Flame

This i dont understand. playing weak NT , you already covered 12-14 so you dont need to worry about it when you open 1x. playing strong NT , you already covered 15-17 so you dont have to worry about it when you open 1x. playing 10-12 you have more balance hands to worry about after biddint 1x, so how can it be eaiser ?

I wouldnt worry about not making this game, its very very rare.

The lottery result idea was just to exaplain that the fact that your opponents hate your system doesnt mean its good, this by itself doesnt mean your system is bad either.

There are many lines here Free's line might be the best. maybe you should also play A club before the J.

I have posted about this same problem here in the forum more then once, i totally agree with you. i think this problem is the main motivation for most known systems. Some examples of ways for a better use. first way is to open 1d with four card and 1c with a minimum of 2 cards. this mean you open 1c with 4432. second way is to play a kind of polish club, this can mean many things, since we are talking about clubs and diamonds here, in systems like strefa 1d is atleast 4 card diamond unbalanced, this mean that even 4342 will open 1c and not 1d. other conventional use are the strong clubs (precision moscito, blue club etc...) there are many other systems which are less common but most do something with this 1c/1d duplication, i play midmac which 1c = i got 4 card major, 1d= i dont have 4 card major (lately a french system called WEB which have the same 1c/1d as midmac is gaining popularity)

Hi You wont go down in grands since you will always check for aces before bidding a grand. The macanism works like that, you cue bid under 4nt to check if you're missing a control of a suit, then when you know you dont, you will ask for aces, this is done with almost any unlimited hand , since this is your only way to check if a grand exist, you cant just bid six. A problem with losing the ability of a 5 level cue bid is losing the ability to continue showing interest and extend "feeling" of the hand, you dont have the way to say , i like my hand abit more then i already showed you. In my opining this lost is very minor, for 2 main ressons, a. you usually dont need it, and b. long cue bidding sessions are very complex, take lots of understanding of the bidding, good evaluation of what you have opposite to what partner know you have. since they come up rarly you wont be ready for them. If you want to see what i mean by complex , read the cue bid notes on daniel system page.

I think you are right.

I think playing runing the 9 at trick two is better then your line. When you played the A and the J drops, if you believe this isnt a false card then it can be from J10 or KJ or J, now there is the question of restricted choice which say holding the KJ and J LHO is twice as much likely to play the J then from J10, however having sgl , meaning the suit is 4-1 is less likely then to have the suit 3-2. running the 9 will win against J and KJ , playing the Q will win against J10, bidding might be importent here, the lead is importent too, if they lead 4th best this mean, west only have 4 diamonds and if only 1 hearts that leave him with 8 cards in the other suits, which give him both a choice of lead , and sometimes also a bid. to sum it up there are 3 more or less independent factors here restricted choice of the suit give us 80% to play small. the suit distribution give us something like 66% for the Q. the restricted choice about the lead(depends on our bidding too) give it about 75% for the Q. I would go for the the Q.

I didnt give up because the market is loader, i actually never intended to develop a software for the market, i wanted to win the computer tournament :unsure: I am rusty in anything related to programing and therefore it will take me lots of time to get to the fun part, i will have lots of work before i even get to anything that is related to bridge or to AI in general, and i cant do it right now.

I dont know if your play is right or not, but i dont see how you can easily cross ruff when west has KX of clubs, wont east overuff you with the 10 of heart and maybe lead heart back ? also this bidding is far from clear here, because if you believe them the west has only 2 hearts or maybe 3. (and yes he can double with only 2, because his partner is either strong or have both majors)

The question about the 2c is very importent here. If your believe you opponents (and they say this 2c is trash or garbage stayman) then either east has 4 hearts, or east has 4-3-4-2, and was planing to pass any response by is partner.

Free's line is an option, it will work when the 10 of spade is doublton with is 40% (the actual chance will be much lower due to other suits needed beheviour) playing for club ruffing finnese is 50%, and will also might work on some 4-1 spade distibutions, which is better. You can also get some combinations, but not sure its much better , for example you can combine free's 10 doublton with , A club on the left and 3 trumps on the right, this is done by playing K spade and Q to the A, then if the 10 doesnt fall, you run the diamonds, when east ruffs you overuff and play for the K club for the finnese. I think there are other combinations but nothing too good.

Hi Im glad someone is intrested. We play a simple system calls MIDMAC, you can find a summry on my partner's site new age bridge I think if you get to watch us , my partner will give you the full version of the system. I have just emailed him about our next meeting, i hope he can make it on saturday. we almost always play at 18:00 UTC (I hope i am not confusing it with 19:00 because of the clocks changings lately) If you will sent me your email on a private message, i will email you before we play (or i can just send you a message here). Hope to see you. bye

For those who play 5 card major and 4 card minor , do you have a bid for both majors ? Yes richard it was a premptive but sadly my partner had 4 card diamond and 2sp was passed out and we got a realy bad score (we played a simulation of an old top championship). this is atleast partly because i took too much time before i passed.

The worse problem in leading the Q from QJx(x) is finding dummy with A10x(x) and declerer with the K, other problems are if dummy has AK10 (the 10s can also be in declerers hand if he got the 9) if you think this is likely then you better not lead the suit or lead small. this might mean if dummy is strong and not short in this suit (like when he bid NT) you might not like the Q lead. The problem with leading small is either selling to opponents 10 , which can happend in many ways (the simplest is when declerer has AK10) beside that leading by the book helps the partnership confident which is very importent. leading low can sometimes fool declerer. I'd say lead the Q unless you have a good resson not to, tend to lead low , as dummy become stronger and have more cards in the suit.

partner opened 2♠ which is 5 spades and (4)5 any other suit . i held x x AQxx KJ9xxxx It was MP , but i would be happy to know what your bid at both MP and IMP. My bid was pass. i thought partner will have be 5/5 in majors about 85% of the time and bidding on will make it easy for the diffenders to panish us in 3M, while if partner has 5 minors opponents have 10 hearts and will bid 2h and give me an easier bid later, and even if they pass it might still be fine if they missed a better score in heart. At imps there is a good chance to make a game if partner has a minor suit, on the other hand if partner have the majors then 3M D going down will hurt alot.

I got off the idea pretty fast, didnt even start anything, I was ready to work on the fun part but that doesnt worth all the work for me, especially today when i got alot of importent things to do (and doesnt do any of them) . anyway thanks for all the info, maybe one day.

The main problem with this system is imo that the 1 level biddings are unlimited, this mean forcing and this sounds to me like something close to not playable, how can you response to 1s without a pass with 0-5 ? this will get you too high too many times, what i would change is to limit the 1 level bids to non GF and add all the GF bids into 1c which should be the only forcing opening. good luck. OK i checked and they do play those 1 level opening as forcing and if they do then saying its close to not playable is far from right, but i still dont like it.

When im strong in the field i play, i hate when someone make a non common bid because this give me less chances to use my better skills then most of the field. If the pair who use the non common bid is also a weak pair then i hate it even more. This doesnt mean its good for them, just bad for me.

Hi JRG Im glad we agree on the specific subject of late bidding, yes if you think the first bid is a disaster then you might fix it with a second one, but i didnt think my bid was a disaster and i was ready to claim what i worked for. my pass was a premptive bid, its main perpose was to mislead them into not getting to the right contract (which i suspected have 80% to be 5D, 19% to be 6D, and 1% to 4D) now when they got to 4D i sure dont want to ruin all the good work of my i did so far by bidding 4sp now. About believing your partner or the opponents i agree on the principle, but i dont think i didnt believe my partner here, i believe she had her overcall (which is about 8 hcp the way we play) its about who will the information about my spade support help more my partner or the opponent and i decided that in this specific place it will help the opponents more. Thanks for all the replays it been a good thread.

Ususally playing garbadge stayman which mean you can stayman with both majors and bid 2h on 2d to show it, sounds like a good idea to me especially over weak NT, however there is a point in passing a weak hand , especially when NV, this can be passed out when opponents have a game, if they do have a game you are sure to score well. not sure this is a good example for this kind of pass, but it should be considered.

Sometimes you doesnt have to make a mistake inrder to get a bad score for example when 2 partners both strech up you end up going down in a game instead of playing a partscore, here is an example when both could have bid more, and maybe should, but its not that the actions that took place are totally wrong this 2sp and the pass by partner are tactical bids that didnt work, im not good with those kinds of bids but i can see situations when it will work. I think at imps biddint only 2sp and not 4sp when there is a fair chance 4sp can be made will lose many more then win.

I think only profesionals should get into this, for non profesionals there is more then enough work to do inorder to get one good system running without making too many mistakes, i can tell you that i love systems, i love making systems, unlike most people i know i like bidding more then play, BUT i can also tell you that the more complex my system is the worse my results are, this is because of bidding mistakes and misunderstanding and imo more importent, i have less of my brain cells avaliable for all the rest of the bridge activities and there is alot to do beside remembering your system. The adv you will get from having variable system is not even close to the adv you can get by siting down calmer.

Can you tell us what was the result at the table ? As i said before this hand is imo worth its 11 hcp , worth 1nt strengh wise, but i can understand not opening it because of its good defensive value, this mean if i pass, and partner bid something i will make some sound bid becuause i like the hand.

I would open this because of all the nice middle cards. I dont have a system for NT evaluation, i also think such a system is less importent when playing NT which have a major premptive value in it, so maybe its not all about strengh but more about ODR in which i can understand why you passed this one.