1stpanda

Just download one of the many spades apps and play. It's a fun game, and since probably 30% of the tricks are won by ruffing you get great practice counting hands and watching spots.

There is a very similar problem (Master Solvers Club F, Feb. 2017). P-2♥-P-P, X-P and you have ♠AK83♥KQ84♦Q1042♣8 A large plurality of the panel converted the double at IMPs when their side was vulnerable and the opponents not. Passers were Philip Alder, Ira Chorush, Marty Fleisher, Rich Freisner, Jon Green, Eddie Kantar, Ralph Katz, Sami Kehela, Danny Kleinman, Jeff Rubens, Joe Silver, and Zia. That's pretty good company for your decision to pass.

It seems like the site should be encouraging more of these rather than making it more difficult. Or is it that I just am missing something?

What are we freaking out about? Just play the !sA and the !dK. Even if W can cross to E for a spade, you just ruff high, draw trump, and claim.

The auction 2!c - Pass - 5!c should show something like !cQJ1098765432 and no side winners. You can't contribute anything to that hand so you should pass. The 2!c opening is poor, but the 5!c response is abominable.

I am surprised that a N of the caliber usually associated with these tournaments would pass 2♦X with that hand.

The downside of bidding spades is as Charles Lee says - Partner may have a good hand like ♠-Kxxx ♥-Kxxx ♦-Qx ♣KJx - - partner will bid 4S over your 1S or Blackwood over 2S and you will be committed to playing in spades, vulnerable to bad trump breaks, when where you want to be is 6D. This hand type was discussed many times in the Bridge World Master Solver's Club - it was familiarly known as the "Bridge World Death Hand." It is likely that what will work best in practice is to jump shift in clubs - your only real losing case will be when partner has 6 clubs (of 12) rather than a losing case of partner having 4 spades (of 10). When 3C goes wrong, though, it can be ugly. The nonforcing 1S rebid also has much to recommend it - as has been discussed, your worst case will be being stranded in a 3-3 fit at the 1-level when partner has 4 or 5 hearts and a weak hand. I find opening 2NT with this hand distasteful - when partner bids Stayman, and RHO doubles for the lead, you just know you are sunk. And when partner transfers, you have no good way to investigate slam potential - is partner going to believe that ♠ - xxx ♥ - KQxxx ♦ xx ♣ - xxx yields a great play for slam from your side? Or are you going to drive to slam over his 3NT rebid, and find that he has ♠ - xxx ♥ - Kxxxx ♦ - Jx ♣ - Jxx? And a 2♣ opening is beyond the pale - after 2♣-negative response, 3♦, you basically have no chance to reach a making spot. And does his major suit rebid here show 5 or can it be 4, or even a stopper?

I echo cherdano on board 16. You have a pretty good picture of your opponents' hands from the bidding - LHO is very likely 3=1=5=4 with a goodish hand, and RHO probably has about an 8 count with 4 clubs and 4+ spades. RHO surely does not have a double heart stopper unless he is 5=3=1=4, and if he does then his spades are weak since he is limited by his decision to only raise 2!c to 3!c. The opponents have a 4-4 !c fit, so declarer is going to have to pull some trumps if he wants to make use of that suit. And you have the !dA so declarer is going to have to let you in early if he wants to use that suit. Leading a !h looks like a good way to attack dummy's trumps, which rate to be a chunky 3-bagger. From your point of view, this could give value to your !s87. I think I would lead the !hK to try to pin a stiff honor in dummy (although that honor might be the Ace :() but in any case I think a heart lead stands out. !dA rates to just help declarer establish dummy's suit, !c seems to be futile and might guess partner's !cQ, and !s seems like it is devaluing the !s87. On board 27, I almost fell off my chair when you didn't play a !h at trick 2. The !d10 sure looked like a suit preference signal to me, and partner had already shown !d support and short hearts. So the trump shift was futile, since if partner has the stiff !hQ you have a !h trick coming whatever you do and if he has a smaller singleton, what hope do you have? Finally, you know partner has a spade, since otherwise he would have splintered in spades unless he was void in both majors (and then you wouldn't be defending). I realize playing 28 boards against good players is very tiring, but this one seemed like a clear error on your part.

Let's try to look at this carefully. 1. I doubt that bidding 4♣ is going to lead to our best result very often. So I am going to just analyze whether it is right to bid 3NT or pass for penalty. What do we need to make 3NT? A. If we have a double stopper (any diamond honor in N, or a singleton honor in E, or a doubleton honor in E coupled with an honor lead by W), then our chance are probably pretty good - in this case we need to take 7 (or 8 if our second "stopper" is a blockage) tricks outside diamonds, without letting W in twice. I would guess that we would make 3NT more than 80% of the time when we have a double stopper or a blockage. On defense, however, it makes a big difference. When we have a true double stopper, then their expected number of tricks is probably equal to LHO's number of diamonds or number of diamonds +1; we will get 100 or 300 against a 7-card suit and 300 or 500 against a 6-card suit. A diamond blockage will have little effect on their number of tricks as declarer, though, and the suit will never block when E has Hx. So they will get 1 more trick, and we will get +100 or +300 against a 6-card suit but +100 or -470 against a 7-card suit. To summarize this case, if we have a true double stopper we will score +400 on offense 80% of the time and -100 to 200 about 20% of the time. Our expectancy is probably +290 or so on offense, and +300 or so depending on the frequency of the various results on defense. When there is a blockage, we will still have an offensive expectancy of +290, but our defensive expectancy plummets to -20 or so. So in this case it's right to bid. B. When we have a single stopper, then we will either need to have 8 fast winners outside diamonds or find W with no entry. I would guess that these combine to about 1/3 of the time. And we will beat 3♦X about 3/4 of the time as above in the blockage case. So our offensive expectancy is probably around +50 and defensively about -20. Once again it is right to bid, at IMPs, to avoid the occasional huge loss (perhaps even a double game swing) by offering up a lot of small losses. Note, however, that it is right to pass at matchpoints because we will likely go plus instead of minus about half the time, and other times we will collect +500 for a larger plus. C. If W is the sort who might "fool around" with, say, ♦KQJ10xx and a minimum opening bid, then 3NT is going down practically all the time, likely doubled. (My experience has been that when W has opened 3♦ with this hand type, and we bid 3NT, W will double far more often than not.) In this case, the odds are heavily with passing, since a W with this hand type is likely to take nearly as many tricks on defense as on offense, and we have no intersecting case where bidding would result in a poorer result than passing. So now, your job is to decide how likely cases A, B, or C are. My guess would be 25%, 70%, and 5%. But note that only in case C is is right to pass at IMPs under my assumption that 4♣ is futile. So I think the IMP odds for bidding are enormous; we will win 5-7 IMPs for 3NT making a large percentage of the time in case A and about 1/3 of the time in case B, while losing 3-6 IMPs most of the rest of the time. Only in case C, where passing is our only hope of a non-disaster, do I think passing has the better of the IMP odds. At matchpoints (or board-a-match) I think it is right to pass based on the frequency of small gains in case B. Thus the basis for "Wolff's Law." It truly is wrong to pass just because you are afraid to bid. You will find that in most cases where you do an analysis of high-leverage auctions such as this one, the odds will come out similarly.

The argument about HCP in hearts is mainly specious - N is limited, else he would have invited. Every HCP he has in hearts is one less he can have elsewhere, within limits. (Of course, he might decide xxxx.Qxxxx.KQ.Qx is not worth an invite but Kxxx.AQxxx.xx.xx is.) The real issue is that, with this hand, opener knows he's never, ever going to get a ruff in hand, whatever is trump. It's quite conceivable, however, that he could get a couple of ruffs in dummy. But if he does that, he'd far rather try to draw trump with AQJ than with Jxx. So I think it's obvious to try to play spades when your suit is this strong and you know that partner is weak.

Ah, you're a piker. In a sectional in Pennsylvania a few years ago, my partner and I bid to 7NT with partner on play. Dummy ♠AKQ10xx ♥void ♦ K10x ♣ A10xx Declarer ♠8x ♥AKxx ♦AQ9xxx ♣K The opening lead was a club. (If they lead any other suit it's cold.) But clubs was the unbid suit. Partner ran this around to his K, as would anybody. Then he led a spade up. Club pitch on his left. Then he called for the ♦K. Heart pitch on his right. So he passed the ♦10 to the J and we scored up -50. This turned out to be an 80% score for us, as the field was playing spade slams doubled. Even 6♠X -1 lost to our score.

Can you add, in a future version of the software, an option to specify the language(s) used in your chat window.

All you people speculating about team Kranyak auctioning off the 3rd pair slot for the BB if they get there ought to read the conditions of contest. Seriously, folks, the organizers of this event know more about bridge and bridge players than you do.

I have tried several times to play with the bots on my Droid Global (3G) with no success at all. The software hangs up in the middle of the hand, and I am unable to play a card. the small size of the cards makes for frequent misplays when the wrong card gets played. Once it even got hung up in the bidding - it wouldn't let me pass although it would have let me bid something.

Many years ago a friend of mine was barred from his local bridge club because he broke another player's fist with his jaw. (Yes, that's right. My friend is 6'-4" and the other party to the altercation was considerably smaller and older.) Needless to say, the other party to the altercation was also a friend of the director. So this is not the worst ruling with regard to physical assault in the history of the ACBL. But it has to be in the top 5.

Full relay systems are not the be-all and end-all of bidding. They can be very bad for contested auctions and partial/game decisions, for example. Plus, there is the "whoops!" factor, where a small misunderstanding in a relay auction can lead to slam in a 3-1 fit, negating most of the gains posted elsewhere. Besides, full relay systems are specifically forbidden by the ACBL General Convention Chart, although they are allowed on the mid-chart.

As far as (2) goes, I think you meant to ask what happens after 1♣-1M, 2♦. The "Relays" that Matula mentions in passing are really simple step responses, from what I've seen. 1 step - 4M, minimum 2 steps - 5+M, minimum 3 steps - 4M, 10-12 4 steps - 5+M, 10-12 5 steps - 4M, 13+ 6 steps - 5M, 13+ This is all useful only in a MAFIA setting. As the previous poster noted, in WJ2000 it is not needed since a MAFIA 1M is pretty limited.