EricK

"To bid or not to bid, that is the question" - Shakespeare

No, it is the USA lagging behind the evolution of the English language. "I have gotten" is correct American English, though few people outside a classroom would find "I have got" objectionable. "I have got" is correct British English, and most schools in non English speaking countries teach English using the British model. Actually it is not English at all. "I have " is sufficient in the sense "I possess" or hold as opposed to past tense. Similarly "got" is already the past tense of "get" so there is no need to find a past participle for it. It is apparently an archaic Americanism which is back in vogue in certain parts of the uneducated world :D In English, "gotten" used to be the normal form, and was such (although it was going out of fashion) at the time the first settlers went over to America. A similar form still exist with eg "taken": "I took a finesse" and "I have taken a finesse", and in phrases such as "I am beholden to you" and "Why have you forsaken me?" which, admittedly, have rather a dated feel to them.

West is almost entirely to blame for this result. Eric

I wonder what you would be saying if you had been playing Raptor 1N all your life and someone suggested giving it up to show a strong NT hand. Would it be "Wow! That's a really good idea as we have trouble showing those hands" or "I think giving up Raptor would be a big, big loss. You have a lot of hands with a 4 card major and 5 card minor to deal with which gets very difficult."? Eric

If you make a lead directing double, it must be to tell partner that you think that lead beats the contract. It is not enough just to say you think that is the best lead. Suppose you make a lead directing double and direct partner to the only lead which doesn't concede an overtrick. What happens? You get a bottom! On this hand you can't really be at all certain that a Heart lead would beat the contract. In fact, since on the bidding declarer is practically marked with ♥ shortage, there is no guarantee from your point of view that a Heart is even the best lead. Eric

Perhaps it isn't desire to win so much as desire not to lose. It was Jimmy Connors who said "I hate to lose more than I like to win" and that may be the key. That may be what allows you to play your best however badly things are going - knowing how bloody awful you will feel if you lose. Eric

4m pre-empts are some of the hardest to defend against. If eg LHO has a good hand but less than 4 in one of the majors he has immediately got a very difficult guess. Where we have 1-4 in the majors he is even more likely to guess wrong IMO. Bypassing 3NT may be a problem for us, but in that case, maybe we can make 4NT! Eric

A few points which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet: 1. How will the result of the hand affect partner? Will he get upset enough to play worse if you knowingly go down in a cold game? 2. How will the result of the hand affect you? If you are not able to immediately forget about bad results, will going down cause you to through away more IMPS later 3. How much do you need the IMPS on this board? If it is very late on in a match and you need lots of IMPS it might be silly playing for the overtrick. Your best chance of IMPS might be that others have missed the game, so you don't want to jeopardise those IMPS you have already won on the bidding. Conversely it might be worth taking a mathematically unsound risk to make a near hopeless contract if you need lots of IMPS very soon. 4. What are your chances of winning anyway? If you are one of the better pairs, it could be silly to risk throwing away a lot of IMPS going for an overtrick even if it is mathematically favourable. If you play safe and the others go for and make an overtrick, you might expect to win back that IMP later. That would certainly be easier than winnning back a handful of IMPS later. But if you are one of the worse pairs, you might feel the need to grab every IMP you can, and hope for the best. Eric

The figures are quite confusing because 18+ including distribution will remove the weakest balanced hands from a normal precision 1♣ sample so we might expect this to increase the chance of game, but in fact it decreases it. This is what lead me to my conclusion. I still may be misunderstanding though. Eric

I don't really know anything about bridge "at the top" so this is all guesswork. But I imagine that one difference between the very very best and the rest of the best is their ability to keep focussed on the problem at hand for longer periods of time. So not only the ability to keep mentally alert for a long time, but also to stop thinking about what has gone before.

I thought this was true at first, but when I looked into it: Let's say you define a positive response as 8+ HCP. Opposite an any 16+ HCP opener, you have game 87% of the time Opposite a 16+ HCP (17+ balanced), you have game 92% of the time Opposite a 18+ with distribution opener, you have a game 90% of the time OK. Maybe much stronger was an exaggeration, but your figures seem to show that a little bit stronger (maybe 2HCP or so) is needed. Or am I misinterpreting them? Eric

I think a more important question is how many points do you need to make a GF response to the strong club. If you play straightforward HCP for deciding the strong 1C opener, you can also use HCP for determining a positive response. This is because on misfits both hands will likely have extra overall strength (HCP + distribution) so that there is less danger of getting too high. If you include distribution in determining your strong opener then you need much stronger hands to make a positive response in case the hands are a misfit (and so the distributional strength which allowed you to open 1♣ is not actually any use to you) Eric

This makes no sense. Youre right with 15 opp 8 you get to find 1N, but similarly with 14 opp 9 you get to 2N playing 14-16 but would find 1N playing 15-17. It all comes out even in this regard. Not quite even because the probability that partner has 9 points opposite a 14-16 NT is not the same as the probability he has 8 points opposite a 15-17 NT - although the difference is likely to be small. Also, 14 opposite 9 might well play on average slightly better than 15 opposite 8, but this difference is likely to be smaller still. Eric

At MPs I definitely pass, as I would rather be 4N+2 with a few bidding slam than 6N-1 with most making 3N+2. I estimate that slam is never going to be much more than 50% anyway. At IMPs I probably pass too, but might hazard 5♦ (as long as we had the agreement that this shows 4) and pass 5NT if that is all partner can muster. It depends how confident I am feeling - I would have to play the hand after all. I find that going negative when I hold a huge hand (especially when bidding to a hopeless contract) is one of the worst feelings in bridge, so this probably colours my thoughts on this one. Eric

What you don't want to happen is this: Leader with KQx leads K, partner with Axx encourages. Leader follows with Q and partner overtakes to avoid blocking the suit. So ... With KQJx(x) lead K followed by J so partner knows if it is OK to overtake with Axx. With KQx lead K followed by Q and partner won't overtake. As a consequence of this, if you have KQJ bare you want partner to overtake the third round if appropriate. You do this by leading K then Q and then J. When partner sees the J he will know you have a tripleton because with a longer suit you would play the J second. Eric

Bid-Up TV (which changed its name to Bid TV in January) was, surprisingly, entirely unrelated to bridge. Eric

I don't think organising your bidding to get to the correct 2m partscore should be near the top of anyone's list of priorities. Given any system it is easy to construct problem hands, the questions to ask are "how often do the problem hands arise?" and "how much do we lose if they come up?" Since very few hands are played in 2m, I don't think it matters much from either perspective which one you choose from this point of view. However, if partner's ambitions run to more than a partscore I think that knowing which minor is longer is quite an imprtant peice of information. Eric

I'll give 2NT a whirl. What would it mean, BTW? Eric

It only destroys partnership confidence if partner doesn't expect you to pass on hands like this. If he does, and you bid and you go down at the 5 level when 4H was going down then there is a danger you will destroy partnership confidence! Eric

Pass on the first - 4 tricks are easier than 11. 5♥ on the second. I don't think I am quite strong enough for 4NT followed by 5♥. I don't like xxx in partner's suit, and the ♥ are not solid enough in the face of likely bad breaks with no guarantee of support from partner. Call me a coward if you must! Eric

Very interesting. What strength do you play these, and what, if any, requirements do you have with regard to the strength of the suits (eg do you need honours in both suits etc)? Eric

I think playing 2 level bids as 5+ but excluding 5332 hands gets the best of both worlds. Eric

Arend, This is very disturbing to me. Last time I was in Germany they were using Euros, and these coins have only two sides. It seems to me that it is impossible to guarantee a 4/5 chance by throwing coins a finite number of times. Apologies for an off-subject response. You generate any probability you like with a coin as follows: Express the probability as a binary number (eg 4/5 = 0.1100110011001100....) and throw the coin until you get a head. Then count it as a success if the first head appears on a throw number indicated by a 1 in the expansion (eg for 4/5 if the first head appears on throw number 1,2,5,6,9,10 etc), and a failure otherwise. This doesn't guarantee a finite number of throws, but you would be very unlucky to have to throw the coin an infinite number of times :rolleyes: Eric

Is this a reasonable question: Given each particular hand shape, how many points are required so that the chance of game is above some particular threshold? (But what threshold?) Will this give you some idea of how much more you need to open a minor suit hand than a major suit hand? Eric

Assuming partner always bids and plays as if I had a 15-17 NT (until it becomes obvious that I don't) why does it matter how often I might have the "psyching" hand? Eric