The_Badger

"What's my new partner doing making my life difficult in a tricky little auction?" is probably a better question. Without reading wank's reply before posting this, I would have said penalties, but what your partner has to double on as a passed hand is anyone's guess? Your 2♣ could be weak and obstructive with a passed partner at white. If you took it as takeout sans agreement then I wouldn't blame you either. I am hedging my bets too...

Personally I wouldn't raise to 2♥ with 3 good trumps and 5-3-3-2 shape. My opinion only. There are exceptions to this rule, but I usually only raise to the 2 level with 3 card trump support with poorer trumps and 5-4-3-1 shape where the bid of the second suit is problematical. With 2 suits open, I'd rather rebid 2♣, Kaitlyn, though I am sure there are some players who prefer to rebid 1NT with the West hand.

[hv=pc=n&s=sa8ht6dkt95cqt542&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=1s(10-15%20Precision)2h2sdp2np3cp3dp]133|200[/hv] MPs. What contract do you fancy ending up in on this auction? And if you make a bid below game level, is it forcing or not? (When I asked what 2♠ showed on this auction, it could be 4♠ support with few points at this vulnerability, or semi-constructive (6-9) with 3 card ♠ support.)

In my view, partner will be a 16-17(poor 18) count including distribution and with 5♠ + 4♥. The 3♥ bid I would take as encouraging/invitational but not completely forcing.

That's an interesting way of reaching the grand, Mike. Thanks for posting it. Personally I haven't seen this method over five level pre-empts. There again, the chance of holding a 9 card suit is about 1 in 2600 or thereabouts, I believe, and partner enquiring about slam remotely higher, so I'm bound to have forgotten it by the next time I need it. Just my luck :)

It can go that badly. Your partner suddenly dies when you open 2♣ :( :)

Deserves +1 for its cheerful, reckless, devil may care, swashbuckling bidding and play...even though the opponents must have been seriously peed off with the result. Who needs Blackwood? :)

Just what I was thinking as an afterthought, Cyberyeti. And given that many players use a 4♦ opener as Namyats or a Texas-type hand, what does a hand with ♦QJ10xxxxxx ♣A open vulnerable?

I certainly wouldn't be bidding NT with the West hand because of the possible entry problems. I would think a 5♦ opener would automatically set the trump suit so anything after would be controls (?) [My view on this. Whether that is standard practice please let me know.] So 5♦ - 5♠ or 5♥ - 6♣ - 7♦

[hv=pc=n&s=s9875hakt92daj94c&n=sak43hq54dkcat952]133|200[/hv] Rubber bridge. We arrived in the second best contract of 6♥. No opposition bidding. West led the ♠10. Plan the play. Small hint: trumps don't break nicely, but they don't break horribly either.

The problem with the EU is that they realise once the cash cow of Great Britain has left then there will not be any country to replace us. That's why they are making it so difficult for us to leave. Most leftfield rational socialists like myself, including Jeremy Corbyn, who was vehemently against the EU before becoming Labour leader, could see the EU for what it was: jobs for the boys, hand in glove with big corporations and investment banks and bankers, backhanders and envelopes under the table par for the course. I liked the idea of a Common Market, liked the idea of being more integral with Europe, but I do not like what the EU has become. A political, oligarchical hierarchy of senior politicians who think they know best for its citizens, when actually the citizens know what's best for them. Most of the people who work within the EU are just thinkers, accountants, civil servants, analysts, lawyers, political and economic types who have never actually done anything in the field of actually working in corporate business and making things happen through real entrepreneurial enterprise. That's why the EU is stuffed silly with red tape and bureaucracy. The EU were never going to make it easy for Great Britain to leave. Teresa May's handling of the issue has been atrocious. That's why we are still at an impasse over a year after the vote.

Two ways of looking at this. 1) It is permissible to pass with a minimum opening hand in 4th position if you feel the opponents are likely to get involved and outbid you. 2) A 3 level opening in 4th with at least a good six card suit and around 10-13 points is acceptable too. Given that both North and South haven't said anything on the first round of bidding, they would have to be brave to come in with a Dbl. to balance, and it's less likely that South will do so as he's probably a balanced hand as he's hasn't opened light in 3rd. What you don't want here is to make it easy for opponents to compete at the one level by opening 1♣. With 7 guaranteed tricks, I favour opening 3♣ at both pairs and teams. The hand has a little more offensive strength with its 7 card suit, but still lacks defensive strength elsewhere. Partner would have to turn up with some perfect cards for 3NT to be in the picture, so opening 3♣ is where I'm at. Hope to gain a few IMP/MPs with a part score.

Another way of looking at this is that you are providing a highly-descriptive bid for partner to act on. If you want to take away the weakness option of especially 1m-2M then so be it, but I've never considered 1m-2M or 1M-3m as pre-emptive, more descriptive and constructive. It does make life easier for the opener to know that you have a 6 card suit and a certain point range immediately.

I'm assuming East leads the ♦Q. From the play and bidding up to declarer winning with ♦K, East is most likely to be 0445. Don't see it's too difficult to make the contract with 4♠ 1♥ 2♦ and 2♣ or alternatively 2♠ 4♥ 2♦ and 1♣. After ♦K wins, cash ♣K and play on ♠, it doesn't matter if West holds up or not: either West or East is endplayed after the last ♦ is cashed, assuming ♦ are 4-4

Lateness and slow play are not excuses as far as I am concerned. Maybe if offending individuals, partnerships or teams that continually flout the rules were banned for a year from the game then things will change. Bridge clocks are not the answer: video evidence, which is not too difficult to set up, especially for high profile games such as the Gold Cup could be used for these indiscretions, and the evidence assessed by an independent committee after the match. Either that or an automatic 10 IMP penalty per board. I once watched a nameless but not blameless experienced international go into a deep huddle for what approached light years over a drop or a finesse, when the odds favoured the finesse considerably. An intermediate player would have worked out that in seconds: why this international took so long is anyone's guess?

The first thing you need to do is recognise when is it favourable to sacrifice. And, even if seems obvious, knowing bridge scoring generally helps. For example, if the opponents reach 7♥ non-vulnerable, and you can bid 7♠ as a sacrifice non-vulnerable too, how many tricks can you concede? Surprisingly you can still go down 6 tricks doubled at this equal vulnerability and turn a small IMP profit (1510 vs. -1400 = 3 IMPs) And even if the opponents bid a vulnerable grand slam (2210) you can sacrifice profitably non-vulnerable doubled by going down 8 tricks (2000), and even 9 tricks (2300) is not a total disaster, except if it is a phantom sacrifice. Knowing these figures off by heart is a good start. Also, recognising that the Law of Total Tricks does not work at this level is also worth noting. Just because you may have a lot of trumps between the two hands doesn't necessarily mean you can take a set number of tricks. As for the minutiae, the small expert details, where a certain bid or double at the 5th or 6th level indicates the number of possible defensive tricks a (possible) sacrifice bidder may hold, I can't pin any book down that carries these details, and I have an extensive bridge library. Maybe someone else who plays regularly at the top level can elaborate further.

After posting my comments on here, I accessed the board in question: http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?bbo=y&linurl=http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/vugraph_linfetch.php?id=53482 As you can see 4♠ makes. If one pair had bid that, and the other had "sacrificed" in 3NTxx-2 then it would have been a flat board. Now that is an Irish Interpretation, to be sure, to be sure :)

Welcome to the forum profhsg :) As Stephen said, it's all about space in the bidding and utilising it effectively and efficiently. 1957 was, well, 1957 and things have moved on a lot bidding-wise since then. I have a feeling most players were still employing strong jump overcalls at this time, though I believe that the weak variety were becoming more mainstream in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Take, for instance, the following auctions:- a) 1♦ - (2♠ weak) - Dbl. b) 1♦ - (2♠ weak) - 3♠ Which one would you prefer to be forced to bid again with your 1♦ opener? The unlimited negative double on the first auction does not take the bidding higher, and the doubler has other options to describe various hands after his bid.

My friend has run a bridge club for many years, and when there are a low number of pairs playing - say 6 pairs - he adopts Mini Swiss Pairs Scoring, where 5 board matches against each pair is converted to Victory Points. I'm not sure that's the answer you want as if someone drops a big score in a set of 5, it can also end up with a maximum VP win automatically too. Maybe you should adopt an individual tournament format instead, where all players have to play with the player who overbids regularly too. I am sure a few disapproving glances will soon get them out of the habit of dropping -1400 :)

I was going to write on my previous comment "Actually I don't like 4♦ either" but that's stating the obvious. What I was trying to deduce in those 30 minutes in the middle of the night is the hand types that would justify this bidding - one for Nige1, our resident expert on this, no doubt. We can see perhaps 14HCPs - give the 3♠ opener KQJxxxx - leaving 26HCPs. East Redoubling on a 16/17 count, let's say, leaves South with a paltry 10 or so, hardly a hand to chance a Dbl of 3NT in the first instance. It is also statistically more probable that East has doubled light but I take on board all what others have commented. However, let's not forget that North has a possible bid over the XX too if West stands his ground and passes. I personally think there's a bit of bluff going on here nevertheless, and things are not what they seem.

Given that this is expert level, there's probably a lot more going on than just bidding. Psychology perhaps? A bit of bluff? Partnership understanding? The luck of the Irish even? My final thought (after 30 minutes of 3am analysis) is South has his cards, and partner has thrown himself into the mix light non-vulnerable with shape by doubling opener's 3♠ bid.

[hv=pc=n&s=sq52hkt643dca9532]133|100[/hv] MPs. With an intermediate partner. Before playing you've agreed that any pre-empts (weak 2s or 3s) must include 3 of the top 5 honours. No Drury or similar. Opponents are vulnerable, you're not. Partner deals and passes, as does RHO: what do you bid?

In my view, expert players do not XX except for a reason, and here, in my opinion, XX should always be used as SOS. 3NTX made would have been a good score, so what's the point of being greedy and redoubling for the sake of it.

Pet peeve is the ridiculous lengths some (usually amateur) chefs will go to create a new nomenclature to describe their mediocre food. All gravy seems to be always called 'jus' these days, which made the French way can be absolutely delicious, but made the British way with meat juices and gravy granules is still just gravy. But worst than that is the silly descriptions of some of the food. Here's three that I have seen recently:- Smashed Avocado, not Mashed but Smashed. (presumably hit with a sledgehammer?) Bubble and Squeak Cake Cake? A mashed potato, onion, greens and Brussel sprout cake doesn't sound particularly appetising to me. Micro coriander Herbs go techsavvy? And there are plenty more out there waiting to be discovered...

It's quite incredible really that the world was made a safer place from nuclear attack in the 1980s by relying on the computer graphics of an appropriately-named Hollywood blockbuster and a bit of Reagan bluff. And the latest about the current North Korean crisis is that Russian and North Korean diplomats have met in the last few days, and Vladimir Putin is urging the USA to 'back down' from a pre-emptive strike. Which prompts the question, why Russia and not China?