EricK

Partner's 3♦ shows a big hand certainly. Whether it says much else about his hand I can't say. I would have rebid 3♠ with your hand to let him know about the ♠ support. Then, if he were to rebid 4♦ that would be a clear-cut cue-bid. After which you can sign off in 4♠ ( not having a heart control ). This hand is much easier if partner simply bids the obvious 2♠ on the first round. But I understand that pre-empting partner with weak jump shifts is all the range these days. Eric

What was partner's reasoning for his strange play at trick one? In my slightly dazed state, I can't picture a holding for declarer where ducking can be right here. Eric

When you play eg 1♣ as 16+ HCP, the result is that minimum unbalanced 1♣ bids are, on average, stronger than minimum balanced 1♣ bids (because they have extra distributional strength). If you switch to something like Zar points then, if the theory behind Zar points is sound, you are making all your minimum 1♣ openings have the same overall strength regardless of their shape. This has an effect on your response structure to 1♣. You will need to raise (possibly by quite a lot) the minimum required for a positive response because if the shape of the hands are misfitting, opener will not have compensating high card values. This has the further effect, that your negative responses become more wide-ranging so you need better methods to determine whether game is likely. It might, therfore, be wise to play a positive GF 1♦ response (or possibly 1♥), and split the negative hands into semi-positives (which are immediately differentiated) and double negatives (which are lumped into a single bid - either 1♥ or 1♦). Eric

Are pairs allowed to keep their system secret? What about full disclosure? Eric

This "dis-service to the rest of the field" argument always makes me laugh. None of the proponents really care about the rest of the field ( although they may care about what happens when they happen to be in the rest of the field), or the "purity of the scores" or whatever. If they genuinely cared about the rest of the field then they wouldn't enforce revoke penalties on their opponents, and they would let their opponents take back cards or bids where it is obvious they didn't meant to make that play, and so on. A lot of players do let their opponents off these minor indiscretions but then they are not generally the type who try to justify unethical actions with spurious arguments about protecting all the other players in the room. I genuinely wonder whether you would let your opponents off a mistake (eg revoke, lead out of turn etc) which handed you an unmakeable contract. To take an extreme case, if one of my relatives was very sick in hospital and instead of sitting at home worrying, I decided to try and take my mind off the situation for a few hours by going to the bridge club, then I would certainly make more mistakes than I would if I wasn't in that state. The "protecting the field" argument would imply that I shouldn't even go and play! The TD is there to enforce the rules of the game. The less he has to do, the better it is for everyone. This is why you should do your best to follow the rules of the game. In this case the rules say that you must not choose from among LAs any which are suggested by the UI. If you genuinely believe that Pass isn't even a Logical Alternative then you can bid 4♥, but otherwise, bidding 4♥ is cheating. Eric

Let's handle question one and two together. Ethically (and legally), whatever you answer to one, you sure as heck best answer to two. I don't think this is right. If you have Unauthorised Informatrion (UI) available to you, you are not allowed to choose from among Logical Alternatives (LA) any which are suggested by the UI. Here, if partner had bid in tempo, it may be that both Pass and 4♥ are LAs. In which case you can bid either (because there is no UI). But the hesitation clearly suggests bidding 4♥, so now you are constrained to pass even if you would have chosen 4♥ without the UI. If however you wish to argue that Pass isn't really a LA (and the definition of LA varies from place to place), then you can bid 4♥ even with the UI. Eric

By far the best method of defensive signals and discards is also (sadly) by far the hardest. And that is to have at your disposal count, attitude, suit-preference, "alarm-clock", etc, etc signals and for each card you play try to work out what information (if any!) partner needs and to signal that. Of course partner also needs to be able to figure out what you might think he needs to know. What this means in practice is that you will often ( but, of course, not always ) signal attitude on partner's opening lead, count when declarer first broaches a suit, suit preference when following to trumps or on later rounds of declarer's suit, and count OR attitude OR suit preference when discarding. One trouble with using suit-preference as your main signalling tool is that it implies that you can work out what is best for the partnership ("partner switch to spades"), but that partner is unable to do the same without help from you! Another is that every discard potentially tells partner something and often you have nothing to tell. Eric

Ben, I am not so sure that having 3♣ in my hand is enough to presume that partner is short in ♣. Against moderately aggressive opps, I would expect LHO to have only 6♣ a lot of the time if NV. And even if he has 7 of them partner can still hold 3. And even if partner has 2 of them, he might have a hand like ♠Axxxx ♥Qxx ♦Qxx ♣xx which is hardly enough to bid with over 3♣. I agree that 5/6 is quite likely. But I wouldn't so blithely dismiss 4/6 (x AKQx AKJTxx xx) or 4/5 (x AKQx AKQJT xxx). Eric

It promises 5♦ and 4♥ (and obviously a lot of extra strength), although I would expect 6-4 or 6-5 quite often. 5-4 hands with short ♣ would often double. And 5-4 hands with something in ♣ might double and take out 3♠ to 3NT, so more unbalanced hands are unlikelier. Eric

This is true, but it only gains if the King is wrong; and also, even if you do arrange for the Qx to be declarer, the hand must be such that the player not on lead can't get in later in the play and successfully broach the suit from there. Especially in part score hands the chances are that both opponents will be able to lead at some point in the hand. Eric

Thiis is a major point, and a reason I prefer the vesion of multi that I play. A couple of key points in the responses... 1) A jump to 4H or 4S is to play (this is my suit), not pass or correct 2) A jump to 3H/3S is pass correct, as is 2H/2S 3) A jump to 3NT shows 4-4 in the majors (preempt), but allows partner with the huge balanced hand (mine is the strong version balance hand, 22-24) can pass 4) A jump to 4C or 4D shows 5-4 in the majors, 4C shows 5H's, 4D shows 5S, wihich works out well opposite the 22-24 hand. Especially NV against V, you may wish to consider playing eg 3♥ as Pass, but correct if doubled. This sort of thing really puts the opposition's methods to the test. Eric

A lot of systems put much effort into making the strong hand declarer (eg by playing transfers). But there may also be much to be gained from having the hand which has revealed less about itself as declarer (many relay systems are geared towards this). Sometimes a system can achieve both. But where this can not happen, which do you think is more important? Eric

My guess would be Weaker ( because bidding in third/fourth seat can require more judgement) and Doesn't matter Eric

I don't know any "natural" way to find out about Queens. So I think it is impossible to be certain of 13 tricks in NT via a "natural" auction. On the other hand, I have never seen any pair use entirely natural methods opposite 1NT, and I doubt you do it either! Eric

The state of the match was that England were a fair way in the lead. The result of the bid was that the Polish declarer played opener for the ♣Q (once opener's partner had turned up with the ♥A and so went down in his contract. Based on the commentary from England Coach David Burn, this was a normal Hackett opening. I can't comment on the other games. Eric

I have just seen one of the young Hacketts (playing for England against Poland) open 1♥ as dealer game all with ♠A542 ♥KJ43 ♦JT874 Eric

Free, From earlier posts of yours, I thought you played Lorenzo two bids when NV. That would make the bidding on hand one even easier 2♥ 4♥. Eric

What I got from reading your comments was that for rule of 19 point hands you take honour location into account but for rule of 20 you just open them. I am prepared to accept that you don't just open all rule of 20 hands blindly, but it isn't what you wrote! I am not writing as an advocate of Zar's methods, but I do notice that a lot of times the arguments people use against his methods would be equally applicable to the alternative methods which are proposed. Misfitting hands are a problem in any method. Given any hand there is a chance that partner's hand just doesn't fit either in relation to suit length's or honour location or both. Not opening light will avoid some of these, but it will miss those hands where, by chance, partner's hand does fit (but he doesn't have an "opening" bid either). Unless you analyse many thousands of hands it will be impossible to determine whether the gains outweigh the losses or vice versa. Eric

The strategic basis for opening light is a) It pays to get the first shot in so that the opponents are not able to use their finely honed constructive auctions :) It is safer to bid early before the opponents know whose hand it is c) It makes your opening Pass more descriptive, so that partner can judge better what to do on his turn d) It puts less pressure on partner to keep the bidding open in third or fourth seat in case you have a (relatively) strong distributional hand e) It can save you having to make the last guess on competitive part score hands Suppose you have a weak hand with 5♠. If you open 1♠, the bidding might go 1♠ (P) 2♠ all pass. If you pass it might go P (1♥) P (2♥) and now you have to guess what to do. I find it interesting that those who argue against opening light always use the risk of partner taking you too seriously as a counter-argument. If you have partnership agreements in place this won't happen, and if you don't have partnership agreements in place then no bidding style is going to be successful! Eric

What you are implying when you say you use the rule of 20, is that all "rule of x" hands are (approsimately) the same strength as each other (because ultimatelely it is the strength of a hand that determines whether it is an opening bid or not). But are they? Axxxx Axxxx Qx x is very different to Qxxxx xxxxx Ax A and to Qxxx KJxx Qxx Ax and so on. Eric

But what do they do if the bidding comes back to them at the 5 level? (which is the common complaint voiced by people who don't want to bid 2♣ hands which are weak enough that you have a chance to actually pick up more than one of them in your lifetime) Eric

Nowhere have I suggested opening strong 1 suiters with a game bid. Playing multi 2D with one or more strong options is incredibly common. 2♣ 2♦ 2♠ 2NT 3♦ is no more or less pre-emptive on yourself than 1♠ (hope we don't get passed out) 1NT (phew!) 3♦. There simply must be a better use for 2♣ than "only really, really, really strong hands and even then not 2 suiters" as that hand comes up about once every ten sessions at most. Whether it is a straightforward weak 2, or whether it some weak/strong combo I don't know. But I am sure that it must be wrong to waste it in the way some are suggesting. Eric

I think 2♥ is enough. Eric

This last point is the key. You can't play Zar points (or similar) and keep the normal responding basis as if opener weren't playing Zar points. The fact that that doesn't work is not surprising, but also not a point which should be held against Zar points! If partner makes adjustments to his misfitting 13 points then he will realise that it is not a GF opposite a minimum Zar opener and not bid game! Zar says that all 26 point hands (and so on) are of the same strength as each other opposite random hands for partner. That does not mean of course that they have the same chance of being totally useless opposite certain hands for partner, or that they will be as easy as each other to bid in your system. His method of calculating the strength of the hand is totally separate from his advice to open all 26 point hands. Personally, I think Tysen's point count (which can be found on these message boards somewhere) is a better scheme. It tends to agree with Zar on run-of-the-mill hands but is more accurate on balanced hands or hands with singleton honours, isolated quacks and so on. FWIW, the hands in the original post are valued at 16, 19, 20, 21, 18, 18, 16 which I think is pretty close to the relative playing strengths of the various hands. Eric

I would open this hand 2♣ because there is a huge risk of playing in 1♠ instead of 4♠ or 5♦ or 6♦ or even 4♥. My point is that if you stubbornly refuse to open 2♣ on two suiters simply because the opponents might intervene, then you are making the 2♣ bid much rarer and also overloading the other openings. If you are going to do that, than you really might as well go the whole hog and play a totally different system where you don't use a strong 2♣ at all, as the ( frequency x IMP/MP gain per hand ) becomes too small. You could easily move the balanced hands into a scheme like multi 2♦ = 22-23 balanced or 26+ balanced 2NT = 24-25 balanced and open strong single suiters at the one level (or play a stronger than normal Namyats type convention). There is more chance of the auction staying open if you have a strong single-suiter than a strong two-suiter because both opponents are likely to be short, and there are usually more high cards out (as you have spot cards in your long suit instead of high cards in the other suits). Eric