social rubber bridge. You immediately ask partner to refill the salsa and serve everyone drinks, then play quickly and complain about poor splits. :) :) :ph34r: I take it that you don't mention that the poor split was in HCP (They split too many to the opponents, not enough to you).

Playing this structure I would prefer 2NT to 4♦. 1. Suits headed by an Ace don't necessarily need support for the hands to fit well. Make the ♦ KJxxx and the ♣Ax and a fit jump looks better. 2. 4♦ forces LHO to bid 4♠ straight away if he has support, which means you will be guessing to a certain extent on the next round. Bidding 2NT might give you another bid below game (eg LHO bids 3♠ and it's passed round to you). 3. If the opps don't have a fit, 4♦ will very often elicit 4♥ from partner and you do have extras but no way to show them, whereas 2NT leaves you more room.

I still have some very real issues with this line of reasoning: I think that you're asking for trouble if the vocabulary that you use in your disclosure system varies significantly depending on the strength of your hand. At the end of the day, that's what most of you seem to be arguing in favor of: The expression "HCPs" means X if you're playing a 15-17 HCP NT and you hold a balanced 15 count. "HCPs" means Y if you're playing a 9-11 HCP NT and you hold a balanced 9 count. I think that its a lot more reasonable that the yardstick - in this case the meaning of "HCPs" - remains fixed regardless of what you happen to be measuring. If you want to play a structure in which ALL 9 counts are opened with a micro NT, you're probably better off saying that you play an 8+ to 11 HCP 1NT opening... (Given that you want to open 1NT as often as posisble, you're probably upgrading the good 8 counts) Supposed you played a 1-3 NT. Would you ever downgrade a 1 count? I can hardly see the point. But that doesn't mean that HCP mean something different at the 1-3 level than they do at the 15-17 level. Suppose you play a 3-5 NT. Maybe the only 3 pointers you'd downgrade are those where the 3 points are in suit which is QJ tight. You would be downgrading exceptionally rarely - far less often than when playing 15-17 - and still have HCP mean the same at each level. Given any reasonable set of conditions which cause you to downgrade, there will be a connnection between how many points you have and how likely it is that your hand will meet the conditions to downgrade. So it's not clear to me that downgrading 9 pointers very rarely and 15 pointers more often means you are using a different valuation method at each level.

I pass. If partner takes out a double I have no confidence that we will actually make the contract and if he passes the double (the default action) I don't have enormous confidence that we will defeat their contract.

It is probably a minority view, but on the second hand I like a 1NT rebid instead of 2♣. 2♣ is only really going to gain when you have a ♣ fit (and it won't always gain, even then), whereas 1NT limits your hand, probably rightside the NT, and avoids the very common situation of playing in 2♥ when partner preferences with only a doubleton.