Flame

intresting idea, but i doublt its more importent then to play from responder's side.

I dont understand this, why didnt you alert the opening ? If you play an opening can show a balanced 9 hcp you should alert.

I think we can begin with pairs and see how it goes, ind is just fine too. This thing can delevelope maybe we will end up with forum ladder or something. We can make it forum's only if we have anough players, or open it to public for the last 5 minute. I think what importent is to start it, then we will know better and can change and upgrade it. about google maybe my google (its an hebrew version that jump in every time i write google.com) is bad because its not finiding it atleast not on the first raws.

Had a funny world class attack today on a short ind turney. Partner the worldclasser doubled 1D and later showed a 6 card club suit, i assumed around 18 hcp and i onsidered a slam but settled down at 5c when i got doubled i redoubled. Well partner had some 9 or so pnts and we payed 1600.

ouch this is triable, I think the only solution is to play 4h as natural here. Maybe its best to simplly generalize it to whenever you have 2 cue bids avaliable, the cue of the bid infront of you is natural. This make less sense when the lho bid doesnt show a long suit, like 1c-1s but make more sense when it does like over prempt or 1M opening.

Do you think we can make a forum tournamanet ? I think if we have it scedual on the tournaments list ppl will know exactly when it will begin and will show up,we can then make it a weakly turney. This will also do good publicity work to the forum, which btw is not known enough, its not linked enough, whenever i try to find the forum when im not home(away from my favorite list) i have a problem ,i usually try bridgebase.com, and google, and it takes time till i finnaly find it.

Good to see fred posting more lately, its the second time im learning something.

Why dont you open 23+ hands with 2c ? About 4432 this is an old question with no best answer, there are benefits each way. If you want 1c to be forcing dont play sayc play a kind of polish club. If you want it to be almost forcing you can play what boochi dubin play which is pass with 0-3 and trasfers with more. (they used to play it forcing but i guess they find out its better not to)

Wow that is a big secrete, i would never pass this one.

hehe yes nice system you got there, no need to change in 4th seat for you, maybe we will adopt it in forth place. My partner suggested 10-12 6 card for 2h/2s and precision 2d.

We need a good and simple meaning for 2d/2h/2s in 4th seat, we play polish club with weak 2d= diamond+major, 2h= majors, 2S=weak 6 card. We need another meaning to these bids in the 4th seat, any suggestions ?

Im always happy to play with ppl from the forum , but cant know when i'll be online. my name on BBO is WGF_Flame

You would make with luke's line, if you will finnese right in clubs.

Anyone read this book by mike lawrence ? Is it good ? Does it really go against the law or just show when and how to make adjustments ?

You might be right, its not easy to say which is better, your line is good when diamonds are 3-3 or when you can find the club . If this 33 or finding the Q club is better then the chances or 32 or 9 sgl heart then your right. At mp your line is clearly better.

The initial plan was ok. After the bad trump break you had a chance to make it, and it was time to rethink, even harder then before, and not feel bad for not thinking about it initially, what you need to do is picture east hand that will make it possible to make the game. After the A of diamond and playing the Q of heart the heart position is E:10x S:Q9xx, with east on the lead. since you have no trump in the north hand the only way you will make this "finnese" is but ruffing all you 9xx of heart, to do this you need 3 entries to dummy, east can help by playing spade which give us a free rufff and now we will need only 2 entries, or play diamond or club anyway will need the club finnese for the entry. Now for this special trump finnese to work we need to cash our non trump tricks in time, because if we dont cash them early enough, east will discard the suit which we have winners and later we wont be able to catch them since he will ruff. For all this to work we need luck having east with a good shape for us. So lets picture a hand that will make this dream possible imagine east having 4423 would not because when we will try to ruff a diamond east will drop a club. Lets try 4432 still not good we wont be able to take our clubs. 3433 is much less likely in the bidding but lets try it anyway. This one could accturally work if east helps us with a spade ruff, we ruff the spade , take Q of D , club to the 10, second diamond ruff, now K of club, and club to the A, and we are home with our last ruff. another possibility that we can make with the spade ruff help is 3424. And last 3442 , we can still make, droping a club on the diamond. After analyzing alot you might find the solution , or on bad days find that there isnt a solution but you must think hard to get there. Here we found out that to make it we need east to play a spade back, and have only 3 spades and 2/3/4 diamond. To make this work on all 2/3/4 diamonds we need to be a bit more carfull after the spad ruff, to play the Q of diamond , then club to the J, and a diamond ruff, now if east was 24 or 33 in minors AK club and last ruff to get home. If wast is 42 we play club to the 10, K diamond droping the A of club, and last ruff in hand. With more expirence we would know that for this kind of play to work we cant have more winners in the minors then east got cards cards in the minors then east which will make it easier to know we cant make it if he got 4 spades (which leave him less minors then we have winners) and can only make it if he has 3 spades but let us cut the extra one.

imo you expect way to much from partner, there are many hands you can have that will make a slam on the same bidding and you would bid them exactly the same, like the added J you mentioned , or another spade 1 less club (which looks very likely from partner's point of view) or the A of heart. I do think its a close bid and would wish my partners will only make this kind of mistakes. Intresting to this thread, one might hold his hand and "logicly" lecture you something like this "after showing a positive hand with 2h, i expected more from your spade cue bid, since you are weak for your first response you shouldnt bid 3s" This oviously is wrong but its a kind of one sided logic which we sometimes see at the table.

Ax xx xxx Axxxxx Will make an easy grand slam.

Nice, happy to be wrong here. ( i didnt feel good with the penalty)

I think i would bid 3d if its splinter since in most partnerships 3c isnt forcing, so if i have to choose between 2sp,3sp,2h and 3d i prefer 3D. on 3D 3sp is probelbly natural so we dont miss the spades on 6-3. If we play 2/1 GF i would not bid 3d, and either bid 2s or 3c.

I tend to agree with you and disagree with Flame. In a tournament, what about the duty to (correctly and properly) alert opponents, and in some tournaments, post a convention card? If your partnership's bidding doesn't match what you've told your opponents your system is, you are misinforming them (a mistake, fine; but if you know your partner is prone to make mistakes, that's UI, just like knowing your partner is prone to psyche frequently and not telling the opponents). Especially if you know from previous rounds that your partner doesn't understand the system you've supposedly agreed upon, you have a duty to disclose. And then, what if you tell them privately, out of a duty to disclose, "Partner doesn't count king of trump..." [or whatever], but your partner realized the previous mistake and now you've misinformed the opponents, etc. Could be messy, fool opponents into sacrificing/doubling/neither. Then they're suspicious you tried to fool them, call director, etc. Whereas if you'd clarified it with your partner after it had happened, you could have avoided the problem of misinforming your opponents. Similarly, if your convention card says udca or whatever, and you know from previous rounds your partner doesn't know it properly even though it was agreed to, do you privately message the declarer, "even though our cc says udca, p doesn't understand it properly". Declarer messages your p, "what carding", your p replies "udca", you're in a big mess, declarer doesn't know what you're doing. Whereas if you'd briefly, politely, discussed it with your partner before, when the misunderstanding arose, you could have agreed just to use a simpler signalling system to avoid confusion and changed your card accordingly. Anyone can make a mistake, but when you KNOW your partner doesn't understand/use properly something you've told the opponents your partnership uses, you have a duty to inform them. Otherwise you have unauthorized information. I guess i wasnt clear since i agree with what you said and you said you dont agree with me. Im not saying you shouldnt clear things with partner, i said exactly the opposite, you should talk inorder to clear things like mentioned here, but not inorder to teach him, I also said you should approach the problem as its a misunderstanding and not a mistake by partner, atleast it what you should initially assume, unless partner say sry my mistake. In other words if you need to teach your partner you better play with someone else because he isnt good enough, so assume misunderstanding or a different style and if you find out its not, just say good bye.

Doubles are one of the hardest thing to agree apon, maybe we should make a long thread considering sequences and agrements. Anyway i have a specific question which we had a misunderstanding about , today. 1♣ - (1♦) D (P) 2♣ - (2♦) P (P) D I thought its a penalty double since a major suit would have been bid already at the 1 level, but someone said its not showing diamonds but giving partner the aportunity to pass 2d double with diamonds since a double from him on 2d would be a takeout. maybe it should be something like the inverted doubles (i think you call them 2-3 double or garoozo doubles on the forum)

This double normally show 4+ spade and and some high card point.

Well there is just nothing to teach or learn here, its just too odd that someone who play rckb the way we do (and most today do) will not know that the K of trump is an ace, so i would assume something else, and therefore the word lecture doesnt fit here. Its like saying someone play 5 cards major and doesnt know what are the majors :) And dont be so sure the trump was clear, many times its not clear and this is one of those hard things to agree apon. Ill give you the simplest example: 1S-4nt is it clear ? No many play this as asking for 4 aces and not 5.

Im not sure you are right here, not sure its right to treat this as a mistake made by him, this is something good for discussing, but i wouldnt consider this learning or teaching, just agreeing. 2 options a. he doesnt play 5 aces, he play only 4 aces with answers 14 03 2 b. more likely today, he plays 5 aces but in the specific squence it wasnt clear that the K which you thought he considered as an ace should be considered as one. Its a good example of how you must look at the problem from the other side of the table which is many times very hard for most bridge players (and drivers)