EricK

The book which improved my game more than any other single book is "Step by Step Discarding" by Danny Roth. The number of contracts (or at MP, overtricks) which are thrown away by poor discarding is phenomenal. Get this right and watch your results shoot up!

Help me out here. Does this mean you think the US would be better without Conservatives, or worse?

But perhaps that just means we should be passing at least 30% of 12 counts!

Suppose the only non-Pass call you make on a hand is a pre-empt, and the only non-Pass call your partner makes is to double the final contract. If you are on lead, does his double suggest *anything* about what you should or shouldn't lead? Or should you make whatever lead you would have made without the double? Obviously, there are lots of different factors eg whether the opponents are in a suit or NT, how strong your suit is, what level the contract is etc. But are there any general principles?

If I am going to raise ♥, and if 3♥ is pre-emptive then I bid that. Otherwise I would have to contend myself with 2♥ - but that just begs the opps to compete. Other tries are the psyche of 1♠ or a forcing 1NT (but should I be mentioning these on B/I forum?!).

I don't mind playing it as GF. If I were playing it as not GF then I would like that the only way to stop short of game would be if opener rebid 2M. Playing 2NT by opener as non-forcing seems wrong as it forces him to jump to 3NT just because he has a little bit extra, and also because 2N on misfitting hands (as these are likely to be) won't be much of a bargain. And playing opener's 3 level rebids as NF seems even more wrong for similar reasons. So after eg 1♥ 1♠ 2♣ 2♦!, 2♥ or 2♠ would be NF - the latter often on Hx; everything from 2N upwards would be GF

A club looked fairly clear to me. Which is strange, because I hate leading from suits headed by a J!

It doesn't matter who's playing whom or where or what the series position is; but test matches where the side batting first is almost guaranteed to make a big score are never much fun. What's the point of a supposedly competitive endeavour whereby one of two evenly matched teams can get a near decisive advantage simply by guessing a coin toss correctly?

Lets say you have a balanced hand outside your NT range and your systemic opening happens to be on a weak 3 card suit. Are you happy because eg if you get to 3NT, LHO will be deterred from leading your weak suit? Or are you unhappy because as the auction progresses partner will have the wrong idea of where your strength lies? Or does this sort of thought never occur to you?

Part of the problem might be that these people have no way to stop in 4NT (because as everybody knows, 4NT always asks for Aces). So raising 3♦ to 4♦ forces them to either 5♦ or some slam.

You could have supported your partner's suit. Kxx plus an outside KJxx plus an outside doubleton is truly excellent support after partner has opened 2♣.

Isn't the stuff about people playing with backer's money and not their own a little bit ridiculous? It is not as if the players have nothing to lose - they risk losing being backed in future if they don't win.

With hand 1, partner has described and limited his hand by the 1NT response. Even if 2♠ is 100% forcing, you don't actually gain anything by bidding it on a hand where you know you are going to play in ♠ - if partner doesn't support your spades straight away you will rebid 3♠ yourself anyway. So bidding 3♠ isn't just to cover partner's inadequacy - you can also use it to show this sort of hand - single suited in ♠ and keep 2♠ for hands which still need to search for somewhere to play (eg strong 5530 or 5440 hands). The reason I overcall 1♠ is that I like to keep doubles shape suitable unless I absolutely can't bear to risk everybody passing my overcall. On hand 2, you want two ways to bid ♥ - GF hands and invitiational hands. You need to split them up somehow and there is very little room. If you play that double followed by a new suit is GF and that the immediate bid of a new suit is GF then what will you do on hands without GF strength?

Doubling and then bidding a suit! Two different auctions, two totally different meanings. On the first hand, the 1♠ overcall would be NF. On the second, the 3♥ bid would be GF. Because of this, most people play that doubling and then bidding a suit shows a strong hand on auction 1, but not on auction 2 because that type of hand is shown by the direct bid. Clearly though, your partner was on a different wavelength on hand 1. He was probably playing you for something like a minimum 5422 hand. As an aside, I would have overcalled 1♠ with this hand, but if I had chosen to double, then a 3♠ or 4♠ rebid would remove any ambiguity. On the second auction, if I were your partner I would probably have thought you had an invitational hand with short ♠ and 6♥ i.e. not strong enough to bid a GF over 2♠, but strong enough and long enough in ♥ so that the chance of getting to a good game outweighs the risk of getting to the 3 level on a misfit.

Can somebody explain to me why a hand which is a 12-14 NT opener when playing a weak NT, might no longer be worth an opening bid when playing a 15-17 NT (so that a 1NT rebid shows 12-14)?

1NT is not a terrible bid but it is an underbid. If partner has ♣A and any sort of semi-stop in ♥ you have a great play for 3NT, and many hands without the ♣A but 6 or so well placed points will also do. If you don't want to bid 1♣ followed by 3♣ (which is the middle-of-the-road approach with this hand), you could always try 1♣ followed by 2NT, which is about right in terms of strength.

I must admit that my "standard" auction is 1♥ 1♠ 2NT 6NT Hands where responder has a shortage in opener's first suit are generally very hard to bid accurately in standard structures, and I think this is no exception - move either of North's minor suit honours into ♥ and the grand becomes much less good.

I don't see why South can't bid 2♥ on the second round. Both opponents have limited their hands and they have found a fit. While it is not certain that we have a ♥ fit, it is highly likely.

Is this just another example of partner trying to get the blame in first? Since 3♦ is a stronger bid than 2♠ and partner already overbid despite hearing only 2♠, I can't see why your bidding 3♦ would have led to a better contract.

While I agree that West's 4♠ was an awful bid when he already knows about the double fit, I don't think East has any right to bid 5♠ here - he doesn't know about the double fit and his partner has made the weakest possible bid in this auction (i.e. immediately bidding the agreed suit at the level they have been forced to). After all, the hand could be a secondary suit misfit and partner might be planning to double 5♥. Of course, once East does bid 5♠ then bidding on with the West hand becomes even more imperative.

This thread brings back memories. The first ever page I edited on Wikipedia was on the envelope paradox! It was in the very early days of the article, and I added the section about Raymond Smullyan's reworking of the problem to not include probabilities at all. It is all been rewriiten countless times since, and I think the only words of mine which remain unchanged are in the Bibliography section!

Was it scientists who held the traditional view about simple non-overlapping genes, or was it science reporters and laymen? I am not a professional scientist and this "discovery" doesn't come as a surprise to me - anybody who understands evolution would know that this is bound to be how genes work in the real world.

The LOTT says that on most hands, the combined number of tricks that can be taken by each hand if played in their longest fit is "generally" equal to the combined number of trumps. Sometimes, though, you don't want to play in your longest fit - eg opponents bid up to 4♥ and your side have 8 ♠ and 9 ♣ and you'd rather try your luck at the four level than at the five. What, if any, are the guidelines here?

Why is reaching a makeable contract the gold standard you compare to? Every hand has a par score which may or may not be a makeable contract and the point of bidding is to arrive in a contract which is at least as good as par - that might be a makeable contract over which the opponents don't find a profitable sacrifice, it might be a non-makeable contract which the opponents don't double, it might be a non-makeable contract which the opponents fail to bid over, or it might be that the opponents overstretch in one way or another, or it might just be that you bid to the correct contract. If your bidding achieves these goals more often than other people's then you have bid well. So if there is a standard to compare to it should be something like having a less than x% chance of reaching a contract which is better than par.

Consider the case of Cohen and Bergen. I really have only heard about their exploits in tales, but as I understand it they introduced (or at least made use of) a lot of these so-called "randomizing" pre-empts and they consistently did very well! Now if this is true then "random" is being used in an unusual sense when it comes to describing bidding methods. ok so where is your proof they bid random and won based on random. Luck or chance? year after year? I am sceptical. :blink: But if you have proof they won on random chance and luck for years, cool please show me your paper. :lol: I also note even if they did they stopped playing in fact Bergen stopped playing tourney bridge 100%. You seem to present strong evidence against random bidding? I wasn't the person who originally used the word "random". I was commenting on the fact that pre-empts which are made on weaker hands or weaker suits than is traditional are often accused of randomising the game (as in the post from ArcLight which I responded to). I was just asking what was meant by "random". I mentioned Bergen and Cohen precisely because they kept on winning despite using these so-called randomising methods. It is not that I think these pre-empts are randomising - far from it, in fact. I think that they emphasise a different set of skills than traditional methods.