catch22

Not sure on a percentage line which is best. Normal club play gives you about 40% chance of nine tricks. Running the jack is worse, just not sure how much worse. But if it gives you greater than a 20% chance of nine tricks and the spade finesse is 50% then it is the right percentage line. The downside is you are playing against the room and LHO with AKJxx and K♠ might well have overcalled, so I the spade finesse is unlikely to be 50%, but that does depend on the oppo. Put me down for the normal play in clubs. At IMPS you might try the Q♠ first you never know they might cover.

It was in the #229 Pairs Happy Birthday STELLA=ELENA. It was board 5, I'd just arrived as a substitutes with 6 minutes to bid and play the hand. At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :)

Well played. In the BBO tournament not one person found this me included. Interesting that it is, as you say, a standard book hand, but everyone either played too quickly or just didn't see it. If you present it as a problem then it becomes more obvious. I was hoping to at least get a couple of wrong answers, just to make me feel better :) . I feel gutted I missed this at the table and I presume I'll now have to wait another 10 years for the next time this comes up.

[hv=n=sat2h76djt642ck64&s=skq9743ha832dakqc]133|200|[/hv] South dealer uncontested auction is 1S-2S-6S. How do you play on the 5♣

I've dabled in this in the past, a lot of it as been done and there is a large amount of work required to get a product to market. No idea what the bridge software market is worth, probably not a lot. As a challenge try writing a double dummy solver, I started writing one but it is hard to make it fast, took about 10 days to get to the point were it wasn't too painfully slow (got it down to about 10 times slower than GIB). Learnt a lot, but to get any better speed would probably require a re-write using partition search. The other area that seems sadly lacking is in bidding system definition, a number of poor products on the market and some vague research information. I think it requires someone or a group of people to define a bidding markup language in XML, then build an editor around that. If it was good I'd buy something that would allow me to practice some of the stupidly complex systems I play with various partners. I always seem to select partners who want to play a lot of system and I never know it much beyond the first response. Of course there may be a killer product that loads of bridge players would buy. I think Fred's BridgeMaster is original and a great product, be interested to know how many have been sold. I bought GIB, but never play it, not sure why people would when access to a computer gets you a great game on-line. On the shareware front, then suitplay is a great little product. Anyway, good luck in whatever you try, I must admit the various projects I have done in the past have been fun, but not very lucrative. :)

As I see it the real problem hand is a balanced 16-17 count with a 5 card major. The wide ranging 1NT (0-9) means that opener probably as to move to what potentially could be a very uncomfortable contract at the 2 level, although they play 2C as either natural or 18+ unbalanced, so there is some additional definition there. Like all bridge systems there are strength and weaknesses, it may be down to the statistical frequency of the hands were they have an advantage as opposed to the frequency of the hands were they are weak. 17 opposite 0 is awful for the system, but how often does that occur. It looks an interesting system and it obviously works for them, though as Mike pointed out, maybe any old system would work as they are that good. Many thanks to all who have replied, I've found it most useful and I know a lot more now than I did when I posed the questions. Don't touch it with a barge pole does seem to be the underlying message of a number of posts, but I'll probably give it a try, so it'll be easy pickings at my table :lol:

I wasn't too concerned about competition, perhaps I should be. The opening bid except in the case of 1C is either 15+ balanced or 14+ unbalanced (5 cards except ID can be 4 when 4441), so responder has a better idea of the minimum holding and can be more agressive and can more readily identify game going hands. Having thought about this further I'm revising my view on the strengths and weaknesses. Having said 1S-1NT is a strength of the system above standard, I need to revise that statement. You can more readily identify the game going/slam going hands but the cost is having a 1NT response of 0-9, which must put a lot of pressure on the opener. There was a hand from the Bemuda Bowl were the Italians got too high for this very reason.

I've been considering playing a system losely based on that played by nunes and fantoni, but can't decide wether the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. The basic system is to open all unbalanced 9-13 point hands at the two level, 1NT is any balanced 12-14 count (can contain 5 card major), all one level bids are then 14+ and forcing with 2/1 responses. Just checking if anyone here as played this type of system and if so with what results. The key strengths seem to be in the reduction of the number of 2/1 hands that have to go through 1NT, with their system 2/1 can now be 10+ and you can get in the auction quickly with minimum unbalanced hands by opening two of the longest suit. The downsides are the loss of weak twos and the pressure that is placed on the 1NT opening which is required to contain balanced hands with 5 card majors. Would be interested in any views on the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. I'll probably give it a try anyway and will report back on what I find out albeit good or bad.