EricK

You get to 7NT after the sequence 1NT 7NT. Your ♠ are AJx opposite KTx. You get a complete count of the hand and you know LHO started with 3♠ (and hasn't discarded any), and RHO has 3 left as well. All else being equal, you should play RHO for the Q and the probability the finesse would win is 4/7. But suppose your count of the hand shows that LHO started with, say, ♠?xx ♥xxx ♦Jxx ♣Txxx. Should you apply restricted choice to LHO's opening lead choice and say if RHO had the ♠Q, then LHO might equally have chosen to lead a ♠ from xxx, whereas with ♠Qxx he wouldn't lead a ♠, so the probability that LHO has ♠xxx is not 4/7, but only 2/7. In which case we should play LHO for the Queen.

Can you really afford to bid 4NT on pure take-out hands? Surely, if you are strong enough to suggest playing at the 5 level in any other suit, the best result will often actually be to play in 4♠X? 11 tricks is a lot to make against bidding opponents; whereas 4, on defense, is far more likely.

Where's the option for genius/idiot?

When you are visualizing what the other players have, what form does that visualization take? eg does it look like playing cards, or how a hand appears in books or magazines, or as it appears on BBO, or is it not really a picture at all, and more like a collection of words, or it nothing like any of these? And, assuming it is some sort of picture, if you have some doubt about the contents of the hand, how do you picture that (eg you know West started with either 4 or 5 spades; or you know his suit will be headed by either the K or the A)? Do you keep separate pictures, one for each option, or some sort of "fuzzy" picture with maybe question marks, or "A/K" type symbols?

This seems like an excellent agreement. The main reason being it stops partner bidding a natural 1NT on a completely unsuitable hand.

What does "having his bid" mean in this context? i.e. what is the typical hand for passing on the first round then protecting with 2♠?

I can probably get (at least) one of these a week from my Monday night Pairs game. Here's one from last Monday. First a bidding problem: You hold ♠ATxxx ♥KJ ♦A ♣Axxxx, you are vulnerable, they are not. Partner opens 1♠ and 2nd hand bids 2NT (minors).What would you bid with a good partner? What do you bid with a partner who doesn't really understand bidding and whose main slam-bidding technique is to bid Blackwood too soon, and then not know what to do over the response? Anyway, my choice was 6♠. Partner greets this with a look of bewilderment, and perhaps slight annoyance, and passes. The ♦K is lead, and partner cleverly takes the Ace. He has a little think and then plays a small ♠ from dummy to his K, and then looks really annoyed when his LHO shows out. He scrapes 12 tricks all the same. After the hand I suggest he might have tried playing the trumps the other way given that LHO had shown 10 cards in the minors, and he says 'The problem was, I had KJ in my hand and you had AT, so it was a guess.'

I've not had much experience of playing Drury, but logically (or so it seems to me), if it is useful over 1M (P), it must be at least as useful over 1M (X), as opener is more likely to have the weaker hand, and responder is more likely to have support.

My partner did this to me last week. Suffice it to say it was wrong on the hand he had. Personally, I think you need a really good reason to lie in response to a direct question from partner. And when your hand is in line with your previous bidding, you almost certainly don't have a really good reason.

Playing weak NT, partner opens 1♦. I have ♠ T9xx ♥AQxx ♦- ♣AQJxx. I bid 2♣. Partner passes(!). A small ♠ is lead, and dummy comes down with ♠Axx ♥ Jx ♦AT9xx ♣Kxx. Me:Why did you pass? Him: I didn't know what to bid. Me: That's why you should have opened a weak NT. Why didn't you? Him: My hand was so weak Me: All weak NT hands are weak; that's the point.

If the distribution of the cards between your hand and dummy allows, then the correct way to play a hand like that is to lead up to a red king in your hand, and, if it holds, quickly lead the queen of the other red suit to tempt a revoke.

Just to clarify, I don't think you should be in the club slam on these hands. But on similar hands 6C will be much better than 6H (and 5C will be at least as good as 4H). It seems a shame never to mention the Club support. But am I asking too much to want to investigate everything and still confidently stop in the right place on these hands?

It's fairly easy to get to 4H. But nobody's sequence here really investigates the Club slam. Is it possible to do it all?

Yes, North was dealer.

We got lucky on this hand from last night. We ended up in a poor 6♥ which made on a mis-defence and a lucky layout. How would you have bid them? And after the final pass, how confident would you be that you had explored all the possibilities and ended up in the best place? [hv=pc=n&s=sq73hkjt962d8c963&n=stha5dakq2caqt752]133|200[/hv] Scoring is IMPs, if that makes a difference.

Slightly off-topic, but tangential to this: If you notice an opponent has placed a trick the wrong way, do you point this out immediately, or do you leave him thinking his side has won one more/fewer tricks until the end of the hand?

3rd hand high; cover an honour with an honour. All the bridge rules tell you to overtake here ;)

You need to be able to show a wide range of NT bids here, so this really has to be natural. I think that the standard balancing NT ladder goes: 1NT; X followed by 1NT; 2NT; X followed by 2NT; X followed by cuebid followed by NT. But there is, I think, some disagreement as to whether an immediate balancing cue-bid should be a strong two-suiter (a la Michaels) or whether it is just strong, so can also include some balanced hands. Anyway, that particular argument does not affect the meaning of the immediate 2NT. So to answer the question in the OP, just ask yourself what the maximum point count you could hold for an immediate 1NT balance is, then add 4 points to that to give the minimum for an immediate 2NT. To get the maximum, ask yourself what HCP range you are comfortable with. Some are happy with a three point range for a 2NT bid, but others prefer it to have only two as partner does not have an invite available.

I have a couple of questions about the Fantunes 2-level bids (If you know what Fantunes themselves play, I am interested in that; but if you play a version of their system and want to answer based on your own methods, then I am interested in that too!): 1. What does one do with very distributional hands (eg 6/5 or more) at the bottom end of the 10-13 range (According to the Wikipedia page, they will tend to upgrade these to 1 level openings when at the top of the range)? eg with ♠KJTxx ♥x ♦KQJxxx ♣x, should you open the 6 card ♦ suit at the 2 level anyway, and hope to get in the ♠ later, even though this risks never mentioning the 5 card major? If so, do the relays allow for showing the 5 card major (The version in Fantunes Revealed, which I know is not exactly what Fantunes themselves play, does not appear to have a way of showing extreme hands in the relays). Or perhaps you should show the major first, and hope to get to show the minor later if asked, as 4M is the most likely game? 2. How do you respond to a 2-level opening if you have an invitational hand but no fit in opener's suit (eg with a 4234 12 or 13 point hand opposite a 2♥ opening). The set of responses outlined in Fantunes Revealed allows for responder to bid 3 of opener's suit to show an invitational hand with some support, but there seems to be no way to offer a choice between 2NT and 3NT, which must surely be fairly common issue opposite a 10-13 range?

But a lot of that is down to interference by the opposition. One of the advances in bridge bidding theory, since the early days of bridge at any rate, is that it is much harder to reach the optimum contract if the opponent's interfere, and interfering is much safer in practice than it might first appear.

But more likely to take tricks

It's odd that they let you play in 2♣ with more than half the deck and an 8 card fit they'd already mentioned.

If you are counting AQ as 1 1/2, you should probably count AJT as something similar.

That should probably be shown as a bust though - you can still force it to game if opener shows 23 balanced. One definition I have seen for a bust opposite 2♣, is no Ace, no King, not 2 Queens.

An interesting comment from last night: The player led ♣T against 3NT (1♥ 2♦ 2NT 3NT). It was from T8xxx. "Top of nothing" he explained afterwards.