smerriman

Bird/Anthias had examples of this in their book. With AK54 87652 T4 A9, for chance of beating contract / average tricks taken: ♠A/K: 47.1% / 4.63 ♠4: 34.1% / 4.17 ♥: 39.4% / 4.22 ♦: 34.0% / 4.02 ♣: 39.1% / 4.24 Note their numbers are always weighted towards winners since they can guarantee finding the right continuation, so take this as you will. steve2005 mentioned a few important cases where low goes badly, but there aren't actually many where it goes better - most of the times low works, high also works. Bird/Anthias state examples like dummy having QT4 and partner the J, or Q in dummy and partner having the T, only happen about 2.75% of the time.

If you're replaced by the original player, your TCR isn't affected. But if you quit for any other reason, your TCR goes down, since that is just as annoying for others / the director.

Against 1NT-3NT I think the card I would lead is "another suit". But if I had to lead the suit then the generic advice is high from AKxx and low from AKxxx. It's just too dangerous giving away a trick to the queen in the first case, and blocking the suit in the second. (Leading low bases your entire defense on partner having the queen, or that you have to set up the suit, when in the best case you only gain one trick. At least the high lead gives you a chance of switching.)

Agree that's annoying, but if you were planning to alert it anyway, why not type the description before you make the bid so that it shows up instantly? Saves the opponents from having to click in the first place. I find it pretty frustrating when my opponent makes a bid and then makes a delayed alert, rather than doing them both together as you're meant to.

Hmm, I'm a bit stumped. If West has the spade Ace, it doesn't appear to make much difference what we play. If we play the Q, West will know for sure East doesn't have the King. If we play the A, West will also know East doesn't have the King, both from East's signal and the fact we wouldn't play it with AQx vs xx as that would be the only way to go down. Conversely, if East has the spade Ace, it also feels like we'll probably make whatever we do - why would East immediately rise with the Ace when we lead a small one from dummy? This would often give away a trick for nothing, unless they know that they need to cash 5 tricks immediately, and neither heart play seems to imply that. I guess I'll play the Q as it at least leaves East slightly in the dark, and maybe lead the J of spades in case West thinks they have to duck. But there must be something else to it that I'm not seeing.

A club lead is fantastic if partner has any single top trick (club ace, diamond ace, spade ace, trump king all work, and sometimes even Qx in trumps. Though diamond ace you may not guess.). For a diamond to work you need partner to have *two* tricks. One seems a better shot than two. (If a singleton lead picks up an honor holding in partner's hand, isn't it likely to be picked up regardless?)

So what? Then he leads a third round, and I get a ruff. Exceeding rare that setting up declarer's 10 on the fourth round so that he could discard something in dummy rather than ruff it is going to make a difference.. and if it did, maybe the suit shouldn't have been continued regardless. [edit] removed a sentence which didn't make sense

No, my partner would cash the other honor then lead a third one. This works regardless of what I have.

I think you miscalculated something somewhere - the probability of having no black cards is 1 in 61055. Edit - nope, it was me that misread, I thought you said 1 in 17 million, you said 17 in a million (which is a rather odd way of expressing it, and it's closer to 16, but hey). Still, most bridge players would play considerably more than (1 hand a day for life) hands - when you include the fact you'd probably be just as surprised with any two voids, that brings it up to 1 in 10000. If you play a couple of sessions a day, you'll see one of those at your table every couple of months. So definitely rare, but not as rare as it sounds. But definitely cool when it happens :)

I'm not sure why you need special rules about equal honors or hidden honors or.. you encourage if you want partner to continue the suit. Here you don't. Contrary to your rule, if dummy had Axx, I would encourage if a quick ruff looked necessary on the hand.

My opinion counts for very little here given the level of people replying already, but.. My definition of a Lightner double is that it specifically excludes any suit bid by the defenders, as is shared by many online sources: Karen Walker: "That eliminates a lead of the unbid suit, a trump or any suits bid by you or partner. " Bridgebum: "Additionally, the double asks partner to NOT lead any suit that your side has bid. " Now obviously I'm not saying any of the posts above were wrong; I'm sure in expert circles you can get more complex and play "don't lead your suit, unless you know that I'll know that you weren't going to lead it, in which case lead it". But there's no chance I'm ever making that agreement at the Intermediate/Advanced level, which is where this was posted; all that's going to do is lead to disaster. So I'll trust our partnership agreement. They can't have a spade void on the bidding; they might have something like an ace and a sure diamond trick, but wouldn't double with that due to the risk of running to 6NT. So as unlikely as it seems, a club void seems the only option, perhaps with the AK of spades. I lead a spade.

North is a human?

2NT is never to play in any sequence for me, so invitational. If we do have a minimum 4432 I'm happy to play in 2♣, given partner chose to bypass possible NT bids themselves.

With diamonds so much better than hearts I think I'd go with the XYZ 2♣ - we can still find our heart fit if partner can break the transfer with 2♥. But weak 5-5 reds is always awkward; 1NT / 2♣ / 2♥ can all be right at times.

Well, let me just put it out there that I hope you do keep playing, since regardless, I enjoy reading the interesting discussions that always stem from your posts, and the forums have been quite quiet recently without them..

Yes, sorry, we were both deleting messages too quickly for each other :)

The main problem is that your poll question (what's the common approach) and your post (what is your call with a random BBO partner) are two very different questions. They vary considerably depending on the level / country of the player you are playing with. (And your subtitle 'what's your style' is a different question to both). Some form of forcing minor raise will be unanimous amongst good players, yet probably shouldn't be bid if you hadn't discussed it..

I saw this a while ago and was a bit disappointed after learning all auctions would be 1NT - 2NT - 3NT. There's only so much you can do with those hands.. I expect any decent robot will beat humans on fatigue factor alone. Still, will be interesting nonetheless.

By the way, haven't used redeal, but: I think this should be suit - nt - which explains why that number is so low (nt taking one *more* trick than a suit contract).

Double dummy plays 5-2 fits brilliantly, as it knows exactly when the trumps will break 3-3. In real life, if you draw a third trump and they break 4-2, you're probably in trouble, while if you don't draw a third trump and they break 3-3, you go down when it was an 'easy make'. I'd say that trump fit is the most inaccurate of all situations for double dummy analysis.

It wasn't. Change its ♠J to a ♠Q and it will jump to game instead of the game try. It just doesn't consider it strong enough to bid game. (In fact, basic GIB also passes 3♠; it's advanced GIB that decided it couldn't bear to pass 3♠, but didn't understand that if it were going to bid game anyway, it had to be the round before).

With human bidding 3♣ is initially to be interpreted as a game try, but if it's followed by bidding game anyway, it completely overrides the original meaning to have shown a control in clubs with (failed) slam interest. Here it's just a bug as a result of having having too few points to bid game initially, but too many to pass later. But of course, you don't want to be in slam when the opponents can take the first two tricks.

I bumped up the sample size considerably. So far it has only finessed 1/6 of the time. Given GIB clearly makes no assumption that South wouldn't duck with the King, the drop would only be a very slight favorite based on vacant places. If GIB simulated 100 hands - and it definitely does less than this - it would still be finessing at least 1/4 of the time. I wonder if GIB is applying a warped version of 'restricted choice' here - thinking that North is less likely to have the King because they didn't drop it earlier, all cards being "equal" double dummy.. if so, that would be a remarkable bug. Will find out in a week's time when I can rent the advanced bot..

Well, you're correct. This time I dealt the robots the following: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?w=SxxxxHAKxCQJxDKQx&e=SAQJTxHQJxCAKDAJx&d=e&a=2CP2NP3SP7SPPP]400|300[/hv] I gave myself Kx in South, and ducked when they took the spade finesse. On all 20 occasions they crossed back to dummy, and led towards hand.. .. then on an incredible 15/20 occasions, played the Ace of spades, only taking the marked finesse 5 times. And thus going down on virtually all 3-1 splits where the queen was onside. Wow. I'm going to need to test these situations with an Advanced robot to see if it does any better (think I have to wait a week for the basic one to expire though.)

Double dummy simulations in this scenario tend to show 1N and 2M performing about the same. However, these contracts are cases where double dummy is the most unreliable since knowing the other hands gives you far too much information on how to play. Just transfer like everyone else :)