wondermech

Hi all, Thanks so much for all of the replies, reading through the advice given has been a pleasure. The reasoning given to support a pass here makes a lot of sense to me, and it's good to know that this situation has a "correct" answer. I guess I was mostly concerned that partner might have a 4+♠ suit with decent values and a pretty good hand, but it seems that's certainly too much to hope for with only the information given. Additionally, as some mentioned, if partner has a good hand they can rebid anyway. I knew that bidding at the two-level or a takeout double would be lying about my point count, but I did not know how to determine if my distribution was worth enough to allow bidding. rmnka447's remark: seems to answer this question quite well, and the additional analysis showing that I have very few good rebids to partner's response were I to bid seems to reinforce this. Seems I have some studying to do and thanks again for all of the responses, it was quite a surprise and is greatly appreciated!

Hi, I am still quite new to bridge and I'm hoping to get some advice on better ways to bid the hand depicted below from the perspective of West: [hv=pc=n&s=s32h43daj532cj742&w=st7654h7dt9874caq&n=skqj9hqjt95dqc853&e=sa8hak862dk6ckt96&d=n&v=0&b=1s&a=p1h2d?]399|300[/hv] All 4 players were playing SAYC, score system was IMPs. In my case I was not sure how to respond and passed repeatedly. Due to a lot of interference by partner our opponents ended up in spades which was great for us, but I'm still not sure how to deal with this situation. Passing doesn't feel great since you know your partner has points, the hand likely has little value on defense unless South's 2♦ bid sticks, and if you have a good fit you might just be dropping a game. On the other hand with so few HCP I don't feel comfortable bidding past maybe the two-level without knowing more about partners distribution. Is there a good way to display the shape of your hand, or get enough info about partner's to know you have no fit, without bidding too high? Or should I be content with passing here? Was initially going to post this on the novice sub-forum, but then thought it fit better here since presumably other bidding systems might have different tools to deal with this situation. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to see what I could have done differently.